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Save a child in Africa has almost become a cliche in certain charities' advertising campaigns. In the 1970s and '80s, images of starving Ethiopian kids stared down from billboards and out of news photos. Ethiopia, however, is no longer the land of dying children. NPR's Jason Beaubien reports on one program that helped change things.
JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: This is the Walgo Yar health post in eastern Somali region of Ethiopia. It's a simple cement brick building with just enough room for the health worker to live in one room, have a consultation room in the next. There's no electricity. There's no lights. Despite its simplicity, it's health posts like this one which have allowed Ethiopia to dramatically cut its child mortality rate over the last two decades.
FOOS MUHUMED GUDAAL: (Foreign language spoken)
BEAUBIEN: Foos Muhumed Gudaal is one of 35,000 rural health extension workers in Ethiopia. She's part of an army recruited, trained and deployed by the government to provide barebones health care across the country.
GUDAAL: (Foreign language spoken)
BEAUBIEN: One of the main conditions she deals with is malaria. She describes how she can treat most malaria cases right here in her small clinic. She also sees a lot of kids with diarrhea and respiratory infections. These are conditions that continue to be major killers in many parts of the developing world, and 20 years ago, claimed tens of thousands of lives each here. But they're relatively easy to treat.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken)
BEAUBIEN: Because there is no electricity at the clinic, Gudaal has to rely on a kerosene-fired refrigerator to keep her vaccines cold. The aging fridge sits in a small shed next to the consultation room.
GUDAAL: (Foreign language spoken)
BEAUBIEN: Gudaal lifts several vaccine vials out of the fridge. She not only administers the immunizations, it's also her job to make sure kids in her village get vaccinated. She keeps records and reminders of who needs what boosters and when. Gudaal's role is a bit like the old image of a small-town pediatrician, but she isn't even a nurse. Instead, Gudaal, along with all the other health extension workers, has gone through a special one-year training program. Her salary also isn't anywhere near that of a pediatrician's. She earns roughly $35 a month.
Since being launched a decade ago, Ethiopia's health extension worker program has had a huge impact in the country. Peter Salama, the head of UNICEF in Ethiopia, says quite simply, it's saved kids lives.
DR. PETER SALAMA: If you're a kid born in 1990, you had one in five chances of not surviving to your fifth birthday. One in five children did not survive to their fifth birthday. Today, they've dropped that mortality by around two-thirds. So a tremendous achievement in the space of two decades.
BEAUBIEN: Ethiopia used to have one of the highest rates of child mortality anywhere in the world.
SALAMA: And if you take something like severe acute malnutrition, what Ethiopia was famous, if you like, in the 1970s and '80s, today, successfully, these same lady health workers treat 300,000 children for severe acute malnutrition successfully who would otherwise almost invariably die.
BEAUBIEN: Every year, it's been...
SALAMA: Every year, 300,000. These children are now treated right across the country at a scale that was previously unheard of around the world.
BEAUBIEN: Salama says, part of the beauty of Ethiopia's health extension workers program is that it is not an international development project. It's run by the government. So as long as there's the political will, the program is sustainable and is able to reach kids across the entire country. Jason Beaubien, NPR News.
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And now a note to all you parents out there. Stop and ask yourself, could the next thing you say or do come around to embarrass you in a few decades when your child writes a memoir? Case in point, writer Gary Shteyngart's latest book. It's called "Little Failure." Here's Meg Wolitzer with a review.
MEG WOLITZER: In 1979, Gary Shteyngart and his parents moved from Leningrad to Queens. Shteyngart was an only child. So when he puts himself under a microscope, with no sibling to provide distraction, his parents get the same close-up treatment. It's not always pretty. His mother's brand of parenting involves loving put-downs. She calls him failurchka, which kind of means little failure. His father's involved installing a wooden ladder in their living room. He's hoping to bulk up little Gary and end his fear of heights. When Gary gets to the top, bang, the father knocks him down. And yet, Gary describes his father as his best friend. How can both be true? Because they are.
Shteyngart knows that families are about nothing if not ambivalence, and he describes his own with the kind of detail that you only find in the best fiction. We begin in a place of much self-loathing and there are plenty of humiliations on display. To illustrate them, Shteyngart has included a helpful series of photos. We learn about little Gary with his rickety teeth and ugly clothes, and his father who eats raw garlic sandwiches. I don't have much choice in pals, he writes, but there's a one-eyed girl in our building complex whom I have sort of befriended. We're suspicious of each other at first, but I'm an immigrant and she has one eye, so we're even.
Too much of this kind of thing might have felt shticky but it's balanced out by the author's pride, exuberance and sophisticated humor. And if the humiliated hang on long enough, and if they also happen to be brilliant and original, they sometimes grow up to claim their rightful power. When I turn 14, he writes, I lose my Russian accent. I can, in theory, walk up to a girl and the words, oh, hi there, would not sound like Okht Hyzer, possibly the name of a Turkish politician.
The teenage years of the book feel as if they're spent in oblivion. Copious pot smoking and then heavy, destructive drinking. It can get a little repetitive. And what is he trying to block out? The mother and father with their Russian, tough-love cruelty? Not exactly. This is a mature book in all the important ways: evenhanded toward his parents and not trying to score points or twist the knife. In the end, he's able to use this book to celebrate the ambivalence in his life. And for him, that's a win.
"Little Failure" is an immigrant story. It's also about coming of age, becoming a writer, and becoming a mensch. And in each of these ways, it is unambivalently a success.
CORNISH: The book is "Little Failure" by Gary Shteyngart. It was reviewed by Meg Wolitzer. Her latest novel is "The Interestings."
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The Food and Drug Administration is trying to decide what, if anything, it should do about menthol cigarettes. The FDA now has the power to regulate menthols and public health advocates are pushing that agency to ban them. They say the cool flavoring encourages kids to start smoking and makes it harder for smokers to quit. But as NPR's Rob Stein reports, the idea of banning menthol is raising concerns beyond the tobacco companies.
ROB STEIN, BYLINE: Millions of Americans smoke menthol cigarettes, smokers like Larry Brown. I ran into Brown having a smoke outside his office in downtown Washington. He's 46 and started smoking menthols when he was 15.
LARRY BROWN: I grew up on menthols. My mother smoked menthols so I used to steal them from her so I got a taste for menthols.
STEIN: Brown just likes the way his Newports feel.
BROWN: Just the taste, there's something about it. It feels good, you know, after a meal or when I wake up in the morning. It's less harsh than, like, a regular, the regular cigarettes.
STEIN: But those Newports could become a thing of the past if anti-smoking advocates have their way. David Abrams of the American Legacy Foundation is among those pushing the FDA to make menthols illegal.
DAVID ABRAMS: Menthol makes the poison of the cigarette go down much more easily.
STEIN: To begin with, Abrams says, menthols make smoking much more appealing for kids.
ABRAMS: Because the experience of the first cigarette can be very harsh on the throat, and if the menthol wasn't there to anesthetize the throat and give that cool pleasant taste, it's possible that a lot of kid would either not start or all. Or if they tried a cigarette would not progress to become addicted regular smokers.
STEIN: And Abrams says menthol may enhance the addictiveness of nicotine, making it harder to kick the habit.
ABRAMS: There are some studies suggesting that it's more addictive and more attractive, both for genetic and taste and neuroscience reasons for certain people, and especially African-Americans.
STEIN: About 80 percent of African-American smokers smoke menthols. There's a big debate about why - whether tobacco target them, whether it's cultural, something biological, or maybe a combination of all that.
Whatever the explanation, some charge that banning menthol cigarettes would be discriminatory. Niger Innis is with the Congress for Racial Equality.
NIGER INNIS: It's clearly that menthol cigarettes are being targeted because it is disproportionately liked and consumed by African-Americans. It is discriminatory.
STEIN: But others disagree. Valerie Yerger is with the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, at the University of California, San Francisco.
VALERIE YERGER: I don't see that as being discriminatory at all. I would say that it would be a good thing to ban menthol because it would mean saving a number of African-American lives.
STEIN: Tobacco companies dispute all of this. Neil Wilcox is with Lorillard, which makes Newports - the most popular menthol brand.
NEIL WILCOX: The reality is there are simply no scientific evidence that menthol adds to the initiation of smoking with youth or adults. Nor is there any evidence that menthol exacerbates addiction. Nor is there any evidence that menthol prevents individuals from quitting smoking.
STEIN: And the cigarette companies aren't the only ones who oppose banning menthol. The National Black Chamber of Commerce and the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement executives also oppose banning menthol. One worry is that a ban would create an underground market for menthols.
Lyle Beckwith is a senior vice president for the National Association of Convenience Stores.
LYLE BECKWITH: There are individuals ranging from manufacturers in China to international smugglers, to street gangs that are just licking their chops hoping that menthol gets banned so they can just jump into that marketplace.
STEIN: And, Beckwith says, that could end up making it easier for kids to get cigarettes, as well as have other unintended consequences.
BECKWITH: That black market doesn't check ID and that black market doesn't just limit itself to menthol cigarettes. There's no stopping them from selling counterfeit regular cigarettes and other illegal products - illegal drugs.
STEIN: The FDA hasn't decided what to do. It could ban menthol outright or limit the amount of menthol allowed in cigarettes. Or do nothing at all.
Mitch Zeller heads the FDA's tobacco office.
MITCH ZELLER: It would be inappropriate for me to prejudge any potential action that we could take other than to say we're in information-seeking mode. We want more evidence, more information as we ponder any potential action that we could take.
STEIN: For his part, Larry Brown thinks the FDA should keep its hands off his menthols.
BROWN: Freedom of speech, freedom to smoke whatever flavor of cigarettes you want to smoke - I don't think they should get involved at all.
STEIN: As the FDA weights its options, the government is sponsoring new research to try to find out whether menthol really makes it harder to quit. And the FDA is launching a big, new anti-smoking campaign aimed at kids that specifically warns against the dangers of smoking menthol cigarettes.
Rob Stein, NPR News.
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CORNISH: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.
For many Americans, today is a reset day. We look at our waistlines, our drinking habits, maybe how much we're getting done on that secret dream project; and we commit to do better in the New Year, to finally step into the selves we've always wanted to be.
This next story is about a technique that could help. It involves telling yourself slightly altered personal stories. Turns out, editing your own life story can result in huge changes in your behavior, from health and self-control to performance at work and school. NPR's Lulu Miller reports.
LULU MILLER, BYLINE: Before I heard about this technique from a research psychologist, I heard about it from my nephew.
(LAUGHTER)
MILLER: He's 4 and a half. His name is Lewis. And what happened is this: When he was 2and a half, he happened to encounter a thing that terrified him, a 4-foot tall statue of Frankenstein.
ALEXA: Do you remember that time we saw the Frankenstein in the toy store?
MILLER: That's his mom - my sister Alexa.
LEWIS: I think I do.
MILLER: The statue was standing just outside of a toy store. And Lewis was so startled by it ...
ALEXA: that...
MILLER: ....take it away, Alexa.
ALEXA: He ran deep into the store, and he had this expression on his face that I have very rarely seen in his almost five years of being alive. It was like, shock.
MILLER: Of course, now he had a problem. To leave the store, he was going to have to walk by the Frankenstein again. So he steeled himself; he held his mother's hand; and they walked closer and closer.
ALEXA: And then he just jumped into my arms. (Laughter) And he kind of put his head into my shoulder. So we left the store.
MILLER: And she said that after that...
ALEXA: He was really rattled. Really, really rattled.
MILLER: They had to make a four-hour car ride.
ALEXA: And the entire car ride, he just said over and over, hey, Mom, do you remember the Frankenstein? And I'd say, yeah. And then he'd be quiet for a little bit and then it would just start over. Hey, Mom, do you remember the Frankenstein - do you remember that? Do you remember that? He was so stuck on it.
MILLER: Again and again, he told the story of running past Frankenstein in fear. Sometimes he'd make his mom tell it back to him.
ALEXA: Frankenstein, the Frankenstein, the Frankenstein.
MILLER: And then, after likely hundreds of retellings, suddenly something funny happened.
ALEXA: He jumped in and said, and I pooped on the Frankenstein.
(LAUGHTER)
ALEXA: And then I peed on the Frankenstein.
MILLER: She said his face was pure delight.
ALEXA: You know, it became not a story about how scared he was, but it became a story about how he overpowered it.
MILLER: And that was the Frankenstein story that lasted.
LEWIS: And I pooped on it.
(LAUGHTER)
TIM WILSON: Well, my main thought is your nephew is a brilliant story editor. What a nice turn of narrative.
MILLER: This is Tim Wilson, the aforementioned peer-reviewed psychologist.
WILSON: I am a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia.
MILLER: And I took this story to him because, well, teaching people to pee on Frankenstein is basically what he does for a living.
WILSON: Yeah, sure.
MILLER: He calls the technique story editing.
WILSON: Story editing.
MILLER: But the principle is the same. The idea is that bad stories can actually bring you down; stories like, I'll never succeed or nobody likes me, or I'm a coward.
WILSON: That's, unfortunately, self-reinforcing; that once you say that to yourself, it's very hard to get out of it.
MILLER: But if you tweak a story like that just a little bit...
LEWIS: I pooped on it.
MILLER: ...it can help you get out of a place of fear or unhappiness or defeat.
WILSON: A little tweak to our story can go a long way to changing what we do, and how happy we are. And there are, you know, for those of us who aren't as clever as your nephew and are struggling with events, there are writing exercises that I think do just that. They allow us to find a different meaning in something that's bothering us, in ways that we can put it behind us.
MILLER: And that, says Wilson, is the first step toward recovery: making sense of a negative outcome. And back in the 1980s, Wilson discovered how profoundly a simple writing exercise - seriously, ones that take less than 40 minutes - can help. In that study, he watched as a new story helped college students...
WILSON: Improve their grades.
MILLER: And though his research interests have since changed, ever since then he's been keeping track of whenever a story editing intervention was successful. And recently, he complied all these examples into a book called "Redirect," which reads as a sort of "Ripley's Believe It or Not" of story editing - story Editing interventions that can help parents stop abusing their kids; story editing that can reduce violence, depression, drug abuse.
WILSON: And let me give you another example, if I may.
MILLER: Social belonging. In this study, two Stanford professors did an intervention with college freshmen - men and women, white and minority. The researchers knew that freshmen often have trouble connecting socially on campus, especially minority students. And the researchers also knew that the kids tended to blame themselves for their problems.
WILSON: I just said to these students, hey, you know what? A lot of people experience social difficulties at first. A lot of people have trouble making a lot of friends at first, and it's a natural part of the college process.
MILLER: What they did is have the students read accounts written by older students who'd had a hard time fitting in at first, but then ended up happy.
WILSON: And I actually asked them to make a speech for high school students.
MILLER: Describing what they just learned.
WILSON: So that incoming students know to expect that it might be a little rough at first.
MILLER: And that was basically it. One intervention less than an hour long, in which the students were simply asked to consider a different story - that having no friends at first, is normal.
WILSON: It was fascinating. It led to a remarkable turnaround. They did better academically. Three years later, if they had gotten this intervention, they were actually healthier than the control group that didn't. I think it's another one of these little story editing nudges that seems trivial, but it's self-reinforcing. And it just cascades in a positive way, down the road.
MILLER: Now, if you want to try this at home, simply Google the name James Pennebaker. He's a psychologist at UT Austin who's another one of the pioneers of this work. And up on his website, he's got a bunch of exercises you can do to try this yourself.
WILSON: Typically in the Pennebaker writing technique, you write for three or four nights in a row - maybe 15 minutes each time - about a particular problem. And you just write about your deepest feelings. You try to open up, and just write freely about what it is.
MILLER: And that's all you do. You pick a troubling event, and write everything you can about it for 15 minutes, for four days.
WILSON: We know that from many, many experiments that randomly assign people to do this - or to a control condition that doesn't - is that on average, it is helpful. We know that college students who do this don't go to the health services much. Workers who do it have better attendance records. There's lots and lots of data.
MILLER: The way that this seems to work is that as people write about this troubling, confusing event again and again, eventually they begin to make some new sense of it.
WILSON: By the end of it, they have constructed a new narrative. They've found some new meaning in the event. They've looked at it in a different angle. They've, in a way, tied it up so that it doesn't prey on them as much.
MILLER: Which brings me back to my nephew. I can report that as of Thanksgiving 2013, Lewis is unafraid of Frankenstein. My sister actually tested. She pulled up a photo of that same green, bolted-face...
ALEXA: All right, ready?
LEWIS: Mm-hmm.
MILLER: ...to see how Lewis would react.
LEWIS: He doesn't look scary.
MILLER: A self-confidence...
ALEXA: No?
LEWIS: No.
MILLER: ...that is built on an act of imagination. He didn't pee on Frankenstein. He cowered like a little baby in his mother's arms.
WILSON: But what's the harm? If it conquers the fear and doesn't lead to maladaptive behaviors in the future, I see no problem with it.
MILLER: A little lie can go a long way?
(LAUGHTER)
WILSON: Sure.
LEWIS: Bye, Frankenstein
MILLER: Lulu Miller, NPR News, Washington.
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CORNISH: For writing exercises to help you edit your own story, visit our health news blog Shots, at NPR.org.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
We go now to Brazil where the use of social media is exploding. It's Facebook's third largest market, the fifth largest for Twitter. The controversial women only app called Lulu just launched in Brazil and it's become the top downloaded app there, making it Lulu's biggest market.
But NPR's correspondent Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reports, Brazil isn't all good news for these international Internet giants. They're also struggling with a host of legal issues, as Brazil tries to update its legal code for these social media times.
MARCELLA: (Foreign language spoken)
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, BYLINE: Twenty-year-old Marcela taps on the Lulu app on her iPhone, while flicking her long brown hair. On the screen, pictures of young men appear with ratings next to them.
MARCELLA: (Foreign language spoken)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I think it is cool because it's a social network for what all women throughout history have always done, she says. Let's talk about the guys we like, the guys we think are handsome. That's why I liked it because it is a good way to spend time and it is funny, she says.
MARCELLA: (Foreign language spoken)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: In case you have been living in isolation in a cave in Tibet or are under 25, Lulu app is the girls' only application linked to your Facebook account that allows you to anonymously rate your exes, your current boyfriend, or your male friends with hashtags like: momma's boy, incurable romantic or burps and farts, among many others.
Created by entrepreneur Alexandra Chong, it started in the States and took off. Its first foray into the international market was in Brazil.
DEBORAH SINGER: In the first week, there were five million visits by girls, 300 million profiles used.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Lulu's marketing director Deborah Singer says the launch was an unqualified success. Social media in Brazil is booming analysts say because it taps into some fundamental Brazilian traits: sociability, their love of communicating, and the consumer culture here that prizes anything new. All this made Brazil the obvious market for Lulu, Singer says.
She says Lulu app makes some men uncomfortable at first.
SINGER: But once they actually see how the app works, once they realize that its multiple choice - that girls can't write whatever they want - and that overall the reviews tend to be very positive. And that's when we convert them and they really start to see the value of Lulu.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But if you try to get onto Lulu app today in Brazil, you'll see a banner reading: Lulu is on vacation, Happy Christmas, we are renovating during the holidays and we will be back soon.
Lulu app has been faced with lawsuits by men who say their privacy has been violated. The public prosecutors office has even launched an inquiry.
FELIPPO DE ALMEIDA SCOLARI: (Foreign language spoken)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Law student Felippo de Almeida Scolari is among them. He says a friend of mine sent me a screen shot of my Lulu app profile with all the hashtags about me. I got revolted because I saw things about my intimate life exposed on the Internet for anyone to see, he says.
SCOLARI: (Foreign language spoken)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Facebook got my information and used for something I didn't expressly authorize, he says. Our fight is to regulate privacy on the Internet. I want Lulu to comply with Brazilian law, he says.
The problem is Brazilian law is still in flux and legislation is only just being created, to deal with the rise of social media here.
Fernando Baptista is an independent researcher on Internet use.
FERNANDO BAPTISTA: (Through Translator) In the Brazilian Constitution, freedom of expression is guaranteed. But the constitution also says there can't be anonymity in this expression. So if I rate someone, that's not the problem. But the anonymity could be. That's the debate right now.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And it's not only a discussion about Lulu. Last month, two girls killed themselves after sexually explicit photos of them were distributed through social media. One congressman has proposed legislation that would make so called revenge porn illegal. In the past few months, there's been a raft of other laws dealing with Internet hacking, identity theft, racism on the net and other issues.
More broadly Brazil's congress is expected to pass sweeping Internet legislation in the New Year that will deal with issues of privacy, among other things.
As for Lulu app it promises to be back in 2014 and says it will now only use the profiles of men who have agreed to opt-in. In the meantime, it's launched a marketing campaign to get guys to agree to be rated.
Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR News, Sao Paulo.
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Now, to a lingering controversy over one of the health law's required benefits, contraceptive coverage. Last night, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor temporarily blocked the federal government from requiring a Catholic order of nuns who operate 30 nursing homes from having to provide the benefits to their workers. NPR's Julie Rovner joins us now to sort some of this out. Hey there, Julie.
JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: Hey, Audie.
CORNISH: So remind us first, what are the requirements in the law when it comes to covering contraceptives?
ROVNER: Well, this is part of a preventive services package that applies to almost all health plans, most of those provided by employers as well as the new plans that people are buying in the individual market. The benefit, by the way, was developed not by the administration itself, but by the Independent Institute of Medicine and it said that as part of routine healthcare for women, they should have access to all forms of FDA approved prescription contraceptives with no co-pays.
Now, this does not include the controversial abortion pill, mifepristone, but it does include some forms of the morning-after pill and the intrauterine device, which some religious people say cause abortion by blocking the implantation of a fertilized egg, although that's not the medical definition of an abortion.
CORNISH: To be clear, though, some religious groups are completely exempt from the requirement.
ROVNER: That's right. From the beginning, the rules exempted what the administration called a religious employer. That's defined as an organization that has the inculcation of religious values as its primary purpose, that it primarily employees people who share those religious tenets and it primarily served people who share that faith.
But many religious organizations, mostly, but not exclusively Catholic groups, complained that that exemption was way too narrow.
CORNISH: So who did it leave out?
ROVNER: Well, primarily it leaves out religious health and education facilities so hospitals, colleges, schools and social service agencies are all covered by the requirement. Now, after a lot of back and forth, the administration made a lot of changes to the rules. Finally, last summer, it made what it hoped would be a compromise everyone could live with, that religious groups that were not exempt had to make sure their employees get the benefit, but that they wouldn't have to pay for or provide it themselves, that the coverage would be provided directly by an insurance company or a third party provider.
That turned out to be still too much for many religious groups who say they're being made complicit in something that violates their religion and starting today, they can be subject to penalties for not facilitating the benefit, which is why there was a last-minute flurry of legal action. And most of the plaintiffs in this suit, there's about 20 suits that are still in play, have gotten injunctions fairly easily so they don't have to comply with the rules while their lawsuits are being heard.
The only reason this suit reached Justice Sotomayor is that the appeals court in the 10th circuit, where this case was heard, wouldn't grant that injunction and Justice Sotomayor is in charge of that circuit. I doubt we really would've heard much about this case except for that.
CORNISH: So does this ruling tell us anything about what's likely to happen?
ROVNER: I really don't think so. As I said, most of these cases have resulted in those suing getting a stay while their cases are heard and most people think this case will ultimately be decided by the full Supreme Court anyway.
CORNISH: Doesn't the Supreme Court already have this case before it?
ROVNER: Well, yes and no. What the court already has agreed to hear are two cases from for-profit companies about the contraceptive mandate, but those companies are actually required to provide this coverage. These religious groups, remember, don't have to provide it directly so it's a slightly different issue, even though it's the same mandate.
The religious cases have been somewhat delayed in the courts, however, because, as I mentioned, the rules hadn't yet taken effect. Now they are in effect and I expect we'll start seeing this case move a little more briskly.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Julie Rovner. Julie, thank you.
ROVNER: Thank you.
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Since October, more than 2 million people have used new exchanges to sign up for private health insurance. We're going to focus now on sign-ups in Mississippi. Jeffrey Hess of Mississippi Public Broadcasting reports that insurers there are working hard to enroll people despite wariness of the law.
JEFFREY HESS, BYLINE: About 275,000 uninsured Mississippians are eligible for the health insurance exchange, and they're slowly signing up for the new health coverage plans. Enrollment navigators and insurance companies are pushing to find and sign up people like 56-year-old Arlene Wilson (ph), who's a chef with a popular, local pizza shop in Jackson.
Wilson says until now, she and many of the people who work with her in the store have been unable to afford insurance.
ARLENE WILSON: Because most jobs don't offer health care, you know, and it's so high, we can't afford to pay, you know. Most of us live from paycheck to paycheck.
HESS: Although website issues made the enrollment process take almost two hours, Wilson was able to find a plan and was pleased with the rate.
WILSON: I got the premium plan, which pays up to 90 percent; and I got a credit of $711, so only thing I have to pay a month is 71 cents - less than a dollar.
HESS: Wilson's plan is so inexpensive because she makes less than $17,000 a year, and the premiums are reduced by federal subsidies that are tied to her income. Only two insurance companies are offering plans in Mississippi, and they only overlap in four of the state's 82 counties. However, those two companies appear to be betting that the website problems, and skepticism about the exchange in general, are passing.
One of the two companies, Humana, launched a late-December ad campaign to drive more people to the site says spokesman Mitch Lubitz.
MITCH LUBITZ: There's been a ramp-up as the healthcare.gov website has gotten easier to use, and there have been other options for people to go on and get information and enroll.
HESS: Mississippi's insurance commissioner, Mike Chaney, says the improvements to the enrollment process are good, but he's still skeptical they'll be able to get enough people signed up this year.
MIKE CHANEY: From zero through 10, I'd give it a confidence level of about a three.
HESS: That's still not very good.
CHANEY: It's not, but it's better than where I was at a one a week before last.
HESS: Chaney says the unofficial count is around 2,000 people enrolled. But he says if the trend continues upward, his confidence will rise to a five. For NPR News, I'm Jeffrey Hess in Jackson, Miss.
CORNISH: This story, as well as Sarah Varney's reporting, came to us from a partnership with Kaiser Health News.
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From memory alloys now to the fragile historical record left by prehistoric societies. In some places, what little we know about those who came before us is being threatened by climate change.
As NPR's Elizabeth Shogren reports, archeologists are racing to learn about people who lived in the Arctic thousands of years ago, before the traces of their lives disappear forever.
ELIZABETH SHOGREN, BYLINE: Portland State University archeologist Shelby Anderson is fascinated by the ancient people who lived along the coast of what is now Northwestern Alaska. They hunted whales and seals and were connected by trade routes with people as far away as Northeast Asia. Frigid temperatures preserved lots of clues of their lives: tools, houses and even animal skins. But climate change is hastening their disappearance.
SHELBY ANDERSON: It's literally taking them away out into the ocean where I can't find them.
SHOGREN: When the sea ice connects to the shore, it protects the land from big waves and flooding. Because of global warming the ice connects about two weeks later in the autumn, than it did a decade ago. This leaves the coast vulnerable during the time of year when the worst storms usually come. There's also a larger area of water that is free of ice in the summer and early fall, which translates into bigger waves and storm surges. These forces exacerbate natural erosion on this coast.
Anderson has searched stretches of the coast for settlements that her colleagues documented 20 years ago, only to conclude that they've completely washed away. She also sees the damage in real time when she's in Alaska doing field work.
ANDERSON: Sites that I've been walking past, you know, for months, I'll see them lose five feet in one storm.
SHOGREN: There's another threat. Many areas that used to be permanently frozen are melting. Permafrost preserved plant material, leather and even whole people, which archeologists don't find in non-frozen environments.
ANDERSON: So something that survived for thousands of years, once it's exposed to the elements, quickly decomposes. And so, you know, there's less that we can learn from those objects.
SHOGREN: Like, say, an ivory carving that depicts the parkas and boots people wore thousands of years ago.
The permafrost also protected the shoreline. Exposed bluffs erode much faster than the ice covered ones did. All of this is agonizing for Anderson.
ANDERSON: And if these sites are gone, there's going to be nothing left to study. And I feel worried about it.
SHOGREN: Anderson knows she can't stop the forces of nature that are wiping away these archeological treasures. But she's determined to document as much as she can before it's gone. What she needs is better forecasts of which sections of the coast are likely to erode first.
ANDERSON: It's thousands and thousands of acres of uninvestigated land. I need to know, like, which specific area of the coast should I focus on.
SHOGREN: There could be some help on the way. The National Park Service owns the coastal land where Anderson works. It recently hired paleo-climatologist Maria Caffrey to calculate the risk national parks face from sea level rise and storm surges.
MARIA CAFFREY: We will be able to see where there are areas that are really exceptionally vulnerable to sea level rise.
SHOGREN: Caffrey hopes to finish forecasts for 105 coastal parks by 2016. She can make the best predictions when she has lots of historic data. She gets it from devices called tide gauges which can be used to measure sea level. The only tide gauge along the Northwestern Alaskan coast didn't record the data she needs.
CAFFREY: There's still a lot of question marks about what could happen with sea level in that particular area.
SHOGREN: Still, Caffrey hopes she can make good predictions. She found some data from Russian tide gauges and plans to use a temporary tide gauge on the Alaskan shore, before she makes her forecasts.
Elizabeth Shogren. NPR news.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
If you've every straightened out a wire coat hanger, you know that once it's unbent, it doesn't bend back up on its own. But certain mixtures of metals remember their original shape and will re-bend themselves under the right conditions. Scientists at a Department of Energy National Laboratory have developed a new class of these materials with some remarkable properties.
NPR's Joe Palca is always looking around for interesting inventions, as part of a project we're calling Joe's Big Idea, he found this one in New Mexico.
JOE PALCA, BYLINE: The metal mixtures that have this memory property are called shape memory alloys. Here's how they work. Let's say you have a wire made out of one these alloys to set its memory you heat the wire up and give it to the shape you want. Let's say you just want a simple, straight wire. When it cools down you twist the wire, coil it, fold it - whatever. And then...
DON SUSAN: When it heats back up, it remembers the high temperature shape that you set in it originally.
PALCA: Don Susan is a material scientist at the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque. He's set up a little demo for me at this lab bench. There's some wires and a glass beaker with boiling water.
SUSAN: Here's a shape memory allow wire that the remembered shape is straight. And we can make it into whatever we want.
PALCA: Don Susan starts bending the wire.
SUSAN: Coil it up.
PALCA: Then he holds the coiled up wire over boiling water...
SUSAN: It happens pretty fast.
PALCA: ..and dips the wire in. I don't know if you can hear that, but that clink is the wire smacking against the side of the beaker as it returns to its straight shape. Don Susan says the shape change occurs with considerable force, force you can use to flip a switch or pull a pin.
These shape memory alloys are used today in medical devices, plumbing fixtures, even household appliances. The materials they're developing in New Mexico are different.
SUSAN: The new alloys that we're working on, they transform at higher temperatures.
PALCA: Commercially available memory alloys are made of nickel and titanium. They transform shape at room temperatures or body temperature, by adding one of three other metals...
SUSAN: Platinum, palladium or hafnium.
PALCA: ...Don Susan and his colleagues are raising the shape changing temperature considerably - hundreds of degrees. And what does he plan to do with these high temperature shape memory alloys?
SUSAN: We like the idea of using these alloys in safety devices, fail-safe devices.
PALCA: Here's how that would work. Let's say you want to make sure that a bomb on a fighter jet won't go off accidentally. You could make a shape that would let the bomb function under normal circumstances. But if the plane caught fire, the shape would change all on its own - maybe pulling out a pin or breaking an electrical connection.
SUSAN: Because these alloys will do their function in the fire perform and saving function. And so we like that.
PALCA: What's not to like?
Don Susan says fail-safe weapons are just the start. He sees thousand of potential uses for these high temperature shape memory alloys.
Joe Palca, NPR News.
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The Barclays Center is home to the Brooklyn's pro-basketball team, the Nets. It's also home to some of the most advanced technology ever to come to a stadium or arena. As reporter Dan Tucker found, it even has its own app.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)
DAN TUCKER, BYLINE: I'm sitting in the Barclays Center watching a Brooklyn Nets game with Chip Foley, the arena's vice president of Technology. He's a big fan of the team.
CHIP FOLEY: He goes back. They're going. Here he goes outside to hit the three, and brick.
TUCKER: Foley is not narrating the game. He's actually narrating a replay that we're watching on my iPhone, just a few seconds after we watched that same play on the court.
FOLEY: Oh, yeah. If he hit it, it would have been exciting. Boom goes the dynamite.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Shaun Livingston.
TUCKER: Yeah. Actually, when I was playing with it, I missed something, I heard the shot clock go off and then I hit the replay. It seemed to work pretty well.
FOLEY: No, no, it's great.
(SOUNDBITE OF A CROWD)
TUCKER: You need to be inside the Barclays Center and connected to the arena's wireless network for this technology to work. In addition to replays, you can also watch live game feeds from multiple camera angles. The sideline cam, for instance, gives you the feeling of standing with the coaches and players down on the court.
FOLEY: I mean, you got to think of it not only for the courtside fans, but the fans in the upper concourse, in the upper pavilion area. They get a bird's eye view from up top, but then they get a first-person perspective from their device.
(SOUNDBITE OF A CROWD)
TUCKER: This system works so well thanks to the arena's high-density Wi-Fi. Instead of one big network that would slow down as more fans log on, there are 300 access points spread throughout the arena. There's no password, no terms of service and no fee. And you can log-on with any device you want. It's almost too easy.
OK. Now, I've just been playing with this app so I have no idea what's been happening on the court.
Oops, maybe I should have been paying more attention to the game instead of looking at my phone.
So I just hit replay here at the game. OK, it looks like the Nets - oh, it's a little blurry. Oh, but here it is - Number 14 on the Nets, Livingston. Oh, and there's a dunk. OK, I guess I missed that.
The feature has more practical applications if you're moving around the arena. Say you're in line for the bathroom or a beer and you miss a three-pointer. Just hit replay. Or maybe you were chatting with a friend and you missed a big block - hit replay again.
The live feeds are a different animal. There's a three-second delay, and it can be a little disorienting when what's on the court and what's on your phone aren't synced up.
FOLEY: Let's go back to the game feed. So this camera's set up in Section 124. We're tapped into those cameras right now and you'll be able to log-in and see what that camera's seeing. So this is really the television view.
TUCKER: So why buy an expensive ticket just to get the same view you see on TV? Paul Kapustka, the editor-in-chief of the blog Mobile Sports Report, thinks he has the answer. He says as mobile devices and stadium Wi-Fi advance, these replays and feeds will become more and more compelling.
PAUL KAPUSTKA: Being able to see that when you're still in the stadium atmosphere and everybody cheering is really, I think, going to increase the value and the fun of being at the stadium.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)
TUCKER: Instead of distracting you from the game, apps like the one at Barclays could actually enhance what you're experiencing. So far, very few venues have taken steps in that direction. Not many stadiums have their own apps. And according to one survey, only a third have high-speed Wi-Fi. But experts like Kapustka say the wired stadium is here to stay. After all, fans won't be leaving their Smartphones at home any time soon.
For NPR News, I'm Dan Tucker in New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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The city of Wilmington, Delaware has a problem: gun violence. It has just 71,000 residents but if its homicide rate were compared to larger cities, it would rank fourth behind Flint, Michigan, Detroit and New Orleans. This month, the Wilmington City Council passed a resolution asking for federal help. It wants the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of what it calls a pandemic of gun violence. Sponsors are hoping it will lead to resources for community agencies that can help bring peace to their streets.
NPR's Allison Keyes reports.
ALLISON KEYES, BYLINE: City Councilwoman Hanifa Shabazz is worried about her city.
HANIFA SHABAZZ: At this corner here, Tenth and Pine, we had a shooting and a death
KEYES: It happened on a street lined with brown row houses - some boarded up - right across the intersection from a brightly colored mural of historical Wilmington residents.
SHABAZZ: The horrific part about it is they took pictures of it and put the pictures out on Facebook.
KEYES: Shabazz's resolution passed unanimously. It says Wilmington is experiencing a pandemic of gun violence and homicides among young African-American males, and that deserves national attention. It asks the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to examine and mitigate the effects it has on our children and youth.
SHABAZZ: I'm hoping that it would validate what we already know of the social ills and mental diseases that our community is suffering from and the trauma that they've been exposed to is causing them to make the wrong decisions that result in gun violence.
KEYES: A 2009 CDC report found that the leading cause of death for black males in America, between the ages of 15 and 30, is homicide and Wilmington's police department says over 90 percent of the victims of shootings and homicides this year have been young black males. Wilmington Mayor Dennis Williams says he respects the council's request for a CDC study because he's also frustrated.
MAYOR DENNIS WILLIAMS: If you want to stop this bloodshed, let's go out into the community and do work.
KEYES: Williams is planning to put what he calls street ambassadors out into the neighborhoods. Some have been incarcerated, but Williams says they know the streets and the rules in troubled communities and they'll be able to help.
WILLIAMS: People who have street credibility can stem the tide of this violence by reaching out to these folks prior to them going out shooting somebody. These are people that can confront these folks and talk to them and they ask them, you know, look, can you settle this a different way?
KEYES: Williams says the problem is exacerbated by the proliferation of firearms as well as a loss of morality, Christian values and stability in the home. But he also thinks some of the blame lies with the police department and its chief, Christine Dunning. He's threatening a shakeup of top police brass he appointed just 11 months ago.
WILLIAMS: There will be new people put in place if things don't change. And when I say things don't change, police officers will get out of the car, they will patrol neighborhoods. They won't stay in fixed posts.
CORPORAL MARK IVEY: He's talking about the police department as he'd like to see it and he's reminding us that that's what he wants. And in a lot of cases, we are doing that.
KEYES: Corporal Mark Ivey is spokesman for the Wilmington police department and acknowledges that the top officials there serve at the pleasure of the mayor. But, he says, police are focusing on reducing violence and strengthening the city's neighborhoods. Ivey thinks there's what he calls a numbness among young people to gun violence.
IVEY: People obviously feel comfortable shooting guns at other people in public and they don't seem to worry that they're going to be caught.
KEYES: Ivey says part of the solution is getting the community to trust each other and create an environment where drug dealing and guns aren't acceptable.
NORWOOD COLEMAN: It seems very clear that we need some guidance here.
KEYES: That's Norwood Coleman. He's clinical supervisor for Wilmington's child development community policing program. It provides short term counseling for children who've been exposed to traumatic events. He says since 2007, the program has seen its referrals quadruple. Coleman says perhaps the CDC can help.
COLEMAN: We need outside eyes to be able to help us look at the situation differently and also to help us to plan how we can utilize the resources that we have here.
KEYES: Coleman says the violence confronting the city and its young people doesn't have just one victim. He points to a shooting that happened recently behind a family home.
COLEMAN: There were many other more families that expressed that their children were scared, that the parents were no longer willing to let their children go outside and play.
KEYES: City officials say they are looking for any answers to help bring down the gun violence. The council says it expects the letter to go from the state of Delaware to the CDC without delay. Allison Keyes, NPR News.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CORNISH: After three years, six injured actors, $75 million and several lawsuits, the most expensive musical in Broadway history is coming to a close. "Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark" ends its run this week, faced with declining ticket sales and huge operating costs.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing) I'm a $65 million circus tragedy.
CORNISH: With music by Bono and The Edge, of U2 fame; choreography that included thrilling, high-flying acrobatics; and the show, directed by Julie Taymor of "Lion King" fame; this show seemed to have the makings of a mega hit.
GLEN BERGER: Up until the first preview, there was really no evidence that we had anything other than airtight, surefire hit. The investors, the producers - everybody just said, man, this thing is going to fly.
CORNISH: That's Glen Berger. He's written a book called "Song of Spiderman: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History." Berger co-wrote the script for the musical; and he admits that early on, he thought the idea of making this production was a bit ridiculous.
BERGER: You know, I said in a certain light, it could be construed as possibly ridiculous. I had the image in my head of a super villain looking over Manhattan and singing, but I knew that the people that we were working with, especially Julie Taymor, that was going to make sure that this wasn't about singing super villains; you know, that there was something sort of ancient and mythic at the heart of it. And I knew that it ultimately, wouldn't be ridiculous - or I was pretty sure that it wouldn't.
CORNISH: So tell us what the basic plot is supposed to be. I know some of us are familiar with the movies or the comic books. How did this go? How was it different?
BERGER: Well, you know, the first act in particular just followed the origin story and then, meanwhile, there's this sort of patron demi goddess in Peter's life. This is different from the movies, this figure of Arachni based on the Greek myth who sort of appears to him in dreams and then winds up becoming sort of a super villain after she becomes convinced that Peter Parker, as Spiderman, can deliver her from the shadows where she was banished by Athena, millennia ago after she beat Athena in a weaving contest.
CORNISH: This is where Marvel right away is like, get this Arachni think out of here, right? Like, they're not exactly interested.
BERGER: They weren't quite onboard with it, early on. You know, there was a lot of back and forth. Marvel finally did approve the presence of Arachni and we went on to write the script with here onboard.
CORNISH: There are some moments in the show in which you describe as being essentially bad choices, maybe that they didn't quite translate from the page to the stage and...
BERGER: You know, no, it's hard and, you know, in hindsight you can say, oh, well, yes, of course, what were you thinking?
CORNISH: But in dissecting the show, did you find moments where you thought, I should've spoke up. Here's the moment where I should've said something?
BERGER: Well, you know, you could have doubts, but everyone have doubts, you know, from time to time and, you know, you would just feel silly going to someone and saying, well, clearly, you know, this isn't going to work because, you know, we all thought it was going to work until we were deep into previews.
CORNISH: And as we mentioned in our introduction, numerous actors were injured during that time in the early part of development. Again, is that another moment where anyone said, hey, this isn't working?
BERGER: Well, not to downplay the accidents at all, but I think it was sort of up-played in the media. You know, there was one fellow, Brandon Rubendall, actually I can't remember if it was Brandon or Kevin who hurt himself first on this one particular maneuver and then the second fellow was injured in exactly the same way after we thought we had figured out what was wrong.
But there did seem to be, you know, an ill wind blowing. You know, it came to our luck with the accidents.
CORNISH: And we should mention, at least one of those actors also has filed a suit, right, against the show as a result.
BERGER: Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's right. Josh Kobak to replaced Chris Tierney who fell 30 feet off of the ramp. No, it was harrowing and awful and, you know, made everybody just sick with, you know, anxiety and worry for them.
CORNISH: Now, by the time this show opens, critics and theatergoers, it seemed as though they were going there to see if something would go wrong, in a way, right? It's been a very long period of previews. And what was that like for you? I mean, essentially people were, like, hate-watching the show.
BERGER: Yeah. There was a sort of NASCAR element to it. Although, at the same time, you know, you looked at the faces of the nine-year-old kids watching it and I know that they weren't thinking that. They were just here to see Spiderman. But it did - the show did take on, as I wrote in my book, it felt less like a Broadway musical and more like sort of a, you know, an enormous art installation, you know.
It felt like a sort of a capital E event was, you know, was taking place in real time, you know, in Time Square.
CORNISH: After writing, you know, a good 350 pages about this experience, what did you come to as maybe the top two or top three reasons why this was so problematic?
BERGER: Well, I guess I am a glass half-full guy 'cause I see all the things that went right, too, amazing number of things went right. And all these things along the way that we thought we had figured out, you know, bullets that we dodged and still, you know, (unintelligible) things.
CORNISH: But you describe - I mean, people have criticized the music, right? And you have The Edge and Bono of U2. You describe the process of kind of getting them to write the songs on time, right, for it to start.
BERGER: Yeah. Well, that's difficult.
CORNISH: Technical things.
BERGER: Yeah, I know, but gosh, you know, the top three - the music, for one, the original demos that Bono and Edge turned in were absolutely thrilling. However, they were these little demos that Edge had put together on his, you know, Apple computer garage band program and not really realizing that it would actually be very difficult to translate these songs to an orchestra.
You know, and then, you know, we had an ending that was going to culminate with this giant web fight and then we realized a few days before our first preview that we didn't have the web for the web fight. Suddenly, we didn't have an ending. And bringing the intangible into the tangible world, you know, dealing with the stupid world of reality became kind of a drag with this show.
CORNISH: And now, what project are you working on? Can we expect to see you on any more Broadway plays?
BERGER: I'm actually working on one right now. It's an adaptation of a Warner Bros. movie. I can't say much more, but yeah, believe it or not. Either I'm crazy or someone else is.
CORNISH: Glen Berger, he's the author of "Song of Spiderman: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History." Thank you so much for speaking with us.
BERGER: My pleasure. Thank you.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish. Happy New Year.
We begin this hour with big change in New York City. As of today, it has a new mayor, its 109th. Bill de Blasio is the first Democrat at the helm of city hall in two decades. At his inauguration, de Blasio talked up his progressive agenda.
From member station WNYC, Brigid Bergin reports on the beginning of this new era in New York City government.
BRIGID BERGIN, BYLINE: Mayor Bill de Blasio and his family took the subway to city hall, where he was greeted by throngs of well-wishers and offered some advice.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Make sure to keep it real, Bill.
BERGIN: Keep it real, Bill, was the message and it was a straightforward sentiment echoed throughout ceremony. Organizers say nearly 5,000 people turned out in their winter weather finest, sipping hot cider from thermal mugs handed out for the occasion.
Former President Bill Clinton administered the oath of office with his wife, former New York Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, nearby.
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: Please raise your right hand, state your name and repeat after me. I, Bill de Blasio...
MAYOR-ELECT BILL DE BLASIO: I, Bill de Blasio...
CLINTON: ...do solemnly swear...
BERGIN: De Blasio was flanked by his family, his Caribbean-American wife, Chirlane McCray, who he considers one of his top advisers, and their two teenage children, Chiara and Dante. Bill de Blasio campaigned on a pledge to break from the Michael Bloomberg era, which ran for 12 years here. Bloomberg sat stern-faced on the dais throughout the ceremony. While he leaves behind record low crime and record long life expectancy for New Yorkers, de Blasio and his supporters say the city needs to change.
BLASIO: And so today, we commit to a new progressive direction in New York. And that same progressive impulse has written our city's history. It's in our DNA.
BERGIN: One of de Blasio's top priorities is expanding early childhood education through a tax on New Yorkers who make more than half a million dollars, something he'll need state lawmakers to approve. He's also aiming at the widely derided police tactic known as stop and frisk, which critics say has unfairly targeted people of color and was found unconstitutional in federal court. And the new mayor has a message for conservatives questioning whether he'll stick to his campaign promises.
BLASIO: There are some who think that now, as we turn to governing, well, that things will just continue pretty much the way they always have. So let me be clear, when I said I would take dead aim at the tale of two cities, I meant it.
BERGIN: That Dickensian theme is part of what catapulted de Blasio to his 50-point victory. Mitchell Moss teaches urban policy and planning at New York University and advised Bloomberg on his first campaign. He says de Blasio may struggle to tackle income inequality, as many cities have.
MITCHELL MOSS: But they can raise minimum wages, we can have living wages, there are some quick and easy things cities can do, they have done around the country - in Seattle, in Portland, in San Francisco. So he'll take on those.
BERGIN: Moss says it's striking that the Clintons were front and center at the inauguration. It ties them to de Blasio's liberal agenda, which could help Hillary Clinton if runs for president in 2016. And it may also be about carrying the liberal banner for urban centers, as mayors across the country watch closely to see how Bill de Blasio plans to do it.
For NPR News, I'm Brigid Bergin in New York.
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With the new year comes a new era in Colorado, where recreational marijuana use is not only legal, pot can now be bought by anyone over the age of 21, for any reason, at state-licensed stores. Denver alone has dozens of stores and we reached out to one of them. It's called The Clinic, and it's open for business today.
I'm joined on the line by the company's general manager, Ryan Cook. And, Ryan, I've heard stories of people lining up outside of stores as if it was Black Friday. How's business?
RYAN COOK: We opened our doors this morning at 11 a.m., and we've seen hundreds of patients. We have probably, I would say, somewhere between 200 and 300 people in line outside our facility waiting to get in. So, yeah, it's been a busy day.
CORNISH: So, Ryan, I notice that you called your customers patients, and the full name of your company is The Clinic Medical Marijuana Center. You've been in business for four years. But what is it like in a store on a day when you have customers that aren't patients, right? I mean, is it festive? Is it strange? What is it like for someone like you who's been in this business for a while that's had so many restrictions?
COOK: So we do have both medical patients and adult use patients, you know, coming through the door at the same time. And, of course, today is a bit of a festive occasion. I mean, I've had the opportunity to, you know, walk down the hall and meet a lot of individuals. And, you know, it's exciting that people have come from all over to come and support us, you know.
I met a gentleman from Alaska who's on a cross-country tour and he made sure that his trip came through Colorado on January 1st to be a part of this. And I think, you know, that's the feeling that I get from the individuals that are here is that regardless of how long they might have to wait and what the challenges are, you know, at the end of the day, they wanted to be a part of this.
CORNISH: Now, one concern that people had and one thing that you guys will be dealing with as retailers, I guess, would be pot tourists. And describe some of the limits for buyers once they make a purchase. I know that for one thing, they can't smoke up in the store, right? What are some other limitations?
COOK: Sure. Well, you know, ultimately, if you are in state, you have a Colorado resident and Colorado ID, you are able to purchase one ounce of marijuana. If you are from out of state, you can purchase a quarter ounce. Because of high demand and lower supply, ultimately, we are limiting all individuals that come in that do not have medical marijuana cards to one-eighth of an ounce. So, you know, we're trying to slow that down so that, you know, individuals that have lined up here have an opportunity to experience it. But there's definitely a challenge with inventory.
CORNISH: And are there any differences between what you can sell your medical marijuana patients versus what you can sell to anyone else who walks in off the street today?
COOK: Well, really, the biggest limitation is in regards to edible products, from drinks to truffles, to, you know, cheese spreads and peanut butters, you know, you name it, these are what we consider medical marijuana infused products. So edibles have had the ability to have higher dosaging for our medical patients. But on the retail side, the regulation has been set to 100 milligrams. So, you know, I think it's very important for individuals while using edible products that they understand their dosaging. So it's helpful to be able to kind of limit it right now and step into this.
CORNISH: Ryan Cook, I understand that you got your new license from the state just yesterday. Describe the approval process. Is there any sense that this is more regulated than under the previous system for medical marijuana stores?
COOK: Well, yes, it's extremely regulated. And we've been going through the process of working through inspections at our growth facilities and also at our retail stores for the last several months. We have inspections by the building department, by public health, by the fire department, along with the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division that has now been kind of converted into the Marijuana Enforcement Division. These are law enforcement officers that oversee all aspects of our operation, from inventory tracking to the amount of cameras and the way that our safes are operated.
In fact, actually, with today being the first day, we have already had two different agencies come in for inspections, along with, you know, the Denver Police Department. They have 90 additional officers on duty here today in the Denver area. You know, it's honestly been a very good process. Working with these agencies, I mean, at times, of course, challenging as we're all trying to kind of create a path here.
CORNISH: That's general manager Ryan Cook. He's from The Clinic Medical Marijuana Center. He spoke to us from Denver. Ryan, thanks so much for speaking with us.
COOK: No problem. Thank you for having me.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
The Socialist Workers Party has never elected a candidate to federal office. In the last election cycle, it raised a total of $16,500. Everyone who gave $200 or more would fit into two stretch limos with room to spare. But the Socialist Workers have something that some conservatives want badly, an exemption from the law requiring public identification of party donors. NPR's Peter Overby explains.
PETER OVERBY, BYLINE: The Federal Election Commission exempted the Socialist Workers Party in 1979. Since then, the party has been able to ignore the legal mandate to disclose donors who give $200 or more. The FEC hasn't offered that exemption to anyone else. But now, there's more interest in shielding donors from public scrutiny, especially on the right. Conservative donors say they're often targeted by liberal activists, Democratic elected officials, even President Obama and his administration.
A political action committee called the Tea Party Leadership Fund was at the FEC a few weeks ago, asking for a Socialist Workers Party type exemption. Exhibit A was the alleged IRS targeting of Tea Party groups. Congressional Republicans have sought to link that to the Obama White House. Dan Backer, the lawyer for the Tea Party Leadership Fund, told the FEC that all Tea Party groups suffered from the targeting.
DAN BACKER: I just think that the pervasiveness of this conduct is such that it really is beyond the pale.
OVERBY: Up in New York, Michael Krinsky is the long-time lawyer for the Socialist Workers Party. He says it's possible the Tea Party Leadership Fund has a viable case.
MICHAEL KRINSKY: If they could sustain the claim that there was deliberate IRS targeting of the Tea Party and its supporters, you know, that would be an important factor to consider, a very powerful factor to consider.
OVERBY: Still, Krinsky notes that the Socialist Workers allegations of harassment and intimidation go deeper and reach back much further.
KRINSKY: Decades, decades, decades of very, very serious harassment by the United States government.
OVERBY: The FBI led the effort.
KRINSKY: This was a level of harassment which is intense. It was, you know, a program within the FBI, and the object of the program was stated to be to disrupt and destroy the Socialist Workers Party.
OVERBY: Other factors, too, may set the Socialist Workers' case apart from today's Tea Party groups. Take political clout. The Socialist Workers Party has a long record of political - well, political failure. Since its birth before World War II, it has never managed to elect anyone to federal office. Its fundraising base could be described as microscopic. In campaign finance law, that raises the question what would voters lose if they never knew about the party's financial backers?
At the hearing on the Tea Party Leadership Fund, FEC chairwoman Ellen Weintraub framed it this way.
ELLEN WEINTRAUB: That's what the Supreme Court has told us. We need to balance the need for information, the right of the electorate to be informed about who is supporting candidates and political groups.
OVERBY: And to answer her own question, what's lost with secrecy for the Socialist Workers, Weintraub said, not much.
WEINTRAUB: The names of those 11 donors to a party that had never supported a winning candidate.
OVERBY: By comparison, the Tea Party movement writ large operates with millions upon millions of dollars and has shown it can shape events on Capitol Hill. The FEC deadlocked on exemption for the Tea Party Leadership Fund. The group still has the option of suing the agency. But that might actually be the wrong course to take. John Samples is a constitutional scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute. He says that in the age of electronic disclosure reports and Internet access to them, the issues might be somewhat different.
JOHN SAMPLES: It's not that someone is going to come and beat you up.
OVERBY: He says donors nowadays face different problems, like personal abuse or boycotts of businesses.
SAMPLES: It's that you might find yourself in arguments you really don't want to be in, or there's reputational issues, particularly for larger donors.
OVERBY: Those would include superPAC donors of a million dollars or more, the kind the Socialist Workers Party has never seen. Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.
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Two-time Olympic gold medalist Seth Wescott has been snowboarding longer than some of his competitors have been alive. And at 37, Wescott isn't ready for retirement. Far from it, he's got his sights on another victory at the games in Sochi, Russia.
But as Maine Public Radio's Susan Sharon reports, he'll first have to overcome a physical hurdle to qualify.
SUSAN SHARON, BYLINE: Wescott has dominated snowboard cross since 2005, when he emerged as the world champion. The following year, he took gold in the sport's Olympic debut, and he came from behind for another gold in the Vancouver games in 2010.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)
SHARON: Growing in popularity, snowboard cross is sometimes described as motocross on a snowboard. In this event, several snowboarders all simultaneously race down a steep and narrow course that includes bank turns, big jumps, inclines, drops and flats. Going airborne and crashing into each other come with the territory. And Wescott has not been immune.
SETH WESCOTT: January of 2012, I had kind of a freak crash in a world cup in Veysonnaz, Switzerland, on the landing of a jump and ended up tearing the pectoral off of my arm, off the humerus bone. So I had to have my chest reattached to my arm.
SHARON: And then, last April, during an annual snowboarding trip in the rugged Alaska wilderness, Wescott soared over a gap in a glacier and ran smack into the side of a crevasse.
WESCOTT: There was a - probably like a 40-foot-wide open hole in front of me. So I hit the other wall and came to a dead stop.
SHARON: Wescott tore a ligament in his left knee and fractured his shin. Somehow, he managed to ride his snowboard to the bottom of the mountain. Wescott had surgery and began intensive physical therapy just 10 months before the Olympics.
WESCOTT: It's the reality of the sport in that, you know, you can't function in a, you know, a world of bubble wrap if you're doing action sports. You're gonna get banged up from time to time, and there's gonna be times where you're going to be forced to sit out. And I really believe that I can get to Sochi. And I know that if I get there, I can kind of make magic happen on that day.
SHARON: Taking a run on Maine's Sugarloaf Mountain, he says he's making progress.
WESCOTT: It's just so fun to, like, be able to crank turns again and not have pain right now. Feels good.
(LAUGHTER)
SHARON: Wescott started snowboarding just five months after his knee surgery. But the pressure is on. There are just four Olympic slots on the men's snowboard cross team and Wescott, champion though he may be, does not get grandfathered in. Peter Foley is the U.S. snowboarding head coach.
PETER FOLEY: When the terrain is smooth, he's perfect. But I think his knee is just not quite to the point that he wants it to be in rough terrain.
SHARON: Foley says Wescott's advantage is his depth of experience in the sport and his natural ability. It also doesn't hurt that there are several other members of the U.S. team who are dealing with injuries.
PETER CARLISLE: I'd say one of the biggest advantages he has over others in the field is that he's done it before.
SHARON: Peter Carlisle is Wescott's agent and friend. He says if anyone can beat the odds of medaling a third time at the Olympics, it's Seth Wescott. But if he doesn't get to go to Sochi, Wescott says it won't be the end of his career. He plans on competing in the Olympics again in 2018 when he'll be 41 years old. For NPR News, I'm Susan Sharon.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish. Happy New Year.
For the next few minutes, we're going to revisit one of my favorite music interviews of 2013 with Gregory Porter. In his first semester playing football at San Diego State University, he severely injured his shoulder. The bad news, doctors told Porter his football days were over. The good news, the school let him keep his football scholarship. Now, suddenly, without football but with a lot of time on his hands, Gregory Porter searched for a new calling. He found his voice.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIQUID SPIRIT")
GREGORY PORTER: (Singing) Un-reroute the rivers, let the dammed water be. There are some people down the way that's thirsty, so let the liquid spirit free.
CORNISH: Porter is now a world-renowned jazz singer, and the track from his album, "Liquid Spirit," has been nominated for a Grammy.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIQUID SPIRIT")
PORTER: (Singing) Get ready for the wave it might strike like a final flood. The people hadn't drank in so long, the water won't even make mud. After it comes, it might come with a steady flow. Grab the roots of the tree down by the river, dip your cup when your spirit's low. Clap your hands now.
CORNISH: I spoke with Gregory Porter about his path from football to jazz. He says it began with his mother and one of their last conversations.
PORTER: She had cancer, breast cancer. And she - on her deathbed, she had a couple days left. And we were talking about everything, you know, children and what I'll do with the rest of my life. And I wanted to tell her - I was like, Mom, I'm studying city planning and I'll be a good municipal worker or, you know, whatever I'll be. So you don't have to worry about me, you know, when you leave.
And she just kind of out of the - she said to me, she's like, you know, Gregory, singing is one of the best things you do, so don't forget about that as well. And in a way, she kind of just, like, gave me this surprising nudge. She said, sing, baby, and let your hair down, you know. And so that's what I'm doing now.
CORNISH: What kind of music had you been listening to before? You know, what brought you to jazz?
PORTER: I heard myself in jazz. My grandmother and my mother and my grandfather, their style of praying was - all day long, they would pray by singing and humming. (Humming). And some of the notes that they were hitting - I was acquainted to jazz saxophone players and, you know, come to find out after, you know, studying it and digging into it for a while, it was the same thing, you know. My grandmother and Coltrane did have a connection. And my mother also loved Nat King Cole. So that was some of the first music that I heard, yeah.
CORNISH: On a song like - is it "Wolfcry"?
PORTER: "Wolfcry."
CORNISH: That has a kind of a croon to it and a gentleness to it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WOLFCRY")
PORTER: (Singing) The night has fallen. And you have soaked your see-through silken gown with tears. Your love was all in and he mistook your come-stay call for come quick, dear.
CORNISH: Your writing is so evocative, and it made sense to me when I learned that you also have a musical theater background, like you've written a musical.
PORTER: Yeah. Yeah. This musical comes back to Nat King Cole and...
CORNISH: And we should say this musical was called "Nat King Cole & Me."
(LAUGHTER)
PORTER: Nat - right, "Nat King Cole & Me." But the story is the story of my childhood and how I came to Nat King Cole's music so strongly in the absence of my father. It was like seeing his image in this, you know, this elegant, handsome, strong man, sitting by a fire, looking like somebody's daddy. And I was like, wow, OK. Then I put it on and then, you know, (singing) Smile though your heart is aching. Smile even though, you know. The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. You know, you'll be a man someday, you know. These powerful words I started to listen to and they affected me.
CORNISH: Can I ask about your father? What happened to him?
PORTER: He was this charismatic preacher, singer, painter. These are all the things I found out at his funeral. You know, after he divorced my mother, he came around but not often.
CORNISH: So there's no musical connection there?
PORTER: Well, there is now. I've created - in the musical, I created an apology from him. His character actually says to me that he's sorry. And once I performed it on stage at the Denver Center, I actually released that bitterness that I had towards him. And in the writing and in this record, I actually have come to the place that I have to give my mother all the credit and love that she is due. But I also have to give my father some thanks for my creativity. I'm almost certain, genetically, it comes from him and my singing voice comes from him.
CORNISH: It does?
PORTER: So, yeah. And so I have to say, wow, I have something to be thankful for. And he did give me some gifts that are paving away for me, so my burden is lighter, you know. I'm now quoting some of the lyrics from one of the songs called "Free."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FREE")
PORTER: (Singing) So I'd be young and free. Daddy make a way for me. He paved the road so my burden is lighter. And momma did just the same, dropping love just like rain. She said guide your heart from it, come into the light. Free. Free. Free.
I think part of my job as a songwriter is to go back in my memory and pull up those pains for other people because somebody else is going to come along who didn't have a good issue with their father. And so there's a song that I'm currently working on called - he was a painter, a house painter. And the song is called "A Man on a Ladder." And I stand at the bottom of the ladder, waiting to catch some of the overspray from the paint so it would land on my face, so people would know that I was the son of this painter.
CORNISH: You know, if you mention a new song you're writing, I can't help but wonder what it sounds like. Would you sing any of it?
PORTER: Well, yeah. (Singing) There's a man on a ladder, way up in the sky. No, actually, I can't.
CORNISH: You had me right there.
(LAUGHTER)
CORNISH: I'm just going to say that.
(LAUGHTER)
PORTER: Well, yeah. So (Singing) he had a big head and real wide shoulders and real small feet, so small I couldn't see his footprints. You know, I can't see his footsteps and I don't know which way to go because I didn't have a man to guide me and lead me and direct me in the way that, you know, fathers do. There you go.
CORNISH: Well, thank you so much for telling us these stories. It was really amazing. I appreciate it.
PORTER: Thank you so much.
CORNISH: That was Gregory Porter. His album is called "Liquid Spirit."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN LOVE WAS KING")
PORTER: (Singing) There's much more story that I could tell to make the hardest hearts swell. This is the story when love was king.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish. Happy new year. Today marks the first day that millions of Americans will be covered by insurance under the Affordable Care Act. In a moment, we'll get the latest on the debate around one requirement of the law that most employers provide contraceptive coverage.
But first, some big change went into effect today. To run through them, here's reporter Sarah Varney.
SARAH VARNEY, BYLINE: It's a crisp sunny day outside the entrance to the emergency department at Alta Bates Medical Center in Oakland California. A few visitors carry flowers through the sliding glass doors, but otherwise the E.R. is remarkably quiet. The stillness belies the profound changes the U.S. healthcare system underwent as revelers rang in 2014.
Starting today, there are new rules for insurance companies. They can't deny coverage based on a person's medical history and they can't charge women more than men. The companies can't set a limit in medical expenses and they must cover basic services. Also starting today, the federal government will subsidize private insurance for millions of low and middle income Americans and open up Medicaid in the 26 states that chose to do so to all poor residents.
For NPR News, I'm Sarah Varney in Oakland.
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With almost 52 million tourists in New York City each year, museums are crowded. This week, there have been lines around the block to see the "Girl with the Pearl Earring" at the Frick. But there is no room for that kind of mob where NPR's Margot Adler is taking us now. It's a much smaller museum, the city's tiniest.
MARGOT ADLER, BYLINE: Imagine a museum that's only six feet square. It's simply called Museum and it's housed in an old elevator shaft in an alley not far from the city's courts. It has some odd exhibits on 18 small shelves.
Only about four people at a time can fit into the space. It was created by three filmmakers: two brothers, Josh and Benny Safdie, and Alex Kalman. Josh Safdie says the idea grew out of frustration and storytelling. The three filmmakers would tell amazing tales to each other of what they had seen and found in the city, and the others would say, no way, and want proof.
JOSH SAFDIE: So you'd be like, I saw these fake Sharpies and it was called Shupay(ph). And, you know, it was like, no, you didn't. I was like, actually, I brought one just for you. So we started to develop this kind of collection of stuff.
ADLER: And those Sharpies are in the museum, bootleg apparently from China.
SAFDIE: You can buy them, you know, for like 40 for a dollar, essentially. And they dry out really quickly, and they are terrible. But each design is a slight riff on the word Sharpie.
ADLER: All the exhibits document the odd and delightful of modern life. Charnelle, Darryn and Laura King, a husband, wife and sister from Sydney, Australia, come by. They read about the museum in Time Out.
CHARNELLE KING: I love little pop-up stuff, so I'm still trying to figure out what's going on, actually.
DARRYN KING: The display of vomit from all around the world is quite interesting. It's very enlightening.
(LAUGHTER)
KING: It's really cool. It's very small and hard to find.
(LAUGHTER)
ADLER: Yes, he did say a display of vomit from around the world. It's actually fake vomit and many of the examples have a certain Jackson Pollock quality. There's a number you can call to find out about each object.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Welcome to Museum. Please enter the object's reference number at any time.
ADLER: Most of the descriptions are serious but Peter Allen, who collected the fake vomit, is clearly having a bit of fun at the art world's expense.
PETER ALLEN: This subtle palate of primarily beige tones intercedes with robust fragments of dimensional inner meaning. The delicate hints of animal products are not overwhelmed by the soothing, soft, vegan-based composition.
ADLER: Another shelf has bulletproof backpacks, which came out after some of the school shootings. They are all in pastels and pinks with Disney-like characters.
SAFDIE: And they say things like blast off, or I believe in fairy tales, or nice day for flying or up in the clouds.
ADLER: It's fairly creepy. There are three shelves devoted to the late Al Goldstein, editor of Screw magazine. There's a pair of his gold Air Jordans, size 13. There's a shelf devoted to prison contraband, including carved soaps with racist slogans and a tiny, tiny pair of dice. They are molded from bread with the dots done in felt pen, easy to hide in a cell or even in your mouth. And then there's this shoe that the museum says was thrown at George Bush in Iraq in 2008 by an Iraqi journalist. Most reports say the shoe was destroyed, but Safdie won't give its provenance.
SAFDIE: We promised that we would never say who they were and where we got it from, and we were told that it's the shoe that was thrown at George Bush. And, you know, as much as we can believe it, you can believe it. I mean, that's what it is.
ADLER: It's one of their biggest attractions, he says, but it's just a shoe. Lily Ash walks in. She's an artist. She says the space is tiny, and you wouldn't think it had much in it.
LILY ASH: There's so much stuff and it's all really interesting to look at and weird.
ADLER: The Museum is only open on weekends, although you can look through a window on other days. Margot Adler, NPR News, New York.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
Nine million people are expected to gain health coverage under Medicaid. That's after it expands in more than two dozen states to cover all poor adults, not just those with disabilities or children under 18. The expansion will also include the nation's homeless, many of whom can now access regular health care for the first time.
In Los Angeles, some estimate as many as 54,000 people live on the city's streets and health workers there are trying to spread the word. Reporter Sarah Varney begins this hour on Skid Row.
SARAH VARNEY, BYLINE: If you were led blindfolded from Los Angeles' grand city hall a few blocks east, you would know when you entered Skid Row. There's the pungent smell of urine and burning marijuana smoke and the sound of music and easy laughter, a carnival rising out of misery.
This is the chaos that Chris Mack plunges into most days. Once homeless himself, Chris is an outreach worker for a local community clinic and he walks the streets to find men and women whose troubled lives might be better with routine medical care.
CHRIS MACK: (Unintelligible) right?
MARTHA CASTRO: (Unintelligible)
MACK: What have you been up to? You all right?
CASTRO: Yeah.
MACK: So you do come to my clinic, don't you?
CASTRO: No, I don't.
MACK: You haven't been here?
CASTRO: No. I...
VARNEY: Chris greets a woman perched on an upside-down plastic bucket with a Burberry scarf covering her head. Her eyes are clouded with drink or drugs, her cheeks smeared with ash. Her name is Martha Castro. Martha tells Chris she has slept on the streets for four years and has been to the doctor just once for a lung infection.
MACK: Do you realize that you can have health insurance?
CASTRO: No. I don't want to apply for nothing else right now.
MACK: You don't?
CASTRO: Yeah. I need to see my son. I need to be in touch with my son.
MACK: OK.
CASTRO: Yeah.
MACK: Where's your son?
VARNEY: Martha is adamant that at 64 years old, she's healthy enough. And anyway, she says, she doesn't have any ID or money.
CASTRO: So then how we going to have insurance for (unintelligible) clinic?
VARNEY: I tell her the insurance, Medicaid, is free to her and she doesn't need ID. But that doesn't matter to Martha, who is high or drunk and perhaps touched by mental illness. That's it, she says, signaling that the conversation is over. About 80 percent of homeless people are mentally ill or addicted to drugs or alcohol, say federal health officials. That makes Chris' job of enrolling them in a complicated public health insurance program all the more difficult.
MACK: Sometimes on the streets, you know people are, you know, following their habit, you know, whether it be smoking or drinking or shooting up. That's part of the ugly reality.
VARNEY: And yet, reaching out is vitally important. Those who work with the homeless say while housing is paramount, regular medical care is a critical intervention for getting lives back on track.
MACK: A person who is not feeling very well can't behave or perform very well. So I think health care is primary.
VARNEY: Under Medicaid, homeless adults can have steady doctor's visits to keep prescriptions filled for asthma, diabetes and schizophrenia, and get referrals to private specialists for lingering ailments. But Chris says he can't force anyone, even someone like Martha, who he suspects has chronic asthma, to sign up.
MACK: You see what I did? All I did was left the door open - Martha, if you need help, you can come to us. That's it.
VARNEY: In a city crowded with chauffeured black SUVs and upscale hotels, L.A.'s homeless are a reminder of life's cruel turns. In the lobby at Chris Mack's bustling community clinic on Skid Row, I met George Farag. He's an Egyptian immigrant and former security guard whose own cruel turn came when he fell asleep one night on the job.
GEORGE FARAG: I work in security before. I sleep on the job. Kick me out.
VARNEY: George shows me his shirt embroidered with his old company's logo.
FARAG: After me lost the job, I lost everything. I sleep on the street two years.
VARNEY: You sleep on the streets for two years?
FARAG: Two years.
VARNEY: One of those nights, George says someone ran over him, a hit-and-run that crushed his right leg. He's come to this clinic before for the occasional prescription, but today, he's signing up for Medicaid, known as MediCal in California. Clinic worker Alberto Moreno helps him.
ALBERTO MORENO: This is the final step before your transition into MediCal.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Yeah.
MORENO: You're going to get you Healthnet health card, and you'll be assigned here to the clinic.
VARNEY: Alberto hands George a copy of his new forms and George stuffs them into a worn-out plastic bag.
MORENO: And you're all done.
VARNEY: George says through the glass enrollment window, God bless you. From now on, the clinic will coordinate his medical needs and perhaps do something about the makeshift brace on his leg. Dr. Dennis Bleakley has been treating Skid Row patients at the clinic for more than a decade. He says uninsured homeless adults like George had little access to specialists. Fractured bones, bulging hernias, diseased hearts all went untended.
DR. DENNIS BLEAKLEY: Now, at least, you know, you have a reasonable length of time, access to specialists. It's going to, you know, open up a whole new world for us.
VARNEY: Even with new services available to them, the homeless will remain some of the toughest, most confounding patients. Disorder and addiction easily sabotage the best-laid efforts. And those who work with the homeless acknowledge few make it out. That sober reality doesn't stop Chris Mack, the outreach worker, who is back out on the street.
MACK: Do you have medical insurance?
VARNEY: He's like a rescue diver, plunging into a roiling ocean to bring those who've fallen over back to safety. For NPR News, I'm Sarah Varney.
CORNISH: Sara comes to us through a partnership with Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit news service.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
A new medical facility in Berlin is offering what its founders describe as the most comprehensive treatment available in Europe to victims of female genital mutilation. Doctors say the goal of the Desert Flower Center is to help women become whole again, by ridding them of the physical and psychological pain resulting from forced circumcision.
But as NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports from Berlin, most victims are reluctant to get help. First, a warning to listeners: This story contains some graphic descriptions and may be inappropriate for children.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: (Foreign language spoken)
SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON, BYLINE: A dozen African and Middle Eastern immigrants gather for a sewing class at the Mama Afrika center in Berlin.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: (Foreign language spoken)
NELSON: Most of these women had part or all of their external genitalia cut off years ago. The practice, called female genital mutilation in the West, is a time-honored tradition across religious lines in most of Africa and in parts of Asia and the Middle East. The World Health Organization says about 140 million women and girls are living with the health and psychological consequences of FGM.
Its proponents say cutting girls in this manner enshrines their purity and virtue.
HADJA KABA: (Foreign language spoken)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: Yah.
KABA: Yah?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: Mm-hmm.
NELSON: Mama Afrika founder Hadja Kaba asks one of the students if she's been cut. She answers yes, and holds up the cloth that she is sewing.
KABA: (Foreign language spoken)
NELSON: Kaba says: No, not the cloth - down there.
The woman shakes her head and turns back to her sewing.
(SOUNDBITE OF A SEWING MACHINE)
NELSON: Kaba, who helps integrate immigrants into German society, says it's hard to get her clients to open up about female genital mutilation, even if they are suffering ongoing medical problems like abnormal growths or incontinence. It's a taboo topic even among proponents of female circumcision, most of whom are women.
KABA: (Foreign language spoken)
NELSON: Kaba says her clients may live in Berlin but are still firmly entrenched in the culture of the countries they left behind. So when she tells the women about the Desert Flower Center, a short drive away that can make them whole, most of them change the subject. But Kaba doesn't give up.
(SOUNDBITE OF A CROWD)
NELSON: Her persistence is finally rewarded when one of the student seamstresses agrees to talk about her circumcision. She is the wife of an African diplomat. Fearing retribution from relatives, she asks NPR not to identify her.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #4: (Foreign language spoken)
NELSON: The woman says she wants to get reconstructive surgery at the new clinic. She hopes that if the doctors rebuild her genitalia, sex will be easier and more enjoyable for her. But she says she's won't go to the center because she's afraid her husband won't approve. And she's worried about her young daughters. Their relatives are already talking about circumcising them when they return to Africa. The older girl is nine, the same age her mother was when she was circumcised.
Kaba explains that in many African nations, a woman is considered unclean if her genitalia are intact. It's that belief plus her aunt's promise of gifts and a big party, which Berlin resident Jenny(ph) says drove her to get circumcised more than two decades ago in Sierra Leone. She agrees to be interviewed provided NPR not use her last name.
Jenny says she was 19 at the time she was cut, making her older than all of her friends who had the procedure done.
JENNY: And they were laughing at me, saying, look at her, you know. They were telling me I'm unclean. I'm dirty so you are tempted to do it.
NELSON: Jenny recalls how the women who took part in her circumcision braided her hair and carried her to a hut made out of palm leaves. She was blindfolded and the women stood on her arms and legs to keep her from moving.
JENNY: Yeah. And they lay me on the ground. I don't know what happened, I just feel a very sharp pain, you know? That's, it's un-describable on this Earth, you know? The way you feel, it's like you are already dead, yeah.
NELSON: Twenty four years later, Jenny nervously sits in the waiting room of the Desert Flower Center in Berlin. The center is located inside a hospital specializing in women's health care. She hopes doctors here can undo the misery that she says has defined her life since her mutilation.
JENNY: It makes me so sad. Sometimes, I am just depressed in my house - like two, three days, just I cannot go out. You know, why should I go out? Nobody love me.
NELSON: While she fidgets in her chair, another patient comes out of the doctor's office and sits down next to her. Her name is Senait Demisse and she's an Ethiopian nanny working for the former Somali supermodel who funds the Desert Flower project.
JENNY: (Foreign language spoken)
(LAUGHTER)
NELSON: Jenny discovers the nanny, who came from Poland, recently had the reconstructive surgery and peppers her with questions. Demisse tries to reassure her.
SENAIT DEMISSE: All is good. Don't be scared, eh?
(LAUGHTER)
JENNY: It's unbelievable. It's just like normal? Like normal women? It's normal like before, like a normal woman.
DEMISSE: The pain, I don't remember.
JENNY: No, I mean the way it looks, like your- excuse me...
DEMISSE: Yes, looks like (unintelligible)...
JENNY: OK, it's real.
DEMISSE: ...it is not by one time.
JENNY: OK, it looks very real.
DEMISSE: Step by step, yes. It takes six months to be...
JENNY: OK, develop. OK. OK.
NELSON: Weeks later, Jenny has her own surgery. Her doctor, Roland Scherer, says she's doing well. He's the head consultant at the Desert Flower Center, which opened last fall and expects to treat up to 100 victims of female genital mutilation a year. The care is free to patients and is covered by German health insurance or donations. Scherer says the center takes a holistic approach, caring not only for these women's surgical needs, but their psychological and social ones.
ROLAND SCHERER: Women, if they want to have an operation, they have a very long history of traumatic situations. And so, it's not only the operation.
NELSON: He says that oftentimes, the husbands demand a divorce if the woman chooses to get the reconstructive surgery. Other victims like Jenny are single and feel ostracized in Europe, where women who've been mutilated are objects of pity or treated as if they aren't normal.
Scherer says it's a struggle to find patients even though activists estimate there are 24,000 female genital mutilation victims living in Germany alone. Scherer says doctors here often fail to recognize women who've been cut.
SCHERER: Especially for these female doctors, gynecologists, the knowledge in Germany is not so widespread. And so we make now training programs for them, because this is one of the most important ways to tell the patient that there is a center.
NELSON: The center also works with immigrant groups like Mama Afrika to try and get these women to seek care.
KABA: This is for Tripoli - flying from Tripoli.
NELSON: Mama Afrika founder Kaba says she'll do whatever she can to get her clients to go to Desert Flower, although she doesn't plan to get reconstructive surgery for herself. She thinks the millions being spent on the medical facility would have more impact if the money were used to stop female genital mutilation in the first place.
KABA: (Foreign language spoken)
NELSON: She says the funds should go to educate health care givers and village elders in the countries where female genital mutilation is widely practiced. Kaba says that just about all countries officially forbid the procedure, but it continues anyway because governments don't want to fight long-standing traditions.
Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR News, Berlin.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CORNISH: This is NPR News.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
NPR's East Africa correspondent, Gregory Warner, regularly covers dramatic and serious stories. In the past month, he's reported on the conflict in South Sudan, the funeral for South Africa's Nelson Mandela, and the treatment of HIV in Kenya. But today's story, one from Ethiopia, is a different kind of tale that he just could not get out of his head.
Here's Gregory Warner.
GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: In 2010, a well-traveled freelance photographer named Kristie McLean came to Ethiopia, a country she'd never been to, to photograph women with a childbirth injury that can happen when the baby gets stuck.
KRISTIE MCLEAN: In the West, if the baby gets stuck, they give you a C-section and everyone is fine. If you're delivering in a mud hut and there're no doctors available to do a C-section, then that's when the woman gets in trouble.
WARNER: She talked to women who'd been in labor for days, after which the baby is usually dead and a hole, called a fistula, can form between the birth canal and the bladder or the rectum.
MCLEAN: The woman is then left incontinent - urine, feces, or both depending on where the hole is. Typically, their husbands and their families reject them. They're completely shunned from society.
WARNER: Obstetric fistula, as it's called, can be fixed with a simple surgery. But women who are shunned by their families have little means of raising the money for treatment. Those that are helped by charity have often waited a long time on lists. They can be weakened physically and mentally. So when Kristie and another photographer on this trip were introduced to anew patient in Ethiopia's Hamlin Hospital, they were cautioned not to extend their visit past 30 minutes.
MCLEAN: And that amount of time came and went. My partner wouldn't stop shooting. The fistula patient was cowering and was clearly not comfortable. And I said as much to my partner, and her response was: Don't tell me what to do. I paid thousands of dollars of my own money to be here and I'm going to get the shot. I went outside and was just wondering, what the hell am I doing here?
WARNER: Not just what the hell am I doing in Ethiopia but what am I doing with my life.
MCLEAN: If this is what it's like to be a professional photographer, I'm in the wrong place. And I stumbled out into the parking lot.
WARNER: And in the parking lot she spotted a young man covered with dust.
TSEGA MEKONNEN: Our clothes, our shoes is full of dust. Our car is full of dust.
WARNER: He said his name was Tsega.
MEKONNEN: Tsega Mekonnen.
WARNER: I telephoned Tsega in Addis Ababa to fill in parts of the story that Kristie says he told her right there in the parking lot that day; that he was an engineer who built grain mills in far off villages. That in his travels hearing about fistula patients, he was inspired to do something to help; and that now, once a month, he was volunteering with a church, unpaid, to transport women with fistula from their remote villages two days journey to this hospital in the capital.
MEKONNEN: We drive on forests, very bad roads, very slow driving.
MCLEAN: And he said that they always travel with three women. And on the day that they were going to leave there were only two women.
WARNER: There was some question whether to make the trip or wait for a third
MCLEAN: Because petrol is expensive and they decided to go anyway.
WARNER: But then Kristie says that on Tsega's way to the hospital, he found the road blocked by a crowd.
MCLEAN: And Tsega got out of the car and asked someone on the side of the road, what's going on, what's happening. And someone said there's a woman who's hanging from a tree and she's trying to kill herself.
MEKONNEN: Because nobody wanted to work with her, to live with her, because she is leaking, there is very bad smell.
MCLEAN: That her husband had chased her from the house and that her family had rejected her and she had nowhere to go. And he was able to say, come down from the tree and come with us, and we have room for you in our car. And we're going to the fistula hospital. And that was Hijaibe, she was 22. And the word Hijaibe means amazing. The name Tsega means grace.
I don't know what it was specifically about that story because I had interviewed other really interesting, really lovely women. But I heard that story of Hijaibe and it changed something in me.
WARNER: And something about this story when she told it back home in Seattle...
MCLEAN: Even...
(LAUGHTER)
MCLEAN: ...sitting next to me on airplanes or in the frozen food section, not even good friends of mine but complete strangers...
WARNER: ...wanted to help Kristie help these women.
Obstetric fistula affects up to two million women and girls around the world. And there are a number of fistula organizations already. But Kristie collected enough money on her own to set up a new project in western Ethiopia, in the region where Hijaibe lives, to help women support themselves after surgery.
(SOUNDBITE OF A GOAT)
WARNER: On her fourth trip back to the country she took along a tape recorder. Three years had passed since she'd heard the story in the parking lot. And now she'd come to celebrate. She'd raised enough funds to help Tsega build a special grain mill that would benefit women with fistula. The proceeds from the mill allowed women to own livestock.
MCLEAN: So we are standing here with Hijaibe and her six sheep. So I'll let you...
(LAUGHTER)
MCLEAN: ...let her tell you about how she feels about having her new sheep.
HIJAIBE: (Through Translator) I'm very, very happy to have these sheeps. I forget my problems by seeing them.
WARNER: Hijaibe was still living with the symptoms of her injury. Surgeons could not fix the hole in her birth canal, there was just too much scar tissue. So when Kristie finally mustered up the courage to ask her on tape about her attempted suicide three years before, the pain was just as fresh.
(SOUNDBITE OF WEEPING)
HIJAIBE: (Foreign language spoken)
(SOUNDBITE OF WEEPING)
MCLEAN: Hijaibe said that she was completely out of options; that she was completely out of hope. And that she had found some rope and she had strung it through the tree.
WARNER: With every intention of ending her life until a person found her, stopped her and saved her. Except, Kristie now learned that that person...
MCLEAN: Wasn't Tsega...
WARNER: The man called Grace.
MCLEAN: ...that took her down from the tree. It was this other woman.
WARNER: One of Hijaibe's neighbors. Tsega didn't enter the story until two months later, when he heard about Hijaibe from villagers.
MEKONNEN: They were talking about Hijaibe. And I tell them, please bring this woman to me. I'll take her to hospital.
WARNER: Tsega confirmed Kristie's original version, except...
MEKONNEN: No, no, no...
WARNER: ...this most important detail.
MEKONNEN: When she trying to kill herself, I didn't see.
MCLEAN: It's possible that the discrepancy is pure interpretation. Because we're talking about a woman on the tree and then they're telling me that they brought this woman and that they had one spot left. So I'm not even realizing that there's...
WARNER: A two month gap.
(LAUGHTER)
MCLEAN: Right, a two month gap. So...
WARNER: Yeah, I mean, does the two month gap change the story?
MCLEAN: I think the two month gap makes it a different story.
WARNER: When she first heard the story there in the hospital parking lot, she herself was in a profound state of doubt about her life and her career. The story she thought she heard suggested that the unlikeliest rescue can come exactly at our lowest moment of despair.
MCLEAN: There's times in our lives where we're that person hanging from the tree. We're looking for that place. We're hoping for that place.
WARNER: You could say that this story rescued Kristie. It gave her a purpose. And so, while intellectually she knows that the true version is not that different...
MCLEAN: The pain is the same and I think the sense of hope is the same.
WARNER: Just that miraculous cinematic timing is gone.
MCLEAN: And there's an awkward part for me because I don't want people to think I've been gaming this whole time, for some kind of sensationalist story because it's not my character and it's not accurate. On the other hand, emotion is what moves people to action and so this is that tender spot.
WARNER: Now that she's met these women, seen their lives up close, she no longer needs a supernatural coincidence to be moved to compassion. But if back then, when she was still a stranger, she'd heard the real story...
MCLEAN: It's likely we would have shaken hands and I would have went on my way.
WARNER: And that's what she fears when she tells this story again at fundraisers, that most people will do.
CORNISH: Gregory Warner, NPR News.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
In much of the world it's called the underground economy. It's made up of things like business gifts, bribes and tax evasion. In China it's called gray income and that money accounts for perhaps 12 percent of the China's economy, as much as a trillion dollars annually.
NPR's Anthony Kuhn introduces us to some people who earn gray income in China.
(SOUNDBITE OF A RING TONE)
WANG HAICHUAN: (Foreign language spoken)
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Migrant laborer Wang Haichuan's cell phone rings. It's a customer. He walks out of the dark corridors of the former air raid shelter where he lives with other migrant workers.
HAICHUAN: (Foreign language spoken)
(SOUNDBITE OF A CROWD)
KUHN: At a large supermarket, Wang is a gift card off a woman who wants to unload it for cash. He charges her 10 percent for his trouble. In China, gift cards are often given as small bribes or as bonuses that companies give their employees. Wang says he needs the income from these cards to supplement his low-paying job at a gas station.
HAICHUAN: (Through Translator) I know there's risk in this work, but I've got to do it. The way I see it, I'm not stealing or robbing, so I don't feel like I'm breaking the law.
KUHN: Wang is playing a big part in a much larger gray economy. The study on gray income was done by Wang Xiaolu, the deputy director of a nongovernmental organization called the National Economic Research Institute.
WANG XIAOLU: (Through Translator) I define gray income as income whose origin is not clear or whose legality cannot be confirmed.
KUHN: His study found that the wealthier Chinese people are the more gray income they earn as a proportion of the total. While rich people take the lion's share of this money, Wang says the trend is creeping into China's middle-class. And he says that could make the middle-class less independent, and less enthusiastic about political reform.
XIAOLU: (Through Translator) Those people with power have vested interests. They get benefits from this power, so they may oppose and obstruct further reforms.
KUHN: Here's another example: A journalist in Southern China, who asked that we only use his last name, Zhang. It's a common practice for journalists to receive small cash payments for attending press conferences. Zhang says he takes in about $175 a month doing that, about a third as much as his regular pay.
ZHANG: (Through Translator) My attitude towards gray income is that I oppose it but I don't refuse it. I oppose it because when I take someone's money, it puts pressure on me. I think: Can I write an article for the people that paid me? Can I fulfill their expectations?
KUHN: Zhang says he doesn't refuse the payments because this is how the system works. And he doesn't think he can change it all by himself.
ZHANG: (Through Translator) Realistically speaking, I've got to make a living. Secondly, if you want to work in this circle and everyone else is taking the payments but you don't, then it will be hard to get into this business.
KUHN: Farther up the food chain is a Beijing-based investigative reporter named Pang Jiaoming. A few years ago, Pang reported on local officials who bribed anti-graft investigators to look the other way. Pang says those same officials then offered him a million yuan, or $165,000, not to publish his story.
PANG JIAOMING: (Foreign language spoken)
KUHN: What did you think when they offered you that payment, I asked him.
JIAOMING: (Foreign language spoken) I thought, I've got to publish this news. Spending this kind of money is not enough to buy me. Even a bigger sum couldn't make me violate my journalistic ethics
KUHN: Pang adds that if a bribe is not enough to make journalists do what they're told, the threat of punishment can be even more persuasive.
But Beijing-based magazine editor Wu Si says the phenomenon of gray income does not necessarily increase the government's control over society. After all, he says, corruption eats away at institutions such as the press and the judiciary, and that can affect rulers' credibility.
WU SI: (Through Translator) In the end, people will ask: What kind of contemporary morals are these? Who's presiding over all this? Well, we know who is presiding. At this point, all this anger is directed at them. People say they're no good and have to be replaced.
KUHN: In the end, Wu says, gray income is just a fact of daily life in China. Teachers take it to admit kids to schools. Doctors take it to operate on patients. Officials take it to award contracts. Whether or not to take it, Wu says, is an ethical dilemma that everyone has to grapple with.
SI: (Through Translator) The thing you're being asked to do, how do you feel about it, and the moral conflict it involves? How serious is it? How intolerable is it? It's a very concrete sort of weighing of options that each individual must make.
KUHN: Wu notes that the phenomenon of gray income has been around throughout China's history. He says historical records show that contemporaries of Confucius complained about the problem of gray income 2,500 years ago.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Beijing.
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Oklahoma is no stranger to natural disasters. The state is best known for tornados, but it might not be long before something else steals the spotlight: Earthquakes. As Joe Wertz of StateImpact Oklahoma reports, the number of quakes there has soared, including two more just today.
JOE WERTZ: Amanda Erwin says even on a clear day, she knows something's up when the thunder begins.
AMANDA ERWIN: The chandelier was swinging and the walls were rumbling and the bed was rumbling.
WERTZ: Her husband Keith says the earthquakes remind him of the artillery he used to hear growing up near a military base and when the sound of shaking fade, the game starts.
KEITH ERWIN: We just turn and look at each other and we play this game, what do you think it was? A 2.5. No, that had to have been a 3.0. It's a daily thing.
WERTZ: For the past three decades, Oklahoma averaged about 50 earthquakes annually, but in the last few years, it skyrocketed. In 2013, almost 3,000 quakes shook Oklahoma, the state's most seismically active year ever. The quakes are small and they're concentrated in the central part of the state right where the Erwin's live. As we talk in the living room of their suburban Oklahoma City home, a funny thing happens.
ERWIN: Was that one just now? Did you hear it? Did you hear that, that little rumble? OK. It might have been the workers.
WERTZ: The Erwins are on edge and they're not alone.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Oklahoma City, 9-1-1.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Yes. Did we just have an earthquake?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Yes, yes. We had an earthquake. Everything's OK now. Do you need police, fire or (unintelligible)?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: No. I was just sitting here looking at the ball game and my butt started moving.
WERTZ: In October, the U.S. geological survey warned that Oklahoma's risk of earthquakes has increased 10-fold. The swarm of quakes includes Oklahoma's largest ever, a 5.6 magnitude temblor that struck east of Oklahoma City in 2011.
BILL LEITH: And that doesn't mean that there's going to be a large earthquake tomorrow or next month or next year even, but those probabilities are up very substantially.
WERTZ: That's Bill Leith with the U.S. Geological Survey. He says there's strong evidence linking Oklahoma's earthquakes to the state's large oil and gas industry. When they drill, toxic fluid from fracking and other types of drilling is injected deep underground. Cornell seismologist Katie Keranen says that can change pressures near fault lines.
KATIE KERANEN: And we can show that it's quite reasonable that water flowing from these wells is actually triggering these earthquakes.
WERTZ: While scientists say the quakes are likely connected to the wells, there's no proof. That's why regulators aren't considering new rules or laws. Oklahoma's official seismologist, Austin Holland, at the State Geological Survey, says oil and gas activity might trigger earthquakes, but it could just be a natural increase, too.
AUSTIN HOLLAND: But I don't think we can, at this point, attribute all the earthquakes to some sort of manmade cause.
WERTZ: In the fall, state regulators did force one well operator along the Oklahoma/Texas border to reduce injection volume and pressure after a series of nearby earthquakes. But the state might allow an experiment to let the company increase the injections to see if it does trigger more rumbling. Scientists, like Holland, would monitor the outcome.
HOLLAND: Or no earthquakes happen and we say, wow, that was the most amazing coincidence we've seen and, you know, we move on.
WERTZ: Back at the Erwin home, every little noise or rumble sends them scrambling for the iPad to see if the quake was real or a phantom.
ERWIN: You feel like you're playing Battleship. You look at the map and you see these little tings of all the different places where they hit.
WERTZ: Oklahoma is tornado alley, not earthquake country and residents here are slowly getting used to the shaking. But many Oklahomans like the Erwins, still feel rattled. For NPR News, I'm Joe Wertz in Oklahoma City.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
If you opened a bottle of wine over the holidays, you may have noticed something. Increasingly, wine is being sealed with screw caps instead of corks. As NPR's Allison Aubrey reports, some winemakers like screw caps because they seal in freshness and they're convenient. But don't put a cap on the cork just yet.
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: There's a ritual to opening a bottle of wine. Just ask sommelier Lucas Paya.
LUCAS PAYA: So we're going to - I'm going to present you this wine bottle of wine. And this is the Pares Balta Mas Petit from Penedes.
AUBREY: Paya oversees the wine list of a dozen restaurants in the D.C. area, including here at Jaleo. Tonight, as he turns the label towards his guests, he moves in close to the table for a bit of show and tell.
PAYA: They want to see the label or they want to just, you know, touch the bottle.
AUBREY: As he describes the wine...
CORNISH: 84 percent cabernet and then the remaining is garnatxa, grenache.
AUBREY: He pulls off the corkscrew from the holster on his belt and gracefully slices away the foil that covers the cork...
PAYA: Now, we're going to open it.
AUBREY: ...which means we're about to get that...
(SOUNDBITE OF POPPING)
AUBREY: Ah, that sound.
PAYA: That's the sound. That's what we want.
(LAUGHTER)
PAYA: That you don't get with screw caps.
AUBREY: For Paya, who's a traditionalist, cork is still very much part of the wine world. He says despite the fast-rising popularity of screw cap tops, he does not see cork disappearing.
PAYA: When it comes to the higher-end wines, cork is still kind of a must-have.
AUBREY: But increasingly, the screw cap has begun appearing on some pretty good wines. And winemakers say there's a reason. James Foster, the head winemaker at Cupcake Vineyards in California, says choosing screw caps over a cork comes down to science. He explains, for many of his white wines, a cork is not ideal because it can let in a little bit of air, which can change the taste. The screw cap, on the other hand...
JAMES FOSTER: It keeps it sealed and does not allow oxygen to enter into the bottle.
AUBREY: Now, Foster has not given up on cork. He uses it for some of his red wines.
FOSTER: Bigger, fuller malt-filled wines, for example, Red Velvets and cabernet, benefit from a little oxygen that the cork naturally allows the wine to intake while in the bottle.
AUBREY: This is important in aging. And Foster says, in his red wines, the little bit of oxygen can help improve the taste.
FOSTER: It allows the wine to become even more drinkable and approachable to our consumers.
AUBREY: Now, since the vast majority of wine produced today is not intended to be cellared and aged but rather consumed and enjoyed immediately, Foster says the screw cap has a lot going for it. It preserves the taste the winemaker created. And for us, the consumer, the screw cap offers simplicity.
FOSTER: That's easy to open and it's convenient.
AUBREY: Sommelier Lucas Paya says, yeah, he absolutely agrees with the convenience factor. Anyone can get a screw top open.
PAYA: Opening a screw cap bottle is so easy, it's idiot-proof, right?
AUBREY: Idiot-proof.
PAYA: It is idiot-proof.
AUBREY: Paya says he hopes he doesn't see the day that the uncorking ritual disappears. But he says it is the taste that truly matters. So with an open mind, he unscrews a bottle that's enclosed with a screw cap.
PAYA: Let's taste it.
AUBREY: He gets two glasses and pours.
PAYA: This is like almost chocolatey and very red fruity. Oh, I really like it.
AUBREY: So just as we're told not to judge a book by its cover, even sommeliers say don't judge a wine simply by how it's sealed. Allison Aubrey, NPR News.
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Scandinavian crime novels have become so popular that some publishers even have a name for the genre: Scandi-crime. Many of these books keep readers right on the edge of their seats all the way through. But a new Norwegian crime novel takes a more subtle approach. Here's reviewer Rosecrans Baldwin, to tell us about it.
ROSECRANS BALDWIN, BYLINE: My favorite crime novels always combine more than one genre - like a detective mystery that's really psychological, or a police captain who happens to be a gourmet. In the case of "Before I Burn," by Gaute Heivoll, the mash-up is suspense meets memoir. It sounds a little gimmicky, but I promise it's absolutely not. Instead, we have a semi-autobiographical novel that's poetic, gripping and at times, even profound.
In the summer of 1978, an arsonist terrorized a small village in Southern Norway; 10 fires over the course of a month, buildings burned to the ground. Just after that, in the same week the last house was torched, a baby boy was christened in a local church. He turns out to be our author. Thirty years later, he's come home to make sense of what happened the summer he was born.
The story from that point follows two paths. The first is about the fires. The author goes around interviewing people he's known all his life. He wants to hear their memories about the nights they couldn't sleep, wondering which house would be next. Heivoll's writing is terrifically sensory. The fires sounded as if the sky itself was being torn apart. The flames were like large wild birds twisting around one another, above one another, into one another.
I won't give away any spoilers, though Heivoll does identify the arsonist early on. The guy's a local, well-known to the community. The mystery we have to solve is less who did it than why, but the book is also a memoir. As a young man, Heivoll wasn't an outcast, but he couldn't really connect with other teenagers. He left the village to study law in the big city, but then he quit after his father was diagnosed with cancer.
His path from that point to writing is a dark one but in the end, it's writing that saves him. Ultimately, this book is a portrait of these two young men - one an arsonist, the other an artist. Of course, it's impossible to really experience another person's perspective, to know why they set buildings on fire or why they feel compelled to write books. But "Before I Burn" makes a persuasive case that the novel is still the best method we've got.
CORNISH: The book is called "Before I Burn." It was reviewed by Rosecrans Baldwin.
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One of the more interesting congressional primaries we'll be watching this year involves Florida Republican Trey Radel. He was charged in November with cocaine possession in Washington. After a month in rehab, Radel is now out and planning his return to Congress. NPR's Greg Allen reports that's caused some consternation among Republican leaders in southwest Florida.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: It's usually OK when your local congressman is on the national news, but not when it's after a drug bust.
(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS REPORT)
UNIDENTIFIED BROADCASTER: Congressman Radel is scheduled to be arraigned here in D.C. Superior Court later this morning. We haven't seen...
ALLEN: It was in November when Radel, a first-term congressman from Fort Myers, was charged with cocaine possession, a misdemeanor in Washington. He pleaded guilty, was sentenced to a year's probation, and then went into rehab. A few days before Christmas, he was out and immediately held a news conference. With his wife by his side, he said he was sorry. Alcohol, not cocaine, is his main problem, he said; and that's what he was treated for. But the main point of his news conference was that he would not step down from Congress, despite calls from Republican leaders.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NEWS CONFERENCE)
REP. TREY RADEL: I love what I do. And I'm going to return to what I do - what you sent me to do in Washington, D.C. - which is working for you and your family while I relish mine.
ALLEN: Radel is a former TV anchor who represents a heavily Republican district in southwest Florida. Following his arraignment on drug charges, GOP leaders throughout Florida called on him to resign. Terry Miller, the Republican chairman in Lee County, Fla., says Radel's time in rehab, and apology, have done nothing to change that.
TERRY MILLER: I certainly believe in second chances. Unfortunately, when you betray the public's trust and you put yourself in illegal activity - and let's be clear, what he did would have been a felony, had it happened in his home state - I think that disqualifies you from representing your constituency.
ALLEN: He may be an embarrassment to some Republicans, but for comedians like Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, Radel is another Florida punch line.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE COLBERT REPORT")
STEPHEN COLBERT: He actually voted to drug-test people who receive food stamps.
(BOOS FROM AUDIENCE)
COLBERT: Ah-ah-ah. No, no, no, no. He's not a hypocrite because he doesn't get food stamps from the government...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHTER)
COLBERT: ... just his paycheck.
ALLEN: On that point - his vote to drug-test food stamp recipients - Radel isn't backing down. With remarkable political chutzpah, at his post-rehab news conference, he said he'd like to take it further.
(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS CONFERENCE)
RADEL: With drug-testing for food stamp re - I think members of Congress can and should be tested as well. And maybe it will help someone else, in the future.
ALLEN: The House Ethics Committee has announced it's investigating whether Radel's cocaine possession charge violates Congress' Code of Official Conduct. Those investigations typically take months. The question Radel hasn't definitively answered yet is whether he plans to run again when his congressional term expires this year.
But several other Republicans are exploring runs. Lee County GOP chairman Terry Miller thinks if they have the chance, his constituents will reject Radel. And he expects campaign donors will as well.
MILLER: His financial supporters, we'll see how they react to this. I would have to speculate only that it's going to be much harder for some folks to write checks.
ALLEN: One likely candidate for Radel's seat, former Republican State Rep. Paige Kreegel, already has significant backing. This week, a homebuilder in southwest Florida formed a superPAC with more than a million dollars, to back Kreegel in the race.
Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish. At the top of Congress' to do list when lawmakers return next week is whether to renew emergency unemployment benefits. An extension of those benefits expired at the end of the year. That means 1.3 million Americans are no longer getting unemployment checks.
Regardless of where they stand on a possible extension, conservative and liberal economists both would like to see the government improve the underlying program. They're proposing changes that might help more people find work more quickly. NPR's Chris Arnold reports.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: At a small manufacturing company south of Boston, Evalise Pachenko(ph) is cleaning out the inside of a component for a heart pump. It's used in surgery and she's using a microscope to inspect the part.
EVALISE PACHENKO: You see right there, you have to make sure it's clean and no fuzz around.
ARNOLD: Six months ago, Pachenko was collecting unemployment. She got laid off working at a cardboard box manufacturer that went out of business, but a friend of hers told her about a job opening here at this much higher tech factory. It's called Machine, Inc.
PACHENKO: My friend Rosemary said to apply and I applied and in a week, they called and I was really, really happy about that, instead of being home and collecting.
ARNOLD: Is it more interesting than making cardboard boxes, or...
PACHENKO: Yes, definitely. Yes, it is.
ARNOLD: Economists say this is how unemployment benefits and the job market are supposed to work together. Pachenko has three young kids at home. Her partner's only making about $700 a month, so with the benefits she said a bridge that helped the family survive for nearly a year. Now she's got a better job with the same pay as she had before, but she's learning new skills and there's more room for growth.
PACHENKO: You have to pay attention really because it's like, again, medical stuff and airplane stuff so it's interesting. I have training for, like, three months so I think doing good.
ARNOLD: That's one way economists say the unemployment insurance program could be improved, helping people to get training while their collecting.
DEAN BAKER: Community colleges have been, you know, a good investment that have enable people to get skills to get, you know, somewhat better-paying jobs.
ARNOLD: Dean Baker is the co-director of the liberal-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. He says, though, many states don't do enough to support unemployed people getting that sort of training. He'd also like to see more of what's called work sharing. This is something that's reduced unemployment in Germany, actually.
Basically, instead of laying people off, a company could just reduce hours for most of its workers. And for the time that they're not working, the government could then use unemployment money to pay them. And some conservatives like this idea, too.
MICHAEL STRAIN: I would like for Congress to make it mandatory.
ARNOLD: That's Michael Strain, an economist with the American Enterprise Institute. He says in 2012, Congress authorized this German-style work sharing option for employers, but it's only up and running in some states. Strain has other ideas, too. Some involved helping workers to get to areas where there are more jobs.
STRAIN: In some of the states, the labor market is booming and healthy and unemployment is really low so I suggested that we offer relocation vouchers to the long term unemployed. You know, only to the people who want them so no one's being forced to move or anything, but, you know, we say, hey, look, you've been looking for a job for seven months and you haven't found one yet. Do you want us to cut you a check and you can move to North Dakota or move somewhere where the labor market is much healthier?
ARNOLD: There are lots of other ideas, too. But as far as whether Congress should extend benefits when lawmakers come back next week, Michael Strain says yes.
STRAIN: I think it's a mistake that Congress let the benefits expire.
ARNOLD: For one, Strain says that long term unemployed workers are more likely to drop out of the work force and give up if they get cut off, but also, he says, there are still three times as many people looking for work as there are job openings so that means that hundreds of thousands of Americans just won't be able to find a job any time soon.
STRAIN: Society is failing for them. Really, through no fault of their own.
ARNOLD: Still, some other conservatives oppose extending benefits again. They're worried about the cost and also some feel that workers would be looking more aggressively without the extended benefits. Next week, Congress will be debating the issues when lawmakers return. Chris Arnold, NPR News, Boston.
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The debate over what to do about the long term unemployed comes in the midst of a larger conversation about income inequality. Democrats like New York's new mayor, Bill de Blasio, have made it a central talking point. President Obama himself delivered a big speech at the end of 2013 on what he called a relentless and damaging trend.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: And that is a dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility that has jeopardized middle class America's basic bargain that if you work hard, you have a chance to get ahead.
CORNISH: But what exactly is income inequality? Ask six economists and you're likely to get six different answers. And we're going to ask Drew DeSilver of the Pew Research Center who spent a lot of time lately trying to measure it. Welcome to the program, Drew.
DREW DESILVER: Thanks for having me.
CORNISH: So you've written that economists disagree on how much inequality there is and how to measure it so what are the most popular measurements for understanding inequality?
DESILVER: Well, there's all kinds of ways that you can measure income inequality specifically without even getting into whether you should be measuring wealth or consumption inequality or any other kinds of economic inequality. But if you're just looking income, you have to decide whether you want to look at taxable income, total gross income, do you want to include things like Social Security payments or unemployment insurance and depending on which set of numbers you use, you'll come up with different answers, although no matter which income measurement you use, you will see a generally rising trend over time, particularly in recent years.
CORNISH: So looking back, say, from the economic crash in 2008 to President Obama's speech last month, what has been the trend? Are we becoming more unequal and in what way?
DESILVER: Well, I like to look at the numbers compiled by the University of California researcher named Manuel Saiz and according to his figures, in 2008, the top 1 percent of American families had 20.9 percent of all income in the U.S. and by 2012, which is the most recent numbers he had, that had risen to 22.5 percent. Now, when you look at the bottom 90 percent, they had almost 52 percent of the national income in 2008. That had fallen below half to 49.6 percent as of 2012, which was the lowest in any of the years that Saiz had researched.
CORNISH: So you mention measures for understanding inequality so just looking at income inequality specifically, but what about wealth? Talk about the difference there in those numbers.
DESILVER: Well, when you look at wealth inequality, it almost always turns out to be a lot more unevenly distributed than income and one of the ways to look at that is by looking at the top 20 percent. The richest 20 percent of the U.S. families own 88.9 percent of all wealth in country, according to the research that I've seen, whereas the highest earning 20 percent of all U.S. families earned 59.1 percent of all income.
CORNISH: All right. But just to understand, the top 20 percent of U.S. families have 88 percent of all the wealth.
DESILVER: 89 percent.
CORNISH: Now, sometimes people kind of hear this information in a blizzard of numbers. Is there a statistic for you that feels like really reflects how stark the gap is or how controversial this debate is?
DESILVER: I guess one of the other numbers that really strikes me was an analysis that we did based on 2012 dollars about the disparity between household income by race and ethnicity. And if you look at that, the median household income for white Americans was about $57,000 in 2012. For black families, it was $33,300 and for Hispanic families, it was $39,000. And that really is, to me, a very large gap.
CORNISH: Why does there appear to be this widening of the gap since the 2007, 2008 financial crisis? I mean, we're in the middle of reporting this week about a surprisingly robust recovery of the stock market.
DESILVER: And that's true, but you have to remember that approximately half of Americans don't own stock in any shape or form, which is another way of saying that only about half of Americans are exposed to the stock market either directly or through their retirement accounts. And stock ownership tends to be very heavily concentrated in the upper income brackets. So the people who are most benefiting from the run-up in the stock market are folks who are already at the top of the distribution anyway.
CORNISH: That's Drew DeSilver. He's a senior writer for the Pew Research Center's fact tank blog. Drew, thanks for speaking with us.
DESILVER: Thank you very much for having me.
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In recent years, scientists have discovered around a thousand planets orbiting other distant stars, including some called super-Earths. These planets are bigger than our rocky hole but smaller than any of our solar system's gas giants. Not much is known about these mysterious worlds.
NPR is Nell Greenfieldboyce reports on new evidence that one super-Earth is shrouded in clouds.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: The super-Earth is called GJ1214 B. It's about two and a half times the size of the Earth, and every 38 hours it orbits a small star that's about 40 light years away. In an astronomical sense, that's right nearby.
LAURA KREIDBERG: But in an absolute sense it's still mind-bogglingly far. It's over 100 trillion miles away.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Laura Kreidberg is at the University of Chicago. She says ever since this super-Earth was discovered, people have used the biggest and best telescopes to try to learn what its atmosphere is made.
KREIDBERG: We have basically thrown the kitchen sink at this planet. Up until this point it's really eluded our efforts to characterize it.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: She led a team that used the Hubble space telescope to make the most precise measurement of the atmosphere yet. They watched as the super-Earth repeatedly crossed in front of its star, so that they could analyze the star light that filtered through its atmosphere. What they saw suggests that this world is covered with clouds. But not clouds like the ones in our sky.
KREIDBERG: These clouds are probably something much more exotic. It could be, at the temperatures and pressures we see in the atmosphere, we'd expect clouds that could be made out of potassium chloride or zinc sulfide.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Or maybe haze of soot.
The results are reported in the latest issue of the journal Nature. Kreidberg says new, more powerful telescopes are in the works. They should help scientists figure out what lies beneath these clouds.
Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
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Well, there are plenty of clouds on the move back here on our planet. And what lies beneath them is no mystery: snow, lots of it. The Northeast is bracing for the brunt of a serious, winter storm. In all, some 22 states and about 100 million people will feel its blustery effects from New England well into the Midwest. Snow is already falling in some places and more than 1,500 flights have been cancelled.
Yesterday, Boston Mayor Tom Menino announced the city's public schools will be closed Friday - a full two days in advance. They're expecting as much as a foot of snow. New York could get eight inches. The storm will also bring frigid temperatures. Wind chills in parts of Connecticut could dip as low as minus-20 degrees.
Meanwhile, in central Arizona it will be 75 and sunny with zero percent chance of precipitation - nicely done, Phoenix. You're lucky the storm's shut down so many flights or we'd all be heading your way.
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CORNISH: You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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The Egyptian government enters the new year tightening its grip on the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is the Islamist organization that backed the recently deposed president, Mohammed Morsi. Egypt now brands it a terrorist organization and announces new steps in a crackdown almost daily. This week, Egypt's prosecutor ordered a 15-day detention for several journalists on suspicion of joining the Brotherhood. The order accuses two producers and a correspondent for Al-Jazeera's English language news channel of tarnishing Egypt's image abroad.
Sherif Mansour joins me now to talk about the case. He's with the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit that promotes the freedom of the press around the world. Thank you for coming in.
SHERIF MANSOUR: Thank you for having me.
CORNISH: Now, the government released an Egyptian cameraman. But it's still holding Al-Jazeera's Cairo bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy and producer Baher Mohamed, along with a correspondent, Peter Greste. Now, why does the government suspect they were working for the Muslim Brotherhood?
MANSOUR: I don't actually believe that the government suspect that they are Muslim Brotherhood. I think that they just are trying to prevent any critical or independent coverage for the event in Egypt. And so far, what we've seen is the Egyptian government are accusing them of doing their work, basically meeting with Muslim Brotherhood people as sources for their materials and possessing, like, media coverage materials. And we think that this is an attempt to criminalize journalism in Egypt that's not approved by the authority.
CORNISH: Al-Jazeera has a long history with the Egyptian government, right?
MANSOUR: Mm-hmm.
CORNISH: And troubled history. Describe how that's played out since Arab Spring protests of 2011.
MANSOUR: Well, Al-Jazeera overall since establishment have been a venue for a lot of the dissident voices, opposition voices that the Egyptian government has managed to cast Al-Jazeera as a foreign agent, because they are funded by the Qatari government who was close to the former President Mohamed Morsi administration, and also gave a lot of aid in investment to support his government. So, in a way, they managed to make this a national crime campaign.
CORNISH: And by that they, you mean the Egyptian government. Essentially because Al-Jazeera is owned by the emir of Qatar, obviously a backer of the ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, you're saying it's become connected to the larger politics.
MANSOUR: Of course, and with the divide that took place and started during President Morsi, a lot of the local homegrown channels were very critical of Mohamed Morsi. And Morsi took a style, attitude toward the press and towards the station, and publicly accuse them of inciting violence which started the divide in the Egyptian media and also a divide between those who support the army and those who support the Muslim Brotherhood and President Morsi
And that divide was further escalated when the army intervened and ousted President Mohamed Morsi in July, causing this to become a political fight and also destroying any potential for Egyptian journalists to express solidarity with one another.
CORNISH: Can you put some of this in context for us? Aside from Al-Jazeera, Egypt is on your list of top jailers of journalists. What are the numbers there? What are the other countries that act similarly? And what does this tell us about the freedom of the press to operate in Egypt?
MANSOUR: Well, last year in 2013, there was a lot of precedents in Egypt that the end of the year there were at least five who've been held without charges by the Egyptian government. In addition, there were six cases of journalists being killed while doing their work throughout the year. And that made Egypt number three globally in terms of how many journalists were killed. And this is an unprecedented number, that we found out that 10 journalists have died in Egypt since 1992, six of them died last year in 2013.
So overall that means there is a lot more hostility towards the press. Egypt is not the only country who is seeing a lot of deterioration. Across the region, Syria remains the most dangerous environment for journalists. Last year in 2013, there were 29 killed. In addition, of course, across the region, Turkey and Iran remain the top two jailers of journalists around the world, which makes the Middle East a very hostile environment for freedom of the press overall.
CORNISH: That's Sherif Mansour. He's the Middle East and North Africa program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
MANSOUR: Thank you for having me.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish. Toyota, Honda, Hyundai recently announced that they're planning to build hydrogen-powered cars in the next few years. These cars could rival all electric and plug-ins as cleaner alternatives to gasoline-powered cars. NPR's Richard Harris took a drive in a hydrogen car to learn about the advantages and drawbacks of the technology.
RICHARD HARRIS, BYLINE: First, the good news about these cars: Hydrogen gas can be really clean. Keith Wipke at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado says run hydrogen gas through a device called a fuel cell and you will produce electricity and water. That's it.
KEITH WIPKE: So they are essentially zero emission vehicles just like a battery electric, but you have the added benefit of three-minute refueling and 300, 400 mile range.
HARRIS: And speaking of which, we are standing in the garage right now.
WIPKE: We have four of these vehicles. I need to find the right one. Oh, there it is. So when I start this up, it's going to be dripping water.
HARRIS: We hop into a white SUV which is plastered with graphics to draw attention to the fact that this isn't your grandpa's station wagon.
WIPKE: So this vehicle is a Toyota Highlander and it's called the FCHV ADV.
HARRIS: We pull out of the garage and onto the street. Wipke presses the gas pedal, well, the accelerator and we surge forward.
WIPKE: Pretty quiet. I don't think your mic will pick up much there.
HARRIS: Indeed. It is kind of eerie.
WIPKE: Yeah.
HARRIS: What is your feel from having been behind the wheel of it?
WIPKE: I love the quietness. I love the power and I love knowing that there's no emissions coming from the vehicle. In our case, there's no emissions going into the fuel.
HARRIS: This federally-funded lab uses wind and solar power to generate electricity, which, in turn, is used to produce hydrogen gas. But mostly in the United States, hydrogen is generated from natural gas and that process does emit carbon dioxide so it's not necessarily a squeaky clean fuel. As we merge onto the highway, Wipke says they've done road tests to measure the efficiency and range of this vehicle.
WIPKE: We drove actually 330 miles and there was enough hydrogen left in the tank to go another 100 miles so that gave us a calculated value of, like, 430 miles on one tank of hydrogen fuel.
HARRIS: And in terms of price comparison with gasoline?
WIPKE: It should come out about a wash in terms of the energy costs to fuel your vehicle.
HARRIS: So do you get to drive this home at night?
WIPKE: No. We don't drive these vehicles home.
HARRIS: Aww.
WIPKE: Although I would feel safe with my kids in the back. I've got three girls and I have no reservations about safety.
HARRIS: The hydrogen gas is stored in tough carbon-fiber tanks, he says, and if they rupture, the gas is likely to dissipate quickly, unlike gasoline which can form flammable puddles. After a peppy jaunt on the freeway, we head back to the garage to return this expensive experimental vehicle to its parking spot.
WIPKE: That's my backing in skills.
HARRIS: The question now is not whether the technology can work. Clearly, it can. But whether it will ever become anything other than a novelty...
JOAN OGDEN: Well, I think we'll start to see them on the roads.
HARRIS: Joan Ogden at UC Davis has been following the long saga of hydrogen vehicles for many years and she says there has been a lot of hype about this technology.
OGDEN: With alternative fueled vehicles, there tend to be these waves of enthusiasm that sweep over that last for a little while. Like my colleague Dan Sperling calls it the fuel de jour syndrome.
HARRIS: Hydrogen has up and down along with ethanol vehicles, hybrids and plug-ins.
OGDEN: That aside, there's been steady technological progress and what's maybe just as important or more important even is that the car industry has been developing fuel cell cars into really attractive and good performing vehicles.
HARRIS: The bad news, and this could be a showstopper, is how expensive it would be to build hydrogen fuel stations everywhere. California is subsidizing some for cars in a few cities, but scaling that up nationally would cost a bundle and she says that's only likely to happen if we start to put a price on carbon pollution. Richard Harris, NPR News.
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In the small world of political high rollers, 2013 marked the loss of two big Republican donors. Texas businessman Harold Simmons and Bob Perry bankrolled some of the scathing TV ads that set the climate of today's politics.
NPR's Peter Overby reports.
PETER OVERBY, BYLINE: There had been attack ads before but rarely like this one from the 2004 presidential campaign.
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UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: I served with John Kerry. John Kerry cannot be trusted.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is responsible...
OVERBY: An attack this harsh could have backfired coming from President George W. Bush's campaign but Swift Boat Vets was an independent group. Bob Perry and Harold Simmons provided 44 percent of its money. The 2008 campaign had a similar tale. A TV ad sought to link then-candidate Barack Obama to radical militants from the Vietnam War era.
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UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Consider this. United 93 never hit the Capitol on 9/11, but the Capitol was bombed 30 years before by an American terrorist group called Weather Underground that declared war on the U.S...
OVERBY: Simmons completely financed that ad with $3 million to the group American Issues Project.
ROSS RAMSEY: These are the wildcatters of politics.
OVERBY: This is Ross Ramsey. He's a co-founder of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news publication that, in fact, got contributions from both Perry and the Simmons family's foundation as recently as 2012. Ramsey says that Simmons and Perry were old-fashioned, self-made tycoons, holding the reins on their businesses and their money.
RAMSEY: They were still entrepreneurial guys, just single personalities with their, you know, politics and their proclivities. And they could express themselves just by saying let's do this and writing the check.
OVERBY: Simmons was an investor worth $10 billion, according to Forbes magazine. He was 82 when he died last week. His latest project has been a state-sanctioned disposal business in west Texas for hazardous, toxic and radioactive waste. Perry, who died in April at age 80, made a somewhat smaller fortune, putting down housing developments around Houston and San Antonio. So as the old guard starts to thin out, who's replacing them?
RICK TYLER: I do see a new wave of mega-donors coming in.
OVERBY: Rick Tyler is a conservative political consultant. He's with the Strategy Group Company in Washington. Two years ago, he was with the superPAC backing Newt Gingrich for president.
TYLER: The new generation of donors is they are educating themselves much more in the process.
OVERBY: And maybe they won't be as quick on the draw as Perry or Simmons. During 2012's roller-coaster Republican primaries, Simmons managed to give to superPACs for Gingrich, Texas Governor Rick Perry and eventual nominee Mitt Romney. Simmons' wife, Annette, gave to a fourth superPAC for Rick Santorum. Now, Tyler says politics is moving fast into social media and Internet messaging.
TYLER: And that is something that the new breed of donors is much more interested in.
OVERBY: It's a big step away from the old ways of writing a check for one explosive TV spot and then throwing it up on the airwaves.
Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
It sounds like the perfect script to a Hollywood movie. An investment banker wanted for embezzling tens of millions of dollars disappears and is declared dead. But the saga took a strange new twist this week after a routine traffic stop.
Rose Scott of member station WABE in Atlanta reports.
ROSE SCOTT, BYLINE: It was the dark tint on Aubrey Lee Price's 2001 Dodge Ram pickup truck that sparked suspicion.
E. NEAL JUMP: Once we really found the identity of him, it was like, gosh, this is good.
SCOTT: Glynn County, Georgia, Sheriff E. Neal Jump says the 47-year-old Price fessed up and admitted he was a wanted man.
JUMP: Once he got to the jail, he was given the opportunity to come forth one more time with honesty. And at that time, he said, this is who I am.
SCOTT: No one seems to know where the former banker has been hiding for the past 18 months. He vanished in June of 2012. The next month, he was indicted on charges of securities and wire fraud of $21 million from a bank in Ailey, Georgia. Surveillance video showed him in Key West, Florida. Price left a 25-page confession of his financial crimes. He listed clients that he swindled and even left details to assets that could be used to recover money he embezzled.
He mentioned colleagues by name who he said had no idea of his deceit. Although apologetic, Price likened himself to biblical figures such as Sampson, Adam and Eve, and Noah. He wrote, quote, "I pray with my last breath that God would have mercy and grace on the clients that I have hurt." That and other references indicated death by suicide was forthcoming.
A Georgia judge actually declared Price dead. Page Pate, a federal criminal defense attorney, says despite perceived suicidal suggestions, authorities didn't buy that the banker had died.
PAGE PATE: And this has happened in other cases. I mean, we've seen people who were charged crimes who tried to flee and fake their own death pop back up at a later time. And so the FBI was understandably a little skeptical.
SCOTT: When arrested, Aubrey Lee Price's hair was darker, longer and he sported a goatee. That was quite different from earlier pictures of a clean-shaven, suit-wearing investment banker who now sits in a jail cell awaiting the FBI and U.S. Marshals. For NPR News, I'm Rose Scott in Atlanta.
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President Obama sent a clear message to Russian President Vladimir Putin last month when he, A, announced no high ranking U.S. officials would go to the Sochi Olympics and, B, handpicked a delegation including three openly gay athletes to represent the U.S. The move comes in response to Russia passing several anti-gay laws, and we're going to hear now from one of those athletes that President Obama chose. Figure skating gold medallist Brian Boitano, a hero of the 1988 Olympics, welcome to the program.
BRIAN BOITANO: Oh, thank you for having me.
CORNISH: Now, you did not come out until two days after you were appointed to the Olympic delegation. What was behind your decision?
BOITANO: You know, it was really based on the president's message. When I got invited to be on the delegation, I didn't really have an idea that he was sending a message. And when the news articles came out declaring that he was sending a message of diversity and tolerance, I thought, wow, this is an opportunity for me. I really need to jump in with both feet and reveal, you know, my private life like I had never done before. But because I wanted to represent the country and represent his message, I really felt it was time for me to do that.
CORNISH: But in the past, you've strongly guarded your privacy, your sexuality. And suddenly, you're a very public messenger for tolerance. Is that a shift that's taken some getting used to?
BOITANO: It is a shift. I mean, before the press release came out of the president choosing the delegation it did, if you would've told me five minutes before the press release came out that I was going to come out, I would've said you're crazy. But as soon as it did, it gave me the opportunity to re-evaluate certain aspects of my life, call my family, and discuss how important this is. I've always been a very private person but this was a time to push my comfort zone. And the message was so strong that I really felt like I needed to do it at this time.
CORNISH: But you were saying that five minutes before the press release went out, you would've - if someone said you would've done this, that you would've thought they were crazy. Why? I mean, how guarded have you been?
BOITANO: I have been - I'm - it's - I don't know if it's guarded but - and I've never been in or out. I have just been me. People in my life have always known about me. But I really always wanted to be known for my contribution to skating and my achievements. And I always felt that my private life was something special that I would share with people who are close to me. So it will be something that I have to get used to.
CORNISH: There have been many public figures recently who have announced to the public that they are gay, and only a handful of those have been in the world of sports. And I don't know if you find that it is difficult for athletes in particular.
BOITANO: It's really difficult for athletes. I mean, in the Olympics in 1988, it was the height of homophobia. And, you know, I had an agent. My very first agent said, I don't know if you are gay or not, but you can't tell anyone and you need to make sure that you are completely private about it. And, you know, we need to get endorsements, you know, for you and so you just need to be quiet. So in that day and age in the '80s, as an athlete, it wasn't even an option to come out.
CORNISH: Now, since Russia passed these anti-gay laws, there have been calls from LGBT activists to boycott the games entirely. How do you feel about that?
BOITANO: I am not in favor of boycotting the games entirely, and I'll tell you why - because I think we learned a lot from the 1980 Olympics. Jimmy Carter boycotted the Olympics in Russia because of the invasion of Afghanistan. And so it was devastating for many, many athletes who have worked their life for this one moment in sports. And so, I think that that's why delegations like the presidential delegation that I'm on are important because let the athletes focus on what they're doing and the job at hand and creating their dreams, and let athletes like me, Billy Jean, Caitlin stand up for them and represent the gay community.
CORNISH: And right now, are you or anyone else in the delegation planning any other kind of protests in what you're wearing or what you'll be doing at the opening ceremonies?
BOITANO: I haven't spoken to the other delegates but I am not planning on doing that. I think there is a fine line in respecting the country that you're in and just being - I think just being who we are. And stepping off the plane in Sochi as a team and a delegation representing our president is going to be a very strong message. And I think it will get a lot of attention.
CORNISH: Figure skating gold medallist Brian Boitano. He was chosen by President Obama to represent the U.S. at the opening ceremonies at the upcoming Sochi Olympics. Thanks so much for speaking with us.
BOITANO: Thank you for having me.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Finally this hour, a new year means new television.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: That's right. We've got a lot of new TV that is really, really good.
CORNISH: That's NPR's TV critic, Eric Deggans, and he's in a position to know, right, Eric? What should we be watching?
DEGGANS: Well, there's a lot of great stuff coming in early January. "Community" returns on Thursdays on NBC. Now this is a show that critics love but it hasn't gotten quite the popular mass audience that maybe we think it should have. And the creator of the show, Dan Harmon, returns to the show this season, so we're going to see a lot of great new episodes that have already started airing on NBC. I've also seen the first few episodes in 2014 of FX's "Justified," this great series starring Timothy Olyphant as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens.
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TIMOTHY OLYPHANT: (as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens) I've seen people kill one another, and I learn to be ready in case they came after me to do me harm. In other words, I'll kill for you before you even clear your weapons and I'll take my chances with the other two, and you see this star? That's going to make it legal.
CORNISH: Sounds like a very intense guy. And there are even more intense and, you know, sketchy lawmen on HBO. Did you like their new series, "True Detective?"
DEGGANS: It's a really, really great show starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as detectives hunting a serial killer. Their relationship is really complex. It starts out with McConaughey as kind of the wild card, oddball guy, and Harrelson as a more buttoned down, conventional detective. But as the series progresses, their roles start to switch.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW: "TRUE DETECTIVE")
WOODY HARRELSON: (as Martin Hart) So, what's the point of getting out of bed in the morning?
MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: (as Rust Cohle) I tell myself I bear witness. The real answer is that it's obviously my programming. And I lack the constitution for suicide.
HARRELSON: (as Martin Hart) My luck, I pick today to get to know you and, what? Three months, I don't hear a word from you and...
MCCONAUGHEY: (as Rust Cohle) You asked.
HARRELSON: (as Martin Hart) Yeah. And now I'm begging you to shut the (bleep) up.
DEGGANS: Now that show is starting on January 12th, along with a new season of "Girls," and over on Showtime, this great series, "Episodes," with Matthew LeBlanc, formerly of "Friends." They're all great shows and people really should mark their calendars and check them out.
CORNISH: And, of course, January is midseason. A lot of beloved shows come back. Tell us about the next couple of weeks, what are the things we should look out for, the big returns?
DEGGANS: Well, one big return is "Downton Abbey" on PBS, which is coming back with new episodes on Sundays. And if you remember the storyline, we just had the beloved Matthew Crawley die. So we're going to see how everyone in Downton is sort of coping with his death and coping with moving on after the loss of this beloved character.
On Fox, we've got the return of "American Idol," with yet another new slate of judges, including Harry Connick, Jr. and J.Lo is returning, Jennifer Lopez is returning after being off the show for a season, so that's really important for them.
CORNISH: Now, Eric, before I let you go, I got to know the shows that are just bad, right, like, the shows we basically should avoid.
DEGGANS: Sure. Well, there's this show called "Intelligence" on CBS. And it really is a good effort but it's got Josh Holloway as this agent who has a chip implanted in his brain so he can jack into all kinds of GPS and all kinds of computer systems and - boy, it's a good try, but it just sort of feels like sort of half-baked "Six Million Dollar Man."
And, of course, "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" is back to new episodes on TLC. And it's not my favorite show. I think they make fun of the country folk on that show a little too much. But for people who like their sort of wacky reality TV, I guess, it's back.
CORNISH: That's NPR's TV critic Eric Deggans, who watches this stuff so we don't have to. Eric, thanks so much for this public service.
DEGGANS: Glad to be here.
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Supporters of the North American Free Trade Agreement made many promises 20 years ago as they argued in favor of the trade pact. One of the biggest was that increasing trade with Mexico would increase the incomes of Mexican people. Well, the middle class did grow in Mexico over the past two decades and so did Mexico's ultra rich.
In 1992, when NAFTA was negotiated, there were only seven Mexican billionaires. Two years later, when the pact went into effect, there were 24. As NPR's Carrie Kahn reports, Mexico now claims the richest man in the world and one of the highest income gaps in the world.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: He's richer than Bill Gates or Warren Buffett and has six times the wealth than Mark Zuckerberg, but nowhere near the fame. He's Carlos Slim Helu, 73 years old, Mexican, and the richest man in the world. Much of his wealth comes from his cellphone company, America Movil, the largest in Latin America. His reach also touches the U.S., where his investments include a piece of The New York Times.
The rest of Mexico's uber-rich are even less-known. They made their riches in mining, TV, Coca-Cola and beer. Dolia Estevez, a contributor to Forbes magazine, says many of Mexico's 15 billionaires are old, in their 70s and 80s, and like to keep a low profile.
DOLIA ESTEVEZ: A lot of people avoid publicity, especially in a country like Mexico, where there are so much security problems.
KAHN: But Estevez says there are a lot of newcomers to the club, too, five in the last year, most of those attribute their wealth to the company FEMSA, the largest Coca-Cola distributor in the world and Latin America's largest convenience store chain. Economist Luis de la Calle, who helped negotiate NAFTA for Mexico, says these billionaires have gotten wealthier in the past 20 years by what was not in NAFTA.
The trade pact specifically excluded opening the telephone, television and transportation sectors. He says in hindsight, that was a mistake; NAFTA should have been more ambitious.
LUIS DE LA CALLE: The sectors we did not open benefit the few.
KAHN: Many of today's billionaires benefitted from those closed markets and built some of Mexico's most lucrative monopolies. Carlos Slim owns 70 percent of all cell service in Mexico and 80 percent of landlines. In TV, Ricardo Salinas Pliego and his family own TV Azteca, one of Mexico's two television networks; billionaire Emilio Azcarraga owns the other, Televisa.
Economist Rogelio Ramirez de la O says it wasn't the intention of NAFTA or the government to create these billionaires.
ROGELIO RAMIREZ DE LA O: If it had been planned, it wouldn't have come so perfect.
KAHN: But he does say during the NAFTA negotiations, the government focused more on opening up the manufacturing sector, where jobs would be created. And de la O says the legacy of this wealth creation, inadvertent or not, continues to hold Mexico back.
O: So at the end of the day, Mexico cannot grow, cannot compete because, among other reasons, it is being strangled by all these monopolies and oligopolies.
KAHN: The top 10 percent in Mexico now own 40 percent of the country's wealth. But economist de la Calle counters that NAFTA did help narrow the gap between rich and poor. He says Mexicans are much better off now than they were 20 years ago.
CALLE: Mexicans are now taller, they weigh more, they dress better, they're healthier.
KAHN: And de la Calle says Mexicans now consume more. With NAFTA, prices went down and quality shot up for most goods, like washing machines, TVs and cars. But clearly not all Mexicans have enjoyed the consumer binge. Nearly half the country lives in poverty, earning less than $4 a day.
And when it comes to banking, cellphones and television, Mexicans have limited access to credit at high rates. They pay some of the world's highest cellphone prices and have few broadcast TV choices. But when you ask most Mexicans on the street about billionaire Carlos Slim, many don't deny him his riches.
At a downtown sports bar, fans cheer on Slim's soccer team during a recent game. Fan Manuel Jimenez says he's proud of Slim.
MANUEL JIMENEZ: (Speaking foreign language)
KAHN: He says it gives us a lot of pride that the richest man in the world is Mexican. It's true, says Eduardo Garcia, who runs the financial news website Sentido Comun, or Common Sense; most Mexicans admire Slim, who has given a lot of money to local causes and does not flaunt his wealth like many of Mexico's elite.
Garcia says, however, the government has failed to regulate these industries dominated by billionaires. It should have done more to enforce the laws so these titans couldn't run roughshod over their competitors.
EDUARDO GARCIA: If you look at the industries in which they have become these very wealthy and powerful people, they are industries controlled by either one or two companies.
KAHN: According to Garcia's calculations, which differ from Forbes', there are at least 28 billionaires now in Mexico, and he says that's not counting those in private industry who do not have to publicly account for their wealth. Despite its flaws, Garcia credits NAFTA with putting Mexico on the world stage and opening up its rich and its economy to more scrutiny than ever before.
Economist and NAFTA negotiator Luis de la Calle agrees. In fact, he argues that NAFTA and the stability it's given to Mexico will ultimately bring about a more egalitarian economy.
CALLE: The NAFTA process is an economic policy that, in the end, has at its heart the interest of Mexicans, not the guys that have access to the government.
KAHN: But de La Calle warns that 20 years is a short time to achieve the full benefits of NAFTA. He says it may take another two decades. Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Mexico City.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish. Obesity is becoming a major health problem in the developing world. A new report says that over the last three decades, diets in low and middle income countries have changed significantly. Now, almost a billion people in the developing world are overweight. More from NPR's Jason Beaubien.
JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: As a result of globalization, high calorie, cheap snack food's now readily available almost everywhere. Take Mexico, for instance, which Steve Wiggins, one of the authors of the report, calls a poster child for the global obesity problem.
STEVE WIGGINS: Even in a Mexican village, if you walk into a Mexican village store, you'll be confronted with lots of tasty offerings of potato chips and nice cookies with lots of fat and sugar in them and lots of, you know, sweetened carbonated drinks. All kinds of stuff which is terrific in small quantities, but not if you start to eat it in large quantities.
BEAUBIEN: In 1980, less than 40 percent of Mexican women were overweight. By 2008, almost 70 percent were. This is according to a new report from the Overseas Development Institute in London. It found that more than a third of all adults on the planet are now overweight compared to fewer than 23 percent in 1980. And the number of obese individuals in the developing world now far overshadows the number in rich nations.
WIGGINS: As countries go from being low income to middle income and heading towards being high income, people earn more, they can eat the foods that they find tasty.
BEAUBIEN: In some Pacific Island nations, more than 90 percent of adults are now considered overweight. Obesity is also becoming a major problem among upwardly mobile Africans and it's affecting people in the Arab world.
WIGGINS: Some parts of the Middle East, such as Egypt, are now running extremely high rates of overweight and obese people. And it's something like 3 out of every 4 adult female Egyptians, Egyptian women, are now overweight or obese.
BEAUBIEN: The report notes that excessive consumption of fat, salt and sugar are significant contributory factors to some cancers, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Overeating poses huge challenges to countries that already had weak or overburdened health systems. It's costly to these emerging economies in that it drives up healthcare expenses while driving down productivity. Jason Beaubien, NPR News.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish. Many East Coasters woke up this morning to a blanket of snow. And if you're among those digging out, keep in mind that it could be worse. You could be onboard the Akademik Shokalski. That's the research ship that's been ice bound in the Antarctic since Christmas Eve and it could get worse than that.
In light of all the ice and snow in the news, we bring you this week's must read. It comes at the recommendation of poet Jynne Dilling Martin. She recently served as a writer-in-residence in Antarctica.
JYNNE DILLING MARTIN, BYLINE: Picture this. You're a mild-mannered British chap. You're dressed in reindeer skins that are frozen solid. You're 10,000 miles from home, trying to reach the South Pole before anyone else does and your food is mostly stale biscuits. Actually, there's no way you can imagine how miserable this really was until you've read "The Worst Journey in the World" by Apsley Cherry-Garrard's.
"Cherry" was part of an expedition that left England in 1910 and was one of the lucky few who survived. With every page, you think their situation can't possibly get any worse and then it does. The sudden cold you feel on your face, hundred mile per hour winds just carried off your only tent. Blinded by the endless blizzards? Right, compasses don't work this close to the magnetic pole; good luck finding your way.
After months of this, the British team arrives only to find that the Norwegians beat them by a handful of weeks. The book is riveting, even if you already know from history that the primary team will die of cold and starvation on their way home. Cherry had been forced to turn back early, partly because his glasses were always fogging up. At base camp, he waits and waits for his friends to return.
What makes Cherry's story much more endearing than the typical adventure narrative is that instead of bravado, we get understated British humor. Early on he tells us, "The minus thirties and forties are not very cold, as we were to understand cold afterwards, but quite cold enough to start with." And even after the death of his closest friends, he says, "There is many a worse and more elaborate life."
CORNISH: The book is "The Worst Journey in the World." It was recommended by Jynne Dilling Martin.
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In the Catholic Church, the mariachi Mass brings an ensemble of garishly dressed folk musicians right down front. They play liturgical music on guitars, trumpets and violins. It's a musical tradition found in Mexican American enclaves mostly in the Southwestern U.S. As part of series, Ecstatic Voices, NPR's John Burnett attended what's believed to be the oldest running mariachi Mass in America.
He found it in Houston.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Some Catholics cannot imagine celebrating the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe on December 12 without a mariachi Mass.
REVEREND FRANCIS MACATANGAY: Viva nuestra Senora de Guadalupe.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Viva.
BURNETT: The band members stand solemnly in their black decorative charro suits next to the alter in front of a large picture of the patron saint of Mexico, their instruments filling the sacred space.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BURNETT: We're inside the grand old red-brick St. Joseph Catholic Church in Houston's historic Sixth Ward. The priest recites the curie(ph) and The Lord's Prayer and reads the gospel leaving lots of space for musical interludes.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BURNETT: The creation of the mariachi Mass was a direct result of the Second Vatican Council's reforms to Roman Catholic liturgy in 1963. Father Virgilio Elizondo is a longtime priest in San Antonio and professor of pastoral and Hispanic theology at the University of Notre Dame.
REVEREND VIRGILIO ELIZONDO: So at the end of the Vatican Council, the Vatican said for the renewal of the liturgy, the local genius of the people should be used in the art, in the music.
(SOUNDBITE FROM MARIACHI MASS)
ELIZONDO: Our soul music is the mariachi music.
BURNETT: In 1966, the bishop of Cuernavaca, Mexico, commissioned a mariachi folk Mass that came to be called "la Misa Panamericana." It has become the standard repertoire of mariachis in church.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BURNETT: This is Mariachi Norteno, one of Houston's most venerable groups says Pat Jasper. She's director of folk life at the Houston Arts Alliance.
PAT JASPER: They may have been the first mariachi group in the United States to introduce "la Misa Panamericana." But maybe more important than that is that they perhaps are the only group that has continued to play that Mass every week for the last 45 years.
BURNETT: The mariachi Mass came to Houston because of a music-loving parish priest at St. Joseph named Father Patricio Flores. He heard about the Panamerican Mass in Cuernavaca and he organized a trip to go there with members of Mariachi Norteno. They listened, they brought it back to Texas, and they've been playing it ever since.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BURNETT: Father Flores went on to become Archbishop Flores, the first Mexican-American bishop in the Catholic Church and he earned the nickname, "the mariachi bishop." But just because Vatican II invited mariachis into church didn't mean they were always welcome. Some parishioners didn't think cantina music should be part of the Order of Mass. They thought it was loud and undignified.
Guitarist Jose Martinez, a 69-year-old retired refinery worker is one of the original members of Mariachi Norteno.
JOSE MARTINEZ: There was some resistance in the Catholic Church. Some of the priests said, no, you can't play that kind of music in my church. And, slowly but surely, they started getting used to it, I guess.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BURNETT: Mariachi Norteno has a few younger members now. Thirty-three year old Robert Vasquez plays the vihuela, a guitarlike instrument; his father, Guadalupe, is the group's original trumpeter. Robert says performing the Panamerican Mass is altogether different than playing "Jalisco" or "Paloma Negra" at weddings.
ROBERT VASQUEZ: It's a lot deeper because you're here with God. It's different. I mean, the music, mariachi music is not like the note is supposed to go this long. You've got to have the feeling. I can honestly say I don't hear another mariachi Mass the way that we play it here. It's probably the best.
BURNETT: Not surprisingly, the Panamerican Mass is performed most often in Southern border states. But the Father Virgilio Elizondo says he has heard it all over, from New York City to Peoria, Illinois.
ELIZONDO: This last weekend, I was at Yale University for their Our Lady of Guadalupe Mass. They had a fantastic mariachi choir. So it has really spread.
BURNETT: As the Latino population continues to surge in the United States, the sound of violins and trumpets in church is likely to spread even further.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BURNETT: John Burnett, NPR News.
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At the start of this new year, a number of cities in the United States, including its five largest, have a common story to tell about crime. In 2013, they all saw violent crime rates drop significantly. Some also saw murder rates drop to historic lows. From Chicago, NPR's Cheryl Corley reports.
CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: The sharpest declines in crime last year occurred in New York City and Philadelphia. Los Angeles and Houston saw reductions as well. Statistics show Chicago was a safer city, too, despite some high-profile murders that made national headlines, like the death of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, the teenager who performed at inauguration events and was shot a week later not far from President Obama's Chicago home.
University of Illinois-Chicago criminologist Dennis Rosenbaum says New York and L.A. added more police, but most of the reductions in crime in the country were due in part to smarter policing and new technology.
DENNIS ROSENBAUM: We're not just looking at hotspots policing, which has been shown to be effective - in other words, concentrating police resources in areas where there's a likelihood of violence or violence has occurred - but also looking at hot people. There's people that are at risk both of being homicide victims, as well as offenders.
CORLEY: Authorities in New York, the country's largest city, say it had the fewest number of murders in half a century. At 330 violent deaths, it was a 20 percent decline. Chicago also witnessed historical low rates of crime and violence. At a press briefing, police superintendent Garry McCarthy says the 415 murders that occurred last year, down from 506, were the fewest for the city since the 1960s.
GARRY MCCARTHY: Four hundred murders is nothing to celebrate, let's be clear. But the fact is progress is being made.
CORLEY: In addition to more officers in high-crime areas, McCarthy pointed in part to the use of intelligence like using data to map crime and to track individuals involved to help prevent retaliatory gang shootings. But even more significant, McCarthy said in an interview with NPR, was the big drop in actual shootings and the decline in Chicago's overall crime rate to the lowest it's been in four decades.
MCCARTHY: We have 18,000, almost 20,000 less crime victims in this city from two years ago, which is stunning. It's almost 25 percent. And, you know, what people across the country need to know is the fact that, you know, there's areas of this city that definitely have issues but the vast majority of the city has virtually none.
CORLEY: The numbers may be real but in some neighborhoods they are viewed with skepticism.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Let's give a welcoming applause for the principal, Mr. Ross, for opening up the doors for us.
CORLEY: At a meeting in a South Side Chicago school, activists and ministers said the community had to tackle the violent that plague some areas of the city's South and West Sides. Nathuan Harron(ph) lives on Chicago's West Side, and he says he doesn't believe reports about the city's declining crime rates.
NATHUAN HARRON: Because they shoot every day, all day. Well, where I come from, they shoot every day, all day.
CORLEY: Andrew Papachristos, a Yale University criminologist, says there are areas in Chicago where crime is stubbornly persistent. But he says there's far more crime elsewhere.
ANDREW PAPACHRISTOS: Chicago's rate is in the middle of the pack. And in fact, our rate as a city is dwarfed by the rates in places Flint, Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans, St. Louis, that have rates that are multiple times higher than that of Chicago.
CORLEY: Papachristos says Chicago's crime rate is more similar to Minneapolis or Houston. In Houston, police put the unofficial count of murders for last year at 217, just four fewer than the year before. In Philadelphia, murders dropped by a rate of about 26 percent. In Los Angeles, there were 16 percent fewer murders than the previous year. UIC criminologist Dennis Rosenbaum says despite their dramatic reductions in crime many cities experienced in 2013, there's still much work to do.
ROSENBAUM: The reality is we still need significant attention to prevention.
CORLEY: Which he says means address underlying causes of crime like concentrated poverty and the lack of jobs in order to sustain a declining crime rate in the years to come. Cheryl Corley, NPR News, Chicago.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish. As survivors of November's typhoon in The Philippines slowly put their lives back together, the rest of Asia has been marking the anniversary of another disaster. Just after Christmas nine years ago, a huge tsunami swept through the region. At least a quarter of a million people died.
Some of the worst damage was in the Indonesian province of Aceh. There whole villages were swept away by a wall of water so powerful it picked up ships and swept them several miles inland. Michael Sullivan covered the aftermath of the tsunami in Aceh, and he recently visited the area again.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Friday prayers at Banda Aceh's main mosque in the center of the city. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, and the Acehnese are proud of the fact that their province is one of the firs, if not the first, place Islam arrived in Southeast Asia, brought not at the point of a sword but by Muslim traders from the Arabian Peninsula.
The Acehnese admit they're the most stubborn people in Indonesia, hands down, and they wear it like a badge of honor. When the Dutch colonial invaders came, the Acehnese fought them hard. And for several decades before the tsunami, Acehnese separatists fought hard against a brutal occupation by the Indonesian army. That stubbornness, that resilience, helped the Acehnese survive the tsunami, too.
(SOUNDBITE OF GOLF SWING)
SULLIVAN: The Sulawah Golf Club is a few miles down the road from Banda Aceh in the seaside town of Lhoknga, made famous after the tsunami by stark photos of the local mosque surrounded by a sea of debris that came to symbolize the terrible destruction brought by the wave of water. But that was nine years ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF GOLF SWING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Nice shot. No, come on...
SULLIVAN: Lhoknga has been rebuilt, including the golf course, though the golfers grumble it's not what it used to be, the saltwater not kind to the fairways and greens. But the course is packed with Acehnese and Malaysian tourists, and the nearby road is lined with tidy houses built with help from NGOs post-tsunami.
SABARI: (Speaking foreign language)
SULLIVAN: Sabari, one name, lives next to the golf course. He flags down passing foreigners at every opportunity it seems, waving a framed photo of him posing with Bill Clinton, who came to Lhoknga with George Bush shortly after the tsunami to help raise money for the aid effort.
SABARI: (Speaking foreign language)
SULLIVAN: Sabari lost his wife and daughter to the tsunami. But all he can talk about is meeting Clinton. And he is sweet enough, but seems just a little bit off. A woman who lives nearby tells me he's been that way since the tsunami, trauma she says, and then adds there's a lot of people around here like that. But there's also a lot more who have moved on.
(SOUNDBITE OF CRASHING WAVES)
SULLIVAN: The beach at Lhoknga is impossibly beautiful: crescent-shaped, white sand, popular with families who come from nearby Banda Aceh, the women covered in headscarves, the children playing volleyball in the sand. And the nearby fish shacks are packed on weekends. It's a very different Lhoknga than the former U.S. presidents saw.
FIRDA AL FATA: For the people who still live, they have a better future than they thought before the tsunami came.
SULLIVAN: That's Firda Al Fata. She's a 30-year-old college grad who worked with several NGOs after the tsunami.
FATA: For short term, of course, this is a really bad thing. But for the long term, there are many, many things good happen here.
SULLIVAN: Chief among them peace, an end to the long-running conflict between Acehnese separatists and the Indonesian military. The tsunami served as a catalyst for a peace deal between the two sides and greater autonomy from Indonesia.
RINA MEUTIA: It's a blessing in disguise.
SULLIVAN: That's Rina Meutia, a former disaster risk specialist with the World Bank in Washington, with a master's from the Clinton School of Public Service. She also spent time working for the U.N. in East Timor and is now running for a seat in the local parliament. She says it's hard to overestimate just how bad it was before the tsunami during the Indonesian occupation, when a 6 p.m. curfew was vigorously enforced by the army.
MEUTIA: You get scared, you don't know what's going on next; the next morning you go to school, you see, like, so many buildings burned or destroyed. So to have this kind of peace, you can go out even like 11 at night just to grab a coffee, that's such a great feeling. And it's a blessing to have peace. You have no idea. Not to live in fear, that's like the best things ever.
SULLIVAN: The provincial capital Banda Aceh is awash in new cars, motorcycles and cell phone shops, all indicative of the trickle-down benefits billions in aid money brings. But nine years on, the aid workers are gone, the money drying up. And the greater political autonomy hasn't translated into real economic progress for many here, especially those in the rural areas, even though Aceh is rich in natural resources.
SAIFUL MAHDI: Out of 33 provinces in Indonesia, we are the fourth in terms of how rich we are in income per capita. But at the same times, the number of poor, head count, we are number five. So we are the fourth richest but also the fifth poorest in the country.
SULLIVAN: Saiful Mahdi is a senior lecturer at Aceh's Syiah Kuala University. The long-running conflict, he says, stifled development. And the local government, he says, could do a lot better in terms of allocating resources to help improve livelihoods. Indifference, ineptitude, corruption, all of them, he says, but it's still early days for the newly autonomous region.
He and almost everyone else I spoke with thinks the relief effort and reconstruction that followed was extraordinarily successful, though he and others agree it could have been even better.
PATRICK DALY: I think the first three years could have been a lot more effective, and it could have been a lot less internationalized.
SULLIVAN: That's Patrick Daly, a researcher at the National University of Singapore who's been studying post-tsunami Aceh for the past nine years. He says the Philippines post-Haiyan could learn from mistakes made here. He says once projects here were transferred to local partners, for example, they worked better and probably will in the Philippines, as well.
DALY: Empower them. Let them make decisions from the onset about planning. Give them real responsibility to determine spending and how to allocate budgets. And let them determine the priorities. And you will find that the projects will most likely be more effective and most likely to last after the aid dries up.
SULLIVAN: But for a province reeling from decades of brutal conflict and then the tsunami, Aceh could be doing a lot worse. Back at the beach in Lhoknga, local taxi driver Nasir Mohammed digs into a delicious-looking fried grouper at one of the fish shacks.
NASIR MOHAMMED: (Speaking foreign language).
SULLIVAN: After the tsunami, he says, post-conflict, he had a chance to earn, and he's used it well. He's got two cars for ferrying tourists and businessmen to and from the airport and the golf course. And he's got three sons he says will all go to university, something no one in the family has ever been able to do. Yes, he says, the tsunami was terrible for the victims, but who am I to question God's will? In today's Aceh, he says, is better. For NPR News, I'm Michael Sullivan.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CORNISH: This is NPR News.
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In the lead-up to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, athletes like Alice McKennis are training hard for a spot on Team USA. Her journey is exceptional. The ski racer from Colorado suffered a debilitating injury in March. She broke her leg in 30 places. From Aspen Public Radio, Marci Krivonen reports, McKennis is back on skis and looking for her second shot at an Olympic medal.
MARCI KRIVONEN, BYLINE: On a recent cold, cloudy day in Colorado, ski racer Alice McKennis suits up. She buckles her boots, puts on a back protector and dons a tight-fitting speed suit.
ALICE MCKENNIS: Which is not very warm, but it's good for the aerodynamics.
KRIVONEN: She's training at the U.S. Ski Team's Speed Center at Copper Mountain, near Vail. Today, McKennis is focusing on technique. It's a big day for another reason, she's planning to ski the entire course from top to bottom, something she hasn't done since her injury.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Going up?
MCKENNIS: Yeah.
PASCAL HASLER: And then (unintelligible) ski Super G?
MCKENNIS: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: OK.
KRIVONEN: The 24-year-old has been skiing since she was a toddler.
MCKENNIS: The snow's good today. It's better than I thought it was going to be.
KRIVONEN: She takes several shorter runs leading up to the last one of the day, which will cover the entire length of the mountain, about two miles. She takes off and flies down the course dotted with gates that skiers zigzag around. McKennis flies by, going upwards of 65 miles per hour. After McKennis' crash, the doctors doubted she'd be training at year's end.
MCKENNIS: I mean, initially, it was kind of like, you know, you're probably not going to even ski next season. Like, maybe you'd ski next January, but you're certainly not going to race.
KRIVONEN: But the surgery and healing went much better than expected. Now she has a metal plate and 11 screws in her leg. She says she has an edge on the competition because of her March injuries and earlier ones.
MCKENNIS: I'd say I'm pretty tough. I've broken both of my legs, essentially, and come back from these injuries. And I kind of feel like with that sort of situation, like, you have to be super tough to do it. And to make the Olympics is extremely hard, so it takes a certain kind of toughness to do that.
HASLER: With her injury, I mean, we saw the pictures, we know what's in there in the leg, plates and screws. And I think it's amazing, you know, how she's doing.
KRIVONEN: Pascal Hasler is one of McKennis' coaches. He says she's improving quickly because she has a goal in sight. And that goal is an inspiration for others, including younger skiers like twelve-year old Michal Hale.
MICHAL HALE: Yeah. She is a big role model for me.
KRIVONEN: Hale is also from Colorado and she's been tracking McKennis' career for half her life. She's a budding ski racer herself.
HALE: Like, watching her skiing makes me feel like I could probably do that, too.
KRIVONEN: Back out on the snow, McKennis is getting ready to pack it in for the day.
MCKENNIS: Today, I mean, I was definitely nervous to run the full length of the course, but once I do it, I'm like, all right, you know, just keep moving forward and, you know, ski faster and better.
KRIVONEN: It's that kind of perseverance that could get McKennis to Sochi. The Olympic team will be named by late January. For NPR News, I'm Marci Krivonen in Aspen.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
Tomorrow is World Braille Day, a day to commemorate the birth of the Frenchman Louis Braille. Braille was just a toddler when he was blinded in an accident. Undeterred, he went on to become a brilliant student. But he was frustrated that he could not read or write. In school, he learned about a system of dots used by soldiers to communicate at night. Braille adapted that system into something that would transform the lives of the blind and visually impaired.
Almost 200 years later, Braille has not changed so much, but how we read things has. Now that much reading takes place on screens and not on paper, how has that affected Braille's popularity among the blind? Well, here to explain is Judy Dixon. She's with the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, part of the Library of Congress. Welcome to the studio.
JUDY DIXON: Thank you.
CORNISH: So first, to explain, you've been a Braille reader since childhood, right?
DIXON: Yes. I started reading Braille when I was in the first grade at the school for the blind in Florida. When I first started reading Braille, all we had was Braille on paper. And, of course, we read Dick and Jane and Sally. I guess I'm showing my age here.
(LAUGHTER)
DIXON: And I don't think people read those books anymore. But I read the typical schoolbooks that other kids in the class were reading. And I just read on paper.
CORNISH: Now, as an adult, you were one of the first people to really get involved in kind of high-tech Braille, right, and Web Braille. And can you talk a little bit about where the technology is today? Because, obviously, smartphones, for instance, have become an incredibly valuable tool.
DIXON: The Braille technology really started taking off in the early '80s with the development of devices that we call refreshable Braille displays. And they're small boxes - different sizes, of course. I have a couple of them here. This device that's in front of me I have connected to an iPhone. And I have the app BARD Mobile, which is an app that was developed by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped to read our Braille and audio books.
And these devices have Braille cells, so the pins of a Braille cell - Braille is made of six dots. Each dot of the Braille cell raises and lowers so that if I wanted to read the letter A, which is dot one, the upper left of the Braille cell which - the Braille cell is three dots high and two dots wide. The pin for that dot would raise and all the other pins would not raise. And I have the book "The Joy of Cooking" loaded here.
And I was just looking at the introduction to "The Joy of Cooking," which is saying things like all new illustrations, rich new soups, more cooking with fire, including grilling, hot and cold, smoking and hearth cooking. New meals, turns. New grains chapter. Cook for a day, eat for a week. So it's - I'm reading the introduction to "The Joy of Cooking."
CORNISH: And as your fingers are running over and I can see those little pins kind of bobbing and disappearing.
DIXON: Yes.
CORNISH: Now, how do you feel today when you think of just how much wider the access is with Braille?
DIXON: I feel now that I can read almost anything that's published, in one way or another, between my iPhone, my Kindle. The other kinds of Braille displays also can be connected to computers. So any book or document that can be read on a computer can be read with a Braille display and Braille.
CORNISH: Tell us about the price of this, because I understand that Braille readers are pretty expensive.
DIXON: That is certainly still the major drawback of refreshable Braille devices is that they are expensive. These devices are in the thousands. So a smaller version like this 14-cell unit that I have here would be about $1,500, larger units of 40-cell would be in the neighborhood of 3 to $4,000 and the prices go up. So these prices are somewhat prohibitive for many people.
If a way of making Braille cells can be found that uses a mainstream technology that was in many, many devices and was pennies per unit, then Braille devices could be made for perhaps a few hundred dollars and could be affordable by all Braille readers.
CORNISH: Now, how important do you think Braille is going forward? Do you see this enduring another 200 years?
DIXON: I think about that, and perhaps yes, perhaps no. It's hard to imagine what will come along that could replace Braille for us. Audio is a linear experience. The words come, they go. But with Braille, I can see the word, I can see how it's spelled, I can see how the punctuation is. I don't have to wonder if a word has one T or two T's.
It just is something I observe when I read a Braille word under my fingers. And it's a very different experience. I personally am kind of a visual learner. I don't take things in well audio. If I see it in Braille, I remember it, because it goes into my visual memory.
CORNISH: Judy Dixon is with the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, part of the Library of Congress. Thank you for coming in.
DIXON: Thank you.
CORNISH: We were talking on the eve of World Braille Day. Louis Braille would've been 205 years old tomorrow.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The leftover prescription drugs sitting around your house are at the center of a fight between small government and big pharmaceutical companies. Two West Coast counties have passed laws requiring drug makers to pay for the safe disposal of unused medications. In Sacramento, Pauline Bartolone reports that these laws are part of a broader movement, forcing manufacturers to rethink how they do business.
PAULINE BARTOLONE, BYLINE: Mary Hill is a social service coordinator at a retirement home in Oakland, California. She's been accumulating prescription drugs in her office.
MARY HILL: I have here morphine from people like who have cancer. I have Vicodin.
BARTOLONE: Hill's been storing leftover drugs from residents who have died or don't know how to get rid of them safely.
HILL: This is methadone.
BARTOLONE: Hill is in a quandary. She wants to keep the drugs away from recreational users and out of the water supply, but the retirement home has no formal way to dispose of the drugs. And if she drives the drugs offsite she could be stopped for possession of pharmaceuticals that don't belong to her.
HILL: We don't want to put it in the garbage bin outside. They can't flush it, so I don't know what to do.
BARTOLONE: Alameda County has a safe drug disposal program at a couple dozen locations. But Alameda County's supervisor, Nate Miley, says the program needs to be more convenient and the wrong people are footing the bill. He authored a local ordinance that requires drug makers to design and pay for a comprehensive take-back program.
NATE MILEY: This is not something taxpayers should be paying for. It seems like when products have reached their life cycle, it should be the responsibility of the manufacturers to have a way of properly disposing of those products.
BARTOLONE: Alameda County has the first producer-responsibility-drug-take-back law in the country. Miley says the local government stepped up because states and the federal government have not.
MILEY: We can't wait for Sacramento. We can't wait for the federal government. We're hoping that other counties would see what we've done and have the courage to follow our lead.
BARTOLONE: Pharmaceutical companies challenged Alameda County's ordinance in federal court. The local law was upheld and drug makers have appealed. Another county in the Seattle, Washington, area is following Alameda's lead. And now the pharmaceutical industry is challenging their law too.
MIT SPEARS: Running, if you will, a waste disposal authority is something that's really not in the institutional competence of manufacturers.
BARTOLONE: Mit Spears is general counsel for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, or PhRMA.
SPEARS: Local governments have been in the waste disposal business for a very, very long time and, and they know more about it. They know more about how to take care of their citizens and what the needs are.
BARTOLONE: Spears also says if pharmaceutical companies have to pay for the programs, industry will pass the costs on to consumers.
SPEARS: We think it's unfair to basically put upon a Medicaid or a Medicare beneficiary in Tennessee a higher cost on their product so that we can pay for a state-of-the-art take-back program in Alameda, California.
BARTOLONE: PhRMA questions whether local governments can regulate interstate commerce. But Heidi Sanborn of the California Product Stewardship Council says the discussion should focus on responsibility.
HEIDI SANBORN: Is the appropriate role of government to pay for the end of life for products put on the market that have an end-of-life cost? Or is it the appropriate role of the private sector to design life cycle systems that are basically cradle to cradle?
BARTOLONE: Whether it's electronics, pharmaceuticals or other consumer products, Sanborn says pushing manufacturers to be accountable for their waste makes them rethink production.
SANBORN: If they have an economic incentive that drives them to redesign and rethink the product, what it's made out of, how it works, how long it lasts, then we'll see hopefully greener design. And that's ultimately our goal.
BARTOLONE: Pharmaceutical companies must deliver a safe drug disposal plan to Alameda County this May. In the meantime, California lawmakers will look at a state proposal to force the industry to pay for its waste. For NPR News, I'm Pauline Bartolone in Sacramento.
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The National Security Agency is pursuing a new kind of computer that could crack almost any code, codes like the ones that protect email and bank accounts and medical records, that revelation today courtesy of leaker Edward Snowden. The documents were published in the Washington Post.
As NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel reports, this code-cracking project is still in its infancy.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: So the world's most clandestine spy agency is building something called a quantum computer. It's based on rules Einstein himself described as spooky. That's got to be top-secret stuff, right? Guess again.
CHRISTOPHER MONROE: It's all in the open.
BRUMFIEL: That's Christopher Monroe, a physicist at the University of Maryland who studies quantum computing. He's not surprised the NSA is involved.
MONROE: They have funded, through various ways, my own research.
BRUMFIEL: Really? Are you allowed to say that?
MONROE: Yeah, I believe so.
(LAUGHTER)
BRUMFIEL: In fact the NSA funds a lot of unclassified basic research in this area, and here's why it's interested: Most of the world's computers encrypt their data using really large numbers. To break the code, spy agencies have to divide the numbers by other numbers, prime numbers. Finding the right prime numbers can take awhile.
MONROE: A thousand-digit number might take a full year of a team of supercomputers. And again, all you have to do is add another digit, it gets twice as hard. You can add another hundred digits, and forget it, you won't be able to ever do it.
BRUMFIEL: That's where a quantum computer comes in. Rather than just trying one number at a time, it can try all the numbers.
MONROE: It can look at them all at the same time and there's a huge speed up by doing that.
BRUMFIEL: A code that was impossible to break could be cracked in weeks, days, maybe even hours. And that's why the NSA needs to be working on quantum computers.
MONROE: If you think about it, it would be worrisome if they would not pay attention to this field because it could shake them to their roots. If somebody comes up with a quantum computer, and they're not prepared for it, that would not be good for this country.
BRUMFIEL: But if you're worried the NSA might soon be snooping with a quantum computer, don't. They're really hard to build.
MONROE: The technology is way behind anything that could be useful at this point.
BRUMFIEL: The documents leak today seemed to indicate the agency hasn't made much more progress than researchers like Monroe, and as another researcher pointed out to me, the NSA already has plenty of secret tricks and legal tools for reading the world's emails. Who needs a quantum computer when you've got a court order? Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.
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CORNISH: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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The website looks like Victoria's Secret, with lots of sexy models wearing brightly-colored knickers. But look closely. One little lacy number has the word consent printed on it and they somehow managed to squeeze the words, no means no onto a skimpy pink thong. It turns out the site's a lookalike, a prank and it's just the latest effort by two Baltimore artists who are tired of the sexual messaging coming from companies like Victoria's Secret and Playboy.
From member station WYPR in Baltimore, Stephanie Hughes has their story.
STEPHANIE HUGHES, BYLINE: Rebecca Nagle sometimes finds herself asking the question, what would Hugh Hefner say?
REBECCA NAGLE: The only sex that is good is when it's good for everyone. And I've only ever had good sex.
HUGHES: Did you write that?
NAGLE: Yeah.
HUGHES: Nagle has spent a lot of time studying Hefner. She's one of the directors of a Baltimore-based group called FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture. The group is interested in promoting consent. FORCE thinks the way Playboy talks about consent is problematic. That includes the magazine's annual list of top party schools.
NAGLE: The way that they describe women on the list are like campus perks, sort of alongside things like good bars and a good football stadium.
HUGHES: FORCE wanted to change the message. So, last September, the group created a fake Playboy website. But instead of listing party schools, the site highlighted colleges working to promote consent. Nagle says it's not hard to imagine Hugh Hefner getting behind that.
NAGLE: If you're somebody who's all about sexual pleasure, it makes total sense that you'd also be somebody who's all about consent.
HUGHES: The website looks like it could have been created by Playboy. There's the bunny logo and language with just the right amount of smugness. FORCE also created replicas of several blogs reporting on the fake list, including the Huffington Post and BroBible.com.
Playboy hasn't responded publicly to the prank, but BroBible did. Andy Moore is the associate editor for the website, which is aimed primarily at college-age men. He agreed with FORCE's message that consent and party school lists can co-exist.
ANDY MOORE: They didn't say don't have a good time. I think that there's a way to rank these schools and to talk about this while keeping in mind that any sort of terrible behavior is not allowed.
HUGHES: That's something the artists are hoping more people will think about and not just those who read Playboy or BroBible. They've used other brands to get that message across.
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HANNAH BRANCATO: Victoria's Secret, in a lot of ways, publicly owns the idea of sexuality.
HUGHES: Hannah Brancato is another director of FORCE. The group was concerned with messages Victoria's Secret was placing on their underwear, such as stop staring and no peeking.
BRANCATO: The words stop and no are being used as a way to flirt instead of a way to set boundaries.
HUGHES: So, FORCE created a fake Victoria's Secret website. They pretended to release a new line of consent-themed underwear.
BRANCATO: We said that Victoria's Secret was apologizing for their past styles and instead they were releasing this new line promoting consent culture - the idea of loving your body, communicating about sex, asking first, no means no.
HUGHES: The prank fooled a lot of people, including 19-year-old Cinneah El-Amin from Baltimore. She was especially pleased to see models of all shapes and sizes wearing the underwear.
CINNEAH EL-AMIN: Being able to look into this prank and see someone who looks like me, you know, meant a lot.
HUGHES: The fake Victoria's Secret website received hundreds of thousands of hits. That's comparable to other corporate pranks. With the Playboy spoof, according to the count on each website, as of January 2nd, FORCE's list had been shared more times on Facebook and Twitter than the actual party school list. Hannah Brancato says that shows this kind of activism can be effective.
BRANCATO: This is how you change attitudes, by changing the culture that we're consuming on a day-to-day basis.
HUGHES: Until that change happens, Nagle and Brancato are planning to keep it up. They have other pranks in the works. For NPR News, I'm Stephanie Hughes in Baltimore.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish. Congress returns to work next week and both chambers will have a little more than a week to pass an appropriations bill to keep the government open. A bipartisan budget agreement in December helped reduce the chance of a shutdown, but as NPR's Ailsa Chang reports, there's still plenty left to bicker about.
AILSA CHANG, BYLINE: This holiday season has been no fun for staffers on the appropriations committees. It meant coming to work in a nearly deserted building every weekend, Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve and staying well into the night during yesterday's snow storm. Jim Dyer(ph) remembers the pain. He spent two and a half decades giving up holidays and weekends to help write spending bills under the gun.
JIM DYER: To the detriment of friends and family and it made me very cranky and a hell of a lot less charming than I am now.
CHANG: Dyer was a staffer on the House Appropriations Committee until 2004 and he says this year's team is running an especially fast sprint. A budget agreement didn't come until December so appropriators didn't know what bottom line they had to work with until just a few weeks before the January 15 deadline.
DYER: You're talking about writing a bill of a trillion plus dollars that governs every federal agency for the year and you're talking about producing a piece of legislation in an environment that is not very conducive to conciliation and compromise.
CHANG: And compromise will be the only way to get things done. The budget agreement was only a general outline. Now, appropriators have to figure out exactly how much money to spend on agencies and policies many members of Congress downright hate, like the Affordable Care Act.
Yet, Sarah Binder of the Brookings Institution believes deals will happen this month because Republicans are still haunted by last October's government shutdown.
SARAH BINDER: Politically, my sense is Republicans have decided that their party took such a bad beating for being blamed for the shutdown that they don't want to go back there again and so they will find a way to compromise.
CHANG: The way Congress is really supposed to decide spending is through 12 individual appropriations bills. That hasn't happened in almost a decade. Right now, the committees are drawing up an omnibus bill, 12 bills rolled up into one. It isn't ideal because some items don't get as much scrutiny as others, but Binder says it's still way better than as stopgap measure where no new spending decisions are made.
BINDER: Minimum standards become maximum standards, right? That the least we can get done becomes the most we can get done.
CHANG: But is this good start a sign of greater bipartisanship in the months to come?
STAN COLLENDER: No. Let's not go too far here.
CHANG: Stan Collender has closely watched budget fights for years.
COLLENDER: Maybe it's a real measure of how far we've come and how bad things are that an omnibus bill, which would've been considered a disaster a decade ago or a generation ago by appropriators, is now being hailed a cardinal achievement of this Congress.
CHANG: Of course, Collender says, let's wait until January 15 before we celebrate even that. Ailsa Chang, NPR News, the Capitol.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
We turn now to our regular Friday political commentators, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and the Brookings Institution. Hey there, E.J.
E.J. DIONNE: Good to be with you. Happy new year.
CORNISH: David Brooks of the New York Times. Happy new year, David.
DAVID BROOKS: Same to you.
CORNISH: So it felt like lawmakers spent much of the last year dissecting the 2012 Benghazi attack in Libya, resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others. And I bring it up because they started 2014 the same way. Reporter David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times wrote the story that challenged many conservative assumptions about how and why the attack happened.
David, does this story change the narrative here, change the debate about this?
BROOKS: I think so. You know. Tolstoy was right. History is messy. We sort of had two partisan narratives, administration narrative, which was the video started it and it was spontaneous; the Republican narrative, it was al-Qaida and was carefully planned. It was sort of in the middle. The video had a role. It was somewhat spontaneous. It was somewhat planned.
We had people who were sort of on our side in one month. They turned against us. So I think we can say it was probably not an al-Qaida operation, but it was not simply the video and simply spontaneous. It was sort of just a messy muddle, sort of refuting, I'd say, a little both of the partisan spin.
CORNISH: And E.J., do Democrats embrace this reporting and kind of re-litigate this issue or is this a story they want to go away?
DIONNE: No, I think the New York Times story ought to help it go away. What was astonishing to me is how difficult it was for Republicans to accept that maybe the facts did not support all these crazy conspiracy theories that they were spinning. They were completely denying that the video, for example, had anything to do with what happened there.
I hope this makes the story go away. The only thing we should've been concerned about all the time, for all along, was how to make sure this didn't happen again. And I hope that's where the focus goes.
CORNISH: Looking at domestic politics, we've talked a lot on this program about the soul of the Republican Party and the direction of the GOP, but this week at the swearing in of the New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, it gave us some imagery that it seemed like a moment to check in with Democrats. Here's a cut of the mayor.
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO: Today, we commit to a new progressive direction in New York and that same progressive impulse has written our city's history. It's in our DNA.
CORNISH: E.J., this self-described progressive mayor flanked on stage by Bill and Hillary Clinton, right, standard bearers for Democratic centrism. What did you see on that stage about the direction where the party's going?
DIONNE: Well, first of all, I think it's important that Bill de Blasio managed Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign. He also worked in Bill Clinton's administration and I always thought the Clintons were much more populist, both in '92 and in Hillary's campaign, than people sort of lead on when they say they're all about centrism. But I think the resurgence of a Democratic left will be one of the big stories of 2014.
Its strength goes out of a widespread concern over a rising inequality and an exhaustion, really, with the rightward push on the center for the last three years. I don't think it's so much a reaction against President Obama as it is a reaction to how difficult the right has made it for the president to move forward. And so I think it's going to be a very important development that will change - start putting pressure on the center from a different direction.
CORNISH: And, David, unlike Republicans where there's so many names kind of being bandied about for 2016, for Democrats it's fewer names and I wonder if you see, again, sort of a direction where the party's going.
BROOKS: Yeah, I think there will be a progressive challenge to Hillary. That part of the party's strong in the intellectual wing and in the coasts, the university towns. I think it's strong, but localized in the way the Occupy movement was. A progressive can win in New York, but let's face it, my hometown is not exactly like America.
CORNISH: But you do hear lots of people talking about, you know, Elizabeth Warren for example. I know she's based in Massachusetts, but a lot of folks look to her as a standard bearer for something in the party.
BROOKS: Right. I think within the Democratic base, I think there's a very strong support. That's where the intellectual support is. That's where the activists are. Inequality is a real problem. And for people who believe in government, there has to be some pretty big ambitious programs. I think the problem for these progressives is that a lot of people don't believe in government, even Democrats, even moderates. So I think it's probably a little more localized than maybe E.J. does.
DIONNE: I think that for a lot of white working class voters who have strayed from the Democrats, the party focusing on economic inequality is actually helpful. It's not just an issue in Berkeley or Cambridge.
CORNISH: And I'm sure we're going to hear more about this in the next couple of months. I want to turn to one last thing in the news this week which is the world's first legal recreational pot sales got underway in Colorado. And David, in your column titled "Weed: Been There, Done That," today you write about the highs and lows of your own adventures smoking pot. See what I did there? But you seem to come down against legalization. What gives?
BROOKS: Yeah. You remember the comedy team, Cheech, Chong and Brooks?
CORNISH: Heard of them.
BROOKS: (Unintelligible) at the Grateful Dead concerts. You know, my view is that I don't get so hyped up about marijuana use, but I do think government should sort of lean against it. And I'm sort of against what's happened in Colorado, in part because the legalization, one of the things it does, it's probably going to lead to much lower prices. It's going to eliminate the legal worries that some people have and so it'll lead to more marijuana use.
I don't think - getting stoned is sort of fun, but I don't think it's necessarily the best way to spend your life. And it's mostly dangerous because I think it will probably increase teenage use. The teenage use really does have IQ effects, serious brain effects and so I'm more worried about. I wouldn't go around arresting people who use weed, but I wouldn't sort of make it an open-door policy.
CORNISH: Although David, I think that's one of the arguments by the legalization folks, right, that marijuana arrests were...
DIONNE: Yeah, that's exactly the point I wanted to make. First of all, I read David's engrossing column today and said maybe if he hadn't used marijuana, he'd be a liberal today.
BROOKS: I was a liberal when I used it, E.J.
DIONNE: Yes, well there you go, see what happened. I don't think he's wrong about wanting to discourage its use, but the point you were getting to, Audie, is exactly right. Having marijuana illegal means people go to jail. That's more than discouraging its use. And the racial disparity about who goes to jail is so large and so stunning that I think we have to stop doing what we're doing.
I hope we have states that experiment with legalization and others that try decriminalization, which may have a bit of a discouraging element there but will not result in these wildly disparate punishments.
CORNISH: E.J., you get the last word, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution, thank you so much.
DIONNE: Good to be with you.
CORNISH: And David Brooks of The New York Times, thanks so much.
BROOKS: Thank you, groovy.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish. It's been years since a new, for-profit health insurance company launched in the U.S. The industry's dominated by large, established firms. But some young tech entrepreneurs in New York believe they can take on the big guys, offering plans on the New York Exchange. NPR's Dan Bobkoff has their story.
DAN BOBKOFF, BYLINE: The company is called Oscar, and its headquarters is pure tech startup. Office dog? Check. Guys writing computer code next to half-eaten takeout? Yep. Ping pong tables nearby. Most of the staff sits around a long table in the center of the office. Most seem about 30, and come from some of the biggest names in tech.
MARIO SCHLOSSER: This is Tom here, formerly from Facebook. What's up, Tom?
BOBKOFF: Co-founder Mario Schlosser is showing me around.
SCHLOSSER: So Naveen, here, founded Foursquare. He's...
BOBKOFF: One came from the music service Spotify; another, from Google. And they're here to work for a health insurance company - unsexy, unglamorous insurance.
JOSHUA KUSHNER: We only live once.
BOBKOFF: Twenty-eight-year-old Josh Kushner is another of Oscar's three co-founders.
KUSHNER: Why, you know, build a toy on your phone when you can actually, directly impact an industry that needs to be changed?
BOBKOFF: And this is the idealistic pitch - that a bunch of outsiders whose backgrounds are mostly in tech, and a few from the insurance industry, can create a friendlier, easier and more understandable health care company.
KUSHNER: Insurance companies have done everything they can to acquire customers but soon after, everything they can to avoid them.
BOBKOFF: Oscar wants to be a big part of its customers' lives - keeping track of their medical histories, reminding them to take care of themselves and refill prescriptions. If you're feeling sick, Oscar wants you to start at its website. The technologists are working on a search box for you to tell it how you're feeling, in normal language. And Schlosser says it gives you suggestions and connects you with a doctor.
SCHLOSSER: Look what he just typed in: I'm feeling angry and I'm having nightmares. What are you getting?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Mental disorder is still No. 1. I'm trying to fix that.
BOBKOFF: Its doctor-search engine lets you search by location and by doctor's age, experience, medical school, and whether she treats patients like you.
KUSHNER: Which in this case, for the most part, means patients who are, you know, my age range.
BOBKOFF: Log in to the site, and there's like a Facebook newsfeed of your medical life.
KUSHNER: The visits you've had to the doctor, or the visits you've had to a hospital. Whenever you had a visit, we give you very detailed information as to what you paid and what we are paying.
BOBKOFF: Need a hip replacement? The map will show all the doctors in network that will do it, and how much each charges for the procedure so its customers can comparison shop. Important, since so many individual plans, including Oscar's, have high deductibles. Oscar is not competing on price. Its plans are neither the cheapest nor most expensive. It's hoping it's different enough from its competitors that it has an edge. And it hopes its selling points are features that save customers money, save Oscar money, and maybe improve care.
For instance, Oscar lets its customers call a doctor any time of day to ask about anything; great when you have a strange rash at 2 a.m., but don't want to go to the ER. Regina Herzlinger, of Harvard Business School, specializes in health care innovation.
REGINA HERZLINGER: So that sounds kind of fluffy, but the reality they use - if you can keep somebody out of the emergency room who shouldn't be there, you've not only reduced costs, but you keep that person out of sitting next to somebody who's been shot by an Uzi.
BOBKOFF: She says the industry has been ripe for some new company to try to shake things up. And she says the Affordable Care Act makes it possible for a new entrant like Oscar to compete because its plans are shown on the exchanges right next to the big brands. But Herzlinger says Oscar doing things a new way is encouraging, but also a potential liability.
HERZLINGER: Well, they're techies so health insurance is a very complicated industry. We've seen where techies have failed, crashed and burned disastrously in the past few months, in the exchanges.
BOBKOFF: For now, Oscar is focusing on getting up and running in the New York metro area. But it has long-term ambitions to go national. The question is whether customers want their health insurer to look more like Facebook than Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Dan Bobkoff, NPR News, New York.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Recently, we've heard of some big changes at several news organizations involving some of their most prominent journalists. At the Washington Post, the founder of the popular policy site Wonkblog, Ezra Klein, is weighing a departure. And the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are both scrambling to set up dedicated news teams to replace journalists who have left in pursuit of more money and independence.
NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik joins us from our studios in New York. And David, these sites - like, say, Wonkblog - they're called verticals in the news business, right? What does that mean?
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Well, what it means is you've got this digital presence. You think of it as a site and a blog, but it's run by a team of people with expertise in the area they're covering. And they're really relentlessly focused on the subject at hand but in, at times, an off-the-news way. They may explain what's happening in the news instead of breaking what's happening in the news. They'll find things that illustrate it metaphorically or with incredibly analytical data-crunching. And they'll find different ways of getting at the problems and issues behind the headlines rather than the headlines themselves.
CORNISH: It used to be called the beat, right?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, yeah, except it's not just a question of who was named to what. It's a question of what drove the decision that you're reading about on the front pages. It's a little complementary rather than replacing traditional reporting.
CORNISH: So what's the state of play for Ezra Klein at the Post?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, he apparently - this has been reported by Huffington Post and now, in more detail, by the New York Times - he went to his bosses at the Post and said, look, I'd like you to invest many millions of dollars - the Times said it was an eight-figure request - to really build this up and expand what he did in explanatory journalism beyond the health care policy, economics and federal policy that he had focused on, to a broader array of issues.
You know, the Post has been in some economic trouble. It was recently bought by a billionaire - Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon. Ezra Klein may have reasonably thought there was some money to play with there, but they may have said this is putting a lot of money on a specific project. They weren't ready to do it. He's thinking whether to go independent or seek a new home.
CORNISH: And you report this is as part of a wider trend. Tell us more about what's going on at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
FOLKENFLIK: Well, let's take the Times first. You may remember FiveThirtyEight was all the rage during the 2012 elections, as people clicked on to see what the polling would suggest about what would happen in November. He decamped - Nate Silver, the creator of that blog - from the New York Times to ESPN, which gave him more latitude to explore his analysis and approach to sports and to entertainment.
Similarly, perhaps more meaningfully at the Wall Street Journal, you had something called AllThingsD - for digital; a familiar phrase, perhaps. Kara Swisher, a reporter, and Walter Mossberg, the digital device reviewer for them, had set up a franchise where they had this vertical, this online presence as well as a presence in the newspaper. But they also had an enormously profitable conference business that they had set up.
They felt they made profits for a dozen years for the Wall Street Journal without a heck of a lot help from the home office, and they decided to spin that off. They created something called Re/Code. They're doing it in partnership with NBC News and CNBC, the financial cable news division. But they have controlling ownership stake in it. They've brought onboard an investor - Terry Semel, who used to be the CEO of Yahoo!
But it's a way in which you're seeing this upending of who controls what the content is, and what the nature of these verticals are; and you're seeing the Journal and the Times scrambling to replace them with new ventures - in the Times' case, being led by David Leonhardt, the former Washington bureau chief for the New York Times.
CORNISH: Now, how are these changes affecting the nature of journalism?
FOLKENFLIK: You're seeing a lot more conversational style. You're seeing shorter journalism. You're seeing more visual, graphics, video, audio, different approaches blended. But what I think you're really seeing is a pivot; where the balance of power going from these major, famous, you know, world-renowned news organizations to many of the journalists who have really driven online digital traffic for them. People like Ezra Klein have been really important for the Washington Post in the digital age, and that's given him a lot more power than he would have had 10, 15 years ago as a reporter, or even as a columnist.
CORNISH: That's NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik. David, thank you.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.
After pummeling the Midwest, a big winter storm hit the Northeast today, dumping snow up and down I-95. Flights were canceled, major highways closed. Boston took on almost two feet. Up to 10 inches fell on New York City, where the new mayor has only been in office two days. And that's where our coverage begins this hour with NPR's Zoe Chace.
ZOE CHACE, BYLINE: I'm standing here in the snow and the cold and the sun in Woodside, Queens. Now, the snow in Queens has brought down New York City mayors before. 40 odd years ago, Mayor John Lindsay. Streets out here were unplowed. People were stuck. Garbage uncollected. It took days for the mayor to get out here. And when he did, his limousine couldn't make it through the streets.
But today, New York City's brand-new mayor, Bill de Blasio, he showed up in Queens, right out here at the sanitation workers repair shop, where snow plows have been coming in and out all night in Woodside, Queens.
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO: We are going to make the point in everything we do. All boroughs are created equal.
CHACE: The message, this mayor does not favor Manhattan. He loves the whole city equally. He cited some impressive stuffs to prove it: 100 percent of major roads plowed by 10 a.m., somewhere around 90 percent of all secondary roads in the city. De Blasio likes to be the everyman. It's what got him into office two days ago after 12 years of the city being led by a billionaire.
BLASIO: I am a proud Brooklynite, and I was proud to be shoveling my sidewalk in front of my Brooklyn house.
CHACE: And the people of Brooklyn were watching.
MAGDALENE ANGELS: Yeah, he came out this morning. I saw him on TV. And he was cleaning his own driveway. He didn't send his people to clean his driveway.
CHACE: Magdalene Angels lives kind of near the mayor in Crown Heights.
ANGELS: He's setting an example and even a better example to the first mayor who was there, the past mayor.
CHACE: Lots of people out here are mad at the last mayor, Mayor Bloomberg, the billionaire, because the last big storm was twice as big as this and it took a while for Brooklyn to get attention. Kendra Legere remembers.
KENDRA LEGERE: All Manhattan streets were clean and Brooklyn was a complete mess. So the fact that our new mayor, de Blasio, is actually cleaning the streets, he's doing good. He's all right.
CHACE: But let's be real. The new mayor kept lots of the Bloomberg people in charge: the head of sanitation, emergency management. His first major decision really was to close the schools, which is super rare in New York City. But it's cold out and the mayor said he didn't want kids standing around in the cold, waiting for the bus. He even said, keep the sledding to a minimum.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Girls, Monroe(ph), look up.
CHACE: But snow days don't happen very often here. What are you doing?
SAMMY HELMRICH: I'm sledding.
CHACE: Yeah? How many times have sledded in so far?
HELMRICH: Uh, I don't know.
TODD HELMRICH: A lot? A hundred?
HELMRICH: No.
CHACE: Sammy Helmrich and his dad, Todd, sped off down the hill in Central Park. Kids were off schools from Philly to Maine. Lots of flights were canceled. Big highways were closed and re-opened but most people on the East Coast woke up feeling like they dodged a bullet. Several deaths were reported, a few thousand people out of power.
One thing that did spook people in coastal New England, high tides. Last year, a big storm swept a whole house into the ocean just off Boston's north shore. Erin Guay has lived out there all her life and she was watching the tides.
ERIN GUAY: I personally have never seen it this big and this close. I mean, I'm worried about these houses.
CHACE: The danger from the water seems to have mostly passed. Now, it's just the cold. Boston officials are predicting windchills well below zero. Same goes in New York, where it seems like this mayor may have gotten off easy. But we'll see after the roads potentially freeze over tonight. Zoe Chace, NPR News, New York.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
As we just heard, it's really cold across the Northeast and the wind is making things even colder. In parts of Maine, that means it feels like it's minus 45 degrees. For the homeless, the frigid temperatures make an already difficult situation downright dangerous. Maine Public Broadcasting's Susan Sharon followed one outreach worker on her rounds as she tried to make sure people were safe and warm.
SUSAN SHARON, BYLINE: They start lining up for dinner outside the Hope Haven Gospel Mission in Lewiston just after 4 p.m. One man is wearing only a sweatshirt and work boots. One man has on shoes but no socks. It's four below zero. The wind is blowing. It's snowing. And Lacey Donle is there to greet them.
LACEY DONLE: Do you have a place for tonight?
CURTIS SNYDER: I can stay with Ian, yeah, probably.
DONLE: OK. Sure?
SNYDER: Yeah. But, I mean...
DONLE: All right. Just as long as you have a warm place, dude, because otherwise...
SNYDER: Yeah. That's all I need, is a warm place.
DONLE: All right.
Donle is an outreach worker with New Beginnings, a program that works to keep teens and young adults like Curtis Snyder off the streets. Snyder had been hoping to get a bed at Hope Haven shelter. Meantime, another man from the soup kitchen offers to take him in for the night. Snyder says he's been homeless for about three years.
SNYDER: It's pretty rough during the wintertime. I mean, I try to find like a heated parking garage or something like that or like an awning or something like that to go underneath or, like, sometimes even - as much as I hate to admit it - a cardboard dumpster, you know, just to keep the wind away or keep me covered from the snow and the rain and all that.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (unintelligible).
SHARON: Inside the soup kitchen, about 20 people line up for barbeque spareribs and heaping piles of homemade mashed potatoes. Almost all of them are men. Donle introduces herself to the guy who only has on a sweatshirt. She helps him score the last bed at the shelter. Before we leave, Donle gives him her card. Her goal, she says, is just to make a connection, maybe eventually help him find a permanent place to live. But she says her most pressing matter is a family that is sleeping in a garden shed.
DONLE: They go to bed with all their clothes and their hats and mittens and coat on and wake up in the morning very cold, seeing their breath and go outside, start the car and get going in the car and get into a warm place as soon as they can.
SHARON: A few blocks away, Donle leads me up a flight of wooden stairs to the back door of a drop-in center where young people ages 14 to 21 can hang out for a few hours in the afternoon. It's a place to shower, eat, get warm and watch TV, at least for a while. 19-year old Brooke Deschene has been coming here for several years. She recently got an apartment and considers herself extremely fortunate since there are an estimated 300 homeless kids in Lewiston and a teen shelter with just 12 beds.
BROOKE DESCHENE: On nights like this, there's not really anything you can do. Most people actually go into peoples' hallways in the apartments because there's a lot of space there and huddle up and find other people who are in the same predicament as you are.
SHARON: Deschene says, sometimes kids will go to the hospital and say they are sick just to find a place that's open, comfortable and warm. These hard-luck stories took their toll on Lacey Donle. She actually quit her job last year.
DONLE: I said, I didn't have the heart for it anymore. I just - if someone would call and say they needed help, I would just have this feeling of dread. And, oh, here we go again.
SHARON: But a few months later, Donle was back, reconnecting with her co-workers and especially the clients. She found that without this work, her heart ached more than ever before. Sometimes, she says, you just don't know what you have until it's gone.
For NPR News, I'm Susan Sharon.
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This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.
NFL playoffs start this weekend and the weather will be a big part of the story, at least for three of the four games. San Francisco visits Green Bay, where the temperature will likely be below zero on Sunday night. There are also outdoor games in Cincinnati and Philadelphia. Both will be cold enough to make indoor Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis seem like a paradise. NPR's Mike Pesca is here to talk about the weekend's games and some other NFL's storylines. Hey there, Mike.
MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: I've been to Lucas Oil Stadium. It is a Valhalla under any circumstance.
(LAUGHTER)
CORNISH: OK. Well, good to know then, because we're going to start with what should be the coldest game.
PESCA: Yes.
CORNISH: Packers hosting the 49ers. Green Bay is home to some of the most dedicated fans in the league, of course. But the game didn't sell out until this morning, and that doesn't happen in Green Bay, right? You know, what's the world coming to?
PESCA: Right. Well, there is a great explanation for this. People have cited the weather and it would make sense that, you know, it would be - not only is it going to be zero degrees, with the wind chill, it will be minus 30. That's the temperature where the National Weather Service issues advisories, talking about frostbite, hypothermia and death. And yet, we know historically that Green Bay fans will still show up to the game. This is a team with a 30-year season ticket waiting list. So how did they not buy the tickets to the game? That is the question you asked me and here is the answer.
It seemed extremely unlikely that the Packers were going to make the playoffs. And they sent notices to all their season ticket holders. If you want playoff tickets, you have to buy them now. Unlike other years, if they don't make the playoffs, we will not be refunding you your money, we'll be applying it to next year's total. So I guess a lot of Wisconsin residents just didn't want to give essentially the Packers a six-month, interest-free loan for what could be thousands of dollars on the extremely small chance the Packers made the playoffs.
Well, now since the Packers did make the playoffs, some of those fans, you know, had to buy single tickets. They're all over $100. You add it all up, I think a lot of people are pointing to this procedure where the league threatens blackouts. Local games won't be on TV unless teams like the Packers - also Cincinnati was a team that almost had a blackout for its game against San Diego, even Indianapolis, which you talked about.
CORNISH: Yes. And let's get to that paradise, right? By paradise, I mean, climate controlled. Indianapolis hosts Kansas City, and the Chiefs, who, in addition to facing some late season trouble on the field, are facing some off the field trouble. The team's being sued by a number of former players. What's going on there?
PESCA: Well, we all know that 4,500 or so players and their families were engaged in a lawsuit against the NFL, the league itself. And that was settled before the season started, though it's yet to be, you know, finally adjudicated. But there is a clause in Missouri law, Missouri only, that allows workers who weren't covered by workman's comp to sue an employer. And that's what 26 or so former Chiefs have done.
Some big names like Joe Horn and Neil Smith. Not sure how this relates to other teams. And then, as you said, Jovan Belcher, who was the former player who murdered his girlfriend and then committed suicide, his mother is suing the Chiefs, too, claiming that, you know, essentially, the head trauma and concussions and the workplace caused temporary insanity.
CORNISH: Now, while we're talking about off the field issues, former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe wrote a piece for the website Deadspin this week. And in it, he accused his position coach of bigotry and his head coach and GM of cowardice. This was related to Kluwe's advocacy for gay rights and marriage equality. The Vikings say Kluwe was let go because of performance reasons. What's going on?
PESCA: Well, Kluwe wasn't a bad punter, but Kluwe, I guess you could consider him, just statistically speaking, he was a league average punter, which still means he's one of the 16, 18 best punters in the world. But the guy who replaced him was almost as good. The Vikings couldn't have known that beforehand. But he was like, you know, half a yard net under Kluwe.
And I think any GM would say for a million fewer dollars, the rookie is being paid that much less, then Kluwe would go with the rookie. However, as Kluwe says, he's so out front on all these issues. And, like, not just vocally taking a stance, but his stance was a really in-your-face kind of stance. It clearly made the Vikings nervous.
CORNISH: Yeah.
PESCA: And what he alleges with his position coach, you know, caused a lot of friction and possibly even bigotry.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Mike Pesca. Mike, thank you.
PESCA: You're welcome.
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We end this hour with a remembrance of a daring World War II flight that lifted the spirits of the French people and of the humble man who flew it. In 1944, American fighter pilot William Overstreet of the 357th Fighter Group was on a mission in Nazi-occupied territory. Flying his P-51 Mustang, Overstreet was escorting American bombers through France when a dogfight broke out. Overstreet broke away to pursue an enemy German plane.
PASTOR JEFF CLEMMONS: It started at 30,000 feet.
CORNISH: That's Pastor Jeff Clemmons, a combat veteran of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps and a close friend of William Overstreet.
CLEMMONS: This was a half-hour dogfight which would end up going through the streets of Paris and conclude itself through a pursuit through the Eiffel Tower where Bill shot down the German pilot.
CORNISH: Yes, you heard that right, from the stratosphere, down through the arches of the Eiffel Tower. Here's how Overstreet himself described the chase in an interview posted online.
WILLIAM OVERSTREET: He figured I'd try to get around and he'd have time to get away. He was wrong. I was right behind him, right under the Eiffel Tower with him. And when he pulled up, I did get him. But that's a huge space. That's not close at all. It's plenty of room to go under the Eiffel Tower. But it makes a good story.
(LAUGHTER)
CORNISH: More like a great one. Clemmons says the pursuit inspired thousands of people below who witnessed the feat.
CLEMMONS: The Paris citizenry actually rose up in defiance of the Germans for a period of three days, celebrating that victory. And they knew the Germans would lose the war.
CORNISH: The French people never forgot Overstreet's courage. In 2009, France presented William Overstreet with that country's highest award, the Legion of Honor. Clemmons tells us that Overstreet was a very modest man. He accepted the medal in memory of servicemen who died in the war.
CLEMMONS: Bill was selfless. He was authentic. He knew who he was. I was there when he died. I felt his last heartbeat. We will never see the likes of these men again.
CORNISH: World War II veteran William Overstreet passed away in Roanoke, Virginia this past Sunday. He was 92 years old.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Coming to you from NPR West, it's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Arun Rath.
Outside of China and Taiwan, U.S. museums hold the world's best collection of Chinese paintings. It's worth billions of dollars, but it's a fragile collection. Over time, these paintings fall apart. There are only four master conservators in the country who know how to take care of these paintings, and they're all going to retire soon.
NPR's Alan Yu reports.
ALAN YU, BYLINE: Inside one of the huge stone Smithsonian museums at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., there's a softly lit room with a high ceiling. If you look to the right, you'll see a painting that's about four feet long. In it, two Chinese scholars dressed in long robes stand under a gnarled tree. There's a river and a soaring mountain range in the background. It's called Summoning The Sage At Wei River, and it's from the Ming Dynasty, making it about 500 years old.
GRACE JAN: The lighting in the museum gallery is very good, because it also helps to mask a lot of the damages.
YU: That's Grace Jan, an assistant conservator here at the Freer and Sackler Galleries in D.C.
JAN: You can see, like, there's horizontal lines that are slightly darker, and then you can see there's like kind of a vertical line down the center above the figure on the left.
YU: She says that faint black streak was once much more serious damage. These paintings weren't done with oil paints on wooden panels, like the Mona Lisa. They're painted on fragile pieces of silk or rice paper, which is why Chinese painting conservation is so important. The image we're looking at has been carefully cleaned and painted over.
The Freer has more than 2,000 Chinese paintings, and one master conservator is responsible for maintaining all of them.
JAN: We just do as minimal treatment as we can so that it doesn't jump at you when you're looking at the painting.
YU: This hanging scroll was fixed in a lab right down the hall.
XIANGMEI GU: (Chinese spoken)
YU: Behind the scenes, Xiangmei Gu is one of those four conservators who treat Chinese paintings. One of the first things she shows us is an ancient map that was torn halfway down the middle.
GU: (Chinese spoken)
YU: She says once she remounted it, it looked fine. And she's right. Even standing just inches away, I can't see where the tear used to be. It took her a long time to learn how to do this.
GU: I worked so many years - almost 40 years. Still I never finish - continue to learn this job.
YU: That's right. Forty years and she says she's still learning. She can't work forever. So the Mellon Foundation recently gave the Freer Gallery a million-dollar grant to train an assistant Chinese painting conservator. In the meantime, Xiangmei Gu is passing on her skill to Grace Jan too. Jan's parents want her to be a doctor but also told her...
JAN: If you're going to find a job, you should find one that you love but also build a skill set that no one can take away from you.
YU: She has a master's degree in conservation from New York University, and she got interested because her grandfather was also a painter.
JAN: I remember seeing his paintings turning yellow. They turned yellow after they were mounted in the next couple years.
YU: This is typical of xuan paper, the rice paper used in Chinese paintings, which is one reason why they need such special care. Here's another big reason: Chinese paintings are made to be handled. Andrew Hare, an East Asian painting conservator at the Freer, explains.
ANDREW HARE: To view, to appreciate a Chinese painting, you would have to, for example, unroll a scroll and then roll it back up. If it were an album, you'd have to open, turn the pages. And of course, when you use something over time, there's wear and tear and damage.
YU: Conserving these fragile works starts with making new backing paper. Xiangmei Gu and Grace Jan demonstrate this on a giant red lacquer table. Xiangmei Gu rolls out the paper and brushes it to make it perfectly smooth.
GU: Then you put the (unintelligible) on the papers.
YU: She says they can't afford even the slightest crease on this paper. Andrew Hare explains why:
HARE: What you do now is maybe part of the art object for the next several hundred years. So this is the only time you have - right now - to get it right.
YU: This is pretty basic, but conservators in training practice for months with newspaper before they can use the actual rice paper. Grace Jan says without spending the decades it takes to learn these skills, conservators wouldn't dream of fixing an ancient masterpiece.
JAN: It's like just, you know, sticking a Band-Aid on something and calling it done. So that's not the most effective way to treat our priceless works of art in the United States.
YU: For example, the Freer has a short scroll that's estimated to be worth $100 million, if it were ever sold. To handle cultural treasures like that, Grace Jan says she'll be learning for a lifetime. Alan Yu, NPR News.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Arun Rath.
When Jimmy Santiago Baca was 20 years old, he was convicted of drug charges and sent to prison. He was illiterate when he arrived at the Arizona State Penitentiary. But by the time he walked out the door as a free man, he was already on his way to becoming one of America's most celebrated poets. A new collection of Baca's poems tells the story of that transformation and the long career that followed. It begins with a series of letters that he wrote from prison to a woman named Mariposa. Baca and I spoke in December.
JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA: These are excerpts from the Mariposa letters - Number 77: Though in prison, though I rage at times at the ignorance and stupidity and coarseness and cruelty behind bars at keepers and kept, I turn to you feeling the air that I breathe, air churned darkly and heavy with steep systems. And though I say nothing, walking early through prison mornings, my voice you hear cannot be drowned out because by you giving me your great spaces of love and filling them with my love, my voice cannot be drowned out.
RATH: Can you tell us about the woman that you are writing these letters to?
BACA: When I was in prison, a man by the name of Will Inman, who had the first bilingual journal along the border called "Illuminations," introduced me to a woman named Mariposa, the butterfly. And as we began to write letters to each other, I think Americans - American poets reveled in the epistolary form. And for myself, it became the resource and the instrument by which I would begin to excavate my voice. I must have written at least 1,000 letters to her.
RATH: How did you end up in Arizona State Prison?
BACA: Possession with the intent to distribute and a gun battle with the DEA on the border.
RATH: So you're serving a five-year sentence, right?
BACA: Five to 10. And no parole, day for day, no good time.
RATH: And you did not know how to read and write when you went to prison, right?
BACA: Not knowing how to read and write is only the top of that morbid state of being. Not knowing how to read and write leads to not knowing where windows come from, how cars are made, how people pay for cars. Not knowing how to read and write is only the top of the problem because behind that wall, you don't know anything and how anything operates in society. And that's the nightmare.
RATH: I think it's just remarkable for a lot of people that may read your poetry and know nothing about you the fact that you actually - you learned to read and write in prison, and the earlier poems in this book are some of the first things you actually committed to paper.
BACA: Yeah, yeah. I had people from the outside sending me books. I had people from on death row giving me the books that they were reading after they read them. I had correspondences with other writers that were writing me after I learned how to write. It was phenomenal.
RATH: I'd like you to read another poem. This one - number 145.
BACA: Page 19. OK. Number 145. Remember that these are excerpts from the letters we exchanged. By the black gates of each night, I sit, glancing at the lights of the city, listening to night talkers and pick up the scrappings of their lives. Wow. I love that. I just love it.
RATH: Does it take you back?
BACA: It's like eavesdropping - yeah - it's like eavesdropping on the sorrows of others and then after - in the silence of their lapsed discussion, I come in and I pick up the scraps on the ground. Wow. Beautiful.
RATH: You know, something that struck me with your poetry - and you have to forgive me if I'm stereotyping you as a poet - because I would have expected, for some reason, I mean, because your Latino background, there would be more of a Spanish sound. And I'm hearing a very strong Anglo-Saxon feel and the alliteration and the kind of like angular cragginess of the prose.
BACA: Dude. That's like a kick in the crotch, man. Come on.
(LAUGHTER)
BACA: Come on.
RATH: I'm sorry.
BACA: Don't be comparing me to that - to Anglo-Saxon poet. Come on, man. What's up with this?
RATH: Well, the coarseness and the cruelty, the...
BACA: Is this a conspiracy? What kind of bull (bleep) we got going on here?
(LAUGHTER)
RATH: I meant no offense.
BACA: No, that's OK. Listen, because I studied Byron and Wordsworth and Coleridge, then I went to the - oh, God, I just love those Russian poets - I was searching for a voice to come out of me that had the imprint of my own culture, that had the imprint of my own people. Not Latino people but Chicano people, people de Norte Mexico. I was looking to permutate in such a way that I could give honor to my grandmother by expressing her experience - a grandmother who never got paid more than a dollar a day for picking in the fields.
The work that I began very early on was a homage to those who were silenced by oppression. My job was to get up on my feet and continue forth, you know? And I did that through language.
RATH: You know - and I feel those lives that are cut short - in your work over the years, you know, going through this anthology, it comes out in more detail. The poems seem like they're more narrative poems, longer poems that delve into these lives in more detail.
BACA: It's true. That's absolutely true. I have long poems, short poems. I have metaphorical poems. I have the majestic poems. It sort of covers the entire range of 40 years in different types of - I treated the poems differently with each approach.
RATH: Before we let you go, can we just get you to read maybe one or two more poems?
BACA: Let me just give you a shout-out here with the - the title of the book is called "Singing at the Gates." And let me just read a page on that, OK? All right. No pope nor priest could more enhance my life than machica smiles and Incan eyes. Those startled sparrow eyes peering over papa's nesting shoulder, entering the santuario. Her father's back to me, the brown baby girl hugging his neck, her face pressed against his white shirt collar.
As it has been for a thousand years for Mayans and Incans and Aztecas and Mexicanos and Chicanos and cholos and homies, we've carried and carry our infants through government massacres, forced marches off our lands, to the present and fiestas and low-riding gatherings, our children clinging to our arms and bodies for safety, a continuous unseen line from beginning of our mestizo birth walking across America all the way to the...
RATH: And that's Jimmy Santiago Baca reading the beginning of the long titled poem from his new anthology, "Singing at the Gates." You can hear Baca read more of this poem and others at our website, npr.org.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Once again, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HIGH HOPES")
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: (Singing) Monday morning runs to Sunday night screaming slow me down before New Year dies...
RATH: This is one of the most anticipated releases of the new year: Bruce Springsteen's latest, "High Hopes." You're listening to the title track right here. It's one of the records Stephen Thompson is already geeking out on. Stephen's with our NPR Music team, and he joins us now. Good to hear from you, Stephen.
STEPHEN THOMPSON, BYLINE: Good to hear from you, Arun.
RATH: So this new album from Springsteen, it's going to be a real treat for the hardcore fans, right?
THOMPSON: Yeah. I think every Springsteen album is a treat for hardcore fans of one stripe or another. But this is an interesting one. It's split about evenly between brand-new songs and songs that he has previously released or performed in some way before. Either he's showcased them in live performance, or in the case of songs like "Ghost of Tom Joad" or "American Skin," they've actually appeared as studio recordings before.
So there's a little bit of revisionist history, you know, looking at his own catalog. But especially, I think for the hardcore fans where, like, he's only played this twice in 1989, you know, are going to be very excited about it.
RATH: Along with some, like you're saying, gems from the vault which sound of exciting.
THOMPSON: Yeah. And it includes three covers, and not necessarily extremely well-known covers. The song "High Hopes" is by a singer-songwriter named Tim Scott McConnell. There's a cover of the band Suicide. It's got a real kind of deep cuts feel to it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HIGH HOPES")
SPRINGSTEEN: (Singing) Give me love, give me peace, don't you know these days you pay for everything. Got high hopes, I got high hopes.
RATH: That's from a new Bruce Springsteen album, "High Hopes." It comes out on the 14th. Stephen, what else do we have to look forward to in the early part of this year?
THOMPSON: Well, it's interesting. You know, one of the big trends of 2013 to me was how many bands put out albums after incredibly long gaps, you know, 10, 15, 20 years. You suddenly had new music by The Pixies and My Bloody Valentine and Sebadoh and Luscious Jackson putting out very, very long-awaited records that a lot of people didn't expect. And we've got another one coming out on Valentine's Day by a group from New York called Cibo Matto.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CIBO MATTO: (Singing) Music from Africa from a dark hallway. Who can tell me something is up tonight?
THOMPSON: The two women at the core of the band put out a couple of records in, like, the late '90s and then broke up and has been broken up for the last decade or so. And, you know, if you remember the music of Cibo Matto, as I believe you do, it was this very sweetly atmospheric but also very light and kind of almost...
RATH: Silly.
THOMPSON: ...almost silly. You know, a lot of songs about food. You know, there was a little bit of a kitschy side to it as much as there was real craftsmanship put into it. This record, it's called "Hotel Valentine," and it's a rougher-edged record. It's got a darker quality to it. It's got more, kind of language to it. But it's still, you know, it still captures a lot of the lightness of the original band.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RATH: The band is Cibo Matto, and their new album is called "Hotel Valentine," coming out on Valentine's Day. My guest is Stephen Thompson from NPR Music. He's giving us a little preview of some of the most anticipated albums of the new year. Stephen, what do you have next for us?
THOMPSON: I've got a band from Florida called Against Me!. The album title speaks for itself. The title is "Transgender Dysphoria Blues." And for people who've been a fan of Against Me! for years, it's a big, big change. Basically, the lead singer, Tom Gabel, is pre-operative transgender.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TRANSGENDER DYSPHORIA BLUES")
AGAINST ME!: (Singing) Your tails are so obvious, shoulders too broad for a girl. It keeps you reminded, helps you remember where you come from.
THOMPSON: The words are very - are barked out, so just to do a quick reading: Your tails are so obvious, shoulders too broad for a girl. It keeps you reminded, helps you remember where you come from. And Against Me!'s music has always been very intensely political, very brainy and thought-provoking and very muscular and in your face. And this particular record is not necessarily as directly about politics, but it's all, you know, a concept record about the experience of changing gender. She now goes by the name Laura Jane Grace.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TRANSGENDER DYSPHORIA BLUES")
AGAINST ME!: (Singing) You want them to notice the ragged ends of your summer dress. You want them to see you like they see every other girl. They just see a faggot. They'll hold their breath not to catch the sick. Washed off on the coast I wish I could've spent the whole day alone.
RATH: That's the band Against Me!. Their new album is "Transgender Dysphoria Blues," and it comes out on the 21st of this month. Stephen, we have time for one more. And I know this one is a cool one.
THOMPSON: Yeah. This is just - oh, man, I'm really, really excited about this record. It's by a woman named Annie Clark who performs under the name St. Vincent.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BIRTH IN REVERSE")
ST. VINCENT: (Singing) The dogs will bark, so let them bark. The birds will cry, I'll let them cry.
THOMPSON: You know, every few years, there's a new St. Vincent record, and it kind of tops the one before. Each one is a little spikier and a little even smarter and more confident and powerful. And she's - Annie Clark is coming off of a record she made a couple years ago called "Love this Giant" that she did with David Byrne, from Talking Heads. And I think even that experience feeds into this interesting and very distinct-sounding music. It's her fourth album under the name St. Vincent. It's called "St. Vincent." The first single from it is called "Birth in Reverse."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BIRTH IN REVERSE")
ST. VINCENT: (Singing) 'Cause what I'm swearing, I've never sworn before. Like a birth in reverse. What I saw through the blinds. You could say that I'm sane in phenomenal lies.
RATH: She is just brilliant. And you mentioned how St. Vincent, you know, she's got a completely unique sound as all her own. And I feel like each album is almost as different from the others as they are from every - all other music that's out there.
THOMPSON: Exactly, exactly. And they still sound so much like her. And I think partly that's a product of the fact that she is an incredible musician, an incredibly, just a great guitarist and just so, so smart.
RATH: Again, that's new music from St. Vincent. Her new album is self-titled. It comes out on February 25. Our guide has been Stephen Thompson from NPR Music. You can also hear him on the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. Stephen, thanks for all the music and Happy New Year.
THOMPSON: Happy New Year to you too, Arun.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
Back in November, 222,000 Californians opened their mailboxes to find an unnerving letter. It read: The federal extension of unemployment benefits that you have collected and may still be collecting are scheduled to end at the end of December 2013. It was a warning.
While Congress was inching toward a budget deal, extending Emergency Unemployment Compensation was not a part of that deal. That's the extra government money that allows unemployed workers to collect payments for months longer than they could in better economic times. And sure enough, on December 18th, Congress passed that budget and packed up for Christmas recess, leaving those extended benefits for 1.3 million Americans to expire just 10 days later.
So what happens to the people and families whose payments were cut off? That's our cover story today.
Ruth Mills is 28 years old and lost her job as a construction estimator back in June. She got one of those letters, warning her that benefits could end. Mills couldn't believe the news coming out of Congress.
RUTH MILLS: I followed it every week, and I was just like, did they really just go home?
RATH: After six months of unemployment, she was already scaling back her holiday plans.
MILLS: But a couple little things that my wife asked for for Christmas were very small, and a couple of things for my son that he asked - you know, she asked me to get for my son, I got them. And I ended up, you know, taking everything back, just to get our cash back, so I could pay whatever bills we had.
RATH: The rent is high in San Diego County. Even with her partner's salary, losing benefits meant Ruth Mills and her family are moving in with her parents.
MILLS: No matter what way you do it, you can only stretch $2,000 so far.
RATH: There are usually jobs for an experienced estimator, she says, though it can be hard to find work in the fall. To be safe, Mills decided to get her welding certificate at a nearby trade school. But it's a months long course and the fall session was already full. So she signed up for the spring semester. Class starts on January 27th. But now that her benefits have come to an end, there's a problem.
MILLS: Those classes cost $600 to take. That payment is due next Friday by the 10th or I get dropped from the class. My unemployment was just cut off, so how the heck do I pay for the classes?
RATH: That's the point of unemployment benefits. All states pay newly unemployed workers for around four to six months to help keep them on their feet. And usually, there's a little extra to fund the job hunt, things like gas, paying the cellphone bill for interviews and extra training like in Ruth's case.
But as NPR's Chris Arnold explained to me, it takes people a lot longer to find a job when the economy goes belly up.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: When that happens, states have been able often to get the federal government to help, you know, extend benefits a little further. When the great recession hit in 2008, Congress passed a bigger emergency extension of the benefits, and that's totally paid for by the federal government. So up until December 28th, people could get unemployment checks for longer than a year in a lot of states.
RATH: There are a lot of people that are still in bad shape, so what are the arguments in Washington against extending the benefits?
ARNOLD: Right. Most Republicans say, look, we're not totally opposed to this. We'll consider extending benefits. But they want Democrats to make concessions to pay for it. So if you extended the program for another year, the Congressional Budget Office says that would cost about $25 billion. So Republicans want Democrats to agree to cut the budget and find ways to pay for that.
And then there are a few Republicans who say, no, we don't even like that because we think that this enables people to stay out of work longer and not really work that hard to find a job. And if they were taken off the dole, then they'd go out there and be more aggressively looking for work.
RATH: What are the arguments for extending the benefits?
ARNOLD: Well, there's a lot of arguments for extending the benefits. And I talked to a liberal economist and a conservative economist this week. And they both said, look, right now, you've got three times as many people looking for work as there are jobs. So if you cut people off, a lot of them are just going to be unable to find work. There just aren't enough jobs out there.
So they see this in economic terms as it's just bad to have that many people destitute in the economy. There's this human suffering that, of course, you don't want. But it's also just bad for the economy, and that if you put money into people's pockets, especially people with the fewest resources, they have to go out and spend that money. That's stimulative. And the White House and some other independent economists have said, look, if we don't extend this, we're going to lose between 200,000 and 300,000 additional jobs just because we're losing that stimulative effect.
RATH: NPR's Chris Arnold.
Just a few days into the cuts, we can't tell what the changes will mean for California or other states likely to be most heavily affected. But there is one case study to look at: North Carolina.
Back in July, lawmakers there cut the maximum length of benefits all the way down to just 19 weeks, and cut the maximum weekly check from $535 to $350. Losing that safety net sent people searching around for others. One place that felt the drag almost immediately: food banks.
RON PRINGLE: We've seen an average of about 17 percent increase over this time last year.
RATH: Ron Pringle is a food bank director in southeast North Carolina. He says the surge felt by the food banks and the Department of Social Services makes sense.
PRINGLE: Individuals that are receiving unemployment benefits are sometimes just above the threshold to receive food stamps. So after, you know, those unemployment benefits were cut, then our local DSS offices began to reach out because they started seeing such an increase of individuals coming and applying for food stamps.
RATH: So he has a warning for food banks in the other 49 states.
PRINGLE: And there's going to be a rush. It's going to be a surge that we're going to see over the next several months. Keeping that steady flow of product is something that food banks are going to be challenged with. So I would really, you know, encourage them to begin the conversation now and not wait for the impact to hit because it's going to hit all at once.
RATH: As NPR's Chris Arnold explained earlier, most of the money going into homes through long-term unemployment insurance quickly goes right back out into the economy - to local stores, gas stations, landlords and more. But many conservatives aren't swayed by the stimulus argument.
After the benefits were cut off, unemployment in North Carolina did drop dramatically. Conservatives say that's a sign the policy was a success. Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner explains.
MARK VITNER: People are dropping out of the labor force. That's been an issue in North Carolina. It's been an issue all over the country. But the thing that seems to have changed is that some folks who may have passed up on a job because it wasn't all that desirable and didn't pay all that much now seem to be giving those jobs a second look because their extended unemployment benefits have ended.
RATH: Vitner says it's true that unemployment payments can actually keep people unemployed for longer.
Warren Williams lives in Murrieta, California, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. He was laid off from his door-to-door marketing job back in March. This job hunt has been much tougher than his last.
WARREN WILLIAMS: When you're 62 years old, a lot of companies don't want to hire you.
RATH: Williams says he gets about $600 every two weeks from the government, deposited straight into his checking account. He and his wife share just one car. And since Murrieta is about 60 miles from L.A. or San Diego, commuting would be both tough and expensive. So the unemployment benefits have allowed him to be selective about a new job.
WILLIAMS: Yeah. I mean, I was offered like part-time jobs, but again, it was - by the time you pay for gas and all that, you'd make more money not working. So I was only looking for jobs that paid more than what my unemployment was.
RATH: Even with the insurance expiring, Williams isn't too worried. At 62, he can and has already begun to receive Social Security checks. But dropping out of the workforce often isn't an option, especially for those too young to retire. So where else do you go?
VICKI DOLENGA: I decided that I was going to try and find something in Dallas, Texas.
RATH: After getting laid off four times in four years, 42-year-old Vicki Dolenga packed her things in a storage unit and left Los Angeles. Dallas held a promising job opportunity, but it didn't pan out. Dolenga had to move in with her nearest family member - her mother in Jackson, Mississippi, a six-hour drive from Dallas. It's not at all what she wanted, but it's what she can afford.
DOLENGA: If I were still in California right now renting an apartment, I would be completely stuck. So I do feel like I'm really lucky that I made this decision. And I'm now staying with family, and at least I don't have to worry about, you know, food or a roof over my head.
RATH: Dolenga got her last payment earlier this week, but credit card bills and student loans are looming. And she says she has to pay for her cellphone. What if she does get an interview? And even if that dream job in Dallas opened up...
DOLENGA: I have no money to be able to get to Dallas if I were to get an interview. It's $200 that I literally don't have.
RATH: Vicki Dolenga and all the other unemployed workers we talked to this week were hanging onto Congress' every word, because there is still a chance that these benefits could be renewed. The Senate is expected to vote on a bipartisan bill to extend the benefits as soon as Monday. A similar bill has been introduced in the House, though passage is not assured in either chamber. NPR's Chris Arnold.
ARNOLD: The word from a White House economic adviser was that, look, people need to pay their mortgages and eat, so let's pass this bill right away. It's - the bill's only going to be for a three-month extension, so let's just get this part done, get people their checks, and then we can figure out down the road, are we going to find ways to pay for it? Should we extend it longer? We'll see if Republicans go along with that.
It's also worth mentioning that benefits could be renewed retroactively. So even if it takes a while, people might get that money back in their pockets.
RATH: It's normal for emergency benefits to end when the economy recovers, but long-term unemployment has persisted through this recovery, and Congress has recognized that. The program has been renewed more than 10 times since mid-2008. Not all of those renewals have come on time. Four were at least two days late.
California's next unemployment checks are scheduled to go out just over a week from now. If Congress can pass those bills quickly enough, those Californians and most of the other 1.3 million Americans affected won't experience a delay in their payments.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Finally tonight, a farewell. The Everly Brothers' close harmonies and smooth guitar licks influenced an entire generation of popular musicians. Friday night, Phil Everly, one-half of the iconic duo, passed away of lung disease. He was 74 years old. NPR's Sam Sanders has this remembrance.
SAM SANDERS, BYLINE: Don's voice usually handled the melody. But Phil Everly gave the higher accompanying harmony to that melody, and that was what defined the Everly Brothers' sound.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WAKE UP LITTLE SUSIE")
EVERLY BROTHERS: (Singing) Wake up, little Susie, wake up.
SANDERS: That sound came from a lifetime and a family full of music. Phil's father, Ike, was a Kentucky coal miner and musician. Ike Everly played country music on the radio and ended up with his own show. Phil Everly was born in Chicago in 1939. Father Ike would have his sons, Little Donny and Baby Boy Phil, sing with their parents live on the air in the mornings before they went to school. By 1955, the brothers were in Nashville getting work as songwriters. In 1957, they got their first hit as the Everly Brothers with a song called "Bye Bye Love."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BYE BYE LOVE")
BROTHERS: (Singing) Bye bye love, bye bye happiness, hello loneliness, I think I'm gonna cry.
GRAHAM NASH: I was about 15 years old attending a Catholic school girl's dance on a Saturday evening. We got halfway across the floor and "Bye Bye Love" by the Everly Brothers came on.
SANDERS: That's Graham Nash, a member of the group Crosby, Stills and Nash. In a recent interview with NPR's Terry Gross, Nash said the duo's work was a big influence.
NASH: Ever since that day, I decided that whatever music I was going to make in the future, I wanted it to affect people the same way that the Everly Brothers' music affected me on that Saturday night.
SANDERS: The Everly Brothers didn't just influence Nash. Their sound, a blend of roots music, gospel and country, produced hit after hit in the top 10 and inspired artists like The Beatles, Linda Ronstadt and Simon & Garfunkel. Over time, though, the brothers fought. At a 1973 concert, Phil Everly smashed his guitar and walked off stage. Right there, Don Everly announced that the duo had broken up.
JASON EVERLY: They're brothers. If you had a brother that you were working with for 50 years, you're pissed off over a few things, for better or worse.
SANDERS: Jason Everly is Phil Everly's son. He says whatever the two fought about, they always had each other's backs.
EVERLY: If you said a bad word about my Uncle Don, even though they weren't getting along at that point, he was the first person to defend him.
SANDERS: The duo reunited in 1983 and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. NPR's Noah Adams spoke with Don Everly soon after their induction about what it was like to sing with his brother Phil.
DON EVERLY: When Phil and I hit that one spot where I call the Everly Brothers, I don't know where it is because it's not me and it's not him. It's the two of us together. I sing the lead, and so I can drift off, then we'll come back in together, and the whole thing will happen again. And it's so - it amazes me sometimes.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN WILL I BE LOVED")
BROTHERS: (Singing) When will I be loved...
SANDERS: Sam Sanders, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN WILL I BE LOVED")
BROTHERS: (Singing) I've been turned down. I've been pushed around...
RATH: And for Saturday, that's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Arun Rath. Join us again tomorrow. Until then, have a great night.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHEN WILL I BE LOVED")
BROTHERS: (Singing) When I meet a new girl...
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
A little over nine years ago, American soldiers and Marines in Iraq endured the bloodiest combat since Vietnam to retake the city of Fallujah from Iraqi and foreign insurgents. It must be hard for the veterans of that battle to see the headlines today, that Iraqi extremists aligned with al-Qaida have retaken the city and are declaring it an independent state.
Tensions have flared up there in part because of ethnic divisions and in part as a backlash against the country's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his decision to crack down on protesters and adversaries.
Kirk Sowell is the editor in chief of Inside Iraqi Politics and is based in Amman, Jordan. I asked him if we should fear the worst when it comes to the al-Qaida presence in Fallujah.
KIRK SOWELL: They've not taken over the whole city. However, what has actually happened is that Fallujah, the entire city has fallen entirely outside of the control of the federal government. The tribes in that area are armed, and they've appointed a military council to try to restore security in the city. Parts of Fallujah and Ramadi are in the hands of al-Qaida - the al-Qaida affiliate there. But most of it is more in the hands of local Sunni militias.
RATH: When we're talking about al-Qaida, is this the old al-Qaida in Iraq that U.S. forces were fighting during those heavy days of fighting in the Iraq War?
SOWELL: Yes. It's a evolved mutation of that organization. We beat them down quite a bit before 2011, and then U.S. forces left in December of 2011. They were not wiped out completely, but they were mostly wiped out. About that time, they changed their name from al-Qaida in Iraq to the Islamic State in Iraq. And then earlier last year, they changed their name again to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham or the Levant, meaning they are based in Iraq and Syria. So it's a mutated form, and it's much stronger now.
RATH: Now, given the history of Fallujah, all the fighting over the city in the past and that there is, as you mentioned, you know, it's a Sunni city that may not be too inclined to feel friendly toward the mainly Shiite government in Baghdad, I would think that the Iraqi Army, they would have been there in force. It's kind of surprising that Fallujah of any city, that would be a place that could be lost.
SOWELL: If you look at 2013 as a whole, the best way to summarize the situation is that of a gradually strengthening al-Qaida organization. And they had a two-prong strategy. One was mass killing bombing attacks, suicide attacks against Shia. And then they were - also had a separate track, which was targeted assassinations against Sunni officials. We talk about Fallujah, they assassinated the mayor there just about a month or so ago.
So the situation was bad. However, ISIS al-Qaida did not actually control anything. And then after Maliki's raid against the protest side at Ramadi, there was this sort of tribal uprising, if you will, in both Fallujah and Ramadi. And then there was also a threat to withdraw from the political process by Sunni politicians in Baghdad. So Maliki pulled back the federal police and army that were guarding all the entrance points and exit points in Ramadi and Fallujah. And then that is what has led to the complete chaos over the last few days.
RATH: That battle of Fallujah in 2004 with U.S. forces, that was one for the history books. Do you think it's going to be as bloody an undertaking for the Iraqi government to regain control of the city, even though it's disputed how much they're in control?
SOWELL: Frankly, I think they're not going to try. I think it would be absolutely foolish for them to do so. They've identified what they say is an al-Qaida base, which may or may not be an al-Qaida base. It may be just a local militia that's hostile to the government that's not al-Qaida. And they're shelling the city. If the federal army were to go in, it would be, I think, frankly quite a bit worse or quite a bit more bloody than it was in 2004.
This is not a well-trained army. This is a hammer, it's not a scalpel. They do not have, you know, a lot of precision weapons. They're not trained to do precision fighting. What they're going to have to do is basically negotiate their way to where the city is in control of tribes, but tribes that are at least - even if they're hostile to the government, are also hostile to al-Qaida. That's sort of the best-case scenario right now.
RATH: Kirk Sowell is a Middle East expert and consultant. Kirk, thank you.
SOWELL: Thank you.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Who's the best team in college football? That's a good way to start a fight.
The Bowl Championship Series established in 1998 was intended to, if not settle the debate, at least civilize it. The BCS used a complex formula involving computer tracking and human polls to determine the teams that play in the five bowl games. And the BCS has been controversial since day one. But change has come to the NCAA.
Monday's national championship between Florida State and Auburn University will mark the end of the BCS, making way for a new playoff system next year.
Dennis Dodd from CBS Sports says the much maligned BCS started off with the right intentions.
DENNIS DODD: At the time, it's what the public demanded. They wanted to see a one and two game. The bowls over the years have been a mishmash of backroom deals, regional games that didn't pit the best teams at the end of the season against each other. And what the public failed to realize - and I think the stakeholders all along knew - that it was an evolution. It got us closer maybe to a true national championship, but it had its bumps along the way.
RATH: So it was supposed to, you know, if not eliminate debates, at least reduce some of the rancor in terms of the championships and the rankings. But almost right away, people were complaining. What went wrong?
DODD: Well, unintended consequences. In 2001, Nebraska got to the championship game without so much it's winning its division in the Big 12. In 2003, Oklahoma lost its conference championship game by four touchdowns and remained number one in the BCS and played for a national championship. You know, there were others. There were other, quote, unquote, "injustices." So I think all that helped chip away at the credibility of it.
And eventually when things did change, the commissioners who run this, it was the public outcry that did it. It was a very grassroots foundational thing that got the change going.
RATH: Can you explain the new plan?
DODD: It's a lot easier. We're going to have, going forward in 2014, a 14 playoff, two semifinals, a championship game. It will be arranged literally by a human committee, very subjective. And the committee will decide which team goes in every year.
RATH: So, you know, fans will always find some reason for discontent, but I have to say, though, from a fan's perspective, a casual perspective, it seems like there's already a lot to be suspicious of, starting off with this committee, these 13 individuals. It feels, you know, like a secret star chamber or something.
DODD: It's hard to criticize them right now. It's very credible. When Condoleezza Rice is on the committee, that's a pretty good committee. And there were immediate outcries about her experience in football. Well, actually, she's got quite a bit. I mean, she oversaw the football team when she was a provost at Stanford. She's a big fan obviously.
Tom Osborne, Archie Manning, you know, the patriarch of the Manning family who's head of the National Football Foundation. Steve Wieberg, who for 30 years was - covered college sports at USA Today, is the media member on there. So it's very diverse. It's very credible. But, you're right, they're going to have some hard decisions.
RATH: Dennis Dodd is senior college football columnist for CBSSports.com. Dennis, thank you.
DODD: All right. Thanks so much.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's time now for The New and The Next.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RATH: Carlos Watson is the cofounder of the online magazine Ozy. Each week, he joins us to talk about what's new and what's next. Welcome back, Carlos. Happy New Year.
CARLOS WATSON: Arun, Happy New Year to you. Always good to be back.
RATH: So this week, we're going to talk about some of the stuff you're excited about in the year ahead. One of those things, in a word, Japan.
WATSON: Indeed. It's funny. Japan was a big topic here in the States in the 1980s as they kind of surged economically. They were very integrated into the American conversation. They were ceded amidst some economic troubles, but they're back. Last year, Arun, what we celebrated a stock market recovery of some 30 percent here in the States, they were up by 50 percent. Not only that, you see them making major investments in clean tech and even getting a little more muscular, which may or may not be a good thing militarily. But all of that has put Japan back front and center.
RATH: And in a dramatic contrast to here, it seems like in Japan, they're kind of excited about their government or have a bit more confidence in the direction of their government.
WATSON: Long story short, a number of governments in Japan over the last decade and a half have struggled to get the economy on track. And at long last, this prime minister, who in fact this is his second time around, seems to have gotten people pointed in a direction that they feel good about. And indeed, there is much more confidence, and it has shown up in no small part in their stock market.
RATH: Coming down to Hollywood now, just down the street from us. You - I love the way you put this: you say we didn't know we were waiting for Denzel Washington's successor, but you say he's here.
WATSON: He's here. So 41-year-old British actor Idris Elba. I know you probably enjoyed him on "The Wire" in which he played a fabulous character named Stringer Bell. He also was good in the BBC detective series "Luther." But where he really seems to be breaking out is this new Mandela film. And now he's got two big upcoming films coming our way - one with Sean Penn called "The Gunmen" and another called "Beast of No Nation." So Idris Elba is not only one of People magazine's hottest guys out there, but he's definitely an actor to watch.
RATH: And something else - I didn't know about these rumors floating around that he might be the next James Bond.
WATSON: You know, they've only had five or six key people, and obviously, Daniel Craig's in the seat now and has done a good job. Idris Elba is kind of the first serious name of a black actor that we've heard talked about in that regard. So what a big deal that would be.
RATH: I would love to see that. So finally, what's the company that you're keeping your eye on this year?
WATSON: You know, it's funny. It's a company here in Silicon Valley - the car company Tesla. Of course, they're the makers of the first all-electric sports car. And for me, Arun, what Apple did in the computer industry, meaning kind of fundamentally redesign how average people think about computers; what HBO did in television in terms of blending both substance and style, it's clear in my mind that Tesla has tried to do that in the car space. They're the company that's a decade old. They just had their first profitable quarter last year, and they're looking to expand. In fact, their stock price last year, Arun, was up over 300 percent.
RATH: Wow. You mentioned Apple. And sort of like Apple in the early years, Tesla's had some ups and downs. You know, towards the end of last year, there was that issue with - around the battery fires. But sounds like they're on their way back up again.
WATSON: Indeed, they seem to be. And, as you said, there was the battery fire issue, and I'm sure there will be other parts of the conversation. But they really, you know, are injecting a certain sense of optimism back in the space. You might think of a sports car company like Tesla as being something for the big cities. The next place where they're looking to make a big dent is in the Midwest. So lots to look at when you talk about Tesla.
RATH: Carlos Watson is the cofounder of the online magazine Ozy. Carlos, thanks again.
WATSON: Arun, great to be with you.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
We'll take a look back now at a best-selling book from the '70s, one you might not remember: "The Spoils of Babylon," by Eric Jonrosh, the epic tale of the powerful yet scandalous Morehouse family. It was made into a television miniseries that never saw the light of day - until now.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE SPOILS OF BABYLON")
TOBEY MAGUIRE: (As Devon Morehouse) My name is Devon Morehouse. Yes, that Devon Morehouse. But I didn't start out with that name.
RATH: Actually, everything about "The Spoils of Babylon," even the writer, is fake. It's a parody of the big, bloated miniseries of a few decades back, like "The Thorn Birds" or "The Winds of War." The series begins this Thursday on IFC; and it stars Tobey Maguire and Kristen Wiig. Will Ferrell appears as the author Eric Jonrosh, and as the Shah of Iran.
The director of "The Spoils of Babylon" is Matt Piedmont. He was a writer on "Saturday Night Live," and he's worked with Will Ferrell's Funny or Die production team to bring this tale to the small screen. I asked Piedmont for the Hollywood pitch version of the story, which begins in the late 1930s. Actor Tim Robbins plays the family's patriarch.
MATT PIEDMONT: Jonas Morehouse - Jonas has gone to Texas from New York, to strike out as an oil wildcatter.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE SPOILS OF BABYLON")
TIM ROBBINS: (As Jonas Morehouse) You see these hands? This nation was built by hands like these; honest hands, mostly African and Chinese, laboring under the belief that hard work is a religion onto itself.
PIEDMONT: Along the way they pick up Devon Morehouse - becomes a Morehouse. They adopt him.
RATH: Literally - pick him up by the side of the road.
PIEDMONT: They do, pick him up by the side of the road. This is 1938 now.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE SPOILS OF BABYLON")
ROBBINS: (As Jonas Morehouse) You can decide on what you want to call yourself in due time - Hezekiah, Ezekiel, Steve, Jim Bob, Skippy, Jesus, Jerry, Vladimir, Ortencio, Mahurishi, Billy...
PIEDMONT: They end up actually striking oil and becoming rich - very wealthy family. Devon Morehouse - played by Tobey Maguire - and Cynthia Morehouse - played by Kristen Wiig - fall in love. But it's a forbidden love as they are, you know, technically now brother and sister, although not by blood.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE SPOILS OF BABYLON")
KRISTEN WIIG: (As Cynthia Morehouse) What?
MAGUIRE: (As Devon Morehouse) Oh, no.
WIIG: (As Cynthia Morehouse) Why not?
MAGUIRE: (As Devon Morehouse) I'm getting my coat. I don't want to do this.
WIIG: (As Cynthia Morehouse) Why not?
MAGUIRE: (As Devon Morehouse) I do want to do...
WIIG: (As Cynthia Morehouse) You do.
MAGUIRE: (As Devon Morehouse) I do. You're right. No, I can't do this. I can't...
WIIG: (As Cynthia Morehouse) OK, fine.
PIEDMONT: Devon goes off to war, comes back with a new bride. I won't spoil who the new bride is - voiced by Cary Mulligan, though, a very talented actress.
RATH: The fact that she has to be voiced gives a little bit away.
PIEDMONT: Yeah. I know. Exactly. But I'll just leave it at that. And then Devon goes his own way, becomes kind of a beat poet, kind of goes the green way. And Cynthia ends up taking over the company, and becomes a little bit more like a traditional president of an oil company. They're trying to avoid their love for each other, which is very difficult. I know it's kind of vague. I'm not very good about dishing plot but that's, essentially, the gist of it.
RATH: It's sort of like "The Winds of War" or "North South"...
PIEDMONT: Yes.
RATH: ...the family history intertwined with the telling of America.
PIEDMONT: Yes, exactly. Thank you. See? Why didn't I just have you do it in the first place? You should've - yeah, great. Exactly.
RATH: And the lead characters age pretty well over the course of...
PIEDMONT: Yeah, yeah. They - well, they use a lot of special creams and things, so their skin stays very nice and moist. But, yeah - no, they age over about a 50-year period so...
RATH: Well, you do a lot of playing with time, because not only the work itself spans decades and decades, but the film - the fake film, which we're now seeing here for the first time, was made in 1979.
PIEDMONT: (Laughter) Yeah. There's a lot of weird meta-stuff going on, where Will Ferrell is a nonexistent author of a nonexistent best seller, who introduces this. And then the film was essentially a miniseries that was shot for three years - from between 1976 and 1979 - but never released. It's kind of like Ambersons - when Orson Welles made "Magnificent Ambersons," and I cut that out and then they've released it. So this was never released, supposedly, and then they now are just - he needs the money, so they're doing a truncated version now.
RATH: Well, you mention Orson Welles. And there's a really Orson Welles-y kind of feel to the character - the author character of Jonrosh, played by Will Ferrell.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE SPOILS OF BABYLON")
WILL FERRELL: (As Eric Jonrosh) Please, won't you enjoy Part 2 of my wonderful miniseries, "The Spoils of Babylon."
PIEDMONT: You know, it made us laugh, the '70s kind of Orson Welles who, you know, had kind of fallen from grace, who's...
RATH: Did a lot of commercials.
PIEDMONT: Paul Masson winery commercial. You've seen some of those where maybe he's a little intoxicated, actually, on air
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE SPOILS OF BABYLON")
FERRELL: (As Eric Jonrosh) Why would I say wonderful? No one says wonderful. Sounds like something a man from the - a circus would say.
RATH: And the bitterness kind of comes through.
PIEDMONT: Yeah. I think what we liked is that he's bitter. If you see Orson Welles in the '70s, he still likes to hear himself talk. He may be bitter, he may - that may come through pretty obviously. But you can tell he's - once he starts getting warmed up, he likes the tales he's spinning.
And so we kind of wanted to combine that in the character that we created for Will, and have him to have some fun. Will - you know, there's no one better than Will Ferrell doing that kind of stuff. So I think we came up with something that he had a lot of fun doing.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE SPOILS OF BABYLON")
FERRELL: (As Eric Jonrosh) After a painful ordeal to bring my popular novels to television, I gave up. I could see that the network executives cared little for art, so I filmed "The Spoils of Babylon" on my own. I lived and breathed "Spoils" for three years. I slept with the cast. Every member of the cast you'll see tonight, I slept with. My wife at the time...
RATH: You have this reputation going back to your days as a "Saturday Night Live" writer, for writing stuff that's just brilliant but just so out there that it couldn't - do you have more latitude with Funny or Die to - when you're pitching stuff like this directly to Will Farrell?
PIEDMONT: Well, it's...
(LAUGHTER)
PIEDMONT: No, the problem is I think this is all normal. So maybe that says more about me, when people say it's out there. To me, I'm pitching a normal idea. You know, I never really think of boundaries or thinking of, is this too much or - you know, it's almost like, if it's too much, let's go even further. And it seems to have worked out OK so far. But...
(LAUGHTER)
RATH: Matt Piedmont is the writer, director behind the fake "Spoils of Babylon" which will be premiering - first episode this Thursday, Jan. 9, on IFC. Matt, thank you.
PIEDMONT: Thank you very much.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG)
UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: Misty visions cloud my mind. All I've had, I've left behind. Like a stranger, I walk alone...
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Finally, we have a late Christmas present for you, but it's a story worth waiting for: A woman whose father spoke to her nearly 70 years after he died in World War II. The story begins about a year ago in a library at The Baltimore Sun.
PAUL MCCARDELL: One day I was looking for something else, and I noticed this black box. And it was, like, tied in rope.
RATH: Researcher Paul McCardell cleared away decades of old papers to free the box. And there, he found vinyl record albums. The paper's multimedia editor, Steve Sullivan, wasn't sure if they'd found gold or just a dud.
STEVE SULLIVAN: But it was beautiful. I mean, it was a pristine copy of this 1943 radio show.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Good afternoon, everyone. We're about to bring you a full hour special broadcast direct from England. This broadcast is a Christmas present from the Sun Papers of Baltimore so that you may hear the voices of your service men and women overseas.
RATH: The show was like an audio time capsule left on a shelf and forgotten decades ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: And just to show you that we're in the Christmas mood, let's have the whole gang kick off with "Jingle Bells."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JINGLE BELLS")
RATH: McCardell and Sullivan had to get this back on the radio. They contacted Baltimore Sun columnist Dan Rodricks who also hosts a show on NPR member6station WYPR.
DAN RODRICKS: Knowing what it takes to pull off a remote broadcast even today, I'm very impressed at the quality of this.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JINGLE BELLS")
RODRICKS: We aired it on December 20 and again on December 24.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "JINGLE BELLS")
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: And now to be under way with our program this afternoon...
RODRICKS: This was just a bunch of guys from Baltimore or different places in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia just speaking in their own voices, a little bit scripted, but all accurate and based on interviews with them.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: I used to be a brakeman on the B&O.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: And if you were back in the States today, where would it be?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: I'd be right back there in West Virginia, would be having turkey for dinner, probably a wild turkey that either Dad or I shot with the old squirrel rifle.
RODRICKS: I mean, it's kind of charming. And it's also a little bit chilling to think about these men are six to seven months away from the invasion of Europe. And many of them in the broadcast had been through several bombing missions over Germany. So these men had been through a lot, and some of them were about to go through a great deal.
RATH: Including one man whose name jumped off the broadcast for a woman named Margaret Ann Harris.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: I believe we have another gunner here, Sergeant Cody Wolf of Catonsville, Maryland.
RATH: Cody Wolf was her father, a father she never got to meet, and a voice she had never heard in her adult life. One of Margaret Ann Harris' friends heard the show live on WYPR and told her to go to a website where it was archived.
MARGARET ANN WOLF HARRIS: And it still didn't register in my mind that I was going to hear my father's voice until I heard it online for the first time.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: What kind of a Christmas have you been having, Sergeant Wolf?
SGT. CODY WOLF: Not too bad, but I've been thinking a lot about Catonsville.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: You have a family there?
WOLF: My parents, my wife, my 16-month-old daughter, Margaret Ann.
HARRIS: It was so wonderful. And it was not a sad thing at all. It was just a wonderful experience to know that I could hear that voice, and that my father said my name. That was the most poignant part.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: And now you're an aerial gunner.
WOLF: I'm a (unintelligible) gunner, one of the new crews like Sergeant Mane(ph) here.
HARRIS: No one expected my father to be on that broadcast at all. He had just arrived in England a few weeks prior. That broadcast was Christmas Day, and he was killed in action January 11.
RATH: How did he sound? Did you have a concept in your head of what your father sounded like?
HARRIS: Never. I never had thought of it. And when I heard his voice, it was very typical of his family. It was very of the time: very calm and very reassuring voice, kind of like the Jimmy Stewart/Gary Cooper era. And it was a safe voice, I guess because I'm his daughter. It felt a voice that would protect you.
RATH: Obviously, you've lived almost your entire life without your father. He passed away when you weren't even a year-and-a-half old. What is it like now at this point in your life to have this connection with him?
HARRIS: To hear him say my name and to know that I was treasured by him is just - it's just an awakening. It's something I always knew. But to hear the voice, so wonderful. Now I can hear him say other things. And my grandchildren heard the voice, and my daughters, and they all heard my father speak, which was a terrific Christmas present for our whole family.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RATH: That was Margaret Ann Harris of Catonsville, Maryland. She heard the father she lost in World War II for the first time this past Christmas season. If you'd like to hear that 1943 broadcast, you can find a link at our website npr.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RATH: And for Sunday, that's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Arun Rath. We're back again next weekend. Until then, thanks for listening and have a great week.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Most firearms in the U.S. start out in a state of perfect legality, sold by a manufacturer to a federally licensed dealer. But somewhere along the way, some of them cross the line and become what are called crime guns.
Member station WBUR's Fred Bever reports on a new initiative in Boston that's calling attention to the role women play in illegal gun trade and the consequences they face.
FRED BEVER, BYLINE: Most gun crimes are committed by men. But research also shows that women can play an outsized role in the marketplace for illegal guns. Often, they make a straw buy, purchasing a firearm that's not for their own use, but for men who then use it in a crime. Or they may hide a man's gun or sell it for him.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I saw cars, I saw bling, jewelry, money, the nicest clothes.
BEVER: This Boston resident knows the story. She was a teenager when she met a man, an older man, who, as she says, was in the life. And she was impressed.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I was young. So that's where my mindset was. I wanted to be a part of that. At a young age, who's going to say no?
BEVER: In her 30s now, the woman asked not to be named, fearing repercussions. She says about two years into their relationship, her then-boyfriend asked her to hold a package for him, a semi-automatic, plus ammo, wrapped in rags. Her involvement with illegal guns quickly escalated and diversified. Always, though, her boyfriend controlled the money.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: It turned from just having gifts and getting money and being supplied with all the marijuana I wanted to having all this money because I did a job for him.
RUTH ROLLINS: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Good morning.
BEVER: But today, she's at the Dorchester Public Library for the monthly meeting of Operation LIPSTICK. That's an acronym for Ladies Involved In Putting a Stop to Inner-City Killings.
RATH: Ruth Rollins, who works in a Roxbury domestic violence shelter, leads the workshop. Like many here, Rollins has direct experience with gun violence, the still-unsolved murder of her son six years ago. Now, she calls herself a LIPSTICK lady. On a map, she charts the gun-running routes that bring crime guns to Massachusetts cities.
ROLLINS: So this is what we call the iron pipeline, how guns are trafficked into our community.
BEVER: Rollins says many young women caught up in the illegal gun economy are numb to what they are really doing. Sometimes they are tempted by things as basic as baby diapers. Domestic violence is often at the heart of it, she says: The man's control over the woman includes coercing her into the illegal gun trade. Rollins says social workers, police and prosecutors should recognize the dynamic and respond.
ROLLINS: Right now, if I got caught, used the guns, you know what, you're just - I know it's your man's. If you want to flip on him, we'll get a deal. But what about having services in place? I'm not saying you don't get accountable for it. But the same services they set up for the women that were fleeing or that was in abusive relationships. It's the same as domestic violence.
BEVER: Operation LIPSTICK got off the ground in 2012 after founder Nancy Robinson saw research that, almost as an aside, documented women's disproportionate role in the illegal gun trade. Now, LIPSTICK volunteers are responding with a robust awareness campaign online and on the streets. They want people to take a hard look at the consequences of the illegal gun trade.
NANCY ROBINSON: There are consequences. They go to jail. Their neighborhoods are unsafe. People are traumatized and devastated. There are funerals every weekend.
BEVER: Robinson says more than 2,500 people have signed a pledge promising not to buy, hide or hold guns for someone else. The Boston woman we met earlier has signed that pledge. She's out of the illegal gun network, she says, but she still feels its tug.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: An old client, I will say, contacted me last night and was like, look, I need to get rid of this gun. And I'm like, oh.
BEVER: She thought about the quick $5,000 she could make, the gifts she could buy her children. But then she thought about the life she's building on the right side of the law, her student loans, the honest example she wants to set for her kids.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Do I regret it? No, I don't. Do I wish? Yeah, I kind of wish. But I can't go back.
BEVER: The next day, she was back to working with the LIPSTICK ladies. For NPR News, I'm Fred Bever.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Walk into just about any coffee shop in California and you'll probably see a sign warning you that you could get cancer from chemicals in the store's products. At the top, the signs say Proposition 65 warning. You'll find similar signs in any number of places: parking garages, restaurants, apartment buildings. We went into a coffee shop in Los Angeles to ask people what they make of the signs.
STEVE HANKINS: I think I've just become so accustomed to them that I just don't really pay attention to them. I guess if I get cancer, I'll get cancer.
AMNEETA CHATHA: I have not seen any signs for Prop 65. It's - I feel oblivious.
ALANA SERFATI: When we first looked at our apartment that we now live in, we saw a bunch of signs plastered all over, and it definitely scared us a little bit. But did it deter me from moving into the apartment? No. And does it deter me from going into buildings where I see it on the outside? No. It's just one of those things you see on the wall.
RATH: That was Steve Hankins, Amneeta Chatha and Alana Serfati. The warnings are there to comply with a 1986 California law that requires companies to disclose if their products or facilities use chemicals that could potentially cause cancer or reproductive illness. And if a company fails to warn consumers, well, they can be sued.
David Roe was one of the original architects of the law.
DAVID ROE: The places where you see Prop 65 warnings tend to be things like gas stations, hotel lobbies where smoking is permitted, hotel rooms where smoking is permitted, things like that. It is important to be warned about it. It doesn't mean don't drink coffee. It means, is this a risk that you want to take among life's many other risks?
RATH: Roe says when it was drafted in the early '80s, the intention of the law was to fix what many saw as a loophole in federal environmental regulations. The EPA only regulates chemicals when it knows exactly how much of a toxic chemical is too much. Finding that out requires an in-depth study, and that requires funding.
ROE: In other words, if you could slow government down, then you could keep these laws from actually having an effect even though they were on the books.
RATH: Roe says the California law has been a huge success. Consumers in the state are safer today than they have ever been.
ROE: Thousands of products have had toxic chemicals taken out of them, but you don't hear about it because most of Proposition 65's effect is companies deciding I would rather switch than fess up about exposing people to toxic chemicals.
RATH: But in the quarter-century since Prop 65 passed, a lot has changed. To start, the number of toxic chemicals it covers has ballooned from dozens to hundreds.
Eric Biber is a professor of law at U.C. Berkeley. He says no one realized how common carcinogens are. Today, the list of potentially toxic chemicals is so long that it's confusing to businesses who are trying to comply with the law, and that's only half the problem.
ERIC BIBER: The law uses a citizen-suit provision in which anyone can sue a company that allegedly is violating the law. And then you can get some money if you're successful in the lawsuit. The problem with that second solution was that it does create an incentive for more and more people to sue. And we've seen an increase in those lawsuits over the years. And arguably, it's become a problem where you have lawyers targeting small businesses for some of these common everyday exposures like alcoholic beverages or cigarette smoke outside of a bar and using that to get some money but not actually producing useful information or useful reductions in toxic exposures.
RATH: Prop 65 suits have helped make California the most litigious state in the union. And as Biber pointed out, those lawsuits disproportionately affect small businesses.
John Kabateck is a spokesman for the National Federation for Independent Businesses.
JOHN KABATECK: Businesses, mostly small businesses, paid about $22.5 million in Prop 65 settlements in 2012 alone. That's up $11.8 million since 2007, and the real problem here is the largest proportion of these settlement funds have actually gone in the pockets of plaintiff's attorneys.
RATH: By some estimates, more than half of Proposition 65 settlement money has gone to lawyers.
For virtually all environmental law in the U.S., it's the government's responsibility to go after businesses or products that are hurting consumers. Think of clean water laws. It's the EPA or state regulators that say, hey, hold on. This factory is dumping toxic pollution into a river. That's dangerous.
But Prop 65 doesn't work like that. The state just puts out a list of chemicals that might hurt you. The responsibility is on businesses to warn consumers, and on consumers to sue if they don't.
Eric Biber says California has been like a lab, testing a new approach to protect consumers.
BIBER: That's one of the things that was innovative about Prop 65 when it was enacted in the mid-1980s is it flipped that burden of proof.
RATH: Is that approach better? Are Californians better protected?
BIBER: I think you end up with companies being more risk averse about toxic chemical exposure in products. That can also mean that it can be more costly. And that's one of the reasons you have this notice problem is what happens with a lot of small businesses is rather than try to fight this out in court, they just put the notice up. Even if they're not sure if there are any toxic chemicals in their product, in their property, it's just easier to put the notice up rather than fight things out in court.
RATH: In 2013, California passed an amendment to Proposition 65 that they hope will ease the burden on businesses. Small business owners faced with a lawsuit now have a two-week grace period to post the appropriate warnings and have the suit thrown out.
In the end, which approach is better, putting the burden of consumer protection on businesses or on the government, has to boil down to a matter of perspective or political philosophy.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
And speaking of mysteries, we've got an amazing puzzle for you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RATH: No, no, no. Wait, wait, wait. Stop, stop. Not that puzzle. Different show. Look, I don't want to offend, but this is a puzzle that's probably way too complicated for most of us.
CHRIS BELL: It's like a Dan Brown novel, if Dan Brown could write this well, to be honest with you.
(LAUGHTER)
BELL: I mean, it's beyond the realms of my intelligence and beyond the realms, I think, of any individual's intelligence to do this.
RATH: Freeland writer Chris Bell will guide us through this mystery. In a piece for The Telegraph, he wrote about an unknown organization posting incredibly complicated puzzles online to lure the world's most talented code breakers. It began two years ago with a simple message.
BELL: It arrived on an underground message board called 4chan. And the message was a simple black square with white writing on. And the message read: Hello, we're looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test. There's a message hidden in this image. Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us. We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the way through. Good luck. 3301. And that was all it said.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RATH: 3301, the only signature left by the mysterious entity that launched the challenge. Thousands of people took it on. To code breakers who dwell in this world, it was simple in the beginning. The first puzzle used a technique called steganography, concealing a message or image within another image. Terrorists have used it to hide messages. Pedophiles use it to conceal child pornography.
Hidden inside that first seemingly simple image, those black words on white text, were many more pictures, codes, clues and one recurring image, a cicada.
BELL: That's why the puzzle was actually named Cicada 3301, because it just appeared throughout. It's a bit like the moth imagery in Thomas Harris novel, "The Silence of the Lambs." So it began to symbolize the entire puzzle as it started.
RATH: If you decoded that first image, you were led to a website. That website contained more puzzles, even harder ones.
BELL: That's why thousands of people joined in, because no one person had the skills to solve all of the puzzles.
RATH: Extremely obscure knowledge was needed to crack those codes, knowledge of Medieval Welsh literature, occult numerology.
BELL: There was clues placed inside the literature. There was stuff from the Victorian occult. There were Caesar ciphers. There was mind neurology (unintelligible) it led to a telephone number. And when it reached a certain point, they solved clues that led to, I think, 14 different GPS coordinates in locations around the world from a place like Hawaii to Warsaw. And when the people visited these locations, they found the cicada image there again and a further clue.
RATH: This was one of the most complex puzzles the Internet has ever seen.
BELL: And this is why people slowly started to realize that maybe it wasn't just some random, lonely kind of neckbeard sitting in his mom's basement. This was an international game.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BELL: As the puzzles got more and more complex, people started to, you know, suspect this is a military organization behind this, like, you know, NSA or many people seemed to suspect the CIA behind this kind of thing.
RATH: Some people, working in teams or individually, cracked the code and made it to the end. So what happened?
BELL: Nobody knows. And this is part of the enduring kind of Cicada mystery is that after they got through all these tests the first time around, it led to a website on what's known as the darknet. And this is about the Web that tends to hide various nefarious industries, I think. They led to a website there, which once a certain number of people have accessed it, it closed down and left the message: We want the leaders, not the followers.
And for thousands of people who were trying to solve the mystery, it was an enormous disappointment.
RATH: No one is quite sure what happened for the select few who made it.
BELL: There's lots of different rumors. None of them talked about it. They reckon there's anywhere between a dozen and two dozen people who made it to the final website. Apparently, they had to build a computer server and register certain addresses. But they never realized who - revealed, rather, who was behind the tests to begin with. The path led and stopped.
RATH: But one year ago today on January 5, 2013, it all started over again - the puzzles with different techniques, new physical locations.
BELL: And again, once the first few people got through to that, the website closed down again.
RATH: And the mystery still continues. Chris Bell says it's become something special now.
BELL: It kind of tapped into all the things that the Internet loves, in a way. It tapped into kind of slightly ludicrous conspiracy theory. And then the greatest thing, of course, is it never actually revealed its purpose. For thousands of people who sat at websites to try and decode these puzzles, it's been a real, you know, labor of love for many of them.
RATH: For the past two years, new puzzles appeared online on January 4 or 5. And sure enough, this weekend, a ton of new puzzles appeared. Chris says the problem is so far, all the ones he's checked out have been fakes. But he's going to keep looking.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Arun Rath.
About a million travelers enter the United States every day. You might be familiar with the process. Regardless of citizenship, people who legally enter the U.S. face some sort of screening by Customs and Border Protection. But exactly what rights do people have at the borders? And when searching for drugs or contraband, is the government also allowed to look through the data on people's phones or laptops?
Those questions have recently been tested in federal courts. And this past week, we got one judge's answer. The government can, without a warrant or reasonable suspicion, seize and search American travelers' electronic devices at U.S. borders.
Susan Stellin is a contributor to The New York Times, and she's been writing about this case and others. She says in general, different rules apply to searches at U.S. borders.
SUSAN STELLIN: Despite the fact that there's a Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure, there's always been what's known as the border search exception to that, meaning the government has a right to look for contraband, which might be drugs, child pornography or the like, or inspect things to a degree that they wouldn't be able to do without a warrant if you were inside the U.S.
RATH: But we'd always, I think, thought about that being, like you were saying, drugs or contaminated farm, you know, issues, but not information you have in your devices.
STELLIN: Well, that's an area where, you know, the courts are kind of slowly catching up to technology. For a long time, people didn't necessarily, you know, have all this information on devices when they left the country. And, you know, court cases have kind of been working their way through the system challenging whether or not border agents have the right to not only ask you to turn on and hand over your cellphone, a camera, for example, or your laptop, and potentially search and even detain that device for a period of time to do more extensive search, which might involve, you know, looking for keywords for different types of activity.
RATH: So let's break down what actually happened in the case that was decided this week. Can you explain who is Pascal Abidor and what happened when he tried to cross the border in 2010?
STELLIN: He's a graduate student studying Islamic studies, and he was returning from Canada to New York on an Amtrak train. And when they checked his passport...
RATH: U.S. passport, which is a U.S. citizen, right?
STELLIN: He is a U.S. citizen. He also has a French passport. So he was detained and taken off the train and questioned for several hours. And his devices that he was carrying were searched. And his laptop was kept for 11 days. And when he got it back, there was evidence that, you know, the government had looked at different files or opened different things on his computer. So he became a party to a lawsuit challenging whether or not the government has a right to search your devices.
What the judge found in this case is that the government does not even need reasonable suspicion to search or detain your electronic devices, that that was a standard that doesn't apply at the border.
RATH: You know, it's interesting the judge that ruled against Abidor wrote that these searches are actually very infrequent. So how often do these kind of searches take place?
STELLIN: Well, according to the statistics I've been given by Customs and Border Protection, the device searches happen about 15 times a day. What's harder to confirm is whether or not this is an accurate count. And there had been a document that came out as a result of a foyer request by the ACLU that indicated that the CBP wasn't maintaining a good system of counting or cataloging these device searches. So we don't really know if these are accurate statistics or what they're counting.
RATH: We traditionally thought of border and customs patrol agents, they're keeping things out, you know, like drugs, contraband, child pornography, those sort of things, and not so much engage in this sort of level of national security, one might say, information acquisition.
STELLIN: Well, that's really the question is, you know, particularly for the more cursory cellphone searches when the cellphone's taken out of your sight, what is happening? You know, is the data being copied? Is it being mixed with other data? You know, anybody who travels to the U.S., there is a file on you as a traveler that includes a lot of information about where you've been, when you've left the country, when you've entered the country. And that mixes with other information the government has in kind of a pretty broad network of databases that most people don't know exists.
And, you know, I've even interviewed people who, you know, someone who returned to the U.S., forgot she had an apple in her bag, was traveling with small children from abroad. When she went to apply for one of the trusted traveler programs, she was asked about this apple incident. And she had forgotten it had even happened, it had been so inconsequential to her. But yet that had made its way into her file.
When you start mixing that with information that you might be carrying on a laptop or a cellphone or a tablet, what happens behind the scenes is kind of still an open question.
RATH: That's Susan Stellin. She's a contributor to The New York Times. She joined us from our New York bureau. Susan, thank you.
STELLIN: Thank you.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
Russia is spending $51 billion on the Sochi Winter Olympics, the most expensive Olympic Games ever by a wide margin. The preparations have not gone smoothly. Construction has been delayed repeatedly and marred by accusations of political corruption. The outlandish price tag for the games has turned into an embarrassment for Russian officials.
Joshua Yaffa's latest article on Sochi is the cover story for the new issue of Bloomberg Businessweek. Yaffa says that Vladimir Putin sees these Olympics as an important part of his legacy.
JOSHUA YAFFA: With the project having that sort of significance and that being obvious to all players involved, especially those involved in building the venues required to host the Olympics, nobody was shy about asking for more money. And everybody understood that with the projects so important to the top leadership of the country, there would be a sense permeating all the way down to the lowest levels that cost really was no object.
RATH: Now, expensive construction delays seem like they're par for the course with Olympic Games. Have the problems with Sochi been much worse than typical?
YAFFA: There's never been an Olympics that came in on budget. And I think that that's important to remember in looking at the story of how Sochi was built, in that it really magnified or exaggerated certain historical trends that have really been going back decades.
RATH: What have been some of the biggest boondoggles in the construction process?
YAFFA: Certainly, the highest profile boondoggle, as you say, was the construction of the ski jump. It came in more than two years beyond its initial deadline, cost throws to $265 million. And the official responsible for the construction of the ski jump had been fired from his post. Criminal investigations were launched into alleged cases of fraud and embezzlement. He fled the country. And for many, the history of the ski jump became a metaphor for many of the issues that have seen throughout the various venues and infrastructure projects.
RATH: Do you think Sochi will be ready for the games next month?
YAFFA: I think it will pull off the games in a way that looks good on television. I've always been interested in, at what cost has Russia put on these Olympic Games? At what cost to the Russian budget, to the Russian taxpayer? What that says about Russia's own policies and priorities under Putin.
RATH: Joshua Yaffa's story, "Vladimir Putin's Ego-Driven Waste-Filled, Corrupt-Riddled, Security-Challenged, $51 Billion Olympic Adventure," is the cover story for the new issue of Bloomberg Businessweek. Josh, thanks.
YAFFA: Thanks for having me.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
2014 has just begun, and this week, NPR is looking forward to some of the most anticipated movies, music, theater and books of the next year. Today, books.
We turn to Daniel Alarcon. His 2013 novel, "At Night We Walk in Circles," was one of the best books of last year. I asked him, which new titles he's most excited about?
DANIEL ALARCON: There's a lot, actually. You know, a few years ago - I think it might've been 2009 - I read an excerpt - an essay, I should say, by a woman named Maria Venegas. And I thought it was just really, really, really beautiful. It was about a relationship with her father and a murder in Chicago and eventually a murder back in Mexico and is tracing the life and relationship between, you know, kind of an Americanized daughter and her father and his past and his moods and his violent history.
And so I was really happy to discover that that was part of a memoir that's coming out. It's called "Bullet Proof Vest: The Ballad of an Outlaw and His Daughter" by Maria Venegas.
RATH: So what else are you looking forward to you can get us excited for for 2014?
ALARCON: Well, there's a writer named Rabih Alameddine, and he has a new book out, which I read over the summer, that's called "An Unnecessary Woman." And the unnecessary woman is named Aaliyah Sohbi. She's in her late middle age. She's an obsessive reader. She's living alone in an apartment in Beirut translating books into Arabic.
RATH: And it sounds like the lives of sort of people that he's writing about, it might be a side of the Arab world that we're not as familiar with.
ALARCON: Yeah. You know what, I spoke with Rabih about this book when he gave it to me because, you know, he was telling me that in some ways, the book that his publishers wanted him to write or that he felt he was expected to write was more topical, was more sort of, you know, ripped from the front pages, a book about the Arab Spring or something like that. And he said that he found it really impossible to write that book.
You know, he just wanted to write this particular character who's at the periphery of great social upheaval by design, you know, someone who has by design chosen a different kind of life. And, you know, I think that that's part of the Middle East, too, this whole idea of like one unified voice on the street of any country or any culture or any region is absurd. And, you know, maybe we should be hearing from the Aaliyah Sohbis of the world - of the Arab world too.
RATH: Hmm. Are there any other novels that you're excited about coming up this year?
ALARCON: There's one that I'm - I can't believe it's taken this long to get into English - by the Mexican novelist Yuri Herrera. Yuri has written, I think, just a masterpiece. It's an allegory about the drug war. It's a novel about art in the face of terrible violence. It's about the narco culture of northern Mexico. It's all those things. I think Yuri, with that book, has really created a new diction to talk about violence and about the drug war. The translation of the title, "Senales Que Precederan Al Fin Del Mundo" is a really, really beautiful title in Spanish. It's kind of a mouthful.
RATH: "Signs Preceding the End of the World" is nice but it doesn't have that - doesn't scan like that.
ALARCON: Yeah, yeah, I know. You've got to - we should all learn Spanish and read Yuri and (unintelligible).
RATH: Daniel Alarcon is an author. His latest novel is called "At Night We Walk in Circles." Daniel, thank you.
ALARCON: Thank you, Arun.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, from NPR News. I'm Arun Rath.
(SOUNDBITE OF BARKING DOGS)
RATH: Walking up to The BoneYard, the Culver City Dog Park. We're investigating what might be the most fascinating science discovery of 2014. It's about dog poop.
(SOUNDBITE OF BARKING)
RATH: I have a question. Your dog, I guess, is with you today.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Yeah, he's right here. Yeah.
RATH: Has he, you know, dropped anchor yet?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Yeah. (Laughter)
RATH: And did you notice which direction Bo was facing when he dropped anchor?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I didn't. I was on the other end of the park.
RATH: Have you noticed that Bo tends to be facing a particular axis when he's baking brownies?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Baking brownies - no. It's actually nothing that I've paid attention to, ironically enough.
(SOUNDBITE OF BARKING)
RATH: You'll be relieved to know that someone is paying attention. A new study of pooping dogs found that they strongly prefer to do their business facing north or south. Sabine Begall is one of the researchers.
SABINE BEGALL: All people know dogs, and know that they are pooping. And so we had a team of 37 dog owners, and they went out with - in total - 70 dogs. The dogs were not on the leash. They were in the open field. And the reporters noted the direction in which the dogs were facing when doing their No. 1 or No. 2.
RATH: Dogs prefer to face north or south; but only when the Earth's magnetic field is stable, which it often is not. A lot of the time, the magnetic field is kind of wobbly and unstable. And when that happens, the dogs will drop their payload - well, any which way.
BEGALL: So we had this analogy: If you were on a hike, for example, and you look every now and then on a map; or you hold a compass. And if the compass needle is shaky or the map is not readable, then you might dismiss, also, reading the map.
RATH: Dogs aren't the only animals that sense magnetic fields. It's called magneto reception. And migrating birds, hungry foxes, and fish and bees all use it. Begall and her colleagues added cattle to that list a few years ago.
BEGALL: After we published our first study on cattle - in 2008 - we got a lot of calls from people from all over the world. And they said, hey, I can also sense the magnetic field. And in the beginning I was like, huh, I can't believe it. But, you know, there were also at least one Noble Prize winner among them. And then I said, huh, so maybe there is something in the story that people can sense the magnetic field.
RATH: And what could humans accomplish with magneto reception? That's still a mystery.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
During World War II, a group of women took a bold step in aviation. While male pilots were sent overseas, the Women Air Force Service Pilots took up the war effort on the home front. From 1943 to 1944, they logged over 60 million miles across the U.S., flying 77 types of military aircraft to haul supplies and conduct training exercises.
This week, the women pilots were honored at the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California. NPR's Daniel Hajek caught up with some veteran members before the parade.
DANIEL HAJEK, BYLINE: Van Nuys Airport, an hour north of L.A., a group of 10 elderly women dressed in blue uniforms walk onto an airstrip where they're greeted by a small crowd and four World War II-era AT-6 Texans, two-seater propeller planes that bring back some memories.
FLORA BELLE REECE: Pratt & Whitney engine, 650 horsepower and is a beautiful airplane. It will just do whatever you ask it to when you use the controls correctly.
HAJEK: That's 89-year-old Flora Belle Reece from Lancaster, California. She flew these planes 70 years ago when she volunteered for the Women Air Force Service Pilots or WASP. She was inspired to fly as a kid in Oklahoma watching the birds as she helped her dad farm.
REECE: In my life, my priorities are God first, family second, and then flying.
HAJEK: And her priorities were straight when she became one of 1,100 women who earned silver wings in the WASP originally stationed in Sweetwater, Texas. The women pilots transported soldiers, test-flew planes and conducted training exercises as seen in this WASP training film courtesy of Texas Women's University.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRAINING FILM)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Nobody should ever tell a WASP that flying's not a woman's job. They wouldn't believe it any more than if it were said a girl can't be a good flier and a woman.
HAJEK: One of their most dangerous missions, towing targets for anti-aircraft training, where guys on the ground would shoot live ammunition. Ask 94-year-old Elizabeth Strohfus if she was ever scared.
ELIZABETH STROHFUS: Oh, no. Not a bit. I loved every minute of it.
HAJEK: Today, these women get to play co-pilots as members of the Condor Squadron at Van Nuys, take four of them up in these old planes they've restored. On the ground, a line of active duty female pilots salute as the planes pass in formation.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLANE ENGINES)
HAJEK: Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Weeks says the WASP inspired her to become a pilot. She flies F-15 and F-16 fighter jets in the United States Air Force.
LT. COL. SAMANTHA WEEKS: To have the opportunity to be around them and sit with them and listen to their stories and hear how they paved the road that allows me to walk the walk that I do in the Air Force today is just amazing.
HAJEK: Yet even today, the aviation culture is largely male dominated. The FAA estimates that women make up just 7 percent of certified pilots in the U.S. These women are trailblazers.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLANE ENGINES)
HAJEK: The AT-6s land and sputter back to the hanger. Elizabeth Strohfus carefully climbs out of the cockpit. She's all smiles.
STROHFUS: Good memories. It was a beautiful flight. I used to do a lot of formation flying. Course, they always said I flew too close. I said, I thought that's what you're supposed to do.
(LAUGHTER)
HAJEK: Like the other WASPs, flying is in her blood. When Strohfus was 72, she hitched a ride in an F-16 fighter jet. Midway through her flight, she says the pilot gave her the controls. So you took control.
STROHFUS: Sure.
HAJEK: And what did you do?
STROHFUS: Well, I didn't mean to make too steep a turn, but I got a 6G turn.
HAJEK: 6Gs.
WEEKS: 6G turn.
STROHFUS: 6Gs, yeah. And he said: Hey, take it easy. I don't have the (unintelligible). I said: Honey, you can have mine because I don't need it.
HAJEK: They've come a long way since the WASP was disbanded in 1944. These women were finally recognized as veterans in 1977, and they received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010. Earlier this week, their own float at the Rose Parade. Members of the Women Air Force Service Pilots are like celebrities in the aviation world. They live for the thrill of flying. Daniel Hajek, NPR News.
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The birth of a new baby is a joyous occasion, but in Portugal it's an increasingly rare one. Since the economic crisis hit, the country's birth rate has plummeted. It's now among the lowest in the world. Rising unemployment and poverty mean people are putting off having kids or moving abroad. It's gotten so bad that Portuguese schools and maternity hospitals are now closing. From Lisbon, Lauren Frayer has the story.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: I'm in the waiting room of Portugal's biggest maternity hospital and the room is empty. You can hear the hum of soda machines across the hall. There's only one expectant father here pacing the empty room.
MARIO CARVALHO: I have a son, and I waiting a daughter.
FRAYER: Today?
CARVALHO: I hope.
FRAYER: Mario Carvalho says he's only able to have a rare second child thanks to his secure job as a Lisbon bus driver.
CARVALHO: I have a lot of friends going to England, to France because they don't have jobs in Portugal. It's difficult, very difficult.
FRAYER: More than 100,000 Portuguese of child-bearing age move abroad each year. That's one person emigrating every five minutes, in a country of just 10 million. Many of those who stay here put off having families indefinitely. They can't afford it.
I duck into the hospital's cafeteria where the head obstetrician has agreed to meet me.
DR. ANA CAMPOS: I've been a doctor since '81 - 32 years.
FRAYER: Dr. Ana Campos recalls when she first started delivering babies here.
CAMPOS: The rooms were filled and we had more than 40 deliveries in one day. And now we have 10 deliveries in one day.
FRAYER: Now, two whole wings of this hospital are unused, lights off. And Portugal is limiting the number of students allowed to study obstetrics. The country doesn't need them anymore. Birthrates have been falling across southern Europe for decades, as women in traditionally Catholic countries like Spain, Portugal and Italy get access to birth control, higher education and enter the job market. But Portugal has seen the biggest, fastest drop in births, 14 percent in just four years. Now there are less than 1.3 births per woman, compared to more than two in the US.
ARLINDO OLIVEIRA: In fact we have hit an all-time low, since we have records of birthrate.
FRAYER: Arlindo Oliveira, the head of one of Lisbon's universities, says if you combine that with the hordes of young Portuguese leaving the country...
OLIVEIRA: What we are looking at is a decrease in the total population and in particular, in the working-age population, because the population is also aging. The weight of the older generations on the working-age population will be very, very high.
FRAYER: Fewer future workers and taxpayers are being born to pay for the rest of the population's retirement. Portugal's already bankrupt. It got a bailout from Europe two years ago and may need another one. Luisa Condeco is a doula birthing coach who delivers babies in rural Alentejo province, where the birthrate is less than half of what it was 30 years ago. On Skype, she describes the rural area where she lives and works.
LUISA CONDECO: There's only two or three children in a small village, and there's like 10 or 15 old people more than there used to be. So, they're closing some schools and preschools, and transforming them into nursing homes for older people.
FRAYER: And when a baby is born the whole village celebrates. Birth announcements are on the front page. Town halls deliver gift baskets. And the grandmothers...
CONDECO: Especially the grandmothers, they're always complaining, oh, this is the only one. So, they go and buy everything they can. I have seen that happening so many times. They go and they want to do everything they can because it's going to be the only grandson or granddaughter they have.
FRAYER: Back in Lisbon, the country's biggest maternity hospital was actually slated to close last summer, but employees went to court to fight for their jobs. They won a reprieve, and the hospital remains open for now - for the jobs, if not for new babies. For NPR News, I'm Lauren Frayer.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. We're going to spend the next few minutes talking about a problem many Americans have faced in the workplace: toxic leaders, bosses who make you and your coworkers miserable. Only, our story is not about corporate America. Officials in the U.S. Army have concluded that they have too many toxic leaders. In fact, as NPR's Daniel Zwerdling reports, some Army researchers wonder if toxic officers are partly to blame for some soldiers' mental health problems.
DANIEL ZWERDLING, BYLINE: One of those researchers is Dave Matsuda. And to understand why he's worrying about this issue, you need to hear his story. Matsuda was walking down the hall one day in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces. This was back in 2010, in Baghdad. The U.S. Army had turned the palace into its Iraq headquarters. And Gen. Pete Bayer walked up and he said, hey, Doc - everybody calls Matsuda Doc.
DAVE MATSUDA: And Brig. Gen. Bayer stopped me, and he said, "I have a mission for you." And so I replied, "What are your orders?"
ZWERDLING: And here, Gen. Bayer picks up the story. Bayer was the general in charge of getting the U.S. Army out of Iraq, as the war was winding down. He says he told Matsuda that almost 30 soldiers in Iraq had committed or tried to commit suicide, in just the past year.
GEN. PETE BAYER: We got to a point where we were exceptionally frustrated by the suicides that were occurring and quite honestly, feeling - at least, I was - helpless, to some degree, of otherwise good young men and women who were taking their lives.
MATSUDA: And he just said, how do we reverse this trend? How do we stop it?
ZWERDLING: Bayer says that day back in Iraq, he ordered Doc Matsuda to study why have so many soldiers in Iraq wanted to kill themselves?
BAYER: What we valued about Doc, as well as a few others who worked for us, was he didn't wear a uniform. He wasn't one of us, so to speak.
ZWERDLING: Doc Matsuda is not a soldier. He's an anthropologist. The Army hired him to advise U.S. commanders: How do you understand what's really going on in Iraq below the surface? Bayer says now, he wanted Matsuda to look below the surface of the suicide problem in the Army because he says whenever a soldier committed suicide, the Army's official investigators basically asked the same questions: What was wrong with the individual soldier? Did he or she - usually, he - have a troubled childhood, mental health problems? Did he just break up with his girlfriend or wife? Was he in debt? And the answer was often yes. But Bayer says he felt part of the puzzle was missing.
BAYER: We decided that we were going to take a look at it from a different angle.
ZWERDLING: So Matsuda took that look at the cases of eight soldiers who'd recently killed themselves. He met with as many of their buddies as he could.
MATSUDA: I crisscrossed Iraq and interviewed 50 soldiers.
ZWERDLING: And Matsuda says those soldiers told him a more complicated story than the official investigations found. Yes, the victims had major problems in their personal lives. But in addition, every victim had also had a leader who made his life hell - sometimes, a couple leaders. The officers would smoke him - that's what soldiers called it.
MATSUDA: Oftentimes, platoon leaders will take turns seeing who can smoke this guy the worst - seeing who can dream up the worst torture, seeing who can dream up the worst duties, seeing who can make this guy's life the most miserable. When you're ridden mercilessly, there's just no let-up. A lot of folks begin to fold.
ZWERDLING: Matsuda says the evidence did not show that the soldiers' leaders had caused them to commit suicide. But the soldiers' friends said their leaders had helped push them over the brink.
So are you saying that so-called toxic commanders were one of the main reasons that those soldiers attempted or committed suicide?
MATSUDA: Yes. Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FULL METAL JACKET")
ZWERDLING: Of course, the idea that officers can be monsters is an old Hollywood cliche. This is from "Full Metal Jacket," back in the '80s. They're Marines.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FULL METAL JACKET")
ZWERDLING: The scene often made people laugh and wince. But about 10 years ago, the head of the Army decided the idea that that some leaders might be awful is more than a cliche. It's worth studying.
COL. GEORGE REED: Understanding that good command climate is important, the secretary of the Army asked us, what is the impact of destructive leadership?
ZWERDLING: Col. George Reed ran the Command and Leadership Program at the Army War College in Pennsylvania.
REED: Well, the first thing that struck me was what a good question. It was not a question that we had wrestled with before.
ZWERDLING: Reed and a colleague interviewed dozens of officers who were attending the War College. And he says most of them told stories about recent encounters with leaders who they said were toxic. Reed says the soldiers were talking about something worse than incompetent bosses. They said toxic leaders were mean and abusive. They bullied their troops; they didn't listen to them. Reed says after a military journal published their study, they were flooded with emails from other soldiers who complained about toxic leaders they knew.
REED: The stories just poured out, at that point.
ZWERDLING: And did that surprise you?
REED: Well, it was distressing. It was distressing because the Army is a world-class organization. And at some point, you have to ask, no - really? Are we tolerating this kind of leadership behavior?
ZWERDLING: Gradually, some generals started to ask that question. And a few years ago, they ordered researchers to do a nationwide study about the problem. Army researchers surveyed 22,000 troops. Most commanders got good ratings; some got great. But the study found that roughly 20 percent of the soldiers - almost 1 in every 5 - reported that his or her own leader was toxic. Toxic was the researchers' word. NPR has interviewed dozens of soldiers who say they struggled under those kinds of leaders. One of them is Frank Costabile.
FRANK COSTABILE: I'm doing better. Like, after my last suicide attempt, they gave me a new medication.
ZWERDLING: Costabile's job with the Army in Afghanistan was fueling helicopters, tanks, trucks. The Army discharged him just over a year ago, after the third time he threatened or attempted suicide. Now, he's living at a center for homeless vets in Las Vegas. We talked with him as dozens of vets lined up in the cafeteria.
COSTABILE: How's it going, buddy?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Talk to me.
COSTABILE: I'll have some of that wing.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: This has got turkey in it.
COSTABILE: It's not exactly the greatest, but it's better than sleeping on the street or at a Salvation Army, you know?
ZWERDLING: Costabile says he never heard the term "toxic leadership" while he was in the Army. But he says some of his own leaders started tormenting him three years ago in Afghanistan - and it kept up when he came home to Fort Carson, in Colorado. He says they didn't scream at him; they ostracized him. And the more he felt like he was falling apart, the worse it got.
COSTABILE: Like the kid that was picked last for kickball in school or something, you know? I get the jobs that nobody wanted to do. Take out the trash, you're going to sweep the floor, you're going to mop the hallway. And it's like, why?
ZWERDLING: Army records show that Costabile pretty much stopped eating. He lost 30 pounds in a month. His wife found him lying on the bathroom floor after he took dozens of antidepressants and other pills. His officer said, he's faking it.
COSTABILE: And I just had like, feelings - like, that nothing's ever going to change. I'm going to get (beep) every day, and I just don't want this anymore. You know, I just felt like I wanted to kill myself.
LT. GEN. DAVID PERKINS: If we don't do something about toxic leadership - I mean, in the end, not to be too dramatic but it does have life-or-death consequences. And quite honestly, we owe it to the American public.
ZWERDLING: That's Lt. Gen. David Perkins. He runs the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, in Kansas. They train the Army's officers to fight wars. And back when the U.S. invaded Iraq, Perkins led the first troops into downtown Baghdad. He knows what kinds of commanders you need.
PERKINS: I can just tell you from experience - I mean, gone into units - that if you have toxic leadership, people will get sort of what we call the foxhole mentality. They'll just hunker down. And no one is taking what we call prudent risk - they're not being innovative, they're not being creative. And some people who are toxic leaders, they might be able to get some short-term results and get an immediate mission at hand done. But in the process, they are destroying the organization and destroying their people.
ZWERDLING: Think about this for a moment. The Army's not the only institution with destructive leaders. Corporations have them, too. But when was the last time you heard one of your own bosses say publicly, "We have too many toxic executives in our company"? Perkins says the first step in the Army was to define the problem.
PERKINS: Page 3, I think, subparagraph 11.
ZWERDLING: Last year, the Army revised their leadership bible. The official name is Army Doctrine Publication 6-22. It officially defined toxic leadership for the first time. Perkins reads an excerpt.
PERKINS: (Reading) Toxic leaders consistently use dysfunctional behaviors to deceive, intimidate, coerce or unfairly punish others to get what they want for themselves - yeah, so we're not really mincing any words, I don't think, there.
ZWERDLING: Then, the Army recently took a second step toward dealing with the problem. They did a pilot project on a new way to evaluate officers. Until now, the Army has done what most companies do. The big bosses evaluate the leaders below them and if the big bosses give them a good rating, then the subordinates generally get promoted.
But in the pilot project, they asked subordinates to evaluate their bosses anonymously. The pilot project was tiny; they rated only eight commanders. But the Army plans to expand the system late this year. Meanwhile, top officials have kicked a small number of commanders out of their jobs for being toxic, and the issue is becoming part of the national conversation.
SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND: Madam President...
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Senator from New York.
GILLIBRAND: I rise today to speak about...
ZWERDLING: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said just a couple months ago that destructive leaders are one reason why the number of sexual assaults in the military is so high.
GILLIBRAND: And you just heard from these victims, there are too many command climates that are toxic.
ZWERDLING: Some of the Army's first researchers who ever raised the issue of toxic leadership say this is clearly a new world now. Still, they're concerned that the Army's leaders aren't moving fast enough.
On a zero-to-10 scale, when you think of what the Army could and should be doing to tackle this problem of toxic leaders, where is it now?
WALTER ULMER: In terms of the Army's making these necessary changes, I guess I give it maybe a 6.
ZWERDLING: That's a retired general named Walter Ulmer. He led forces in Vietnam. Today, the Army uses his writings about toxic leadership at their command school. Ulmer calls toxic leadership an institutional cancer. He says the new system of evaluating officers sounds like a promising way to begin treating the disease. But it's just one step.
For instance, according to the Army's plans, they will ask subordinates to evaluate roughly 1,100 officers anonymously by October. But there are more than 100,000 officers in the Army, and Ulmer says just changing the way many more of them are evaluated is going to be a huge challenge on that zero-to-10 scale.
ULMER: Knowing the bureaucracy, I can't much go above a 6, and I hope that I'm wrong on that one.
ZWERDLING: So the Army's doing more about toxic leaders than any time in the past, but...
ULMER: A long way to go.
ZWERDLING: We began this story talking about the Army's study three years ago, about soldiers who killed themselves in Iraq. Remember the researcher, Dave Matsuda, found that eight soldiers who committed suicide all had toxic leaders; and those leaders, in effect, helped push them over the brink. Now, Matsuda would be the first person to tell you his study was small, anecdotal. But it raises a big question: Have toxic leaders played a role in many more suicides?
The Army and the National Institutes of Health have launched the biggest study yet of why soldiers kill themselves. One of the study's directors told me that they're only just starting to ask whether there might be a link with toxic leadership.
Daniel Zwerdling, NPR News.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. Health care spending grew at a record slow pace for the fourth straight year in 2012. That's according to a government report out today. But the people who compiled it disagree with their bosses in the Obama administration about why the growth of health spending slowed. Obama officials say some credit should go to the Affordable Care Act. But as NPR's Julie Rovner reports, government actuaries aren't so sure.
JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: First, the good news, at least for those worried about health care inflation, from Micah Hartman of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' Office of the Actuary.
MICAH HARTMAN: Health care spending increased 3.7 percent in 2012, which was the fourth year of relatively low and stable growth.
ROVNER: In fact, the $2.8 trillion the nation spent on health care consumed 17.2 percent of the nation's economic output, which was actually down slightly from the year before. Why? Well, it was kind of a mixture of things, said actuary Anne Martin.
ANNE MARTIN: Our main findings included faster growth in hospital and physician and clinical services spending, and slower growth in prescription drug and nursing care facility spending.
ROVNER: Martin said one of the big downward drivers of spending was something called the patent cliff or the expiration of patents of some huge blockbuster prescription drugs.
MARTIN: Most notably Lipitor, Plavix, and Singulair lost patent protection in late 2011 and in 2012. This, in turn, led to the availability of lower cost generic versions of these drugs.
ROVNER: And lower spending on drugs overall. But one thing that did not lead to slower growth, according to the report being published today in the policy journal Health Affairs, was the Affordable Care Act. Said Martin...
MARTIN: There was minimal impact from the Affordable Care Act on aggregate national health expenditure trends.
ROVNER: In fact, for the first three years the law was in effect, the actuaries say its various provisions likely combined to produce a small overall increase in spending. And the persistent slow growth in health spending, even for a few years after the economy has begun to recover? Aaron Catlin, deputy director of the National Health Statistics Group that leads the annual study, says that's just what you'd expect to see about now.
AARON CATLIN: What we can tell you is that the period of stability is consistent with the historical experience.
ROVNER: Meaning health inflation has traditionally remained in check for at least a few years following a recession. But the actuaries' view - that health spending is simply following historical trends - is not universal. Many economists think this slowdown may in fact signify a structural change in the way healthcare's being delivered. David Cutler is a Harvard health economist and one of those who thinks this time may be different.
DAVID CUTLER: There's a big unexplained component which is that even though slower economic growth has reduced spending, spending has fallen by even more than the slower economic growth would suggest.
ROVNER: Medicare spending, for example, which by itself accounts for a fifth of the nation's health spending, has slowed dramatically. And Medicare spending is not traditionally tied to what happens in the rest of the economy, says Cutler.
CUTLER: If you look historically, the link between how the economy is doing and what's happening to Medicare spending is very, very weak.
ROVNER: But what is clearly impacting Medicare, he says, are changes made by the Affordable Care Act.
CUTLER: From reduced error rates in hospitals to reduced rates of readmission for Medicare beneficiaries to reduced payments to Medicare advantage plans and hospitals that are a direct result of the Affordable Care Act.
ROVNER: The bottom line is no one really knows exactly why health care spending continues to grow so slowly and how much impact the Affordable Care Act is having on spending. But most policymakers agree on one thing, they hope the spending slowdown will continue. Julie Rovner, NPR News, Washington.
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One of the hinge points in human history was the invention of agriculture. It led to large communities, monumental architecture and complex societies. Not bad. The downside was tooth decay. Switching from hunting and gathering to eating grains and starches brought about the age of cavities. At least that's what a lot of people thought. NPR's Christopher Joyce reports on a breakthrough in dental history, a discovery which suggest that even before agriculture, what hunter-gatherers ate could rot their teeth.
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: There's a cave in Morocco - the Cave of the Pigeons, it's called - where ancient people lived and died between 12,000 and 15,000 years ago. These were hunters and gatherers. They didn't grow stuff. And what was astonishing to scientists who've studied the cave people was the condition of their teeth.
LOUISE HUMPHREY: Basically, nearly everybody in the population had caries.
JOYCE: Caries, or tooth decay. Louise Humphrey, who's a paleoanthropologist with the Natural History Museum in London, says 94 percent of the people she found in the cave had serious tooth decay.
HUMPHREY: I was quite surprised by that. I haven't seen that extent of caries in other ancient populations.
JOYCE: Sure, life was brutal and short for Stone Age folks, what with saber-toothed cats, parasites, and not an aspirin anywhere. But at least the paleo diet was supposed to be good for the teeth: meat, tubers, berries, maybe some primitive vegetables and very few carbs. Carbohydrates turn sugary in your mouth, then bacteria turn that into enamel-eating acid. But apparently these ancient people had a thing for acorns.
HUMPHREY: Acorns are high in carbohydrates. They also have quite a sticky texture. So they would have adhered easily to the teeth.
JOYCE: Yes, these people did eat meat and snails apparently, but also a lot of acorns, judging by the debris they left behind. Without toothbrushes, without dental floss, that diet rotted their teeth.
HUMPHREY: They were eating on the roots of their teeth. I think they would have been in pain.
JOYCE: Humphrey says this is the earliest case of widespread dental caries ever seen by thousands of years. It contradicts the idea that agriculture ushered in tooth decay and that the so-called paleo diet is inherently healthy. When it came to cuisine, she says Paleolithic people were simply opportunistic.
HUMPHREY: There's not one kind of paleo diet. I think wherever people lived, they had to make best of the wild food resources available to them.
JOYCE: In this case, Humphrey believes, ground acorn patties.
Have you tried them out?
(LAUGHTER)
HUMPHREY: No, but I would like to. I imagine that they would be something like sweet chestnuts.
JOYCE: Kind of like the Twinkies of the Paleolithic. The research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Christopher Joyce, NPR News.
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An obscure provision tucked into the budget deal that Congress approved last month has everyone from genealogists to bankers concerned. The measure would limit access to statistics the government keeps on deaths. The idea is to combat identity theft and tax fraud. But as NPR's Brian Naylor reports, this kind of data clampdown would have far-reaching implications.
BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: The death master file, it sounds like a ledger the Grim Reaper might keep. But in reality, it's a computerized list containing some 86 million names kept by the Social Security Administration.
When people die, that information is passed on to Social Security by funeral homes, hospitals and families. It includes the Social Security number, name and dates of birth and death. Social Security uses the information to make sure checks don't go out to the deceased, while survivors get the benefits they are entitled to.
In 1980, a court ruling ordered the government to make the death master file publicly available. Now, anyone who pays the price can get access to all or part of the file. That has unfortunately led to cases of fraud. Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida cited the ordeal the parents of a young girl went through after she died of cancer weeks before her fifth birthday.
SENATOR BILL NELSON: So you can imagine how they felt when months later they learned that someone had used Alexis' identity, obtained from the death master file, to file a fraudulent tax return.
NAYLOR: Congress estimates that by limiting access to the death master file, it could save taxpayers more than $700 million over 10 years in fraudulent tax refunds. So, last month, lawmakers clamped down on the DMF, as it's called. Now, only those who are certified can see the information. And that has librarians, genealogists, genetic scientists and other researchers who now use the data, more than a little worried - people like Gary Chase, who runs Harvard's Nurses' Health Study. The survey has tracked the health and death of some 250,000 nurses for more than three decades.
GARY CHASE: If we follow women for all these years and we don't find out what happens to them at the end, it's like reading a long novel and then you leave off the last couple of pages. And that's - we really want to know what happens in those last couple of pages.
NAYLOR: It's not just researchers and scientists who use the data in the DMF. Big corporations do, too. Stuart Pratt heads the Consumer Data Industry Association, a Washington trade group. Pratt says keeping track of who dies is a big deal for a lot of companies.
STUART PRATT: That's important for financial institutions to know because there's forms of identity theft that are associated with individuals who are deceased. Identity thieves will sometimes scour obituaries and try to get information and try to open up accounts, even though an individual has recently died. Pension benefits groups need access to the information, life insurance companies. So, there's a lot of very positive uses of the data.
NAYLOR: Congress didn't entirely close off access to the DMF. It left it up to the Commerce Department, which administers the death file, to come up with a process to certify legitimate users. Pratt says his group will be closely watching the process.
PRATT: If the exceptions are interpreted too narrowly, it will actually have a harmful effect, rather than a beneficiary effect.
NAYLOR: The government has three months to come up with a certification process. After that, legitimate users worry it will be more difficult to find out everything from where your great-grandfather was born to what diseases you might be at risk for because of your DNA. Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. Peace talks between the warring factions in South Sudan have stalled. In the meantime, fighting there continues in a conflict that threatens to ignite an ethnic civil war. More than 200,000 people have been displaced. A major stumbling block in negotiations is the fate of 11 political prisoners. Many of them are heroes in the country's long war of independence, but they now stand accused of plotting to bring down the democracy that they helped create. NPR's Gregory Warner was in the capital Juba where he interviewed one former government official just moments before his arrest.
GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: The unmarked streets of Juba can be a little tough for the outsider to navigate. And so by the time I found the house of Peter Adwok Nyaba, it was 5 o'clock. That meant I had less than an hour to do this interview and get back to my hotel before the city-wide curfew.
PETER ADWOK NYABA: Relax, I mean let's, let's...
WARNER: But he insisted that I first drink some of the soda his wife had brought on a tray.
NYABA: I think it would be much better.
WARNER: Sure.
NYABA: Than the water...
WARNER: There's only one glass. You won't have any?
NYABA: No, no, I'm all right.
WARNER: As I drank, Adwok rubbed the stump of his left leg, a casualty of the long civil war against Sudan. Like other war heroes in the struggle, he was granted a post in the government. He was minister of health after South Sudan gained its independence in 2011. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: Adwok previously served as the minister of higher education, science and technology.] But five months ago, Adwok and all his fellow ministers were sacked by the president for disloyalty. And now leaning against the wall beside his aluminum crutches was a small rolling suitcase he'd packed for prison.
NYABA: They called me, the inspector general of the police, that they will come for me. I am one of the people who should be arrested.
WARNER: And what did the inspector general say you'd be arrested for?
NYABA: They say there was a coup attempt.
WARNER: The violence engulfing South Sudan began three weeks ago with what the president says was an attempted coup led by former vice president, Riek Machar. But Adwok denies the charge. He says that President Salva Kiir is trying to purge the party of his political rivals. And that Kiir, who before becoming president spent 28 years in the bush fighting Sudan, handles politics like a military campaign.
NYABA: Because definitely Salva is not a political animal. He is a soldier and doesn't perceive the political process as some of us perceive it.
WARNER: Adwok says the unraveling of South Sudan began not with an attempted coup but months earlier when Riek Machar declared his intention to run for president. Kiir's response to this political threat, he says, was to fire his cabinet, and use his executive power to strong-arm the process.
NYABA: He looks at it from a military point of view, and he gives orders.
WARNER: And Peter Adwok says that's when the world's newest democracy, South Sudan, failed the true test of any democracy. That is having made it through the first election it failed to reach the all-important second, the one where an existing ruler may be asked to peacefully hand over power. Even though the elections are a year and a half away, the country has been now derailed by ethnic conflict.
NYABA: The democratic culture is still very shallow. I mean it is a long struggle, you know, to bring these concepts really to the minds of people and so they can internalize them.
WARNER: He said internalizing these concepts is only a matter of time, five to 10 years or so. But a few minutes after he spoke these words, Peter Adwok ran out of time. His wife burst in and hurried me into the spare bedroom. The police had come.
OK. So, I'm now in the Adwok spare room. Now, I'm whispering here because the South Sudanese police don't know I'm here. And his wife, Abuk Payiti, has begged me not to show my face. They're searching the house now. Abuk pops her head in one more time to say that dozens of police officers armed with machine guns have now taken away the one-legged ex-minister.
ABUK PAYITI: But I have prevent them not to enter, because if they enter and they take your things, it would be another problem.
WARNER: The next day it was official: Adwok's name was on the list of coup plotters.
MICHAEL MAKUEI LEUTH: (Foreign language spoken)
WARNER: This is the minister of information, Michael Makuei Leuth, at a press conference. After he read the list, he was asked what might happen to these men.
LEUTH: OK. The harshest penalty? Death sentence, either by firing squad or to be hanged by the neck until you are dead.
WARNER: President Kiir's insistence that this was indeed a coup and not just democratic dissent has stalled peace talks now underway in Ethiopia. Riek Machar wants to negotiate for the prisoners' release. Kiir refuses. Only Peter Adwok has been set free, although he's essentially on house arrest, forbidden from leaving the country. And when I spoke to him today, he told me he's worried that South Sudan is running out of time, that each day that the war drags on, there's less chance to rescue this democracy. Gregory Warner, NPR News, Nairobi.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. Now to ALL TECH CONSIDERED.
And we're heading today to Las Vegas for the technology industry's annual extravaganza, the Consumer Electronics Show 2014. NPR's Steve Henn is there. Hey there, Steve.
STEVE HENN, BYLINE: Hi.
CORNISH: So this is a gadget lover's dream. What have you seen so far?
HENN: Well, each year, a group of smaller companies get together before the show actually opens and put on a press preview. And so last night, I was invited into this crammed conference room in the Mandalay Bay on the Vegas Strip, And there were hundreds of reporters there and the place was just full of little companies that were pitching sort of their latest and greatest gadgets. So these aren't the Samsungs and Sonys of the world. These are really closer to startups. And they had some, you know, pretty amusing stuff.
I saw an Internet-connected toothbrush. You know, that's perfect for the highly connected helicopter parent. There were robot cash registers and toys. But I have to say my favorite was an Internet-connected sleep monitor made Withings. This is the company that became famous a couple of years ago for selling the first Internet-connected scale. You know, and I'll let Withings' Raphael Auphan explain.
Tell me what we're looking at here.
RAPHAEL AUPHAN: So Withings is launching today a smart sleep system called Withings Aura. And the smart system is a combination of a sleep sensor, which is placed in your bed and which is going to monitor all your movements, heart rate and breathing rate. And based on the movement, heart rate and breathing rate, it's going to detect sleep stages, whether you're awake, whether you are in deep sleep, light sleep or REM sleep. And all this sleep data will be viewable in a mobile application.
HENN: It seems like it would measure things other than sleep that one does in bed. So how do you make sure that this information isn't overshare?
AUPHAN: So there's one thing that we took into account very early on in the product design is to make sure that the user at any time in any kind of emergency can switch off their (unintelligible). So if you have a moment of sensuality and you don't want to have anything monitored, you basically caress the device on the side and it will switch off. It will switch off this...
HENN: You caress the device...
AUPHAN: Yes, right.
HENN: ...to turn it off.
(LAUGHTER)
AUPHAN: Exactly. To turn off the device and turn on other things.
CORNISH: OK. Steve, there...
(LAUGHTER)
CORNISH: ...asking the key questions. So where are you now?
HENN: Well, right now I'm at the registration area at the Venetian. You know, this event really kicks off today. There are going to be big announcements about connected cars and wearable computers. And, you know, of course, the Consumer Electronics Show isn't complete without, you know, a lot of releases of new high-definition television sets.
And right now, it's just getting started. A lot of the display space hasn't been built out yet, so there are construction crews coming in. And if you're lucky and you know the right people, you can sort of get a little behind-the-scenes tour as folks get set up. So I'm hoping to do that a bit later.
CORNISH: And, Steve, there actually has been some news on the connected car front at least. Can you talk about what are the developments there?
HENN: Right. So, early this morning, Google, Honda, GM, Audi and Hyundai, as well as the mobile chip manufacturer Nvidia, announced that they were forming something that they're calling the open automobile alliance. And basically, they want to create a common set of standards that will allow Google's Android software to work seamlessly and safely within automobiles. And what they want to do is create sort of a common platform that will allow app developers to build connected devices that really function well.
The other big piece of this is that for these apps to work, the cars have to be connected. And so there was another announcement today with GM and AT&T announcing that all of GM's models would soon offer 4G, you know, the highest speed wireless broadband connection, direct into cars. And so I think what we're beginning to see is that, you know, for years, the car was this area that was more or less cut off from the digital revolution and that is about to change.
Obviously, Apple and Google and Microsoft, with its Ford Sync system, are really interested in breaking into the automobile and making that as connected an environment as any other part of your life.
CORNISH: And what else are you looking forward to?
HENN: Well, one of the things I'm really interested is wearables and how they're going to develop. Intel has struggled in the mobile technology space. It has a major announcement. I think they're going to try and lay out their business plan for wearables, which will be interesting, and their vision of how these, you know, watches and glasses could change how we live. But it's not just watches and glasses. One of the show organizers told me about a company that apparently is putting a temperature sensor in clothing and then the clothing changes thickness depending on how warm or cold it is outside.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Steve Henn at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Steve, thank you.
HENN: Oh, my pleasure.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
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I'm Audie Cornish. And we begin this hour in a deep freeze. A large swath of the country is seeing record or near record low temperatures with frigid winds making matters even worse, and weather officials say don't look for it to let up tomorrow. The reason: a phenomenon called the polar vortex. We'll have more on that in just a few minutes. But first, NPR's Cheryl Corley caught up with a few hearty Midwesterners who, despite considerable winter experience, were still shocked by just how cold it was today.
CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: Clearing snow is a normal rite of passage in the winter, but Chicagoan Mike Lyman(ph) says these temperatures are like a bad joke. So how cold is it here? Don't even talk numbers, he says. It's just...
MIKE LYMAN: Brutal. I mean it's as cold as I remember it. I've lived here for 20 years. So yeah, wouldn't you say?
CORLEY: Absolutely, if you compare the temperature in Chicago, minus 10 without the wind chill, in the morning to Anchorage, Alaska today at a balmy 32. Just down the street, the wheels were spinning as Lenny Mills(ph) tried to move his medicar van off a patch of ice.
LENNY MILLS: We've got to get these people to the doctors and the hospitals and everything like that.
CORLEY: It's going to be tough doing that today?
MILLS: Oh, we're going to just pray.
CORLEY: And that's just what a lot of people may be thinking since it hasn't been this cold in some areas for nearly two decades. Jim Keeney with the National Weather Service says these are extreme temperatures.
JIM KEENEY: So we're 20, 30 degrees below normal.
CORLEY: Brutally cold, but not necessarily record-breaking, says Keeney, at least not yet.
KEENEY: But there's a lot of wind associated with this system, so our wind chill values are quite low. Across the northern tier of the country, we're pushing 50 to 60 below zero wind chill values.
CORLEY: And some of the temps so far, 32 below in Fargo, North Dakota, minus 21 in Madison, Wisconsin, more than 15 below in Minneapolis, and so cold in Chicago that the city revisited a decision to keep the schools open today and shut them down instead. School spokesman Joel Hood says the school district knew it was going to be cold and windy...
JOEL HOOD: What we hadn't yet really factored in was how much snow the city was going to get early and throughout the day on Sunday, and that sort of just complicated things.
CORLEY: Yesterday, Minnesota's governor cancelled school for the whole state and now says he'll leave it up to local school districts to decide when students should go back to school. All throughout the region, the roads have been like an ice rink - snowy, icy, often treacherous. For the first time in more than three decades, Indianapolis issued a condition red, which meant no one on the roads except utility workers and emergency workers.
Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard says he lifted that edict, but he still wants people to stay inside if they can.
MAYOR GREG BALLARD: Because the wind chills around here are still going to be around minus 30 to minus 40. We're still going to ask some businesses to either not open tomorrow or limit it to volunteer workers, and also we're asking schools to stay closed again because we don't want kids out there waiting on bus stops.
CORLEY: The freezing temperatures have even affected the South. In Florida, it's expected to dip into the 30s in some areas. In Northern Georgia, the plunge began with temperatures in the 20s earlier today. The National Weather Service says the end to the deep freeze will begin in most areas by Thursday. Out walking her dog near Chicago's lake front, Monique Clay(ph) says she can't wait.
MONIQUE CLAY: I know this is still winter so - but we can get down to maybe 30. I can be okay with that.
CORLEY: So she'd be happy with 30, just like it is in Alaska. Cheryl Corley, NPR News, Chicago.
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As with much of the country, we here in Washington, D.C. are in for a taste of winter unlike anything we've felt for a couple of decades, and it's all thanks to a phenomenon called the polar vortex, which is the subject of today's lesson in meteorology from Jason Samenow, weather editor of The Washington Post. Hi, welcome to the program.
JASON SAMENOW: Thank you.
SIEGEL: And a vortex suggests a cyclone and I gather this is a very big kind of cyclone.
SAMENOW: That's exactly right. We're talking about a huge sprawling area of circulating cold air originating from the North Pole. It's a low pressure center, and typically during the winter months it resides up there. At times some tentacles of it will slip southward and bring cold air outbreaks into the U.S., but this year we're seeing a huge chunk of it, most of it descending into the U.S.
SIEGEL: So there always is a polar - I gather both an Arctic and an Antarctic vortex working. It's just how far from the pole it goes.
SAMENOW: That's exactly right. In fact, the Antarctic polar vortex is stronger and more impressive than the North Pole vortex due to the fact that Antarctic is landlocked and so it's colder down there. But even in the North Pole, this vortex is a powerful feature. It's there all the time during the winter months and there even in the summer months at a weaker intensity.
SIEGEL: Well, compared to other winters, how different is the polar vortex this year from in typical years?
SAMENOW: It's fairly typical in terms of its behavior, but what's happening this week is rather unusual in that this huge piece of it is descending southward into the U.S. and that's really a result of the configuration of weather patterns. Right now we have a huge area of high pressure over Alaska so it's actually warmer in parts of Alaska than it is in much of the upper Midwest.
And there's also an area of high pressure over Greenland and just to the west of there, and so basically that's allowing the jet stream to dive south over the U.S. and also for this polar vortex to drop south with the jet stream.
SIEGEL: But judging from the forecasts, this particular cold snap that the vortex is scheduled to bring to Washington, D.C. this evening and tomorrow morning is very intense but very brief; 24, 36 hours later it's gone.
SAMENOW: That's right. We don't have this year what we sometimes have, which is called blocking patterns, which are basically roadblocks in the atmosphere steering flow which can trap some of these cold air outbreaks over the U.S. for an extended period of time, so that's the good news. We're not talking about several days or weeks of historic cold.
We're talking about 24 to 48 hours in most areas. Around Chicago, they may see about 60 hours of sub-zero temperatures, which would be close to a record there. But for most of us, this is somewhat fleeting.
SIEGEL: And where does it flee to? I mean does it just gradually go back up toward the Arctic again?
SAMENOW: That's exactly right. You know, the atmosphere's a fluid and you can think of it sort of as a bubble circulating through the flow, just sort of dipping down and then floating back up to the North and the East.
SIEGEL: Last time we had a polar vortex that came this far south, when would that have been?
SAMENOW: Well, as I mentioned, a lot of times we'll see tentacles of the vortex or little pieces of it dip down into the U.S. Most winters that happens. The last big one was in '94. In '96 we had a fairly sizable polar vortex-type event occur as well, and there were several in the mid '80s. One of this magnitude where we're seeing this large of a piece of the vortex drop into the U.S., it's about a once a decade or so event.
So this is fairly extreme, but fortunately because of the configuration of the weather patterns and the overall setup, it will be short-lived.
SIEGEL: Jason Samenow, thanks for the lesson.
SAMENOW: You bet.
SIEGEL: So Jason Samenow, weather editor of The Washington Post, describing the cause of our imminent discomfort in Washington, D.C. and in much of the country this week, the polar vortex.
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Conman and writer - not two career choices I would likely put together - but James Magnuson's new novel, "Famous Writers I Have Known," does just that. Director of the University of Texas's writing program, Magnuson knows a thing or two about teaching his craft. Our reviewer, Alan Cheuse, delves into Magnuson's new satirical comedy, which he calls a delightful take on writing programs and American life.
ALAN CHEUSE, BYLINE: On the run from some vengeful New York mobsters, conman Frankie Abandonato, in a neat plot twist right up front, hides in plain sight down in Austin, Texas, posing as one of America's most lauded and secretive writers, a novelist appropriately named V.S. Mohle - sort of a Salinger stand-in. For a number of months, Abandonato scams a lot of people in the writing world: the director of the writing center at the University of Texas - not the author of this novel, of course, but a sort of pathetic doppelganger of same - and the bestselling novelist in decline who's underwritten a lot of the Texas program - a sort of pathetic doppelganger of the late James Michener - and an elite cadre of worshipful fiction students who place themselves at his feet. Abandonato treats them all to his version of a great novelist, winging it every day, with a little help from some instructive articles and his conman instincts, producing sweet comedy for us as readers as he goes.
We work in the dark, he mulls over Henry James's famous dictum about writing fiction. We do what we can. Now, what that meant, he admits, I had no clue. The only people I knew who worked in the dark were cat burglars and heating duct repairmen. Before his scheme begins, as it must, to fall apart, Frankie does learn something important about the life of a writer. This whole writing thing was worse than heroin, he observes. The story he tells of his unusual and comic and sweetly told caper will be addictive in itself for all passionate writers and readers.
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The novel is "Famous Writer I Have Known" by James Magnuson. Our reviewer is Alan Cheuse.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. Top ranked Florida State and number two Auburn are playing for the championship of college football tonight. The BCS title game in Pasadena, California, marks the end of the 16 year run for the bowl championship series and very few people are sad to see it go. The BCS has been the punching bag of both fans and the media practically since the day it started back in 1998. NPR's Tom Goldman is in Southern California for this farewell BCS moment.
And Tom, why do people hate this process so much?
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Well, it's sports. You have to hate something, Robert. No, but specifically, we have hated the BCS because the two teams in the championship were slotted into the game using computer rankings in polls and you had a championship that wasn't being decided on the field, as they say, a playoff, you know, where a bunch of teams get together, play over a period of time and the last one standing has earned the championship.
Nearly every sport in elite college competition uses a playoff. College football, at the highest level hasn't. Now, that'll change next season with a four-team playoff format.
SIEGEL: Yes. We finally get a playoff. And the four teams will be chosen by a 13-member committee, including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Will this system be any better than the old one?
GOLDMAN: Well, you know, for the mere fact that you've got a playoff, yes. With only four teams, you're probably going to get the four power teams, the usual suspects. So you won't see the real fun of a playoff, you know, an outsider making an exciting run to the title until the playoff is expanded to eight, maybe even 16 teams, which some say is inevitable.
Is the selection process better? Maybe not. Over the years, the BCS has been excoriated for using computers and polls and taking out the human element. An article in today's Pittsburgh Post Gazette points out that's interesting because in recent years, computers and analytics have become the rage in sports, think "Moneyball," think Nate Silver who's now taking his political forecasting skills into the sports world with his analytics-driven website.
It can be argued that having computers takes out factors like bias and politics so, you know, maybe we'll have to rethink this whole computers are evil attitude as it applies to college football.
SIEGEL: Well, there's a game going on tonight. What should we expect?
GOLDMAN: You know, I think it's safe to say there will be a lot of points on the board. Both teams are powerful offensively. Florida State is favored. The Seminoles are undefeated this season. They beat every opponent except one by at least 27 points. Their quarterback, freshman Jameis Winston, was winner of this year's Heisman trophy.
Auburn only lost one game and the Tigers are your so-called team of destiny after miracle last second victories in two late season games versus Georgia and then Alabama. They have the best running attack in the country. I think it'll most likely come down to which defense can hold at key times. Florida State topped the nation in fewest points allowed, averaged a little over 10 per game. Auburn, not as good statistically on defense, but they stopped opponents when they had to.
SIEGEL: Okay. Thank you, Tom.
GOLDMAN: You're welcome.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's sports correspondent Tom Goldman.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Three years ago, officials at the University of North Carolina had trouble on their hands with an NCAA investigation that tarnished its football program. After the NCAA issued sanctions over financial ties between an assistant coach and a sports agent, it seemed the scandal was over. Far from it. That case spilled over into an entirely different controversy, this time over academic fraud.
A professor accused of holding phantom classes, forging faculty signatures and issuing fake grades to student athletes in a system thought to go back years. Dan Kane is an investigative journalist at The News & Observer newspaper in Raleigh. He joins us now to talk more about this. And, Dan, to start, I understand that the paper started investigating because of a plagiarized paper by a student.
DAN KANE: Yes. That's right. One of the football players kicked off the team basically because a tutor had done some improper work on his paper, sued to get back on the team. He felt that, you know, the punishment was too harsh and in suing, he made public the paper that was at issue and it turned out that it had all kinds of plagiarism in it and the name of the professor on the paper was Julius Nyang'Oro.
And obviously, one of the questions I had was, you know, why didn't this professor catch this very obvious plagiarism. A short time later I was able to get a hold of a transcript of another athlete who was caught up in that earlier scandal and the transcript showed that he had gotten a B plus in an upper level African studies class the summer before he began his first full semester as a freshman.
And what was really odd about that was his first semester he was supposed to take remedial writing. It just didn't add up. Those two things really suggested that there was something seriously wrong. Somebody contacted me who had some inside information into the tutoring program for athletes and what she basically said was that there were these, quote unquote, "paper classes" where the class didn't meet. They'd just be given a paper and they'd turn it in at the end and they got great grades.
CORNISH: The central figure here is the professor with the, at the time, the African and Afro-American studies department, Julius Nyang'Oro, and the accusation is that this goes back as many as 200 classes into the 1990s and that this department was being used to inflate athletes grades. But at this point, has there been any clear connection made between this department, this professor and higher-ups in the athletic department?
KANE: No. There haven't been. The connections have been with the tutoring program for athletes. We obtained, you know, correspondence that showed that the tutoring program, you know, they knew that these classes weren't meeting. They knew they weren't challenging and they were sticking, you know, academically-challenged freshmen even in these classes.
So the question really, you know, was there some sort of hand in hand relationship here and who all knew and, you know, we're still not quite there in terms of answering that question. There've been some investigations and they both basically said, well, this is not an athletic scandal. They can't find that tie between, say, you know, an athletic department official ordering or suggesting or, you know, somehow making this happen. But at the same time, there's still a lot of information that we don't know about because the university is just not releasing it.
CORNISH: And right now, the chair, the former chair of the African and Afro-American studies department, Julius Nyang'Oro, we know he's been indicted by a grand jury. What is the exact allegation and what's the state of the case now?
KANE: Yes. He has been charged with obtaining property through false pretenses. It's a felony charge. Essentially, he received $12,000 in summer pay for a class that he didn't teach. This was a class from 2011. And he created the class just a few days before the semester began. It filled with football players and the summer school dean, you know, noticed the number of students in there and said, well, you should be paid for this class. And he took it and then he didn't teach the class.
CORNISH: How has the school made - how has the school responded to this? Have they made any changes?
KANE: Oh, yeah. They have made changes. I mean, before, practically anybody could take an independent study, you know, in that department. That's ended. They've separated the tutoring program from the athletic department. It had this kind of dotted line relationship to the athletic department. That's gone. You know, there's a lot more supervision of, you know, enrollment. I mean, there were just a lot of things that they changed to respond to the, you know, the scandal.
CORNISH: Dan Kane, he's an investigative journalist at The News & Observer newspaper in Raleigh. Thanks so much for speaking with us.
KANE: Well, thanks for having me on your show.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
And I'm Audie Cornish.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The U.S. Supreme Court has put on hold a lower court decision that declared Utah's ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. The justices granted a request from the state to issue the stay pending an appeal. The decision is procedural, but that means that gay weddings in the state will be halted for now. Joining us to sort all this out and more is NPR legal affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg. Hi there, Nina.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: Hi there, Audie.
CORNISH: So just how big a deal is this, that they granted this stay? Should we be reading a lot into it?
TOTENBERG: I don't really think so. First of all, there were no dissenters, so the court appears to have been unanimous. And second, you have to realize that the whole question of gay marriage is a huge deal. And if the court had not granted a stay, it would have meant that without the issue being resolved at the highest level, same-sex marriages would have occurred in Utah and likely in other states, too.
CORNISH: How would that work? Explain.
TOTENBERG: Well, there are currently 42 challenges to state bans on gay marriage pending in courts all over the country, most of them in federal court. Now, some of those plaintiffs are going to win, just as the plaintiffs won at the district court level in Utah. And if the Supreme Court had refused to grant a stay in the Utah case, it would mean that judges all over the country would take their cues from that. And this is way, way too big an issue to let that happen sort of through the backdoor without any actual Supreme Court ruling. So the bottom line here is that the normal rule is that courts try to preserve the status quo in a case like this.
CORNISH: So as we understand it now, before gay marriages were halted in Utah, there were some 900-plus couples that had been married. What happens to those marriages? Are they legal?
TOTENBERG: Well, a lot depends on what happens with the appeal. But regardless, these were marriages that were legal when they took place. So even if Utah were ultimately to prevail, there would likely be litigation over the legality of these unions.
CORNISH: And with the timetable here, help us understand whether it's going to be the Utah case as opposed to some other that will decide this issue.
TOTENBERG: We don't really know. There are three cases that are either in or headed for appeals courts, cases that have been decided by district court judges. First, there's the Utah case. The 10th Circuit Appeals Court has set out a schedule for briefs in the case to be filed by the end of February, which likely means oral arguments in March. In the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, there's a gay rights group that's appealing a district court ruling that upheld the state ban on gay marriage in Nevada. And in Ohio, there's a case in which the question is whether the state has to recognize an out-of-state same-sex marriage for purposes of a death certificate in which the surviving partner wants to be designated as spouse. And the state, as I understand it, has not yet filed a notice of appeal but it likely will.
CORNISH: And are any of these cases expected to get to the U.S. Supreme Court for a decision this term?
TOTENBERG: I think that would be highly unlikely. Much more likely is that we'd have a decision in one or more of these cases by next term and that we'd have some sort of a decision by June of 2015. But even that isn't a complete certainty.
CORNISH: Why not?
TOTENBERG: Well, I think it was pretty clear this past June when the court issued its first gay marriage rulings that it wanted to go slow and take an incremental approach. Now, that admittedly seems more and more difficult, given the explosion of cases since then. But if the Utah and Nevada bans on gay marriage were upheld by their respective appeals courts, the Supreme Court doesn't have to hear those appeals. It could wait and, as they say, let the issue percolate. It might be more interested in a more incremental case, like the one from Ohio. But you have to say that as we've watched these cases, it's been faster and faster than we thought every single time.
CORNISH: That's NPR legal affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg. Nina, thank you.
TOTENBERG: Thank you, Audie.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
The Senate swung back into action today after taking a break for the holidays. By a wide margin, senators confirmed the nomination of Janet Yellen as the first woman to chair the Federal Reserve Board. But a vote was postponed at the last minute on moving ahead with bipartisan legislation that restores recently lapsed benefits for the long-term unemployed. Joining me from the Capitol is NPR congressional correspondent David Welna. Hello, David.
DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Hi, Robert.
SIEGEL: The Senate went out last month on an acrimonious note, with Republicans - in the minority - doing everything possible to delay nominations that could no longer be blocked by filibusters, thanks to a rules change the Democrats pushed through. And yet Janet Yellen has now been confirmed to head the Fed. Did Republicans have a change of heart?
WELNA: Well, Robert, this was no surprise. Several Republicans had already voted before the break to move Yellen's nomination forward. And 11 of them voted today to confirm her, as did every voting Democrat; for a final tally of 56 to 26. Because Republicans were divided over her nomination, they chose not to fight it. But that doesn't mean we won't be seeing a lot of GOP opposition this year to other nominations, especially for lifetime appointments to the federal bench.
SIEGEL: Now, the Senate was set to follow the Yellen vote with a procedural vote on a matter the Democrats - and especially, President Obama - are turning up the heat on: reinstating the unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed, benefits that the Congress allowed to expire 10 days ago. What happened?
WELNA: Well, weather and politics. Seventeen senators from both parties did not show up for the Yellen vote because of canceled and delayed flights. It was clear Democrats were not going to get the 60 votes they needed to move forward. And those Republicans who opposed moving forward felt like this was being turned into just a showboat, so they objected. Majority Leader Harry Reid acquiesced in this exchange with the Senate's No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn.
SEN. JOHN CORNYN: And it's transparent that this is a political exercise, not a real effort to try to fix a prob -
SEN. HARRY REID: Mr. President...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: The majority leader.
REID: I ask unanimous consent the vote be scheduled tomorrow - 10 a.m.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Is there objection?
WELNA: And there was no objection, so the vote is being held tomorrow.
SIEGEL: And what's the thinking? Is it likely to move forward?
WELNA: Well, you know, this three-month extension of those benefits has Nevada Republican Dean Heller as a co-sponsor. So only four other Republicans are needed to reach the filibuster-proof, magic number of 60. Democrats argue this measure helps the U.S. economy as much as the 1.3 million people whose benefits ran out last month. Here's the bill's Democratic co-sponsor, Rhode Island's Jack Reed.
SEN. JACK REID: I think it would be foolish, frankly, to take a program that we are confident can create 200,000 jobs, can increase GDP by .2 percent, that is one of the best forms of physical policy to stimulate demand and economic growth; and say we're not going to do it.
WELNA: You know, tomorrow's vote could be close. Republicans are under a lot of pressure to vote against moving forward. There were letters today from the conservative Washington groups Club for Growth and Heritage Action, warning against voting in favor. They say this extension should be paid for, which it isn't. If it fails, you can be certain that Majority Leader Reid will bring it up again and again. Democrats feel they have public opinion on their side, in this fight.
SIEGEL: So for the Senate, Day 1 in 2014 is in the books. Beyond - thinking a little bit longer term, what can we expect from the Senate this year?
WELNA: Well, since Democrats set the Senate's agenda, we should expect more measures addressing rising income inequality, such as raising the minimum wage. There could be drama next month over raising the debt ceiling. And we're certain to see a lot of slow-walked nominations that can't be filibustered, in the end. While the Senate alone votes on nominations, for just about everything else, the Republican-run House has to act as well, and even if we do see the Senate revive the lapsed unemployment benefits and raise the minimum wage, don't expect the House to do the same. I think House Republicans would rather spend their time this year going after the Affordable Care Act. That's what they see as their best card to play in the run-up to this coming fall's midterms.
SIEGEL: OK. Thank you, David.
WELNA: You're welcome, Robert.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's David Welna, on Capitol Hill.
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The device that really made the words wearable computing part of the tech lexicon was Google Glass. The high-tech glasses put the Internet, a video camera and apps right on your face. And we're going to hear now about someone who's been wearing it.
MAT HONAN: Awkward. It's really awkward.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
That's Mat Honan, a senior writer for Wired. He's one of thousands selected to try out Google Glass. He just published an article on the experience. He says when you wear Glass out in public, you get reactions.
HONAN: I feel like I look a little bit like a cyborg, you know. I feel like I look a little Geordi-ish from "Star Trek" or it just looks future nerd.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CORNISH: Yes, nerd alert.
SIEGEL: But it's not just the nerd factor. Honan's been wearing his Google Glass for almost a year and he says people just get uncomfortable around a device that could covertly record them.
HONAN: You know, I've had the experience where people have talked in sort of stage whispers about the Glass, you know. You'll hear somebody say something like, look at that guy. What's he doing with that on here? And I'm not using a pejorative that I've heard because this is for radio. But...
CORNISH: Yeah, thanks for that. But Mat Honan says there are some handy upsides to a computer on your head.
HONAN: You can look at a sign and it'll translate it for you using an app. You can follow directions while you're cooking without having to take your hands away from, like, your knife or the things you're doing or put your greasy fingers on a tablet.
CORNISH: Honan thinks wearables are here to stay. Still, he says those weird looks and stage whispers from passing strangers show Google does need to change something to put the public at ease.
HONAN: They're going to have to look good. They're going to have to look normal. They're going to have to look like it's not a face computer. You know, if it looks like a face computer, nobody is going to want to wear it.
SIEGEL: Mat Honan. He's been wearing white Google Glasses for much of the past year. He is now upgrading them to tangerine.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
The government of Iraq has lost control of the city of Fallujah. An Islamist militia linked to al-Qaida has gained control of much of that city and the Iraqi Army is now trying to figure out how to win it back. In 2004, U.S. Marines were fighting for Fallujah. To hear how things have come apart and who's fighting whom, we turn now to Jane Arraf. She's a long-time Baghdad-based journalist whose work appears in Al Jazeera America and the Christian Science Monitor. And she was in Fallujah last month. She's here today in Washington. Hi, welcome to the program.
JANE ARRAF: Thank you so much.
SIEGEL: First, the group that's linked to al-Qaida is called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Tell us about them.
ARRAF: Well, they're kind of what al-Qaida became - and we remember al-Qaida because they were responsible for some of them most horrific things during this war. They've actually transformed themselves. And we have to remember that al-Qaida is sort of a franchise. It's a group of interlinked but loosely interlinked cells. And the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is fighting for what it believes it already has, the beginnings of an Islamic state that will cross borders. It's mainly in Syria now but it is reaching out back to Iraq, where it essentially started and where it still has links.
SIEGEL: It obviously is a Sunni Muslim group.
ARRAF: It is a Sunni Muslim group, although not everyone believes that, oddly enough, in Iraq. But its ideology is very much Salafi extremist, what we would consider extremist Sunni philosophy.
SIEGEL: Well, the battle between these groups, the ISIS, and the Baghdad government seems fairly straightforward. But also involved in the fight in Fallujah are the local tribes, which are, I guess typically Sunni Muslim as well. What role do they play in all of this?
ARRAF: Well, I think one of the things that's happened while we haven't really been paying attention in the West to Iraq in the past year is that the country has become essentially partitioned along sectarian lines. Now, Anbar, we have to remember, is the biggest province in Iraq. It goes all the way up to the Syrian border.
SIEGEL: This is where Fallujah and also Ramadi are.
ARRAF: This is where Fallujah and Ramadi are. It borders Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It's very, very tribal, and that's why the Americans had such a hard time there in 2004, 2003. That's why Saddam Hussein had such a hard time there. Now, the dynamic is that there is a long list of grievances that have been suppressed.
SIEGEL: These are grievances on the part of the Sunni Muslims of Anbar province against the government in Baghdad of Prime Minister al-Maliki?
ARRAF: Absolutely. It's not just that they're Sunni and it's a Shia-led government. It's that Maliki's government feels that it is under direct threat. He feels there's coup around every corner. And the most likely source of that coup, he believes, would come from Anbar, from Ramadi or Fallujah, fostered by other Sunni countries around Iraq. And that's part of the problem. It's not just Iraq. It is now a regional conflict and we're seeing that played out on the streets of Fallujah, which has been increasingly cut off from Baghdad over the past year.
SIEGEL: Well, is the Islamist group, ISIS, does it tap into some vein of public support around Fallujah? I mean, is it welcomed by the people there?
ARRAF: This is the terrible choice that you have to make, that one has to make, when you are in a country which has not emerged from war in the past 10 years. In 2003 and 2004, people there believed they had no one to protect them. So, they turned to al-Qaida. Al-Qaida overplayed its hand and then they turned al-Qaida, many of the tribes, in what was called the awakening with U.S. forces. The Americans left, the Sahwa, the awakening, the tribes who turned against al-Qaida were essentially abandoned. A lot of them were assassinated. And now they're in a fight that's multilayered. The army has not been into Fallujah and Ramadi. It can't go in because people are so hostile to it. The Iraqi government is engaged in mass arrests. It's arrested women. It's rounded up children. There's a long list of grievances there that really cut to the core of what Iraq is. And that's part of the reason why this is so complicated and so hard to fix.
SIEGEL: The way you describe it, it doesn't sound as though the prime minister, al-Maliki, stands much of a chance of putting this back together again.
ARRAF: You know, the Americans used to say when they were there, there is no military solution. And it's as true now as it was in 2004 when the Americans went in with Iraqi forces to Fallujah and essentially destroyed a large part of that city. What Sunnis around the country have been asking for, what disenfranchised groups who could be Shia or could be Sunni had been asking for is a share of political power. It's a feeling that they actually belong in the government. They haven't seen any of that yet. They've seen a lot of promises. But it's going to take a lot of political will, a lot of political compromises from a government that both feels it's under threat in Iraq, outside Iraq and is facing elections in a few months.
SIEGEL: Jane Arraf, thank you very much for talking with us about recent events in Fallujah.
ARRAF: Thank you.
SIEGEL: Jane Arraf was in Washington today, has been covering Iraq since 1991.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Maryland has just become one of six states to allow undocumented immigrants to apply for driver's licenses. Under the law that took effect on New Year's Day, the state will now issue a second-tier license to immigrants without full documentation as long as they meet certain requirements. Advocates say it's a great opportunity for those who need to drive to work. But as NPR's Allison Keyes reports, some lawmakers worry it will draw more people to Maryland who are in the country illegally.
ALLISON KEYES, BYLINE: 23-year-old Baltimore resident Missael Garcia is excited.
MISSAEL GARCIA: Well, it's amazing, you know?
KEYES: Garcia is talking about an experience that can be annoying: going to the Motor Vehicle Administration to get a driver's license. He says it was great to be treated just like everyone else, right down to having his eyes tested.
GARCIA: I've been in this country for 12 years and just having the opportunity to go through the whole thing is just - I don't think, like, no one else could appreciate it.
KEYES: Garcia came to the U.S. with his parents, two little brothers and a sister illegally. He hopes to own a restaurant someday. Right now, he's a food runner at a fine dining restaurant and a sports bar, and he's taking business administration classes at Baltimore City Community College. He says he'll be glad to drive because public transportation was making him late for everything.
GARCIA: This is really going to help me a lot because, you know, I go to school. I have to catch two buses and the Metro.
KEYES: But even though he's undocumented, Garcia isn't worried that he'll end up in deportation proceedings if he gets pulled over by the police.
GARCIA: I feel like it will be more risk if I didn't have a license, you know, and get pulled over for a minor thing like a tail light or something.
KEYES: The so-called second-tier license Garcia is getting requires undocumented immigrants to have filed tax returns for two years and get an ID card or valid passport. The licenses are not valid to board an airplane or enter a federal building. It's a lot of information to give the government in a community where people sometimes face deportation proceedings after being pulled over by police.
PABLO BLANK: I think they are not worried about that.
KEYES: Pablo Blank is with the immigrant advocacy group Casa de Maryland, which has helped around 2,000 people through this process.
BLANK: They have the feeling that, little by little, immigration reform is - it will be a reality hopefully in 2014.
KEYES: So Blank says people are eager to start preparing their paperwork to have better documentation, so they'll be ready for that day. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it's focused on removing convicted criminals and public safety threats. But an ICE official tells NPR it doesn't rely on driver's license information to identify priority cases. But the idea that undocumented immigrants could use their driver's license as a step toward staying in the country worries Republican Maryland Delegate Ron George, who's running for governor. He thinks the law will create a deluge of applicants and long lines at the MVA.
DELEGATE RON GEORGE: It's going to put a lot on us because this will be a place you can come to get that first piece of ID. It's very, very important to people.
KEYES: George lobbied against the two-tiered system the state adopted in 2009, which allowed people without legal documentation to get a driver's license. That program was created to comply with the federal REAL ID Act, which mandated that state issued identification cards meet a series of security standards. George thinks the current law is a security risk and will be costly for the state.
GEORGE: The federal government has to do something about the immigration system. But Maryland can't go in the hole trying to be a service to everybody.
KEYES: Back in Baltimore, Missael Garcia already has his learner's permit and is waiting to realize his dream of getting a driver's license like his friends.
GARCIA: Life is just going to be a lot easier for me.
KEYES: Other states issuing second-tier driver's licenses include Illinois, Nevada and California. Allison Keyes, NPR News.
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This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Last year's Rim Fire was one of the most destructive in California's history. It burned for more than two months, charring 410 square miles in and around Yosemite National Park. The damage was estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Well, the U.S. Forest Service now hopes to make some of that money back by logging the area. But as NPR's Nathan Rott reports, the proposal has sparked a backlash from conservation groups.
NATHAN ROTT, BYLINE: Last August, the Rim Fire torched trees and brush, roaring over mountains, through fields and homes. A study by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission estimated damages could total anywhere from $250 million to 1.8 billion. The U.S. Forest Service's proposal offers equally staggering numbers: roughly 30,000 acres available for salvage logging. Mike Albrecht is a forester and the president of the logging company Sierra Resource Management. He says from that land, loggers could...
MIKE ALBRECHT: Probably log somewhere around 500 million board feet.
ROTT: To put that in perspective...
ALBRECHT: It takes about 15,000 board feet to build the average American home.
ROTT: One state forester estimated it would stock two area lumber yards for more than two years. But it has to be salvaged fast. Albrecht says that after two years, rot and decay can make the timber value-less.
ALBRECHT: We've already had a tragedy, and that is this fire has really destroyed a lot of forest land. The second tragedy would be to sit by and do nothing.
ROTT: It's common for the Forest Service to log fire-burned areas. But many conservation groups say that practice isn't based on ecology. Chad Hanson is the director and staff ecologist of the John Muir Project. He says that the Forest Service gets much of their money for replanting, reseeding, restoration from timber sales. So...
CHAD HANSON: For the timber industry and for the Forest Service, it's about money.
ROTT: But he says that can be shortsighted. Fire burned ecosystems are rare and hugely important to many animal species that depend on dead and dying trees. Most people assume that when a fire burns through a forest, it destroys the forest.
HANSON: It's just like fire destroys a house if it burns a house. But the two things are very, very different. And that's what the ecological science is telling us very loud and clearly.
ROTT: He says that doesn't mean logging shouldn't happen, just that it needs to be done so selectively and carefully. The area Forest Service office is asking that their proposal be fast-tracked. Officials could not be reached for comment today. Even with an approval, though, logging wouldn't start until August. Nathan Rott, NPR News.
AUDIE CORNISH, BYLINE: A few years ago, European researchers caused a stir when they discovered streams of methane bubbles rising from the Arctic seabed. The bubbles were caused by an ice-like material breaking apart as the seawater warmed up. Scientists fear that the warming of the oceans could be triggering the release of methane gas. The problem? Methane can actually speed up global warming. NPR's Richard Harris has the latest on this story.
RICHARD HARRIS, BYLINE: The biggest worry about climate change is some natural system can reach a tipping point, where something stable like methane locked up in an ice-like material on the seafloor suddenly becomes unstable. Christian Berndt and his colleagues discovered worrisome streams of methane gas erupting from ice-like material called gas hydrates off the coast of Norway's Svalbard Islands in 2008, so they knew they had to go back for a closer look. In 2012, they explored the area with a two-person mini-sub.
CHRISTIAN BERNDT: First, we did some reconnaissance dives to look at nature of the sediments and at the site where the gas was coming out.
HARRIS: And during those dives, they discovered some mineral deposits on the sea floor. They pulled up samples and realized that they had been formed by previous bursts of escaping methane, including releases 8,000 yeas ago, 3,000 years ago and 500 years ago.
BERNDT: We can see that this bubbling at that site must have been active for a long time. So that means this bubbling cannot be just caused by new climate change.
HARRIS: Berndt, in Kiel, Germany, is the lead author of a paper in the latest Science magazine that details their discoveries. It's reassuring news because it means that the bubbles near Svalbard aren't signs of a tipping point. But Carolyn Ruppel, who heads research on gas hydrates for the U.S. Geological Survey, says there's a huge amount of methane locked up in these hydrates around the world. There's no sign now of a runaway meltdown as the ocean gradually warms. But still, she says, these icy materials are sensitive to temperature change.
CAROLYN RUPPEL: Any time those waters may warm a little bit, you can break those down and potentially produce methane that then can come out of the seafloor.
HARRIS: In fact, Ruppel says small amounts of methane are emerging from hydrates along the continental shelves worldwide. As it turns out, though, most of the methane dissolves in the seawater long before it can bubble up to the surface.
RUPPEL: Our theory right now is that very little of that methane actually makes it to the atmosphere. So we're not talking necessarily here about a direct input of methane from the sea to the atmosphere.
HARRIS: The methane can alter ocean chemistry in a way that can affect sea life, so there are still consequences. And Ruppel now has her eyes on some areas in the Arctic where methane deposits are in shallow water. If those deposits were to break down, the gas could well make its way into the air. And scientists are trying to figure out just how stable those deposits are, so we haven't heard the last word on this subject. Richard Harris, NPR News.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
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This year, Chinese-American writer Qiu Xiaolong published his eighth detective novel. "The Enigma of China" is set in his hometown of Shanghai but few people there have read it. The plot focuses so closely on corruption inside the Communist Party Qiu says Chinese censors were certain to ban it, as they did three of his earlier novels.
NPR's Shanghai correspondent, Frank Langfitt, joined Qiu for a tour of some of the real-life settings for his new book.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: One of the challenges of placing a novel in Shanghai is the city moves really fast. Faster it turns out than the publishing business. Take this scene: Inspector Chen is sitting in a restaurant and he's looking across the street here at a hotel where government agents are holding a corrupt official in secret detention. So Qiu and I came to this spot to see the real restaurant that he used in the book.
QUI XIAOLONG: We had dinner here. I remember it's a restaurant with a red lantern, so it's lovely. But now, I cannot find even any trace of it.
LANGFITT: That's because the government knocked it down and replaced it with a tiny park.
XIAOLONG: By the time the book comes out, the restaurant is definitely gone. So, you see, it's hard to write about Shanghai nowadays.
LANGFITT: And in other ways, much easier. Qiu grew up here but moved to St. Louis in the late 1980s. Even though he's now 14 time zones behind Shanghai, he stays current by reading news and following surprisingly free-wheeling discussions on China's Internet. That's where Qiu found the plot for the new book.
XIAOLONG: It's a real story. It's real story.
LANGFITT: The story begins with a public official, who gives a talk on the need to continue to support China's sky-high housing prices. That policy benefits the government, but punishes and angers most ordinary Chinese, especially Netizens, China's citizen army of micro-bloggers, who take revenge.
XIAOLONG: In the newspaper, there is a picture of this official. In front of him, he had a pack of cigarettes - very expensive. So, the Netizens question is simple: If you're not corrupt, how can you afford?
LANGFITT: Netizens send the photo ricocheting around Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter, and bring down the official.
XIAOLONG: This entire scenario is taken from Weibo. So this shows, you know, the people's effort on the Internet to fight corruption. Weibo can really tell you about what's changing in people's minds.
LANGFITT: In the novel, government investigators detain the official in a hotel where he ends up dead. It falls to Inspector Chen to solve the case, which his superiors want buried.
Killings like this really do happen here. In April, investigators drowned a Communist Party member in an icy tub of water, while trying to force him to confess to a corrupt land deal.
TINA KANAGARATNAM: My name is Tina Kanagaratnam. I'm the CEO of Asia Media and on the side I also run the Shanghai International Literary Festival.
LANGFITT: Kanagaratnam has featured Qiu's novels at the festival. She says his books show how Chinese people think and how China's authoritarian system has shaped ordinary lives, like Inspector Chen's. When he was young, he wanted to be a poet. But the government assigned him to the police department. Chen still writes poetry quite successfully.
But Kanagaratnam says like many Chinese who lived through communism's darkest days, Chen wonders what might have been.
KANAGARATNAM: There are so many people in China today, who had dreams, who wanted to be something but because they were assigned something else, they couldn't do that.
LANGFITT: The last stop on my tour with Qiu is his old family home. It lies along an alley where neighbors run open-air food stalls and up a narrow stair case
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
LANGFITT: The colonial-era house feels like a museum piece. It's filled with old, carved furniture. A rickety ladder leads to a crawl space with a skylight where Qiu used to write.
XIAOLONG: When I lived here, I used to work up in the attic. These are my old, old books. So this is the first time I've come back home for this trip.
LANGFITT: Actually, Qiu hasn't slept here in years. He stays at a hotel because the house has few modern comforts. Although it's just a short drive from Shanghai's towering skyline, home to some of the world's tallest buildings, Qiu's house still has no plumbing.
Qiu pulls back a curtain and shows me a big wooden box.
What is that? I can't see. It's too dark.
XIAOLONG: It's a chamber pot.
LANGFITT: So you can sit on the chamber pot.
XIAOLONG: Yeah.
LANGFITT: And you draw the curtain to...
XIAOLONG: Yeah, hide yourself. Yeah.
LANGFITT: Qiu loves Shanghai, its old European villas and tree-lined streets. But juxtapositions like this make him pause.
XIAOLONG: You talk about mixed feelings about the city. People live just like this. They still use chamber pot - no choice.
LANGFITT: The Shanghai of Qiu's novels is like the city itself, a fast-changing landscape, filled with contrast where a poet-detective tries to solve crimes, often against all odds and remain true to himself.
Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Shanghai.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
This weekend marks 50 years since the surgeon general, Luther Terry, released his landmark report on smoking. Back in 1964, cigarettes were part of everyday life. Smoke clouded offices, restaurants, planes. Athletes and film stars advertised cigarettes on television. But Terry's authoritative report changed all that. He declared in no uncertain terms that smoking is dangerous.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED AUDIO)
LUTHER TERRY: The strongest relationship between cigarette smoking and health is in the field of lung cancer.
SIEGEL: Today, new research suggests that Terry's report may have had an even bigger impact than first thought, as NPR's Richard Knox reports.
RICHARD KNOX, BYLINE: Joanne Iuliucci started smoking when she was 12, 44 years ago. The surgeon general's report had come out six years earlier, but she says she had no idea smoking was dangerous.
JOANNE IULIUCCI: Absolutely not. Why would I? Because everybody was smoking, mother and father were smoking, doctors were smoking. You were able to smoke in the movie theater, food shopping with my mom. It was really, back then, nobody knew what we know today.
KNOX: In large part, that's because the tobacco industry maintained for years that experts still disagreed about the evidence, says Harvard historian Allan Brandt.
ALLAN BRANDT: Their campaign, their invented controversy, was actually enormously successful. If you asked people on the street: Do we know whether smoking causes lung cancer or not, many would say, well, you know, there's a very significant controversy about that.
KNOX: But in fact, Brandt says by 1964 there was very little controversy among scientists outside the tobacco industry. He says President Kennedy was not eager to take on the industry. Kennedy needed the support of tobacco-state Democrats to further his civil rights agenda.
BRANDT: So Kennedy was not happy about the idea of needing to take this on. But when asked about it publicly in a press conference, it became harder and harder for him to back away. And he punted, really and he said: This is what my surgeon-general will do.
KNOX: Now, it's important to understand that surgeons general had never been given such an assignment. In fact, public health rarely concerned itself back then with any hazards beyond infectious disease epidemics. And the American Medical Association wasn't keen on having government experts preach on the dangers of smoking.
BRANDT: There were some people in the profession who would say, you know, this is really between a patient and his or her doctor.
KNOX: So when Luther Terry put together his expert panel, it was carefully balanced.
BRANDT: The committee was made up of 10 scientists and physicians, five of whom were smokers, five of whom were not.
KNOX: During the meetings, there were ashtrays on the table and smoke filled the room. One Harvard statistician on the panel was a four-pack-a-day smoker. But the group didn't flinch when it came to declaring that smoking is deadly. And a new analysis, in this weeks' Journal of the American Medical Association, documents the enormous impact of that declaration.
Study author Theodore Holford of Yale says eight million Americans would have died if it hadn't been for the tobacco control efforts sparked by the report.
THEODORE HOLFORD: So this amounts to 157 million years of life that were saved as a result of the tobacco control effort.
KNOX: Much of that 42 million years of human experience was among people under 65. That kind of impact is hard to take in.
HOLFORD: It is a very large number, yes. And it's a rather staggering number in a way when we found it.
KNOX: Holford says tobacco control has increased U.S. life expectancy by 30 percent since 1964, more than any other public health or medical measure. But Brandt, the Harvard historian, says the impact of the 1964 report is even broader.
BRANDT: If we look at the history of public health - from the safety of cars and roads, other dangerous products, the environment, clean air, the workplace - all of these issues really have their origins in a moment 50 years ago around the first surgeon general's reports.
KNOX: And the benefits in reducing smoking deaths continue into the future. Joanne Iuliucci, whom we met earlier, eventually stopped smoking after her mother died of lung cancer.
IULIUCCI: I quit November 1, 2010. And a year later they told me I needed a lung transplant.
KNOX: The lung transplant was necessary because she had end-stage emphysema. By the way, that Harvard statistician on the surgeon general's panel who smoked four packs a day, within a year of the 1964 report he was diagnosed with lung cancer and later died of the disease.
Richard Knox, NPR News.
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As we just heard, the Iraqi government is battling an al-Qaida-linked group for control of the city of Fallujah, and that is stirring up painful memories for thousands of Americans who served in the military there. More than 1,300 U.S. service members died in Fallujah and the province around it, over the course of the war.
Now, veterans are starting to ask hard questions about the meaning of that sacrifice, as NPR's Quil Lawrence reports.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Fallujah was the largest set battle of the Iraq War.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
(GUNFIRE)
UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER #1: Hey, Sgt. Lee!
LAWRENCE: In November 2004, I recorded this for the BBC.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER #1: Hold on!
UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER #2: Whoa!
UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER #1: Hey, we've got you covered!
UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER #2: All right.
LAWRENCE: I was running behind Lt. Will Walsh, on the western edge of the city.
WILL WALSH: My name is Will Walsh. I served in the United States Army for five years.
LAWRENCE: Walsh got out of the Army a few years ago. Today, he was traveling on business in Richmond, Va., but keeping an eye on the bad news out of Fallujah.
WALSH: The question I have to ask myself is, was that effort in vain? You know, was all of the work that we did, all of the sacrifice that we had, what is the benefit?
LAWRENCE: Walsh's platoon lost one man in Fallujah. Hundreds of Americans were killed or wounded there. Al-Qaida had taken control of the city. Civilians had mostly fled. It was house-to-house snipers, alleyways and American bombs shaking the earth. Will Walsh says he has thought about it every day for nearly 10 years, and he's not alone.
KAEL WESTON: A lot of Americans want to forget about it, but there are thousands and thousands who don't have the luxury of forgetting about it.
LAWRENCE: Kael Weston spent years in Fallujah for the State Department. Since the weekend, he's heard from Marines - generals to corporals - all gutted by the news. He has also gotten emails from Iraqi friends in Fallujah, desperate for help. Weston says there's no clear American solution now, despite real achievement in the past. For a time, Fallujah was stable.
WESTON: I don't think it was all in vain, but in the big picture, the American legacy there is now being subsumed by more violence.
LAWRENCE: Troops who fought there knew Iraq always had a good chance of returning to violence. Former Marine Eliot Ackerman received a Silver Star for valor in Fallujah. He says his Marines talked about liberating Iraq, but only rarely.
ELIOT ACKERMAN: We were fighting for the same reason guys have always fought, which was, you know, for each other, and for a sense of - that we were bound to an obligation to serve our country in a time of war.
LAWRENCE: Ackerman says sometimes his Marines would half joke about coming back to Fallujah someday as a tourist, if things went well for Iraq. Now, the collapse of Fallujah has veterans debating what the war in Iraq was even about. Paul Szoldra served as a Marine in Afghanistan, but he knew many Marines in Fallujah. Szoldra now writes for Business Insider. His last piece was titled "Tell Me Again, Why Did My Friends Die In Iraq?" It's gone viral among veterans.
PAUL SZOLDRA: It's a painful reality to face. Nobody wants to think that the death of a military service member was a pointless thing. Nobody wants to say that, or put that into words.
LAWRENCE: Szoldra says it's hard to look at Fallujah and not think the same thing is going to happen in Afghanistan. Combat troops are scheduled to leave there by the end of this year.
SZOLDRA: I get an email every time someone is killed in Afghanistan. And, you know, I feel so bad for the family of that soldier, Marine or sailor. But my second thought is, why are people still dying there?
LAWRENCE: Each time Szoldra gets one of those emails, hears that someone has died in Afghanistan, it reminds him of Iraq and his friends who died there.
SZOLDRA: Cpl. Steven Renamaki(ph), Cpl. Eric Gehrut(ph), Cpl. Eric Leaken(ph) and Staff Sgt. Jason Ramseyer(ph), along with Lance Cpl. Franklin Sweger(ph) - they're no longer here. They were good guys, and I miss them.
LAWRENCE: Quil Lawrence, NPR News.
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More sleuthing now from one of the world's most famous detectives.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, 'SHERLOCK')
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: (as Sherlock) The name is Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221B Baker Street.
SIEGEL: Only this time, Holmes isn't the one solving the case, he is at the heart of it.
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A federal judge in Chicago recently ruled that the characters in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories - including Holmes and his partner, Dr. John Watson - now reside in the public domain here in the U.S. That means anyone who wants to write new material about the characters no longer needs to seek permission or pay licensing fees to the Doyle estate.
SIEGEL: That is - and here's where it gets tricky - as long as they do not include any elements introduced in the last 10 Sherlock Holmes stories that Conan Doyle published. Everything else is fair game, just the last 10.
LES KLINGER: Those stories remain in copyright in the United States. And the copyrights will be expiring over the next eight years.
SIEGEL: That's Les Klinger, editor of "The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes." He also put together a collection of new stories all inspired by Holmes. When the Conan Doyle estate insisted Klinger pay a licensing fee or it would block release of the book, Klinger filed a civil complaint against the estate.
CORNISH: His argument: That the defining characteristics in the Sherlock Holmes series can be found in the first 50 novels, and stories that are already in the public domain. And just because those last 10 stories are currently protected by copyright law, Klinger says, does not mean you should be subject to fees.
KLINGER: Even though some of the same characteristics also appear in the copyrighted stories, for example: the names, the fact that Holmes and Watson live in Baker Street with Mrs. Hudson and so on, and the court agreed.
SIEGEL: The Conan Doyle estate plans to appeal the decision. Attorney William Zieske represents the estate.
WILLIAM ZIESKE: What we'll be arguing is that a character, particularly a literary character, really does not become entirely formed until the author has put down his pen and finished with the last story that develops that character.
SIEGEL: Unless the ruling is overturned, that means some parts of the Sherlock Holmes universe are still licensed property of the Conan Doyle estate, while others are in the public domain. It is not elementary, my dear Watson. It's copyright law.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CORNISH: This is NPR News.
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The English rock musician Peter Gabriel released the first half of a two-part project in 2010 singing favorite songs written by living musicians like "Boy in A Bubble," by Paul Simon.
(SOUNDBITE FROM SONG "BOY IN A BUBBLE")
PETER GABRIEL: (Singing) The way we look to a distant constellation that's dying in a corner of the sky, these are the days of miracles and wonder. Don't cry, baby, don't cry.
CORNISH: Gabriel called the album "Scratch My Back." Now comes the sequel, "And I'll Scratch Yours." It features most of the artists whose songs he covered, returning the favor by performing Peter Gabriel songs. The lineup includes David Byrne, Lou Reed, Feist, Arcade Fire, Paul Simon and Bon Iver. It's an eclectic set and critic Will Hermes has a review.
WILL HERMES, BYLINE: On part one of Peter Gabriel's covers project, all the songs he sang were arranged for orchestra, mostly at tempos ranging from slow to glacial. Excellent songs, great singer, but it didn't always work. On part two, a bunch of Gabriel's best songs are performed any way the contributing artists wanted. So nothing stopped David Byrne from turning a spasmodic, paranoid song about amnesia into a disco party anthem.
(SOUNDBITE FROM SONG "I DON'T REMEMBER")
DAVID BYRNE: (Singing) I don't remember. I don't remember. I don't remember. I don't recall. I have no memory of anything at all. I don't remember. I don't recall. I've got no memory of anything, anything at all.
HERMES: It's fascinating to hear Gabriel's contemporaries covering his songs. Even he admits "I Don't Remember" might've been influenced by David Byrne and Talking Heads back when he wrote it. And "Biko" sounds almost like it was written for Paul Simon, another songwriter with a passion for South African music.
(SOUNDBITE FROM SONG "BIKO")
PAUL SIMON: (Singing) September '77, Port Elizabeth weather's fine. It was business as usual in police room 369. Oh, Biko, Biko, because Biko. Oh, Biko, Biko, because Biko.
HERMES: Still, much of the brilliance of Peter Gabriel's songs came from his innovative arrangements. No doubt that's why some artists here mostly Xerox the originals, which isn't a bad approach. Yet for me, the record's most moving song is a radical re-imagining of "Solsbury Hill," by the late Lou Reed. Peter Gabriel's old friend sounds like a grizzled lighthouse keeper preparing to leave his post, as feedback howls around him.
(SOUNDBITE FROM SONG "SOLSBURY HILL")
LOU REED: (Singing) I did not believe the information. I just had to trust my imagination. My heart going boom, boom, boom. Son, he said, grab your things, I've come to take you home.
HERMES: As for younger artists, Regina Spektor and Feist pull off lovely gender-reversals, and experimental singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur transforms "Shock the Monkey," which the first 45 single he ever bought as a kid. Later this year, Gabriel will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist.
Taken together, this covers project may be uneven, but it shows a guy still thinking outside the box, still engaged and who, clearly, still inspires.
(SOUNDBITE FROM SONG "SHOCK THE MONKEY")
JOSEPH ARTHUR: (Singing) Monkey, monkey, monkey. Don't you know when you're going to shock the monkey.
CORNISH: The new collection from Peter Gabriel is called "And I'll Scratch Yours." You can hear the album in its entirety at NPRMusic.org. Our critic, Will Hermes, is the author of the book "Love Goes To Buildings On Fire."
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It's also crunch time for some other U.S. athletes vying for a chance to compete in Sochi. In cross-country skiing, one brother-sister duo is waiting to find out if their special edge, each other, will get them both to the games. One knows she's going. Her brother doesn't yet. Our latest profile of an Olympic hopeful comes from Northwest News Network's Tom Banse.
TOM BANSE, BYLINE: Last month, U.S. Nordic ski team member Erik Bjornsen took a day off from training to coach and inspire junior racers from his home valley, just like former champions once did for him.
ERIK BJORNSEN: Set, go.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Erik Bjornsen is off to a really good start...
BANSE: The 22-year-old Bjornsen would normally have help from his big sister Sadie to lead this annual clinic. But she's on the World Cup ski racing circuit in Europe. So he demonstrates cross-country racing techniques and finishing lunges by himself.
ERIK BJORNSEN: I like to think of myself as a kangaroo sometimes and just bouncing off each foot in skiing and...
BANSE: A class full of 8- to 13-year-olds mimics his every move. Later, many tell me they want to follow in the Bjornsens' path. Emerson Worrell is in the seventh grade.
EMERSON WORRELL: I've always wanted to go to the Olympics as well, yeah.
BANSE: And are you learning things that will help?
WORRELL: Yeah. It's really cool.
BANSE: Sadie Bjornsen remembers being even younger than Emerson when her Olympic dream took root. She's now 24. Speaking from France via Skype, she recalls a welcome home parade after the Nagano Games for another local Olympic cross-country skier.
SADIE BJORNSEN: I remember distinctly Laura McCabe riding in on a fire truck, the whole valley lining the streets and clapping. And that was the moment, I was like, this is so neat, you know. Like, this is - it's such an honor. And I knew I was going to be an Olympian.
BANSE: The Bjornsen kids eventually grew up outside Mazama, Washington with former Olympic skiers as neighbors on two sides. An enviable Nordic trail system starts practically at their doorstep. Mary Bjornsen is the mother in this close-knit family. She says all three of her kids had an athletic upbringing with constant friendly competition.
MARY BJORNSEN: I can remember people wondering when Erik was going to start beating Sadie. And it took a while, actually. Sadie was fast.
(LAUGHTER)
SADIE BJORNSEN: Everything was a competition, from running to the car, the first one to get there, balancing on the job site on a beam as long as you could.
BANSE: Erik and Sadie tried to make the Olympic team four years ago but came up short. They've kept spurring each other on to this day. During the offseason, the Bjornsen duo live together and train at Alaska Pacific University where both are students. Erik says he and his sister both really want to go to the Olympics together.
ERIK BJORNSEN: It would just be nice. I think I can post better results when, you know, she's around cheering for me and just - I feel more comfortable just on the road with her. And if I ever have any problems, it's, you know, there is someone I can go to and...
SADIE BJORNSEN: Well, you know, as a sibling you always have a little more of an open connection. It's easy to get feedback from your sibling and not be threatened, and I think that Erik has been awesome for that because he's encouragement when I need it and also a reminder when I need it.
BANSE: U.S. ski team coaches and officials will wait until practically the last moment to finalize their Olympic squad. They want to have as many of this winter's race results as possible to evaluate rankings and get a feel for who's just plain hot. Sadie has secured a spot on the Nordic team based on her good season to date. For Erik, the next two weeks will be the clincher.
How rare would it be to send siblings to the Winter Games? Neighbor and ex-Olympic Nordic skier Leslie Thompson Hall says it happens more often than you might think.
LESLIE THOMPSON HALL: You know, certainly once someone is involved in a sport, it's easy to have another kid in the family join the sport, too. So - and to have two exceptional athletes isn't that unusual either.
BANSE: Olympic medallists Phil and Steve Mahre in skiing, and Eric and Beth Heiden in speed skating are earlier examples of sibling success at the Winter Games. This year, two sibling pairs have secured spots on the U.S. men's and women's ice hockey teams. And in the wider field of hopefuls, there could be at least four more in sports ranging from snowboarding to freestyle moguls. For NPR News, I'm Tom Banse, near Mazama, Washington.
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For years, tech companies battled to see who could make the most beautiful smartphone - with soft curves, bright screens and clever technology. Well, now the industry is competing to make clothes that free our hand from our phones, but still connect us to streams of digital information. It's called wearable technology, and its one of the latest crazes at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Aarti Shahani, of member station KQED, roamed the floor searching for wearables that she'd actually want to wear. And she sent this report.
AARTI SHAHANI, BYLINE: The human body is a limited piece of real estate. And Billie Whitehouse, founder of Wearable Experiments, says her smart jacket with GPS navigation belongs on every woman's shoulders. She has me try it.
Oh-oh, my arms. OK, thank you.
BILLIE WHITEHOUSE: Do you feel like you're wearing electronics?
SHAHANI: No, it's just like a nice, salmon-colored jacket. Good fit.
The navigate jacket integrates with the mapping app on your phone. Type in a destination, and little vibrators built into the shoulder pads tap you on the left to turn left, and on the right to turn right, and double tap when you've arrived.
WHITEHOUSE: We're basically trying to give the customer their eyes back. So when you're wandering around a city - say you've never been to New York before - you don't have to stare down at your phone the entire time.
SHAHANI: A company that makes smart watches is showcasing a sleek, new metallic band. It's called the Pebble Steel. And while it is slimmer than their original plastic watch, the big face still hangs off my wrist. Spokeswoman Myriam Joire says that's a small price to pay for all the functionality in the mini computer.
MYRIAM JOIRE: When you're outside your car, it shows you things like your tire pressure, where did you leave your car - like, the address. If you're parked in a parking lot, it makes it easier to find.
SHAHANI: A lot of women don't like watches. So Michael Lee, of Arrow Gear, shows me a black, high-heel shoe. It has LED lights built into a wide ankle strap, making it a low-resolution screen that lights up - say, in a dark club.
MICHAEL LEE: Just like a Jumbotron. And it can also stream live Twitter feeds. Within two or three seconds of you actually uploading to your Twitter, it will actually respond and directly show- after a profanity filter, obviously.
SHAHANI: Many experts at Consumer Electronics Show are saying wearable devices will explode in 2014. Suddenly, we will all want smart-gadget gear that augments our body parts with data streams. It's a bold vision with a nice dollar figure attached. At a briefing, Consumer Electronics Association senior researcher Kevin Tillman dropped the B-word.
KEVIN TILLMAN: We see a 35 percent increase in year-over-year growth from 2012 to 2013, up to $1.2 billion in 2014.
SHAHANI: You think it's going to be a billion-dollar industry.
TILLMAN: Yes, that's what we're projecting for 2014.
SHAHANI: But the year of wearables may be many years away. I e-mailed a picture of the black high heel that streams Twitter to an expert in New York who goes to fashion shows, not electronics shows.
EVA CHEN: Wow. That is something else. You know, it's definitely a fashion statement, I would say that much.
SHAHANI: Eva Chen, the editor-in-chief of Lucky Magazine, part of the Conde Nast empire. She self-identifies as a tech enthusiast in fashion. She's even tried on Google Glass eyewear. But, Chen says, most shoppers don't look for smart. They look for style.
CHEN: At the end of the day, you know, the fashion industry is a very image-driven industry. And it has to look right, and it has to be, ultimately, what someone wants to wear because if people don't want to wear it, then it's not going to sell.
SHAHANI: Apple recently recruited talent from the luxury brand Burberry. Intel is partnering with Barneys New York to create a new wearables product line. Chen says maybe the fashion leaders can get tech on to more bodies.
From NPR News, I'm Aarti Shahani in Las Vegas.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. The Senate surprised quite a few people in Washington today when it voted to proceed on a bill to temporarily extend emergency unemployment benefits. Six Republicans joined Democrats in voting to get the measure over a key procedural hurdle.
But that was only the first step. As NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith reports, the president is applying pressure to keep it moving.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: For Democrats, extending unemployment benefits is a top legislative priority, with the added political benefit of playing up their populist message and painting Republicans as uncaring. And this morning, it seemed to be going right on script. Senate Democrats went to the floor and beat up on their Republican colleagues as if the bill was destined to hit a partisan roadblock.
SEN. HARRY REID: I'm just saying I hope that we can get them to move over and help us.
KEITH: This is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who accused Republicans of, quote, "callously turning their backs on the long-term unemployed."
REID: Failing to restore emergency assistance would not only be a crushing blow to long-term unemployed. It will be a blow to our economy.
KEITH: But then, thanks to a bare minimum of Republican support, the bill actually got enough votes to move on to the next step. An hour later, President Obama was in the East Room of the White House with unemployed Americans standing behind him. With a different outcome in the Senate, the event could have turned into an attempt at shaming congressional Republicans. Instead, the president attempted to build on what his spokesman described as momentum.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Congress should pass this bipartisan plan right away, and I will sign it right away. And more than one million Americans across the country will feel a little hope right away. And hope is contagious.
KEITH: He's talking about the approximately 1.3 million Americans who saw their unemployment benefits end abruptly last week when the emergency program - started during the recession - expired. Without congressional action, advocates say tens of thousands of people will lose benefits each week. Katherine Hackett, an unemployed nursing home administrator from Connecticut, is one of them.
KATHERINE HACKETT: Unemployment benefits have been absolutely essential to cover my bare necessities.
KEITH: Hackett's benefits stand to run out on February 22nd. She has two sons who are in the military and wrote a letter to the president telling him about her struggles. She introduced him at today's event but first said a little about herself.
HACKETT: I am not just sitting home enjoying the good life. My cuts include heating my house to 58 degrees, wearing a hat and a coat to stay warm because oil is expensive. I have lost weight because food is expensive.
KEITH: And that's while she's still getting benefits. President Obama said he was grateful for the Senate action and urged the House to do something too.
OBAMA: So letting unemployment insurance expire for millions of Americans is wrong. Congress should make things right.
KEITH: There's a disagreement about precisely how to do that. House Speaker John Boehner has been saying for about a month that any benefits extension would have to be paid for and include a job creation initiative of some kind. He said in a statement today that, to date, the president has offered no such plan. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell echoed that sentiment, speaking on the Senate floor.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL: Yes, we should work on solutions to support those who are out of work through no fault of their own. But there is literally no excuse to pass unemployment insurance legislation without also finding ways to create good, stable, high-paying jobs and also trying to find the money to pay for it.
KEITH: The White House doesn't see it that way. Press Secretary Jay Carney insists Congress should pass a clean short-term extension, just like the bill that cleared a hurdle in the Senate today.
JAY CARNEY: And thereby creates a time here in Washington for further discussions about how to move forward beyond the three months.
KEITH: The bill likely faces another procedural vote in the Senate before it can move to final passage. And Republicans may be less willing to move it along without securing spending cuts in exchange. Tamara Keith, NPR News, the White House.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. We begin this hour with the rising violence in both Syria and Iraq and American military options in the region. A group linked to al-Qaida has been fighting in Syria, battling the regime of Bashar al-Assad. That group has also crossed the border into Iraq where it is fighting for control of Ramadi and Fallujah, cities where hundreds of Americans died years ago.
In a moment, we'll hear what veterans of those battles think about the latest news from Fallujah.
SIEGEL: Here's a key difference between U.S. policy on the fighting in Syria and U.S. policy on the fighting in Iraq. Washington has not intervened in Syria, but the U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq, trained its armed forces, played midwife to its government and after a decade there, withdrew.
To what extent is the U.S. involved in the Iraq government's attempts to fight al-Qaida and retake its own cities? Well, we're going to ask NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Hiya, Tom.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hello, Robert.
SIEGEL: What, if anything, is the Pentagon doing to fight this al-Qaida linked group, the Islamic state in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS?
BOWMAN: Well, in Iraq, they're letting Iraqi forces do the fighting and they promise more support, everything from intelligence-sharing to more hellfire missiles to surveillance drones. Some of this won't arrive until the spring, but the Iraqi military already has sufficient firepower.
Just today, the Iraqi defense minister announced a government air strike killed about two dozen al-Qaida militants, but the U.S. has made very clear it will send arms, but not send in American forces.
SIEGEL: Now, Tom, since this group, the ISIS, is fighting in both Syria and Iraq, if the U.S. gets more involved helping the Iraqis fight them in Iraq, can it do that without getting more involved in Syria?
BOWMAN: Well, the U.S. does not plan on getting deeply involved now in Syria and, at this point, they seem to be letting the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad deal with these more radical rebels. His government forces are hitting their stronghold in Aleppo pretty hard. And also, the more moderate rebels supported by the U.S. in Saudi Arabia are also taking on these ISIS fighters.
But the question is and the real concern is how much does this fighting spread? It's already spilled into Iraq, as we've talked about, and Lebanon where there've been some car bombs and ISIS has claimed responsibility. The real concern is could this spread into Jordan and destabilize that country.
SIEGEL: Well, meanwhile, what is the U.S. doing to support the opposition in Syria now?
BOWMAN: Well, not too much, frankly. There's a small amount of training being done by the CIA, a hundred or so fighters at a time. And the U.S. is providing what officials call non-lethal assistance, radios, medical supplies, for example. At this point in Syria, the U.S. is putting all its hopes into two areas, the first is negotiations.
There's a peace conference, of course, scheduled for later this month in Geneva. Problem is, very few analysts give that any chance of success. And the second area is chemical weapons, removing more than 500 tons of mustard agent and the components that make nerve agent.
SIEGEL: The first of those chemicals finally arrived today at a Syrian port. What can you tell us about that?
BOWMAN: Right. The first shipment of chemicals arrived at the Syrian port and already have been loaded upon a Danish ship that's put out to sea and that ship will come back to port for another shipment, but we don't know when, at this point.
SIEGEL: OK. Thank you, Tom.
BOWMAN: You're welcome, Robert.
SIEGEL: That's NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman.
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The Consumer Electronics Show is best known for its whiz-bang gadgets and tech wizardry. But the world's biggest maker of computer processors, Intel, used its keynote speech to announce something different: That its processors are now free of so-called conflict minerals. They include tungsten, gold, tantalum, and tin found in everything from light bulbs to the smartphone in your pocket. But they're often sourced from war-torn countries, like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where mines have ties to armed groups.
Four years ago, the president signed a Conflict Minerals Rule into law. Companies now have to make public whether their supply chains are conflict-free, the deadline for them to comply is this spring.
Intel is the first American company to say they're already there. Their supply chain management director is Carolyn Duran. She's here to explain how they do it. Welcome to the program and tell us how this process works.
CAROLYN DURAN: Well, this is really focused in two manners. The first was to focus on the supply chain and understanding where those four metals were used. And once we knew where they were used, mapping down through the entire supply chain to figure out where those minerals came from. The second part of it was to identify the smelters as part of that supply chain, and to do third-party audits, or intel direct observations by visiting smelters. By those two methods we were able to accomplish our goal.
CORNISH: So help us understand, will there be enough supply. I mean essentially if you rule out certain smelters, is there going to be enough to make all the products?
DURAN: There will definitely be enough. Once we hit, I call it an inflection point, when enough smelters of a given metal have gone through, we've found that it's better - the smelters have found that it's better for them to be engaged and validation processes than to not.
CORNISH: Why, just because they need a guaranteed customer?
DURAN: Yes, that's where the supply chain pressure comes in. So if enough customers say I need to see some validation of conflict free sourcing before I'll buy from you, when enough are there saying yes, we offer that, those that are not begin to offer it.
And I can give you an example of that. In tantalum, which is the place where the electronics industry has the largest purchasing power - we're the largest consumer of tantalum - we saw in the beginning several that joined with us right from the beginning, saying this is the right thing to do, and yes, we'll go for it.
We saw a few that said oh, it's not my problem. I don't need to do this. And when customers said: You know, you have to validate this in enough customers said it, they actually changed their systems. Before that time, they just didn't care. They would just buy what was cheapest. After enough supply chain pressure came in, they did start to care and implemented those systems. And that's, for me, a very heartwarming - when we started I wasn't sure how this is going to play out. We were just doing our best effort. We saw smelters changing their behavior, to me that meant we were successful.
CORNISH: How can you absolutely be sure the source of each mineral?
DURAN: So we'll never absolutely be sure forever, right? We're testing in a point in time from the soldier for their materials that were transacted over the past year. So we'll be constantly monitoring. And if we do find issues, which we may, we expect to resolve them and get those taken care of as quickly as possible.
CORNISH: Now, how meaningful do you think this effort is - this law is - if essentially there aren't any penalties, right? I mean a company who comes to say: Yes, there are conflict minerals in our product, and they make that public. But, at the end of the day, they don't, you know, there's no consequence for that.
DURAN: That's true. I think the consequence will be coming from the public. And so, the law is a way for companies to be required to disclose what they're doing. And it will be up to the public and ultimately consumers to determine and highlight those that are doing the right thing and those that are choosing to turn away.
CORNISH: How significant or important is it for a company of your size to be doing this?
DURAN: I would imagine that it's pretty significant. We are a recognized brand so people will know of Intel and we also have a pretty complex supply chain. Even though this is focused on the microprocessor where we have large control, based on our manufacturing of these parts, it was still a significant challenge for us and took us several years to accomplish. So for us to stand up and say it was worth it that we did it, that it can be done, is pretty powerful.
CORNISH: Carolyn Duran, she is the supply chain management director at Intel. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
DURAN: Thank you.
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Sub-zero temperatures broke records in the Midwest, the East and even the South. In Chicago it was minus 16 degrees, in Atlanta a record low of six degrees. And the temperature at Baltimore-Washington Airport hovered near zero.
Many people had to change their routines, even our reporter Margot Adler in New York City, where the low of four degrees broke a-century-old record.
MARGOT ADLER, BYLINE: I am standing in Bryant Park across the street from our office. Usually on a Tuesday, I walk a mile and a half to the gym. I took a cab. Usually I walk three and a half miles through the park to the office. I took a subway. And I'm wearing a huge eight foot long Harry Potter Gryffindor-colored scarf that I would probably be too embarrassed to wear on any other day.
But let's go over to the skating rink and see who's here.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Very cold.
ADLER: Very cold?
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Very cold.
ADLER: Where are you from?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: From Russia.
ADLER: Well, it's cold there, too, I would imagine.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Yes.
ADLER: So what brought you out here on this cold day? I notice there are only two people skating.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Yes. We decided to skate, but now I don't know. Will we do it? I don't know.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Yeah, it's a bit too cold today maybe to be getting that kind of wind on your face.
ADLER: That's Sariya Renna Benina(ph) and Richard Zara(ph), tourists from Russia and Australia. He says he came here to escape the summer heat. Now, these tourists, who were the only people I met in the park, are out in the cold by choice, but cities all over the Midwest, East and South are dealing with some people who don't have much choice.
Paul Coleman is the president of Maryhaven in Columbus, Ohio, an agency that serves the poor, the addicted, the homeless. In weather like this, Maryhaven attempts to convince the homeless to go to shelters and many do. But sadly, he says...
PAUL COLEMAN: There are some individuals whose mental and/or addictive illness is so severe that they will not come in even in brutally cold temperatures.
ADLER: At that point, he says, if someone clearly cannot care for themselves, Maryhaven will seek help from the Columbus police to get that person to warm shelter. Most people don't think of Nashville, Tennessee, as cold, but you'd be wrong. Yesterday, the temperature never got out of the single digits. One plumbing company reported 500 calls about frozen pipes.
SHAKIKA MATTHEWS: I never seen no weather like this, honestly.
ADLER: Shakika Matthews(ph) sent her kids to be with their father because there's no heat in her house.
MATTHEWS: We're trying to make contact with the landlord. He doesn't want to call back, but as we're standing here breathing in this cold air, that's how it feels inside my home.
ADLER: All together, more than 17,000 flights have been cancelled over the past week due to weather. More than 500 Amtrak passengers were stranded overnight because of blowing and drifting snow in North Central Illinois. Sixty-five miles of throughway were closed from Buffalo to the Pennsylvania border and many roads were closed in upstate New York were 50 mile an hour winds and blowing snow made travel impossible.
Pipes froze all over the country and many disabled people were simply shut in. PJM Interconnection is the electricity grid operator for more than 61 million people in 13 states and the District of Columbia. The company is asking the public to conserve electricity today because of the cold. PJM is urging people to set thermostats lower than usual if health permits to avoid using stoves, dishwashers and dryers in the morning and late afternoon and to turn off lights and appliances that people are not using.
Meteorologists say some 187 million people will feel the effects of what some are calling the polar vortex by the time it ends. Some places were colder than Antarctica. It will be warmer tomorrow and here in New York, people are expecting a Saturday in the mid-50s. Margot Adler, NPR News, New York.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. When you think of Asian cinema, flying swordsmen likely come to mind and flashy stunts. And that's because of one of the world's most influential film producers, Sir Run Run Shaw. Over half a century, he created a studio that spawned the Kung Fu genre and helped modernize the Asian film industry.
Shaw died Tuesday in Hong Kong at the age of 106. NPR's Neda Ulaby has this remembrance.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: A world without Run Run Shaw would've meant a world without Quentin Tarantino...
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ULABY: Or the Wu Tang Clan...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Raw, I'm going to give it to you with no trivia.
ULABY: Or "The Matrix."
(SOUNDBITE FROM FILM "THE MATRIX")
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: I know kung fu.
ULABY: That global pop culture vernacular came from a Hong Kong media mogul who dominated the industry for decades. When Run Run Shaw was born, China still had an emperor. His father was a textile tradesman, but that did not interest Shaw and three of his older brothers. They went from producing Chinese opera in the 1920s to running movie theaters all over Southeast Asia.
Then, the enterprising Shaw brothers had a problem, says Asian film expert Grady Hendricks(ph). There was not enough money to fill all the screens they owned and buying movies was expensive.
GRADY HENDRICKS: And the price Shaw always wanted was cheap and the only other price he preferred was super cheap.
ULABY: That's how Run Run Shaw got into the movie business. Musicals, historical dramas, epic romances with high production values and lavish budgets. Starting in the 1950s, he build Shaw Brothers into a Hong Kong monopoly with a studio called Movie Town, says Grady Hendricks.
HENDRICKS: And it housed film stages, special effects studios, photo processing plants, dormitories for their stars, anything you'd need to make a movie, that was at Movie Town.
ULABY: In Asia, the Shaw Brothers studio was like Paramount, Warner Brothers and MGM all rolled up into one. It handled every aspect of the business and it changed movies forever. Before the Shaw Brothers, the biggest Asian movie stars were women. But starting in 1967, Hendricks says they introduced macho martial arts films with a massive hit called "One-Armed Swordsman."
HENDRICKS: Guys with bare chests, you know, mutilation of the male body, the swordsman gets his arm cut off, these guys are greased down and slick.
ULABY: Social unrest rocked the globe and this story about questioning authority popped in pop culture everywhere.
HENDRICKS: It was angry young men kicking over the old men holding them back. It was nihilistic. It was bleak. I would say really almost all modern day action movies sort of spring from this fountain.
ULABY: All in all, the Shaw Brothers produced more than 800 movies. Unfortunately, Run Run Shaw dismissed the talents of both Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, but generally his business acumen was amazing. He developed one of the biggest TV networks in Asia. He built thousands of schools and universities across China and endowed a Chinese studies institute at Oxford University.
He bailed out the Macy's department store chain in 1991 and he produced a Hollywood science fiction classic with a robot anti-hero. When he dies, it's a reflection on artificial intelligence and the fragility of memory. The movie, "Blade Runner."
(SOUNDBITE FROM FILM, "BLADE RUNNER")
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: All those moments will be lost in time like tears and rain.
ULABY: Run Run Shaw was an unparalleled figure in world cinema and the global imagination. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
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Today's surprise vote in the Senate suggests a new twist in the longstanding debate over poverty, unemployment and income inequality. Democrats are sharpening their focus on these issues, as is the president, who'll tackle income inequality in his State of the Union address later this month. But a number of Republicans are now venturing on to this traditionally Democratic turf. And to find out why, we turn to NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Hi, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, Audie.
CORNISH: So, the Republican House recently voted to cut food stamps. And most lawmakers there didn't want to extend unemployment benefits. So why are they suddenly interested in poverty and income inequality?
LIASSON: Well, something is happening that's new, and it's that Republicans are actually acknowledging that there is an income inequality problem. And, more seriously for Republicans, who don't usually worry too much about inequality by itself, there's also an income mobility problem. It's harder and harder for people to move up the ladder. So that's why you're starting to hear Republicans like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich say this on CNN.
NEWT GINGRICH: I think every Republican should be concerned about inequality. I think when you have places where there are billionaires living in a city with 22,000 homeless children, anybody who has a sense of decency has to be concerned.
LIASSON: You also have Paul Ryan, the former vice presidential candidate and current budget chairman in the House. He's going to be talking about poverty on NBC on Thursday. Tomorrow, on the 50th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson's declaration of a war on poverty, Marco Rubio - Senator Rubio, possible presidential candidate in 2016, will be giving a speech about reforming federal poverty programs at the American Enterprise Institute. So there's a lot of ferment about this in the Republican Party.
CORNISH: But at this point, does the Republican Party have an anti-poverty policy agenda?
LIASSON: Not yet. There are ideas floating around. Mike Lee, the Tea Party-backed senator, wants to expand the earned income tax credit. Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, has been focusing on school choice. Rand Paul wants to create Jack Kemp-style economic freedom zones. And Marco Rubio wants to block grants in federal poverty programs, give the states more flexibility to run them. Here's how Rubio previewed his poverty speech on YouTube.
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: This isn't a time to declare big government's war on poverty a failure. Instead of continuing to borrow and spend trillions of dollars on government programs that don't work, what our nation needs is a real agenda that helps people acquire the skills they need to lift themselves out of poverty and to pursue the American dream.
LIASSON: Rubio goes on to say that this agenda, which he'll be laying out over the next several months, would create good paying, middle-class jobs, less government debt and it would, of course, repeal Obamacare.
CORNISH: And the politics around this issue have always been complicated. And we often hear a lot of bashing of big government welfare programs. Is this more of that or is there a sense that they're trying to appeal to poor and struggling middle class people?
LIASSON: Well, that's a good question because in the past, when Republicans have talked about the poor, with very few exceptions, it's been because they wanted to convince middle class voters that they weren't hard-hearted meanies. They didn't just care about everybody but the 47 percent. But now, Republicans have a real incentive to get some Hispanic and minority votes because the white vote is shrinking but also because income inequality and lack of mobility is a real political problem.
People are really worried, not so much about the poor. They're worried they might fall into poverty or their children might. So Republicans are trying to marry their traditional attacks on big government and government handouts in welfare to a more constructive approach to a very real economic problem. It's very much a work in progress, how to create a conservative vision that will improve economic mobility other than just telling the government to get out of the way.
CORNISH: Short time left, Mara, but President Obama has income inequality and raising the minimum wage at the center of his agenda. Where do Republicans stand on that?
LIASSON: Most Republicans are opposed to raising the minimum wage, although this is an idea that's extremely popular with voters, including Republicans. But it is against the free market, anti-government philosophy of the GOP.
CORNISH: That's NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Thank you.
LIASSON: Thank you.
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Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca made a surprise announcement today. He is resigning at the end of the month. A series of department scandals in the past few years and the prospect of a bruising re-election race may have been factors, as NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates reports.
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES, BYLINE: Ramrod straight, impeccably creased with the five stars of his rank glittering on his collar, Sheriff Lee Baca squinted into the sunlight and told reporters his decision to leave office after 15 years was exactly that, his decision.
SHERIFF LEE BACA: At the same time that I was elected to four terms, I will go out on my terms. I'm not going to seek reelection for a fifth term as sheriff and I will retire at the end of this month.
BATES: A visibly emotional Baca cited pride in his department and in the organization's determination to treat all citizens with dignity and respect. And while some of the deputies behind Baca grew teary as he spoke, Peter Eliasberg, legal director for the ACLU of Southern California, says it's about time. The ACLU has been criticizing Baca's administration of the county jails for years.
PETER ELIASBERG: Two years ago, when we released our 2011 jail report, we called for his resignation because we believed that the problems that were embodied in that report and other things that we'd said about what was happening in the jails showed that he was unwilling or unable to address the major problems that faced the department.
BATES: The scathing report said Baca's deputies routinely abused and terrorized the inmates in several of the county's jails, including the ancient overcrowded downtown jail. More recently, 18 deputies were indicted by federal authorities and after that, another scandal. The L.A. Times broke news that 80 deputies had been hired with virtually no screening. Some of that number were incompetent, others had convictions no one had asked about.
Former federal prosecutor and Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson says the continued revelations may have factored into Baca's decision to retire.
LAURIE LEVENSON: There has been an ongoing investigation by the federal authorities. Nobody has yet said that Lee Baca would be charged but this has had to be hanging over his head for a long time.
BATES: It's a sad end for a man who entered the sheriff's department 48 years ago because he felt the work was, in his words, a calling.
CONNIE RICE: Baca was a ray of sunlight because he was so upbeat, so humanitarian. He was really kind of like a social worker with a gun.
BATES: Civil rights attorney Connie Rice spent a fair amount of time suing Baca's sheriff's for civil rights violations but she says his personal integrity sometimes put him at odds with his colleagues. She says 20 years ago, Baca went up against a clique of rogue deputies who had abused residents of the L.A. suburb of Gardena.
RICE: You had a vigilante group of sheriffs and Sheriff Baca stood up against them at a time when nobody else in the department would help plaintiffs like my clients. He was by himself, it was a scary thing to do.
BATES: Loyola professor Laurie Levenson agrees Baca's heart was often in the right place but getting the almost 20,000 employees of his sprawling fiefdom to follow suit was an unmanageable task.
LEVENSON: I do believe that he did want fair treatment of the diverse communities, he wanted proper treatment in the jails. But I also don't think that he had the type of oversight or organization that could make that happen.
BACA: I turn 72 years old in May and I don't see myself as the future. I see myself as part of the past.
BATES: So, now, Lee Baca is stepping down. The primary election for his replacement will occur in March. And because there's no one with his name recognition, a critical factor in countywide elections, there will probably be run-offs in June. Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News.
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Before the start of this past National Football League season, more than 4,000 former players and their families settled a lawsuit that they had brought against the league over concussion-related injuries. Well, today, we're learning more details about what each player will receive as part of that multimillion-dollar settlement. NPR's Mike Pesca has been following the case and joins us to talk about it. Hi, Mike.
MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: Hello.
SIEGEL: What exactly came out today?
PESCA: Well, it was called - this is really a step, a tangible step in this process. It was called a - a memorandum of law, and it was to grant a preliminary approval of the class action settlement agreement. And it was really giving details, putting number dollar values correlated to injuries and conditions that NFL players - the suing players and their families have because of head injury and other head trauma.
SIEGEL: And what does all of this mean for the players who sued? What are the details?
PESCA: Right. So what the suit does is it lists a bunch of maladies, say ALS or Parkinson's disease or even people who died at a young age, and depending on how many years of service players had and how old the players are, gives a dollar amount. The highest would be an NFL player who is 45 years of age or under and played the requisite number of years who has ALS would get $4.5 million. Now, the older you get, the less money you'd get. And the reason for that is there's going to be just one lump sum payment for those who accept it.
So it's figured an 80-year-old person with ALS will just have fewer years to live. A younger person will need the money more. And as you go down the list, so ALS would pay the most, death pays $4 million, these are all the figures for player who played for awhile with - who are 45 and under. Parkinson's disease 3.5 million, level two dementia or Alzheimer's, 3 million, level one dementia, little bit less than that. And then they're at different scales.
SIEGEL: I gather the lawyers are to be paid $112 million. How did they arrive at that number?
PESCA: Well, this was asked at the - in the press conference that I listened in on, and there was a big boon of contention. And the lawyers said, you know, for a settlement this size, which is $675 million in compensatory fees and $75 million for testing and $10 million for research, that lawyers' fees of 112 million are pretty much in line with the total of about $900 million that the league will be paying out.
SIEGEL: Is there anyone, Mike, who is not covered by this suit?
PESCA: Yes. First of all, this suit sweeps in all retired players. So it doesn't have to be one of the players who was named in the suit or who brought suit. If you're in this category and you want in, you can get the money. Players who are playing now are not part of the suit. So that's an important point and that might be future litigation. And it's a different set of facts, I suppose. What the NFL knew and when they knew it is a different debate from the current generation of players to the players who retired before all this information about head injury and what the NFL knew about head injuries came out.
Now, as you said, Mike, this is a step...
Yeah.
SIEGEL: ...in the process. The settlement is not final. What are the next steps after this one?
PESCA: Well, the - like you said, there are almost 5,000 family members and players who brought suit. There were, you know, 300 different suits. Not everyone's going to agree. And players have the right to opt out. And if they do opt out in small number, the feeling is that the judge will go ahead and allow this settlement to proceed. But if a huge number of players don't want to settle - and already, there are some parallel suits. You know, famous player like Craig Morton brought a different suit. Randle - Antwaan Randle El brought a different suit.
So that could be one of the things that the judge would say, no, this settlement is going forward, or there can be another reason. The NFL is onboard with this. This is both parties signing and agreeing to it but the judge still has to approve it.
SIEGEL: OK. Thanks, Mike.
PESCA: You're welcome.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's Mike Pesca.
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The arctic air that put a freeze on the Midwest and Plains states moved east last night. Chicago was -11 overnight; Pittsburgh was -9. And the polar vortex extended deep into the south. Charlotte, N.C., plunged to 7 degrees, breaking a record set way back in the 1880s. Birmingham, Ala., hit the same low number on the thermometer. And residents of Atlanta, Ga., woke up to a 6-degree freeze this morning. That beat the record from the 1970s.
Many of those in the southern extremes of the deep freeze are finding themselves, and their houses, unprepared for single digits. HVAC technicians and plumbers are overwhelmed with calls from people whose heaters have failed or whose pipes have frozen. Melvin Davis, owner of Davis Plumbing in Atlanta, is one of the tradesmen dashing from call to call today.
MELVIN DAVIS: Well, the first call I had was around 5 o'clock in the morning, where some lady got up and flushed her toilet, and didn't have no water to fill it up back up. So, you know, you've got these crawl spaces here in Georgia that - they're old, some of them have holes in them, and you'll find a little spot that doesn't have ventilation. And then sure enough, that'll be where there's a pipe. Any pipe within two, three feet of this 6-degree temperature is - going to freeze it up. And they're starting to break now. So it's starting to warm up a little bit and break some of the other ones that are exposed to the sun.
CORNISH: So help us understand. The problem is not just that the pipes freeze but, of course, what happens as they start to defrost?
DAVIS: Yeah. It's really afterwards. I expect it to get really bad Thursday and Friday, when the freeze breaks. But I can tell you right now, I know I will work all through the weekend and probably into Tuesday or Wednesday, doing freeze breaks. So everybody I know, right now is completely covered up with calls.
And we had four heaters; of course, they're out. My buddies have got all their heaters out. So now, it's just a matter of going out with torches and trying to get space heaters where people have them.
CORNISH: And you mentioned heaters. Explain how that works, and also explain the torches.
DAVIS: What you can do is, you've got these little kerosene blower heaters; you know, forced air. And you force those into these basements - of course, unoccupied - and that'll thaw it out. But then you've got to either leave it there with the homeowner and come back to retrieve it, or get them to get some kind of fans and, you know, something to move some heat around in these basements. You know, it's going to get colder again tonight.
CORNISH: So, Melvin, what can people do once their pipes are frozen?
DAVIS: Once they're frozen, what I would do is, I would cut off the main and open everything up, if I didn't have any way to thaw them out with everything open. But you need, you have to have a way to release all that pressure because as soon as it starts expanding - and it will, when it warms up - that's when the breaks happen.
CORNISH: So Melvin, how did your own house hold up, or did you take some proactive action?
DAVIS: Well, you know, my house - like every other plumber I know - all the plumbing is falling apart in it. So we're used to it. But no, I actually, you know, I insulated mine. And I guess I'm OK for now. We'll see. But I have my fair share of plumbing problems, too.
CORNISH: And anyone on the way to fix them?
DAVIS: Actually, I usually hire another company.
(LAUGHTER)
CORNISH: Well, Melvin Davis, of Davis Plumbing in Atlanta, thanks so much for talking with us. And good luck taking care of your own pipes.
DAVIS: Thank you, ma'am. Have a good one.
CORNISH: And to those of you shivering down South, don't worry - warm weather is on the way. Atlanta is forecast to have temperatures close to 60 degrees this weekend.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay nearly $2.6 billion to settle charges that it failed to report suspicious activity in accounts held by Bernard Madoff. Madoff ran a giant Ponzi scheme for more than a decade. JPMorgan was his primary bank and U.S. officials say it willfully ignored evidence that Madoff was cheating his investors.
NPR's Jim Zarroli begins our coverage.
JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: U.S. attorney Preet Bharara says Bernie Madoff probably couldn't have gotten away with this Ponzi scheme for so long without the willful blindness of JPMorgan Chase.
PREET BHARARA: JPMorgan, because of its vantage point as Madoff's banker, had plenty of reasons to be uniquely suspicious about him. Warning signs abounded.
ZARROLI: Bharara says that billions of dollars flowed in and out of Madoff's accounts and none of it went to buy stock. Under the Bank Secrecy Act, banks are supposed to flag suspicious activity like that and tell the federal government about their concerns.
Jimmy Gurule is a former Treasury Department official who now teaches at Notre Dame Law School.
JIMMY GURULE: It goes back to a very fundamental principle, a very fundamental concept called Know Your Customer.
ZARROLI: U.S. officials say that people within JPMorgan gradually grew suspicious about Madoff and even warned British regulators that something was going on. And eventually, the bank pulled its own money out of Madoff's operation.
Again, Preet Bharara.
BHARARA: The bank connected the dots when it mattered to its own profit but was not so diligent when it came to its legal obligations.
ZARROLI: For its part, JPMorgan issued a statement today saying it could have done a better job pulling together various pieces of information and concerns about Madoff being expressed at the bank. But a spokesman said he did not believe any employee knowingly assisted Madoff, who's now serving a 150-year prison sentence.
Under the settlement, the bank agreed to pay $1.7 billion to the Treasury Department and more money will go to other regulators and to the private trustee representing victims.
Ron Stein is president of the Network for Investor Action and Protection, which represents a lot of Madoff victims. He says the fine paid by the bank is puny.
RON STEIN: That $1.7 billion is going back to victims who have lost, I don't know, somewhere between 17 and $20 billion in actual numbers, and $65 billion on paper, amounts to essentially a slap on the wrist.
ZARROLI: Stein also criticizes the government's decision to defer prosecution of the bank on two criminal charges for two years. If JPMorgan pays its fines and reforms its anti-money laundering program, it probably won't be prosecuted.
STEIN: We are basically sending a message to the banking industry that they can do whatever it is they want to do with relative impunity.
ZARROLI: For JPMorgan, this is only the latest in a long string of government investigations resulting in fines and settlements. In November, the bank paid more than $13 billion to settle allegations of mortgage abuse in the years leading up to the financial crisis. In those cases, just like in today's settlement, the bank has decided to pay its fine, promise to do better in the future and try to put the matter behind it.
Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
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In a separate action, the-court appointed trustee who's charged with recovering what he can for the investors who were fleeced by Bernard Madoff, today, announced a proposed settlement of his claims against JPMorgan. Trustee Irving Picard submitted two agreements to the bankruptcy court, agreements that add up to $543 million.
Joining us from New York are Mr. Picard and his counsel, David Sheehan. Welcome back to the program.
IRVING PICARD: Thank you very much.
SIEGEL: And first, before we get to your settlements today, do you expect all or most of that $1.7 billion Justice Department settlement to go to Madoff's victims? And if so, do you expect to be distributing it?
PICARD: Well, the first part of the question is the Justice Department has announced that it will go to the victims. And, no, I will not be distributing the funds. They'll be distributed by the special master who's been designated to distribute funds in the Madoff victim fund that's now, I guess, about $4 billion.
SIEGEL: Ah-ha. Well, now to your separate settlements with JPMorgan that were announced today. They're worth half a billion dollars, which certainly isn't chump change. But in 2010, you sued JPMorgan, which was Madoff's primary banker, for more than 10 times that amount, 6.4 billion. Why settle for what by your standards was about eight cents on the dollar?
DAVID SHEEHAN: Well, you know - this is David Sheehan. The $19 billion that we were suing for was the exact amount that we found was missing, that had been stolen from all of the customers. It was predicated on getting the $19 billion back. Well, as you know, we have collected now almost $10 billion ourselves - the government's collected this, Irving just noted four. So that means there's $5 billion left that we have to get. And so, at the end of the day, the $1.7 billion is a very significant outcome for the government, and obviously over half a billion dollars is significant for us.
So I think it's an appropriate judgment in connection with the overall damages that we were trying to recover.
SIEGEL: But what you're saying - if to read between the lines of what you've just said, asking $6.4 billion from JPMorgan was aiming rather high, you're saying. That was a big share of the overall amount, 19 billion, that you think was actually held by Madoff.
SHEEHAN: Well, I think that's right. And in fairness, we were on the cutting edge with regard to our complaint back in 2010, and many people criticized it. And we decided that given the difficulties associated with being on the cutting edge, as it were, that on balance we were better of taking the bird in the hand and taking the half a billion dollars and having that available to distribute.
SIEGEL: Are you saying you're on the cutting edge by going after a bank, by saying they should have known and they are responsible for the funds that they were taking in for Madoff?
SHEEHAN: I think, yes, that's absolutely true, that it's very rare that a trustee in Irving's situation actually sues the financial institution. I also think we were cutting edge because of the nature of our claims. Many people told us that we didn't have standing to bring them. We believe that it makes no sense whatsoever to suggest that a trustee who's trying to recover money for all these victims cannot go after financial institutions that are part and parcel of what we believe was the Ponzi scheme that was there.
If there was ever a case in which it should have been pressed, it seemed to us that Madoff was the case.
SIEGEL: How close would you both say your are to the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities being wrapped up, being completed, having recovered as much of the money as can possible be recovered?
PICARD: I would say that the case has probably a good three to five years to go.
SIEGEL: Three to five years?
SHEEHAN: If I could, this is David Sheehan, I'd just add to Irving's remark. I think you really have to look at it from the perspective of the litigation, which is very long standing. It's been around for three years - took the first two years to actually just to investigate the massive nature of this fraud. Yet, we still are at the beginning in a lot of ways of most of litigation.
I think you're going to see a lot more activity, such as you saw today, over the next 12 to 18 months because things are now coming to the fore in a way that will yield these kind of settlements. And I think you're going to see a lot more of that.
SIEGEL: Irving Picard, let me just try to draw you out a little bit away from the actual settlement today. I'm just curious, is it your sense that the atmosphere on Wall Street and the kinds of cases that have been brought - criminal and civil - that they all make it far less likely that a Bernard Madoff, somebody like him, could be managing a Ponzi scheme of the type and the size that he did?
PICARD: I certainly would hope so. But pick up the paper on a regular basis and you read about Ponzi schemes - smaller, of course. I think it's out there and I think that, you know, fraudsters will always try find a way to get around the regulators and stretch to the limits and do what they do.
SIEGEL: Well, Irving Picard, trustee, and counsel David Sheehan, thanks to both of you for talking with us about Madoff investments and the agreements you've submitted to the bankruptcy court today.
PICARD: Thank you.
SHEEHAN: Thank you for having us on.
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More than a hundred former New York City workers are being charged with faking psychiatric problems to get federal disability benefits. Most were police officers and firefighters. Prosecutors say some attributed their trumped-up problems to 9/11.
From members station WNYC, Kathleen Horan reports that more than $400 million may have been stolen in the scheme that began a quarter-century ago.
KATHLEEN HORAN, BYLINE: Investigators say the massive fraud was hatched by a few men. The participants were initially brought into the scam by two masterminds: 64-year-old retired cop Joseph Esposito or 61-year-old John Minerva, who was a disability consultant for the union representing city detectives. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. says the applicants were coached about how to describe symptoms of depression and anxiety, on their applications.
CYRUS VANCE JR.: Specifically, they instructed them on how to intentionally fail memory tests, how to dress when they presented themselves, and how to present their demeanor.
HORAN: Vance says nearly every application submitted to the Social Security Administration was written in the same handwriting and includes nearly identical descriptions, such as "I'm up and down all night long," or "I was a healthy, active and productive person." The main conspirators were then paid for their coaching with kickbacks of 20- to $50,000, mostly in cash. In spite of suspects' claims that they couldn't perform basic life skills like driving or grooming themselves, the scammers led very different lifestyles. At the press conference, D.A. Vance displayed blown-up photographs many suspects posted on social media sites of them participating in active, even adventurous lives.
VANCE JR.: Another former police officer who claimed he could not go outside because he was depressed and would have panic attacks, posted on Facebook this jet ski photo.
HORAN: The tanned suspect is smiling from ear to ear, and flipping off the camera with both hands. Another clue to the fraud was that some of the retirees were trying to renew gun permits. Police Department Chief Charles Campisi explains how that tipped off investigators.
CHARLES CAMPISI: They were submitting applications to the Social Security Administration that indicated that they were incapable of owning firearms and they should not have been issued firearms. However, when we dug deep and we checked the forms that they had filed with the police department in order to get pistol permits, they indicated that they were of sound mind and were able legally to posses these permits.
HORAN: Of the alleged lies, claims by some that they suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental trauma as a result of the rescue and recovery efforts after the 9/11 attacks were the most damning. NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton says he's disgusted.
BILL BRATTON: The idea that many of them chose the events of 9/11 to claim as the basis for their disability brings further dishonor to themselves.
HORAN: D.A. Vance says the list of 106 suspects is likely to grow as more people are arrested. Defendants in the case are only beginning to be arraigned, so no attorneys have come forward with a defense. But Patrick Lynch, head of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association - the largest police union in the city - is cautioning a rush to judgment. In a written statement, he says while he doesn't condone the filing of false claims, everyone should recognize that there are serious psychological illnesses resulting from work performed by first-responders, and that benefits are essential to the very survival of those who have been truly incapacitated.
For NPR News, I'm Kathleen Horan in New York.
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The U.S. Olympic ski team lost one of its biggest stars today. Gold medallist Lindsey Vonn announced that she will miss the games in Sochi next month because of injuries. NPR's Ted Robbins looks at what the defending Olympic champion's exit means for her and for her team.
TED ROBBINS, BYLINE: Lindsey Vonn blew out her right knee almost a year ago during a Super-G race in Austria.
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UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Lindsey Vonn over the top, and she is down heavily. Lindsey Vonn.
ROBBINS: Her skis flew off at high speed as she tumbled down the course. Vonn was airlifted and underwent multiple surgeries. Amazingly, she made it back to competition, injured her knee again and made it back. She explained her fortitude to NBC Universal Sports two months ago.
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LINDSEY VONN: I've been injured many, many times in my career, but it's always been situations where I can fight through pain.
ROBBINS: Then a few days after that interview, she injured her knee a third time. Today, Lindsey Vonn decided she just isn't ready for the Olympics. She released a statement saying she is, quote, "devastated to announce I will not be able to compete in Sochi. My knee is just too unstable to compete at this level."
GRAYSON SCHAFFER: It's not a surprise.
ROBBINS: Grayson Schaffer is a writer and editor at Outside magazine.
SCHAFFER: Lindsey Vonn's career has been plagued by injuries, you know, ahead of the Olympics.
ROBBINS: At the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, she injured her shin, yet still became the first American woman to win the Olympic downhill. Then she crashed in two other events.
SCHAFFER: She just seems to sort of have this Olympic curse. And, you know, I think this probably was her last chance at redemption, you know, Olympic redemption.
ROBBINS: That's because no woman has ever won a World Cup race, let alone an Olympic race after 32. Vonn is 29 now and would be 33 at the next Olympics. Grayson Schaffer says Vonn's withdrawal pushes two other American women into the spotlight. Julia Mancuso is a proven winner. She actually has more total Olympic medals than Vonn.
SCHAFFER: And that's because, you know, when it comes to getting into the starting gate at the Olympics where the pressure is the highest, she seems to be the one who can deliver under pressure.
ROBBINS: But Julia Mancuso has long skied in Lindsey Vonn's celebrity shadow. Vonn's boyfriend, just an aside, is Tiger Woods. The other U.S. women's skier to watch is Mikaela Shiffrin. She's 18 years old, and just two days ago, she won a World Cup slalom race in Italy. Still, Mikaela Shiffrin showed her respect for Lindsey Vonn on "The David Letterman Show" last year.
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DAVID LETTERMAN: You won't be competing with her for a spot on the Olympic team, will you?
MIKAELA SHIFFRIN: I hope not.
LETTERMAN: Yeah. Are you friends with...
SHIFFRIN: It doesn't bode well for me.
ROBBINS: Well, now it'll be up to Mikaela Shiffrin, Julia Mancuso and whoever replaces Lindsey Vonn to prove themselves. No question the U.S. Olympic ski team has lost some star power but maybe it hasn't lost too much ski power. Ted Robbins, NPR News.
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Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson declared unconditional war on poverty.
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CORNISH: The poverty rate was 19 percent at the time. It hasn't been that high since.
SIEGEL: Johnson's war led to government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start and food stamps. Still, today more than 46 million Americans, around 15 percent, are poor. Many of them live in the Appalachian coal mining region of Eastern Kentucky. President Johnson once traveled there to promote his anti-poverty campaign. NPR's Pam Fessler takes us there today.
PAM FESSLER, BYLINE: Colby Kirk is the kind of young man who would make a parent proud: polite, smart, focused. He's a junior at the University of Kentucky studying to be a financial analyst.
COLBY KIRK: I'm really interested in, like, assessing risk and doing cash flows. It's not something most people I guess are interested in but it's always struck my fancy, so...
FESSLER: He'd also like to come back here someday to his hometown of Inez, Kentucky, nestled in the mountains of Appalachia. We're sitting in the stands of the high school football field beneath one of those mountains, not far from where President Johnson came in 1964. Kirk says he knows things are a lot better here than they were back then.
KIRK: You know, paved roads, everyone's got a car. There's a half of a McDonald's right there.
FESSLER: He points to a nearby gas station. Still...
KIRK: There's not really any opportunities for college grads back here unless you make your own. Really hard to do that if you're a financial analyst.
MICHELLE HARLESS: I would say one of our biggest exports is, you know, bright young minds.
FESSLER: Michelle Harless is the guidance counselor at the local high school. She says she sees it all the time, the best and the brightest leave Martin County, and those who stay and don't go to college often end up in dead-end minimum wage jobs.
HARLESS: Twenty years ago, they went to the coal mines. My dad graduated high school and went to the coals mines. He is a maintenance supervisor in West Virginia, and I'll never make as much money as he does.
FESSLER: Even though she has a college degree. But those high-paying jobs are disappearing like an early morning fog. Hundreds of miners here have been laid off recently, and there are no jobs to replace them.
KAYLA: Big Sandy Area Community Action, this is Kayla(ph). May I help you?
FESSLER: Which means lots of people here have had to turn for help to some of the many government programs that were spawned by the war on poverty: food stamps, Medicaid, heating assistance for their homes. The poverty rate in Martin County is lower than it was when President Johnson was here. But it's still 35 percent, more than twice the national average.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: OK, ma'am. You're here to get help with kerosene lantern today. Is that correct?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: And you cite that this is your address as shown on your service (unintelligible)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Yes, it is.
FESSLER: Today, more than half the income in this county comes from government payments rather than from wages and salaries.
MIKE HOWELL: In my opinion, you can never get out of poverty if you don't have a job.
FESSLER: Mike Howell runs this community action program. He says many more people here would be struggling without the war on poverty but that it's only helped them so much.
HOWELL: And it can't just be minimum-wage jobs. It can't be jobs that just will barely get you by. But in order to get those jobs, people have to have the education to be able to do those jobs.
FESSLER: His program provides some of that education and training. But getting funding is a constant challenge. And there have to be jobs to fill. So this area, like many across the country, is grappling with how to attract new businesses. State and local leaders say they need more highways and broadband access to bring technology, tourism and factory jobs to this isolated region.
MIKE DUNCAN: People in Martin County perform very well. We have very high-skilled laborers.
FESSLER: Mike Duncan is chairman and CEO of a local bank and also a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. He's concerned about all the talent leaving and has offered internships to students like Colby Kirk in the hopes that they, like him, will eventually settle in Inez. Duncan says the war on poverty has been a mixed blessing for this area's economic growth. It's improved health and lifted many Appalachians out of poverty.
DUNCAN: But there've been some problems too. There's in some instances a lack of self-reliance. I think the entitlement mentality has done away with some things that I consider very strong Appalachian values. Sometimes it's more difficult to get casual laborers today.
FESSLER: Especially, he says, for lower-paying jobs, although others complain that those jobs pay too little to live on. Colby Kirk hopes that people here find a solution soon. He says a local newspaper editor used to ask one question repeatedly - what will we do when the coal is gone? Kirk thinks too few people here took that question seriously until now.
Do you think the country needs another war on poverty?
KIRK: I think we should re-evaluate our war strategy at least.
FESSLER: He thinks today it's not so much about feeding families, as it was 50 years ago, but about giving young people hope. Pam Fessler, NPR News.
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SIEGEL: The music is Chopin. It's his first piano concerto. The pianist is Rafal Blechacz, a 28-year-old from Poland who is in our New York studio today because of a prestigious award that he's won. It's the Gilmore Artist Award. It's given every four years to an exceptional pianist, $300,000 to be dispersed over four years.
Rafal Blechacz, welcome and congratulations on winning this.
RAFAL BLECHACZ: Thank you very much.
SIEGEL: And tell me, when did you learn that you had won the Gilmore Award?
BLECHACZ: I was in Berlin. It was in July last year. I got an email from Dan Gustin, the director of Gilmore Festival. He wrote me that he would like to have a meeting with me so I supposed that the meeting was going to be about my next concerts at Gilmore Festival in 2014. But when I heard the news, I was extremely happy because I didn't expect this award.
SIEGEL: Tell me about you and playing the piano. You're 28 now. You won the Chopin competition in Warsaw when you were just 20. How young were you when you started playing and when you figured out you were going to be a pianist?
BLECHACZ: I was five years old when I started to play the piano, but I must tell you that my first fascination was the organ music and I really wanted to be the organist, not the pianist, when I was a child. So my memories from my childhood are connected with going to the church and listening to the organ music. I was absolutely fascinated by the huge sound of the organ.
But when I started to play more and more piano, I realized that this is the right instrument for me so I wanted to play more and more Bach compositions and Mozart and Chopin, of course.
SIEGEL: I should explain to people that when you won the Chopin competition in 2005 in Warsaw, you did the equivalent of not just winning a pentathlon, but winning every single event in the pentathlon. One event is the polonaise and you have a CD out in which you play the Chopin polonaises and here's a bit of you playing one, one which I think is fitting for a triumphant day when you've won a big prize.
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SIEGEL: These pieces obviously mean a great deal to you.
BLECHACZ: Yeah, it's a very famous piece, it's the polonaise from my last album for Deutsche Grammophon. I decided to record seven polonaises because I really wanted to show a specific, very typical Polish written, and the same we have in the mazurkas. You know...
SIEGEL: A rhythm, a Polish rhythm.
BLECHACZ: Yes, a Polish rhythm, the folk music was a big inspiration for Chopin so I am very happy that I can show the specific type and the specific atmosphere of the Polish dance.
SIEGEL: Have you listened to many recordings, whether they're Rubinstein recordings or other people's recordings of these pieces and are there some which stand out to you as an ideal or do you want to approach them more freshly?
BLECHACZ: I have many recordings of Rubinstein and it's a big inspiration for me. There are so many energies, so many political fragments. And the second pianist, one of my favorites, is Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, the Italian pianist and I love his (unintelligible), his (unintelligible) sonatas, his articulation. I think that he combines the intellectual aspects and emotional aspects in the interpretation very naturally.
So it's absolutely amazing for me. But I think that the most important thing in the interpretation is to find your own way on the particular piece and to find individual view on the particular musical work.
SIEGEL: How does that happen? That is, I assume that there are Chopin pieces that you've been playing since the time that you were 12 or 13 and you've been at it now for 15 years. Have you always played a piece in your own way or does that happen after you've played it a hundred times or when do you find your own way through a Chopin piece?
BLECHACZ: I think it's a very natural process. Of course, the interpretation is changing when I play the same repertoire in different concert halls and different acoustics, on different pianos, on different instruments. I think the interpretation is changing all the time.
SIEGEL: But when you say it depends on the hall that you're playing in as well, because that's how you're hearing it and you're responding to the music that you're playing?
BLECHACZ: Yes. Sometimes I have to change some elements in the interpretation. For example, the (unintelligible), the articulation because sometimes when I play in the Italian theaters where the acoustic is very dry, I have to change some (unintelligible) in the interpretation. When I play in the different concert halls with different acoustics, I have to think about different elements.
So sometimes it's very important to talk with the tuner before the concert about the specific intonation to the specific repertoire, to the specific acoustic of the concert hall. It's very important.
SIEGEL: Does winning the award, the Gilmore Award, does it alter your plans for the next few years?
BLECHACZ: Well, this is a great award so now I am thinking about my next projects. Maybe this award help me with buying a new piano. I have a wonderful piano in my house, but this is the Steinway Model B. I would love to have Model D, the concert piano. So maybe this award can help. After my winnings in 2005, I bought an extremely good piano, Model B, in Hamburg because I realized that this is the best.
I really want this, too, to play more Debussy and the colors and different shades of the sounds. It's very important in this music so I needed a very good instrument and now I can study the sound, which is very important in impressionism but also in Chopin's music. I think very interesting is the middle part of the first polonaise.
There is an extremely beautiful melody, the harmonies are very, very special.
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BLECHACZ: And very important for me was to create many different colors of the sound in this section so I was very happy that I could study this repertoire on my new piano. It was very important before the recording. And also, extremely beautiful and amazing piece for me is the last polonaise, "Polonaise Fantasy Op. 61." There are so many improvised fragments and poetical fragments and I really wanted to create totally different colors.
SIEGEL: Colors, different colors.
BLECHACZ: Colors of the sound, yes.
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SIEGEL: Rafal Blechacz, thank you very much for talking with us.
BLECHACZ: Thank you. Thank you very much.
SIEGEL: Rafal Blechacz, who spoke to us from New York, is the winner of the 2014 Gilmore Artist Award.
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Hundreds of thousands of marine mammals are injured or killed each year by fishermen around the world. And because most seafood in the U.S. is imported, the fish on American tables isn't as dolphin-friendly as you might expect. Well now, under pressure from conservation groups, federal regulators are working to change that, as NPR's Richard Harris reports.
RICHARD HARRIS, BYLINE: There was a time, more than 40 years ago, when U.S. fishermen killed millions of dolphins while fishing for tuna. After a public backlash, fishermen figured out how to minimize that so-called by-catch. Not so much for fishermen in other parts of the world, who continue to kill not just dolphins but seals and even whales. So conservation groups like the Center for Biological Diversity have been pressing for stricter standards on imports.
Zak Smith, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, says new regulations are now in the works.
ZAK SMITH: So we thought this would be a good time to look at, well, what benefit we would get from enforcement of this; what are the species at harm; what regions of the world are particularly problematic for marine mammal by-catch?
HARRIS: NRDC has just released its analysis of this. It finds many species of dolphin, seal and sea lion at risk, even endangered species like the North Atlantic right whale.
SMITH: It is at risk from Canada's lobster and crabbing practices. There's the New Zealand sea lion, Mediterranean sperm whale...
HARRIS: Manatees, rare porpoises - the list goes on. And the global tally of injuries and deaths due to fishing practices is high. Biologists have estimated that 650,000 marine mammals are killed or injured each year. Of that, 300,000 are dolphins and related cetaceans.
SMITH: Three hundred fifty thousand is pinnipeds, so you've got your sea lions and seals who are impacted there as well.
HARRIS: Smith says under federal law - the Marine Mammal Protection Act - fish imported into the United States must meet the same high standards for protecting those animals as is required of local fishermen. It's a black-and-white requirement, and he says it's not simply enough for a country to have rules on the books.
SMITH: You have to prove it. And the only way you can prove it, like the way we prove it in the United States, is that you have an observer program that goes out on the fishing vessels and does a sample, and looks at how many marine mammals are being captured.
HARRIS: That's not common practice elsewhere in the world, and it's not cheap. But Rebecca Lent, executive director of the federal Marine Mammal Commission, says there's a lot at stake.
REBECCA LENT: I think for certain species in certain regions, it is a threat that can lead to extinction.
HARRIS: Over the years, the United States has made progress in reducing this worldwide toll; for example, by cracking down on imports of tuna that were caught with practices that kill dolphins, and by pressing nations to stop the indiscriminate practice of drift-net fishing.
LENT: The rest of the story, as U.S. imports have quadrupled, has been: What about these other products that we're importing?
HARRIS: Lent says it will take time for the federal fisheries agency to develop those new rules. And she expects them to be phased in gradually so fishermen around the world will have time to adjust. Nina Young, who is working on those new regulations at NOAA fisheries, says the issue is one of fairness to American fishermen who are already following the rules.
NINA YOUNG: Clearly, our objective here is to level the playing field for our domestic fishermen.
HARRIS: And while rules for imports can certainly have an impact, Young says they won't stop the killing of marine mammals.
YOUNG: There are a lot of animals that are killed in artisanal fisheries, where the product is never exported into the United States.
HARRIS: In particular, subsistence fishermen in Asia, who string gill nets along the shore to catch fish and whatever else happens into those nets.
YOUNG: Our ability through this regulation, to address that particular issue is severely limited.
HARRIS: But tougher import rules will help, and help Americans shop for seafood with less worry about whether a seal or dolphin or a whale was collateral damage.
Richard Harris, NPR News.
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And I'm Roberts Siegel. We begin this hour with a new twist in the war in Syria. Rebels are now fighting other rebels in the north of the country. A fractious collection of rebel groups has come together to challenge Islamist extremists who are linked to al-Qaida. Those extremists, many of them experienced fighters, were once welcomed by rebels and civilians alike in the revolt to unseat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
But their brutal tactics have instilled fear and resentment. As NPR's Deborah Amos reports, this rebel on rebel fighting has now spread to Raqqah, a provincial capital and extremist stronghold.
DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE: To understand why Syrian rebel groups turned against the al-Qaida affiliate known as ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, you just have to talk to Syrian activists. They were the first victims of al-Qaida's ruthless ways, says journalist Adnan Haddad(ph) who fled Syria after the group targeted him.
ADNAN HADDAD: I think it's about, you know, feeling afraid of being tortured and feeling afraid of getting kidnapped.
AMOS: You were kidnapped.
HADDAD: For three days, yeah.
AMOS: Why do you think they kidnap journalists?
HADDAD: Just, you know, a typical al-Qaida kind of thinking, you know. They just don't want activists and journalists to cover the violations they commit.
AMOS: But the violations became well known after ISIS took over Raqqah, the only major city in rebel control, pushing other rebels out of the city last May. Chris Looney(ph), a Washington-based Syrian analyst, says ISIS made a dramatic gesture on the first day of its rule.
CHRIS LOONEY: On May 14, when ISIS came and took control of Raqqah, it executed three men in the town square in front of hundreds of people. And that really announced its presence in a very brutal way and set the tone for how ISIS would govern in Raqqah.
AMOS: Back then, ISIS allowed a Syrian media center to post a video of the execution, when armed fighters in face masks forced their captives to their knees and shot them at point-blank range.
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AMOS: Soon after this event, ISIS created its own media organization, publishing a newspaper and releasing videos on YouTube. That's when local journalists started to disappear, kidnapped by ISIS, says journalist Rami Jarah(ph). He operated a radio station in Raqqah until ISIS seized the broadcasting equipment and arrested one of his reporters last seen in ISIS custody.
RAMI JARAH: He was badly beaten and bruised from head to toe and that he was left only in his underwear and he'd basically been tortured.
AMOS: ISIS moved swiftly to end any dissent in Raqqah and across northern Syria, he says, kidnapping more than 60 citizen journalists.
JARAH: I can tell you that Raqqah now there's a total absence of any activism or real citizen journalists.
AMOS: Everybody's gone.
JARAH: Everybody's gone from Raqqah.
AMOS: Now, Jarah and other activists have set up media outlets across the border in southern Turkey.
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AMOS: This is Radio ANA, broadcasting news and call-in shows from a studio near the Syrian border.
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AMOS: Jarah and his co-hosts tell listeners they're reporting the real news inside Syria. This is a media battle for hearts and minds in territory controlled by ISIS. But they're up against a well-funded transnational organization, says Chris Looney. These are Sunni extremists from Iraq, later joined by thousands of radicals from around the world.
The war in Syria, he says, has given ISIS renewed strength and safe havens along the Syrian/Iraqi border. Looney and other analysts say that ISIS funds its Syrian operation from money collected in Iraq. Estimates vary from 5 to $8 million every month.
LOONEY: It's mostly through extortion, also criminal activity.
AMOS: And Looney adds what ISIS has done with that cash is ensure its control of Raqqah's economy.
LOONEY: Citizens have become dependent on ISIS for the provision of goods and services. They feel like if they can provide for the community and establish themselves as the only group that Raqqans are able to turn to, it will generate some support for them among the community.
AMOS: Much of that support vanished this week as the new rebel coalition challenged ISIS.
In the first days of the fighting, rebels captured an ISIS prison in Raqqah and released 50 captives posting this video. But in recent days, ISIS has mounted a counterattack to defend their most important base of operations and today, residents report a city without power or water, the hospital abandoned and bodies lying in the street. Deborah Amos, NPR News.
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Sue Monk Kidd, author of the best selling novel "The Secret Life of Bees," takes on both slavery and feminism in her new book. "The Invention of Wings" is a story told by two women. One is a slave, the other her reluctant owner. One strives her whole life to be free. The other rebels against her slave-owning family and becomes a prominent abolitionist and early advocate for women's rights. As NPR's Lynn Neary reports, the story is based on the life of a real historical figure.
LYNN NEARY, BYLINE: Sue Monk Kidd grew up in Georgia in the 1950s and '60s. As a white teenager, she watched as the civil rights movement played out around her. These experiences shaped her, she says, and still pull at her as a writer.
SUE MONK KIDD: I think it's part of my history. It's part of who I am. I can't explain exactly why it lives within me for so long and so passionately but race matters to me. Racial equality matters very much to me, as does gender. There's something about these kinds of social injustices that go to the deep of me.
NEARY: So when Kidd first heard of Sarah Grimke, she was intrigued. In the years before the Civil War, Grimke and her sister, Angelina, left the comforts of their wealthy family's home in Charleston, South Carolina to travel the country, speaking out against slavery. In doing so, they also had to face stiff opposition to the idea that women had a right to speak out at all on any issue.
KIDD: Gender and race got very entwined in the 19th century as abolition broke out, and then women began to want the right to speak about it. I think it was controversial, even among abolitionists, you know. And the Grimke sisters were told to sort of pipe down. They refused to do that. They said, we could help the slaves so much more if you would give us rights to speak and act.
NEARY: Kidd decided to make Sarah Grimke's story the basis of her novel. But she needed another equally compelling character.
KIDD: I knew from the very beginning that I couldn't tell the story of Sarah Grimke without telling a comparable story in substance to that of an enslaved character. I wanted both worlds to be there. I didn't want it to be just one side, looking at it through one lens.
NEARY: In one of Grimke's journals, Kidd read about a young slave named Hetty who had been given to Grimke as a young girl. Kidd transformed that story into an incident that occurs at the beginning of the novel. The fictional Sarah is presented with a slave as a gift on her 11th birthday, a gift she tries desperately to refuse. Here, Kidd reads from the book.
KIDD: (Reading) I struggled to pry the words from my mouth before she exited. Mother, please, let me - let me give Hetty back to you. Give Hetty back, as if she was mine after all. As if owning people was as natural as breathing. For all my resistance about slavery, I breathed that foul air, too. Your guardianship is legal and binding. Hetty is yours, Sarah. There is nothing to be done about it.
NEARY: Sarah and Hetty's stories are told in alternating chapters. Sarah is trapped by the limitations of her role as the daughter of a socially prominent family. Unable stop the cruelty against slaves which she witnesses, Sarah develops a stutter. She becomes a misfit and social outcast until she begins speaking out against slavery.
Hetty, who is also known as Handful, the name her own mother gave her, finds ways to defy the system that enslaves her. At times, she suffers terribly as a result. Kidd said she did not want Hetty to be seen as a passive victim.
KIDD: We need to understand that so many slaves resisted. They fought. They freed themselves. They escaped. They worked in subversive ways. I mean, it was not a passive, victimized situation all the time.
NEARY: Sarah and Hetty's lives are entwined whether they like it or not. Their feelings for each other are deep and complicated, as Hetty explains at one point in the novel.
KIDD: (Reading) People say love gets fouled by a difference big as ours. I didn't know for sure whether Miss Sarah's feelings came from love or guilt. I didn't know whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used her. It was never a simple thing.
NEARY: Kidd says she knew it was important not to romanticize the relationship between Sarah and Hetty.
KIDD: Because it is complicated and it's disfigured by so many things: guilt, estrangement and defiance. And yet, in the midst of all of this disfigurement, they cared about each other. And that's very complicated. Can love really exist in a situation like this? What kind of love? What form of love? What kind of a relationship is really possible when you have this vast injustice between them? And can it find redemption? Can you find your way to some sort of uneasy sisterhood?
NEARY: Kidd says trying to get the relationship between Sarah and Hetty right used to keep her up at night. And when she wrote the last sentence, she burst into tears. She couldn't believe she had actually taken on the subject of slavery and managed to write a book about it. Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.
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A small Canadian company has used genetic engineering to create an apple that doesn't go brown when you slice it. It's waiting for approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture but it faces opposition. And some apple producers are worried that this new product will taint the apple's wholesome, all-natural image.
NPR's Dan Charles is here to talk about this. And, Dan, first of all, does the world really need an apple that doesn't brown?
DAN CHARLES, BYLINE: I'm sure we would do just fine without it. But I have heard of children who will not eat an apple slice that's turned brown at all. And food service companies that serve fresh cut apples, they actually go ahead and treat them with chemicals to make sure they keep looking fresh.
I talked to the president of the company that's making these new apples, these Arctic Apples. It's Okanagan Specialty Fruits in British Columbia, Canada. His name is Neal Carter and he is banking on the idea that those fruit service companies will be interested because they won't have to buy those chemicals.
NEAL CARTER: You know, right now to make fresh cut apple slices and put them in a bag, 35, 40 percent of the cost is the antioxidant treatment they use to make it. So you could make a fresh cut apple slice 30 percent cheaper.
CORNISH: So explain how the Arctic Apple works. How do they do this?
CHARLES: It's interesting. There is an enzyme in the apple that actually produces the browning reaction. And what they did was, the scientists inserted extra copies of the genes that produce that enzyme. And instead of making more, the extra copies actually provoked the apple to shut down action of all those genes - so no enzyme, no browning. Now, the thing is the apple would eventually still rot but it's that immediate browning reaction that stops.
CORNISH: Now how soon could this actually show up in stores?
CHARLES: It's not exactly clear. The USDA has allowed some test plots. It studied the apple and released assessment that says this looks harmless to us. We see no reason to keep regulating it. People are welcome to comment on that assessment and thousands of people have. Most of the comments say: I don't trust it, I don't want this approved. So it's up to the USDA whether to go ahead and approve this and that could happen within a few months. Even after that it would take a few years before there were lots of Arctic apples for sale.
CORNISH: But given the opposition you've described here. It seems like it would be risky for this company to bring it to market.
CHARLES: That is worrying a lot of other people in the apple industry. Some industry groups have could out against this apple, saying it would create hassles. They'd have to keep the genetically-engineered apples separate from the regular apples. And they worry that consumers who don't like GMOs will just be turned off of apples entirely. Now, how many would that be? Not clear.
Neal Carter, the company's president, says they've done market research. They've put actual apples in front of people and asked them: What do you think, would you buy this apple?
CARTER: Typically, it's about 80/20. Eighty percent say fantastic, you know, bring it on. And 20 percent say, hmm, I don't think if like genetic engineering. But they all eat it. Even if they were a naysayer that never was going to eat at any GM fruit, they will eat a slice. Or it's not like we have to ask them to eat a slice. They will ask if they can eat a slice.
CHARLES: So Carter is so much worried about the consumers. He's worried about the grocery stores, whether they will stock this apple because they worried about alienating any consumers, even that 20 percent. They don't want to lose any of them.
CORNISH: Dan Charles, our agribusiness gumshoe. Dan, thanks so much.
CHARLES: Nice to be here.
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The New York Times today unveiled a major redesign of its website. Readers will never again have to click to read the second half of a story, and the site is crafted to appeal to a mobile audience. As NPR's David Folkenflik reports, the Times' digital redesign has also embraced a somewhat controversial shift in journalism - some posts on the site that look similar to articles reported and written by people working for the paper's advertisers.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: The practice is sometimes called native advertising or branded content. The idea is that there is content - maybe in the form of an article, maybe something else - created by or for an advertiser. Stephanie Losee is a former Fortune magazine writer who is now computer-maker Dell's managing editor of global communications. She oversees a stable of writers and identifies the engine driving this dynamic.
STEPHANIE LOSEE: Brands have the privilege now of speaking directly to their audiences.
FOLKENFLIK: In the digital age, Losee says, advertisers have a lot of options.
LOSEE: Brands no longer had to rely exclusively on traditional publishers to gather audiences around content. We weren't calling it content at the time but that's what they were doing so that brands could advertise to those audiences.
FOLKENFLIK: Now, Dell and other corporations will pay for articles they have commissioned to appear on The New York Times site - advertising intended to burnish awareness of a company rather than hawk its wares. This is no longer a luxury or an experiment, other papers are already in the game. Newspapers have lost ground to Twitter and Facebook and other social media platforms where sponsored tweets and postings appear as part of the user's daily stream. For The Times, the move has required great care. Michael Zimbalist is the senior vice president for advertising products at The New York Times.
MICHAEL ZIMBALIST: We've put a lot of attention into how we're going to make it really clear to you as a reader of The New York Times that that story is, in fact, coming from a brand. And that begins with the name. We arrived at the name Paid Post, which we're very happy about.
FOLKENFLIK: The word paid underscoring that someone paid for it, the word post suggesting it's content that could be worthwhile. The material from Dell runs in similar font as the paper's articles. But as Zimbalist says, it's very clearly marked with corporate logos and the legend paid for and posted by Dell at the top of the page.
ZIMBALIST: Expertise can come from anywhere and great stories can come from all kinds of unexpected places. One of those places will be from brands.
FOLKENFLIK: There are risks to imbedding corporate content, as The Atlantic found when it posted a sponsored article from the Church of Scientology that celebrated its history and airbrushed the many controversies that have dogged the organization. It seemed inconsistent with the nature of the magazine, which promised to take greater care differentiating original and paid material.
Critics say that ambiguity is the point for many advertisers who are willing to pay if they can borrow the reputation of the news sites. But take BuzzFeed. The site's founder, Jonah Peretti, says his company's approach is inspired by fashion magazines like Vogue or the Super Bowl. Without the ads, he says, they'd be a lot less entertaining.
JONAH PERETTI: Now, some people, I think, actually don't like the fact that our ads are good quality or that the ads are interesting, particularly when you think about the period where newspapers were mostly monopolies. And they could make huge amount of money without ever really spending any time or attention on the advertising.
FOLKENFLIK: BuzzFeed's digital traffic now far exceeds that of The New York Times or CNN, and sometimes sponsored posts go viral, too. But a reader quickly skimming them might skip by the small corporate logo and the label stating they were written by a, quote, "BuzzFeed partner." There are echoes here of past print advertising approaches. For example, some regional papers farm out their real estate sections to marketing employees rather than reporters. Foreign governments have paid for special sections to appear in newspapers touting their countries. As Zimbalist of The New York Times says, what's old is new again.
David Folkenflik, NPR News, New York.
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Furnaces all over the country are working harder this week, burning more fuel because of the cold snap. And that jump in demand is boosting fuel prices. The cost of natural gas especially is way up in the Northeast. In recent years, drillers have been producing more gas than the country can use. That changed when temperatures plunged, as NPR's Jeff Brady reports.
JEFF BRADY, BYLINE: Part of the problem is getting the gas from where it's produced, in places like Western Pennsylvania, to where it's used; population centers such as New York and Boston. Sometimes there just aren't enough pipelines to meet the demand. In those cases, utilities and other users start bidding up prices. At one point, prices for gas flowing into New York City jumped nearly tenfold over average winter prices.
Anne Swedberg, with the firm Bentek Energy, says utilities were willing to pay the steep prices for one important reason.
ANNE SWEDBERG: You can't let Grandma freeze and so they are required to continue to purchase gas to maintain their systems at whatever price, so that they can, you know, they can keep the lights on for Grandma and the heat on for Grandma.
BRADY: Swedberg says analysts are still sorting out what happened when prices reached their peak. In addition to pipeline constraints, she says it appears something called freeze-off was a problem.
SWEDBERG: The freeze-off is where the gas is not able to get out of the well to enter the pipeline. So they're actually freezing in the well or the pipeline.
BRADY: In parts of the country where natural gas isn't available, propane is often used for heating and this year it's been in short supply, too. Jeff Petrash is the vice president and general counsel for the National Propane Gas Association. He says there are a few reasons for the supply problems first of all...
JEFF PETRASH: This year we're actually having winter. In the last several years, winters have been warmer than normal. And therefore, the needs for all heating fuels - fuel oil, propane, natural gas, et cetera - have been significantly higher this year.
BRADY: Petrash says farmers in the Midwest also need a lot of propane and this year the crops came in later than normal.
PETRASH: Most people don't realize that huge amounts of propane are used in grain drying. So we had a large and later than normal grain harvest that called for large volumes of propane, just as we were entering the winter heating season.
BRADY: Earlier this week, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin joined 18 other states in issuing executive orders to address the propane supply issue. Normally propane truck drivers are restricted in how long they can work each day. But for the next week or two, drivers will be exempted from those rules. And in Oklahoma, out-of-state suppliers will have an easier time bringing fuel in to meet the increased demand.
Jeff Brady, NPR News.
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A funding dispute is threatening to derail a major expansion of the Panama Canal. A European consortium is doing the work and it says it's run out of money because of unforeseen costs. The consortium wants operators of the Panama Canal to pay more than a billion dollars of extra funding. The canal authority has put forward a counter-offer. Now the two sides are meeting in Panama to come up with a solution.
As NPR's Jackie Northam reports, negotiators have so far failed to break the impasse.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: The multi-billion dollar expansion of the Panama Canal began about five years ago and was more than two-thirds completed when a funding dispute between the builders and the canal operators came to a head. A mostly European building consortium called GUPC issued an ultimatum, saying it would suspend work unless Panama's government ponied up an extra $1.6 billion to help cover cost overruns. Pedro Alonso is a spokesman for Sacyr, the Spanish company heading the project. He says there were many unforeseen problems that forced up the cost.
PEDRO ALONSO: (Through Translator) For example, the exact quality of the stone and certain geotechnical things that weren't documented, the depth of different layers of earth. So these are the things that the consortium believes are beyond our responsibility and should be covered by the client.
BEN HACKETT: Usually when companies bid for projects of this nature with such a long term and such a high cost, they'll tend to be optimistic about the timing of completion as well as costs.
NORTHAM: Ben Hackett is the CEO of Hackett Associates, which provides research for the international maritime industry. His company did an analysis of the cost estimate for the Panama Canal expansion plan when it was being bid in 2008. He says, like many companies, GUPC didn't fully take into account cost and time overruns.
HACKETT: Typically, when you have large infrastructure projects, there is usually a delay in most cases. And where there are delays, there ultimately will be cost overruns.
CORNISH: The Panama Canal Authority, which operates the vital waterway, says the builders should have taken that into account. Jorge Quijano, the head of the Canal Authority, says it's already paid close to $180 million above that price for things like the rising cost of fuel, steel, cement and employee payrolls. Quijano says the canal authority is seeking a solution.
JORGE QUIJANO: All we've been saying is that whatever claim they have, they have to go through the process, and we will abide by the decisions. Now, the problem is, most of the time, we've not been able to come to terms with them because their numbers have been blown out of proportion.
NORTHAM: Still, Quijano says the authority doesn't want a drawn out impasse. Yesterday, both sides offered joint funding proposals to allow work to continue for several months until a permanent solution can be found, but they remain at odds. Cato Stonex, with THS Partners, which has a 5 percent stake in the project, says the dispute must be resolved.
CATO STONEX: It's an extraordinary passage and, obviously, widening it allows that capacity to expand dramatically. It's a particularly sort of unique and important project, which I'm sure all parties to the project want to be concluded satisfactorily.
NORTHAM: The wider, deeper waterway will allow container ships three times the current size to pass, which in turn will alter global trade routes. Quijano, the head of the canal authority, says for that reason, construction must continue.
QUIJANO: It will not stop. Let me tell you, this expansion will be completed with GUPC or without them.
NORTHAM: Jackie Northam, NPR News, Washington.
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As Deborah mentioned, many of those al-Qaida linked militants now fighting in Syria are based in Iraq, specifically in Anbar Province where more than 1,300 U.S. troops died during the Iraq war, many of them fighting al-Qaida. And that's a bitter truth for one of President Obama's fiercest critics, as NPR's David Welna reports.
DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Senator John McCain is furious about al-Qaida affiliated forces descending on Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, and Fallujah, the city on the Euphrates River where U.S. troops prevailed after fighting two major battles there. The Arizona Republican says those troops are now left wondering whether it was all in vain.
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: 140-some Americans were killed in the second battle of Fallujah, 600 wounded. Now, we see people driving around Fallujah with black flags. It was a disgrace.
WELNA: McCain contends the total withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq left a vacuum that's being filled by America's enemies. President Obama removed the troops after failing to get a status of forces agreement signed with Iraq that would prevent American service members from being tried in Iraqi courts. McCain says he's spoken with top Iraqi officials about just who did not want to sign that agreement.
MCCAIN: I know what they said to us. They were ready to sign and Obama did not want to stay in Iraq and that's what it was all about.
WELNA: Joining McCain in blasting Obama is a fellow Republican on the Armed Services Committee, South Carolina's Lindsey Graham.
SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: If we'd had a residual force of 10 to 12,000, I am totally convinced there would not have been a rise of al-Qaida. The political process would've continued to move forward.
SENATOR TIM KAINE: They did not want us to stay and under those circumstances we couldn't stay.
WELNA: That's Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine who chairs the Senate Foreign Relation Panel's Middle East subcommittee. Kaine says at a meeting in Bahrain last month he discussed the total pullout of U.S. troops with Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari.
KAINE: What he said was, look, the U.S. offered to keep presence in Iraq and we turned the down and we made a mistake. Now, we regret that.
WELNA: And the Democrat who chairs the Senate Arms Services Committee says American military leaders have assured him they supported withdrawing all troops from Iraq. Michigan's Carl Levin did oppose going to war with Iraq and he says it's probably not the most constructive thing to point fingers now.
SENATOR CARL LEVIN: But since there are a few people who are pointing fingers at Obama, I would just simply say, number one, President Bush is the one set the date for the withdrawal of our forces. That was done during the Bush administration by President Bush sitting with President al-Maliki. Number two, there was nothing said even at that time about a status of forces agreement.
WELNA: In fact, Levin says, it was Obama who tried getting a status of forces agreement in hopes that a residual force could stay in Iraq. At the White House earlier this week, spokesman Jay Carney wondered aloud just what the president's critics might want beyond the hellfire missiles and surveillance drones that are being sent to Iraq.
JAY CARNEY: I don't think I've heard members of Congress suggest this, but if members were suggesting that there should be American troops fighting and dying in Fallujah today, they should say so. The president doesn't believe that.
WELNA: McCain says he does not want U.S. forces going back to fight in Fallujah.
MCCAIN: Obviously, we were not contemplating our residual force to be in a combat role then. We are not envisioning the United States troops to be in a combat role now.
WELNA: McCain and Graham also have some advice for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Graham says they plan to call him this week.
GRAHAM: And here's the message: You need to be an Iraqi leader, you need to prove to the world you're not a sectarian leader. This is a defining moment for you as an individual. You need to unleash the Iraqi Army in support of the Sunni tribal leaders and we will stand behind you.
WELNA: Today, Vice President Biden beat them to it, he called Maliki this morning.
David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.
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New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says he is outraged and saddened to learn that he was misled by staffers. Christie says people will be held responsible after having seen emails that were released today, emails that appear to show two of three local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge were closed for political reasons. It looks like the move was payback against the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey, who had refused to endorse Christie for reelection.
Here's Democratic Assemblyman John Wisniewski.
ASSEMBLYMAN JOHN WISNIEWSKI: They show government at its worst. Among other things, they call into serious question the honesty of this governor and his staff. As a result of what has been revealed today, this governor has a lot of explaining to do.
SIEGEL: Well, here to do some explaining for us is Matt Katz. He covers the Christie administration for member station WNYC.
And, first off, Matt, this traffic jam, where it all began, what was the reason was given for the lane closures?
MATT KATZ, BYLINE: The initial reason given was that Christie appointees at the agency that runs the bridge, that they were doing a traffic study. So they needed to test lane closures. But it turned out that other officials at the agency knew of no such study, and four months later no study has surfaced. So this has all led to questions about whether this wasn't really about a traffic study, but it was really about some political shenanigans to go and get back at a local mayor for some reason.
SIEGEL: The bridge, of course, one of the big Hudson River crossings for commuters coming from New Jersey into New York City, what kind of impact did the closure have on computers in Fort Lee?
KATZ: It was very significant. I mean there were backups four hours a day for four days in a row. There were reports of a cardiac arrest, a lost child, emergency vehicles had trouble responding, and it was the first day of school so kids were having trouble getting to school. This is the busiest bridge in the world so any sort of changes like closing a couple of lanes can have far-reaching effects.
SIEGEL: And there has been talk for weeks that the lane closures were politically motivated. And two members of Governor Christie's team have resigned over it. Tell us about the governor's remarks today about all this.
KATZ: Well, this is the first time we've heard from him in several days on this. He is blaming a staffer in his front office. He released a statement saying that she lied to him. Because a couple - he didn't take this seriously in the beginning. I had asked him about this more than a month ago and he laughed at all, and he was sarcastic and said: Yeah, right, I was out there closing the lanes, putting the cones on the roads to close the lanes. Are you serious with that question? I had nothing to do with this, I don't know anything about a traffic study.
Then he had another press conference where he said that two officials at the agency had resigned. But still, he said this had nothing to do with those in his office. He said he'd asked his entire senior staff, his entire campaign, and nobody knew about political retribution against some mayor who didn't endorse him for reelection. Well, turns out in these emails that surfaced today the Democrats have subpoena power. They got all of these emails.
Turns out not only did those in his inner circle know about it but a few people seem to have known about it. And a top official - a top adviser of his wrote an email right before the lane closures and said: Time for some late closures in Fort Lee. And this means that his - and he's saying now that his staff lied to him.
SIEGEL: Yeah. Now there's a hearing planned, I gather, in the state capital in Trenton tomorrow and also a call for a federal investigation. What's likely to come of all that?
KATZ: Well, this is likely to go on for several months. The Democrats have subpoena power. They've probably found the biggest chink in the governor's armor so far in four years of a pretty popular time in office. And they're going to keep calling people and they're going to keep requesting documents, and they're going to keep making people testify. So this is going to go on for some time and Congress could get involved, too.
SIEGEL: We're talking about a rising star in the GOP, Chris Christie, a person talked about as a possible candidate for president. This can't help him.
KATZ: No. I mean in 2016, if he runs for president, if his opponents try to link this with other images we've seen of him yelling at teachers and reporters and try to frame is some tough guy, Tony Soprano who acts in the political alleyways, this could be a problem for his image long-term.
SIEGEL: OK. Thanks, Matt. That's reporter Matt Katz who covers the Christie administration for member station WNYC.
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Fifty years after Lyndon Johnson famously declared his War on Poverty more than 46 million Americans are still poor. The official poverty rate has dropped only a few points in the last half century. Critics say that's partly because the government is still using an outdated measure of poverty. It's based on what it cost to feed a family back in the 1950s.
Here's NPR's Scott Horsley.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: How do you fight a war if you don't know who are where the enemy is? When President Johnson announced the War on Poverty 50 years ago today, the federal government had no official way to measure the problem. So historian Michael Katz of the University of Pennsylvania says authorities latched on to a simple benchmark drawn up by a government statistician named Mollie Orshansky.
MICHAEL KATZ: She didn't have any illusions this was a really true or accurate measure of poverty. It was a kind of convenient yardstick.
HORSLEY: Orshansky took the cost of a minimum food budget for various family sizes and multiplied by three, because in those days a typical family spent about one-third of its income on groceries. Alice O'Connor, who studies poverty at UC, Santa Barbara, says Orshansky figured any family below that threshold wouldn't have enough food on the table.
ALICE O'CONNOR: I think Mollie Orshansky in saying if you really want to use a minimalistic measure, this is the one you use was precisely trying to say, OK, this is really bare bones.
HORSLEY: And the government is still using that bare bones formula of a minimum food budget times three to define poverty, five decades later.
Rebecca Blank of the University of Wisconsin said the numbers are updated each year to reflect inflation, but otherwise there's been almost no change.
REBECCA BLANK: This is a very politically substantive measure. No president wants to be the person who redefines poverty and poverty goes up on their watch. And to be honest, no president wants to be the person who redefines poverty and poverty goes down, because then they get accused of playing with data.
HORSLEY: Blank is one of many social scientists who've criticized the poverty measure as out of date. Food is now a much smaller part of the typical family budget, while housing, medicine and child care cost more. The official measure also fails to account for many kinds of government assistance, such as food stamps and heating aid.
BLANK: So when someone like Ronald Reagan in the 1980s says we fought a war on poverty and poverty won, what actually he should have said was we fought a war on poverty and we have no idea what we did, because our measure doesn't measure any of the things we used in that war.
HORSLEY: Until last year, Blank was acting commerce secretary in the Obama administration, where she led the push for a supplemental poverty measure. It takes into account how family budgets have changed over the decades, and how government programs have helped to make ends meet. This supplemental measure shows two-and-a-half million more Americans were poor in 2012 than fell below the official poverty line. But the supplemental measure also shows a much bigger decline in poverty since the late 1960s.
BLANK: You can see when food stamps kick in what the effect is. You can see the effect of the Earned Income Tax Credit. You know, you can see the effect of housing subsidies and how that affects certain groups in the population.
HORSLEY: The supplemental measure also reflects the different costs of living and varying levels of welfare payments in different parts of the country. So it shows more poor people in California, for example, and fewer poor in Kentucky.
Conservatives, like Rachel Sheffield of the Heritage Foundation, suggest all these measures overstate the problem of poverty in America as well as the progress of government programs in combating it.
RACHEL SHEFFIELD: The purpose of government welfare shouldn't be to simply artificially boost living standards but to actually help individuals. To help them become self-sufficient.
HORSLEY: The official poverty measure is not going away. It's still used to calculate eligibility for numerous government programs, including subsidies in the new health care law.
The mother of that official line, Mollie Orshansky, died in 2006. Decades ago, she said the sole purpose of such yardsticks is to wipe out what she called the scourge of poverty, even if we don't agree on how to measure it.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
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The relationship between the world's biggest two democracies is under strain over an incident involving a low-ranking diplomat. U.S. prosecutors are preparing to indict a government representative from India. She's accused of lying on a visa application for her housekeeper. That indictment and the diplomat's treatment by American authorities have ignited a furious response in India. And the Indian government is retaliating.
NPR's Julie McCarthy joins us from New Delhi. And, Julie, start with a little background on this case. What's the alleged crime?
JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: Well, an Indian diplomat in New York was arrested in December for allegedly falsifying documents that were used to give a visa for the Indian citizen that she'd employed to work as a nanny and a cleaning woman. She's said to have reported that the maid was paid about $9 an hour when she was to be paid about $3 an hour. Now, what's wrong with that? It's below the U.S. statutory minimum wage and she's one of several Indian diplomats to have run into this kind of trouble over employment of domestic help in recent years, Audie.
And the New York prosecutor, himself of Indian origin, ran with it. She was picked up outside her daughter's school and, in her words, subjected to handcuffing, stripping, cavity searches and holed up with common criminals and drug addicts. The prosecutor denied some of that and is preparing an indictment for next week.
So you see in this clash between India and the United States, this internal clash between the Indians who adopt the U.S. as home and see the maid as the victim and the Indian bureaucracy who sees its diplomat as the victim.
CORNISH: So what are you hearing from the Indian government? What do they want?
MCCARTHY: Well, they want an apology, first of all. The United States has made that, not vocally obvious, but by their silence has made it clear that that's not going to be in the offing. They do want an apology. The foreign minister said the case is no longer about an individual. It's about our sense of self as a nation and place in the world.
That is the significance this case has come to take in an election year. India says it wants the charges dropped. They want the Americans to approve Devyani Khobrogade's transfer to the permanent mission at the UN so there's no doubt about her diplomatic status and thus her immunity. And until that happens, India looks ready to ratchet up the pressure here on the U.S. embassy in New Delhi.
CORNISH: So what sort of reprisals are we seeing from India?
MCCARTHY: Well, India is taking retaliatory steps against American diplomats here in India. Today, it ordered the U.S. embassy to, quote, "end all commercial activities" inside a club that's housed in that compound. And that club is for American citizens who use the pool, the restaurant, for a steep price. And the Indians say, look, that is incompatible with the function of a mission.
The facilities are meant for diplomats and if you extend it to non-diplomats, that's a commercial venture, which means you must pay taxes. That is going to open an entire new can of worms with the Americans. Last week, they said the U.S. embassy couldn't screen any movies at the American Center without obtaining a license from Indian officials.
They're also cracking down on any sort of immunity in traffic violations that were before granted to U.S. officials, so a raft of measures to make their point.
CORNISH: Any sense that this is going to be resolved any time soon?
MCCARTHY: Well, the United States prosecutor in New York seems intent on pushing this forward quickly. He wants an indictment by next week. And behind the scenes, there are a lot of negotiations at the highest levels. The ambassador, Nancy Powell, is meeting here with her counterparts to try to resolve this thing diplomatically and quietly.
But the antagonism, Audie, toward the United States that has surfaced is enormous and something that, I think, is making the Americans sit up and notice. It's become a major news story. It's amplified the public mood here, which is indignation at the United States.
CORNISH: NPR's Julie McCarthy in New Delhi, thanks so much.
MCCARTHY: Thank you, Audie.
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We've been marking the 50th anniversary of the war on poverty from a number of perspectives. Now, the Republican take. Republicans have long been critical of Lyndon Johnson's expansive approach to a federal safety net. Today, the Republican senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, proposed what he says is a better way forward. His way? Take power away from Washington and give it to the states. NPR's Don Gonyea is here to tell us more. And, Don, first, give us some context. What was the setting for Senator Rubio's speech?
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Well, it was not coincidentally in the LBJ room of the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol. That was a place where LBJ worked for so many years before becoming vice president and then president. And there was a nod to LBJ's commitment to address what was a serious problem in the country back 50 years ago. Senator Rubio quoted President Johnson, the 1964 President Johnson, in saying it wouldn't be an easy struggle, that we shall not rest until the war is won. But he got to the critique pretty fast.
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: He said that the war on poverty, the richest nation on Earth can afford to win it. And with those words, he foreshadowed the belief that's still held by liberals to this day, that government spending is the central answer to healing the wounds of poverty.
GONYEA: So in Rubio's portrayal, Johnson's war on poverty was really a big government effort. He didn't cite any of the progress that resulted from those programs over the decades. He focused instead in the tens of millions still struggling, still below the poverty line and with little chance of mobility today as examples of the ultimate failure, again, according to Rubio.
CORNISH: So what is Senator Rubio proposing?
GONYEA: Well, there's no legislation that's been written yet. But Rubio says they are not going to slash funding, but they're going to create a system that would work a lot more efficiently. It would create a single - what he calls a revenue neutral Flex Fund. Money from that fund would be given to states, states that would be allowed to design their own programs to help people.
RUBIO: It's wrong for Washington to tell Tallahassee what programs are right for the people of Florida. But it's particularly wrong for it to say that what's right for Tallahassee is the same thing that's right for Topeka and Sacramento and Detroit and Manhattan and every other town, city and state in the country.
CORNISH: Certainly, a familiar refrain on many issues from the GOP, send it back to the states.
GONYEA: Exactly. It's the kind of block grant program that Republicans have long championed, going back decades now. This one would be far bigger than anything that's been done. Obviously, it would count on states being much more efficient, laboratories being more experimental, being more nimble. And it assumes that all of that would work far better than the currently federally administered programs.
CORNISH: So that's the message. What about the messenger? Why Rubio as the main voice for the GOP on the anniversary of the war on poverty?
GONYEA: He remains a rising star, still a freshman U.S. senator from an important state, Florida. He served in the Florida legislature, was speaker of the Florida House, so he does have experience on the state level, administering programs and designing programs. So he can speak about this from some authority.
He also has a very compelling backstory. Cuban-American - Cuban immigrant parents, rose up from poverty. He did get crosswise earlier this year on immigration with conservatives. This is a chance for him to change the subject.
CORNISH: National political correspondent Don Gonyea. Don, thank you.
GONYEA: Thank you.
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In Fort Worth, Texas, a tragic and unusual medical ethics case is making headlines. Five weeks ago, a man found his wife unresponsive in their bed. A brain embolism is suspected. She was 14 weeks pregnant. Since then, the 33-year-old woman has lain unresponsive. But the hospital says Texas law requires they keep her alive until she delivers the child.
NPR's Wade Goodwyn has the story.
WADE GOODWYN, BYLINE: Both Erick Munoz and his wife, Marlise, are highly trained paramedics, experienced both in the world of medicine and the thin line between life and death. When contacted, Munoz declined to talk on tape and said he's taking a one-week break from giving emotionally wrenching interviews. Still, he confirmed that doctors at John Peter Smith Hospital told him his wife was brain dead and that he wants to honor his wife's wishes that she not be kept alive by machines.
TIM WHETSTONE: It is my understanding that Erick has been told that all EEGs that have been done show no brain activity.
GOODWYN: Tim Whetstone is a lieutenant at the Crowley Fire Department where the Munoz's worked. Munoz's colleagues have stepped in to release some information on their behalf. Whetstone believes Erick Munoz understands perfectly the medical situation.
WHETSTONE: I believe Erick not only knows what the doctors are telling him, I believe Erick knows from work history certain odds in the way things could turn out. He is basically preparing himself to do what he has to do going forward.
GOODWYN: Texas is one of 12 states that make an exception to honoring a patient's end-of-life directives if that patient is a pregnant woman. The state asserts it has an interest in fetal life that overrides a pregnant woman's last wishes, but this does not apply if the patient is dead. And the hospital says Marlise Munoz is not dead.
J.R. Labbe is a hospital spokesperson.
J.R. LABBE: Mr. Munoz, the patient's husband, has not signed the release necessary for us to speak in depth about his wife's case. What I can tell you is that Mrs. Munoz was admitted to our hospital on November 26th, and her condition is listed as serious.
GOODWYN: And if Munoz is in serious condition, she's obviously not dead. It's possible that Munoz could have an abnormal EEG and be in a persistent vegetative state. And under these conditions, the hospital says it believes it must keep her alive.
Laurence McCullough is a professor of medicine and medical ethics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.
DR. LAURENCE MCCULLOUGH: If she's alive and if she has what's called a terminal or irreversible condition as those are defined in the Texas Advance Directives Act, that law provides for immunity against any civil or criminal liability in those cases.
GOODWYN: In other words, if the hospital were to honor Munoz's wishes to take his wife off life support, the hospital could be sued or even prosecuted.
MCCULLOUGH: One hypothesis is that the hospital has elected not to do that because they are making a judgment about exposing themselves to whatever consequences might occur if they did that.
GOODWYN: But even that interpretation of the Texas Advance Directives Act is in dispute. Another section says that the law shall not make anything illegal that was legal before. And before the act was passed, it was not illegal to take a pregnant woman off life support in Texas.
Wade Goodwyn, NPR News, Dallas.
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Pitchers Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux were Atlanta Braves teammates, Cy Young Award winners and, as of this afternoon, they are the newest members of Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame. Also making the hall was the slugger known as the Big Hurt, Frank Thomas.
But some of the game's most notable players were kept out again this year by the baseball writers, the taint of performance-enhancing drugs still overshadowing their careers. NPR's Mike Pesca joins us now to talk about the new class. Hi, Mike.
MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: Hello.
SIEGEL: Let's hear about the players who got in. How would you say - what makes Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux and Frank Thomas so special?
PESCA: Oh, just impeccable credentials, you know. Greg Maddux, four-time Cy Young Award winner. One of these great stories, because never the guy with the fastest fastball or the biggest, most intimidating guy, but could perfectly place his pitch wherever he wanted to, extremely cerebral pitcher. Glavine collected a couple of Cy Young Awards himself.
And Frank Thomas, I mean, he hit over 500 home runs, won the MVP twice, a fantastic slugger of his era. And in the current climate, he wasn't seen as a guy who'd ever done steroids. He came into the game huge. He played tight end at Auburn. He stayed huge throughout his career, so sportswriters didn't think he got artificially huge.
SIEGEL: Now, all-star Craig Biggio came close. He played 20 seasons for the Houston Astros. Does history suggest that he'll eventually make it into the Hall of Fame?
PESCA: Yeah. I mean, he came really close. He came within two votes of making the 75 percent of voters necessary to gain the hall. And everyone who's been in that position, that close with years remaining, has made the Hall of Fame. Another player who's on an upward trajectory but also is somewhat tainted by the steroid/PED thing is Mike Piazza. Other catchers like Gary Carter, also a Mets catcher, he took a few years to get into the Hall of Fame. Piazza is the greatest-hitting catcher of all time but his defense was bad.
I suppose there are some non-PED arguments against him being in the hall, but so many voters have come out and said, you know, we strongly suspect that he did PEDs, and he seemed to have gotten large. And things like the fact that he had acne on his back during some seasons were held against him. But it just goes to the nature of there's no formalized process of how to vote for who and what constitutes proof of steroid use. So a strong suspicion seems to be keeping guys like Jeff Bagwell and Mike Piazza out.
SIEGEL: What about the players with the greatest accomplishments who again were excluded - Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, a couple. Has there been any movement by voters to rethink their exclusion from the hall?
PESCA: Not good movement for them. I mean, when I listed some of the Big Hurt's credentials, there are clips by Barry Bonds. Bonds, probably the best hitter of all time not named Babe Ruth. But because he is a PED user, you know, he said didn't knowingly rub the cream into his body but - that did have PEDs. He's out of the hall.
And so right now, those are two of the greatest players of all time. And it's called the Hall of Fame, but it doesn't have them. So it probably should be called, you know, the hall of really good players but for those we think cheated.
(LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: But, Mike, we're talking about the steroid era. It's more than a decade of Major League Baseball, some great players. The sportswriters are going to have to figure out what to make of this (unintelligible).
PESCA: The sportswriters don't - I mean, some of the sportswriters are at each others' throat. In fact, the website Deadspin, in an act of civic disobedience, sold the ballot, and it was revealed that the ESPN/Miami Herald writer Dan Lebatard filled out the Deaspin readers' ballot. So I don't know if he's going to be punished by the hall. But, yeah, even the voters themselves are saying, we don't really know exactly what we're doing.
SIEGEL: Thank you, Mike.
PESCA: You're welcome.
SIEGEL: NPR's Mike Pesca on the latest selections to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
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In Turkey, a widespread corruption scandal appears to be forcing an odd alliance. On one side is the prime minister, a conservative Muslim. On the other are members of the secular military establishment. As NPR's Peter Kenyon reports, Turkey's leader has done the political equivalent of a 180. He's defending generals who were imprisoned on his watch, while denouncing his own prosecutors.
PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Recep Tayyip Erdogan is no stranger to the capriciousness of Turkey's judicial system, having once been jailed for publicly reciting a poem allegedly intended to incite religious hatred. When Erdogan and the AK Party swept to power over a decade ago, the fear of military coups was still fresh. But as Erdogan consolidated power, prosecutors began going after the military elite and their supporters. Prison terms were handed out to hundreds of men once deemed untouchable.
Political scientist Ersin Kalaycioglu, at Sabanci University, says at the time the government ignored critics who protested that the defendants - generals, journalists, academics - weren't getting fair trials.
ERSIN KALAYIOGLU: Charges were pressed against them, where the evidence seemed to have been tampered severely or the due process of law was not implemented. And it looked as if these trials were political trials rather than legal trials.
KENYON: One complaint involved the religious backgrounds of some of the prosecutors and police, namely that they were motivated by their allegiance to the self-exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen. Gulen is a former Erdogan ally whose teachings have inspired a network of schools around the world. Once the military leadership was either jailed or politically neutralized, however, analysts say the government grew disenchanted with the Gulen movement.
Author and columnist Mustafa Akyol says what began as a war of words between branches of the religious community escalated when Erdogan moved to close Gulen schools across Turkey. Not long after came the explosive corruption probe, reaching toward the very top of the AK Party - launched, Erdogan said, by gangs within the state, a veiled reference to Gulen supporters in law enforcement.
Suddenly, Akyol says, Erdogan seemed a lot more sympathetic to the complaints of the generals that they had been railroaded in court.
MUSTAFA AKYOL: Erdogan now wants them to be retried. I am sympathetic to that cause, as well. But is Erdogan opening this argument because he really wants justice to be served? Or now does he want his own political party to survive this new judicial wave on the party? That's another discussion.
KENYON: Secular opposition party member Farouk Logoglu thinks the prime minister's epiphany was motivated by self-interest.
FAROUK LOGOGLU: (Foreign language spoken)
KENYON: The prime minister says there's no objection to re-staging these coup trials, Logoglu told reporters in Ankara. But what were you thinking before, he asks of Erdogan. Did your moral conscience just now wake up?
Logoglu thinks Erdogan is trying to deflect attention away from the corruption probes, which are continuing despite the sacking of prosecutors and police.
Whether any military retrials can actually be carried out is another question. The Turkish High Court has already reviewed the cases, throwing out some convictions but upholding many others. To put that in perspective, imagine the White House calling for new trials in cases where the Supreme Court had already ruled.
Analyst Mustafa Akyol says the fact that many Turks believe the government can force retrials if it wants to points to a problem bigger than any political rivalry.
AKYOL: The core of the problem is that we don't have a non-partisan, fair, trustable judiciary. And someday, I think we will learn that we need a system of checks and balances constraining power. It's not important who has the state. It's important how the state acts.
KENYON: As with so much about this corruption scandal, there are at present more questions than answers. Few are predicting a restoration of the military to its former prominence. Some continue to hope for judicial reform someday. But the most recent proposals, critics say, would leave the judiciary even more exposed to political pressure.
Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Istanbul.
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As we just heard from Peter, one of the most talked about figures in Turkish politics is the Islamic scholar, Fethullah Gulen. He's said to wield great influence in Turkey, especially among police and prosecutors. This, despite his self-imposed exile. He lives in a compound in the Pocono Mountains in eastern Pennsylvania. Fethullah Gulen doesn't grant a lot of interviews. His aides cite his poor health. But he occasionally does receive an inquiring journalist.
FETHULLAH GULEN: (Foreign language spoken)
SIEGEL: This was from an interview with Jamie Tarabay, formerly of NPR, now at Al Jazeera America. She went to Gulen's compound in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania last summer and interviewed Gulen for The Atlantic. When he asked about Islam and democracy, he recalled being punished as a child for praying in school. Those were in the days when the Turkish republic was militantly secular.
Well, Jamie Tarabay joins us. And welcome to the program once again.
JAMIE TARABAY: Thank you for having me.
SIEGEL: And explain something about Fethullah Gulen. In the days before he left Turkey in the late 1990s, Muslim religious figures did run the risk of harassment or arrest in Turkey, but not in recent years. Why is he still in the U.S.?
TARABAY: Well, you know, he does say that - apart from his health - he is concerned that were he to return to Turkey that he would be the subject of harassment by the government. And he seems to enjoy being in his position here in the States, where you can speak to his followers through the Internet, without the risk of having any kind of physical retaliation against him were he to go back to Turkey.
SIEGEL: Secular Turks sometimes describe Gulen as the leader of a covert Islamist conspiracy. And there is a 1999 video of him telling followers to move in the arteries of the system, avoiding notice until you reach the power centers. But I've also seen him described as Sufi, a Muslim scholar who is very much involved in interfaith causes with Christian and Jewish clergy. How do you describe his orientation as a Muslim?
TARABAY: He's definitely one of the more moderate Islamic leaders that I have met. People - when it comes to Fethullah Gulen - either extremely in favor of him or they're extremely afraid of him. And yet, when it comes to him and his approach there really is so much gray there. When you go to a compound in the Poconos, there are so many people there. And they are really there because, you know, you don't want to say cult but you do kind of feel like they adore him.
SIEGEL: You asked him about statements he made in the past that had been taken by some as anti-Semitic. And he didn't say he was taken out of context. He said his thinking has evolved, is more or less what he told you.
TARABAY: You know, what I found about him is that he isn't someone who shies away from admitting when he thinks that he has said something wrong. And he's definitely a person of learning and intellect. He believes that women should have any position in politics, government, the military, and pushes education. That is really his big thing. So he doesn't inspire violence in any way whatsoever and actually speaks out against it.
SIEGEL: It is often said that he's very popular among police and prosecutors in Turkey. Did you come away understanding what the affinity is between his brand of Sufi Islam and the Turkish cops?
(LAUGHTER)
TARABAY: I really couldn't tell you about whether there, you know, there is a melding of the minds there. What I can tell you is that, given his experience as a Muslim in Turkey, he really wants to inspire people to be able to move up and become part of the forces for change in Turkey. So if that means that they're in the judiciary or they're in the police force or they're in the security elements and they're there instituting change, then I can see where the corollary would be.
SIEGEL: The notion of a compound in the Pocono Mountains, home to this most influential of Turkish Islamist scholars - I mean, it sounds like a premise for a bad novel, frankly.
(LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: Is the mood of the place, is it Spartan? Is it luxurious? Isn't very secure? How would you describe Saylorsburg?
TARABAY: Oh, my goodness. Robert, it is bucolic. There's a creek. And apparently the kids who belong to, you know, the families, and they come and they can camp out there. He lives in an extremely Spartan, modest living quarters. He sleeps on a twin bed. But we went to the dining room and the dining room is full of gifts that he has received from everywhere - amazing swords and books and just incredible things that people have sent him from all around the world.
SIEGEL: Well, Jamie Tarabay, thank you very much for talking with us.
TARABAY: It's my pleasure, Robert.
SIEGEL: That's Jamie Tarabay, whom you may recall from her NPR days. She's now a senior writer at Al Jazeera. And she spoke with us about her interview with Fethullah Gulen from New York.
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The Obama administration says schools need to rethink their disciplinary policies because they're doing more harm than good. To deal with serious offenses like physical assaults or drug possession, many states and school districts developed zero tolerance policies. But the administration says those policies were being applied too often, even for small offenses. NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports.
CLAUDIO SANCHEZ, BYLINE: The outcry over zero tolerance has been building for years. Civil rights groups in particular have argued that schools punish blacks, Latinos and kids with disabilities more often and more harshly, even for minor infractions. So, today, the U.S. Education and Justice Departments issued new voluntary guidelines.
DEBORAH FOWLER: What is great about what has been released today is that they give schools a variety of alternatives that have been proven successful.
SANCHEZ: Deborah Fowler is deputy director for Texas Appleseed, a public interest law firm that was part of a groundbreaking study that Fowler says meticulously documented how schools in Texas criminalize kids' misdeeds, no matter how small.
FOWLER: Chewing gum in class or talking too loudly or so many of the things that when I was a kid would've been handled with a trip to the principal's office in Texas and elsewhere.
SANCHEZ: The proposed guidelines require more training in classroom management and conflict resolution, clearer rules for faculty and security personnel in deciding what constitutes a major threat to school safety versus a kid simply acting out. Federal government figures show that of the three million students who were suspended or expelled during the 2010-2011 school year, a quarter of a million were referred to law enforcement, even though 95 percent were for non-violent behavior. The overwhelming majority, seven out of 10, were black, Latino and kids with disabilities. Civil rights advocates like Judith Browne Dianis, head of the Advancement Project, says the new guidelines will help reduce unnecessary suspensions and put school officials on notice.
JUDITH BROWNE DIANIS: No longer should districts look the other way or make excuses for racial profiling in school hallways and in classrooms.
SANCHEZ: School administrators and teachers groups welcome the recommendations but wondered where the money for new training and counseling programs would come from. Claudio Sanchez, NPR News.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. The novelist Chang-rae Lee is known for his sober depictions of the world as we know it - a family, immigration, war - and that makes his newest novel, "On Such A Full Sea," something of a departure. It's set in a futuristic dystopia. The book begins in Baltimore - or what was once Baltimore. It's now known simply as B-Mor. Here's reviewer Ellah Allfrey.
ELLAH ALLFREY, BYLINE: The nation has collapsed. Once, we had a country of federated states. Now, we have charter villages for the rich, and settlements for the not-so-rich. In between are the open counties, places of anarchy with no corporate or government protection. We don't know exactly what happened to our planet, but it's easy to imagine.
There are hints of an environment abused beyond the sustaining of human life, a capitalist system that's abandoned all sense of public responsibility. This isn't unknown territory. Readers might be reminded of Margaret Atwood or Cormac McCarthy. But despite its familiarity, in Chang-rae Lee's hands, the genre has a lightness of touch that is original and multilayered.
Our heroine is Fan. She is an ordinary girl. She has a budding romance with the ungainly but universally well-liked Reg and lives a safe, well-ordered life. Then, Reg disappears, and every inquiry is met with official silence and obstruction. So Fan leaves the safety of B-Mor, setting out into the open counties to find him.
This is Lee's fifth book and once again, he shows that he is a writer of great imagination. The story is arranged in the collective voice of the residents of B-Mor. In their telling, Fan's adventures become the stuff of legend. There's a commune where children are traded as currency, a kindly couple who turn out to keep young women as pets, and a troop of acrobat vegetarians whose secret I won't spoil for you.
This could easily not have worked. The plotline could have seemed too tidy, the twists and turns too convenient. But the story is held together by Lee's prose, which always feels immediate and engaging. My only real difficulty was that at times, the book can feel disturbingly coy. Fan's exploits are told to us after the fact. We never find out how the narrators came to know her story. We never hear her true voice.
But there is also a satisfying appeal to a book narrated this way. Just as I began to wonder if Fan really is as heroic and wise and naive as the story makes out, the chorus asks the same question. And towards the end of the book, when there is a reunion and a betrayal, and the reader would be justified in expecting a neat conclusion, there are only more tantalizing questions.
Here, for me, is Lee's mastery. "On Such a Full Sea" is a book that involves the reader fully in the act of telling the story. This is a rare experience.
SIEGEL: The book is "On Such A Full Sea" by Chang-rae Lee. It was reviewed by critic and editor Ellah Allfrey.
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Now that the holidays are over, a lot of you home cooks may crave time off, just for a bit. But you and your family, you still got to eat. And the convenience and, frankly, the taste of fast food may be pretty alluring to you right now. Well, we'll help you resist with today's Found Recipe suggestion.
STEPHANIE O'DEA: The slow cooker is the easy bake oven for grown ups.
CORNISH: That's blogger and cookbook author Stephanie O'Dea. She's a busy mother of three young girls and owner of 14 slow cookers. Slow cookers also known as crock-pots, a kitchen device you might associate with the '70s.
O'DEA: Before I started slow cooking regularly, I kind of thought of the slow cooker as a glorified pot roast machine. It seemed like everything I put in it sort of tasted the same. The carrots got a little mushy and the pot roast tasted like Lipton onion soup and a can of Campbell's chicken and mushroom soup.
CORNISH: Not that there's anything wrong with that. Hey, there's no judgment here. Stephanie O'Dea, however, she wanted more.
O'DEA: I really started thinking outside of the crock.
CORNISH: So for one year, she challenged herself to make something different in her slow cooker every single day.
O'DEA: You can steam fish beautifully in the slow cooker. You can make delicate deserts like cheese cake and crème Brule. You can roast a duck. You can make barbecued shrimp.
CORNISH: You can also make a gluten-free version of KFC. Yes. A new deal, a Kentucky non-fried chicken in every crock-pot and for today's found recipe, Stephanie O'Dea has this takeout fake out.
O'DEA: We happen to be a gluten-free family. My daughter, age 9, was diagnosed with celiac, an intolerance to gluten, and we were watching The Food Network and the chefs were trying to recreate a KFC inspired chicken rub and my daughter said, I don't know what that tastes like. And it dawned on me, she doesn't know what that tastes like.
I took it upon myself to see if I could recreate a similar seasoning at home and cook the bird the way I always cook, in the slow cooker. We are not absolutely certain what the actual spices are in Colonel Sander's secret recipe because, of course, they are under lock and key. But in the O'Dea kitchen, it encompasses paprika, some garlic salt, onion powder, thyme, oregano, sage, black pepper, ginger, marjoram, salt, cardamom and the twist in the seasoning rub was adding white sugar to combat the garlic and the salty flavor.
Skin the chicken, rub it down inside and out with a seasoning blend and then put it in the slow cooker breast side down. The chicken, cooked in its own juices with the seasoning blend. Do not add any water. Cook on high for about four hours or on low for seven to eight hours. This is one of the most moist chickens you will ever have and it literally falls from the bone.
My daughter was thrilled with this takeout fake out. I think she ate both the drumsticks, a wing and a half of a thigh that night. It was a really successful meal for our family.
CORNISH: That's Stephanie O'Dea. Her cookbook is "365 Slow Cooker Suppers." You can get the recipe for her KFC inspired chicken on our found recipe page at NPR.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
For the first time in more than 2,000 years, packs of wild horses are once again galloping free in western Spain. Ancient wild horses once roamed the Iberian Peninsula, but when the Romans arrived they domesticated the animals.
Now, as Lauren Frayer reports, a breed closely related to those ancient horses is being re-wilded into the Spanish countryside.
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LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: This empty scrubland on the Spanish-Portuguese border used to be populated by farmers, plowing the land and grazing their livestock. It was only a generation ago that most Spaniards up and left for jobs in the city. Now the land they've left behind is reverting to a landscape unseen for perhaps thousands of years.
BENIGNO VARILLAS: In the last 40 years, the bush increased in four million hectares and now probably five. This is nearly 10 percent of the territory, became bush land because they lost the human population - they go to the city.
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FRAYER: Benigno Varillas tilts his cowboy hat and looks out over empty, overgrown hills that his relatives once farmed. These cork oaks and brush are increasingly vulnerable to wildfires. And Varillas is fighting them but not with water. He's re-wilding the land with its natural protectors, animals.
VARILLAS: To control the bush, you need to eat the new plants, but also to be big animals. What do you say in English? To trample.
FRAYER: Yeah.
VARILLAS: And this is what Spain don't have no more in a lot of parts. The people take their cows or their horses out.
FRAYER: Conservationists say people aren't part of the natural landscape here but their livestock are.
STAFFAN WIDSTRAND: If the domesticated herbivores are not anymore, then we need to bring in those who were there before.
FRAYER: Staffan Widstrand is with a nonprofit group called Rewilding Europe, which sees the decline of farming as a chance to restore biodiversity.
WIDSTRAND: We had domestic horses here while previously there were wild horses.
FRAYER: Widstrand and Varillas converted this abandoned land into a nature reserve and brought in endangered native horses, millennia after the Romans first came here and domesticated the wild horses that once roamed free.
WIDSTRAND: Its one specific race called Retuertas, which is a very ancient horse breed, that the final little herd lives in the south of Spain from Andalusia. But previously, it most possibly was a horse breed - a horse, you know, sub-species that was all over the Iberian Peninsula. So it has ancient traits. And when they checked the DNA, it stands very, very close to the DNA of those ancient wild horses that were here once.
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FRAYER: On a sunny cold afternoon, a ranch hand opens a gate
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FRAYER: And two dozen Retuerta horses gallop out into the wild. These horses are one example of the type of re-wilding that could take place amid an unprecedented global migration to cities. The U.N. forecasts that 85 percent of humans in the developed world will live in cities by the year 2050. Conservationists are looking at what all those people leave behind: animals, agriculture and ways of life and how to preserve it.
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FRAYER: Forestry engineer Diego Benito, his wife and new baby, are the only full-time residents of the nature reserve where the Retuerta horses now roam. He says he considers his family pioneers, moving to the countryside while most longtime residents are abandoning it. But he says it's worth it for this view alone: wild horses galloping free.
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DIEGO BENITO: The last horses here maybe were thousands of years ago. It's kind of strange. But it also is quite beautiful to see all the whole landscape. And also, animals that you know will be wild. I'm sure that in 5 years or 10 years, this will be really a wild ark of nature.
(SOUNDBITE OF A HORSE)
FRAYER: A Noah's ark for the future.
For NPR News, I'm Lauren Frayer in Spain.
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To Georgia now and talk of the Affordable Care Act. The state has opposed the law at every turn. Its governor has chosen not to expand Medicaid, and the state's insurance commissioner publicly vowed to obstruct the law.
But as Jim Burress of member station WABE reports, Georgia is still benefiting financially from the rollout.
JIM BURRESS, BYLINE: Van Willis knows just a few years ago, a company like his would've been a hard sell.
VAN WILLIS: Health care was very reactive.
BURRESS: Willis is president of Atlanta-based PREMEDEX. The two-year-old company contracts with hospitals and doctors' offices to call patients after the hospital discharges them.
WILLIS: From a hospital standpoint, there was very little, if any, communication with patients once they leave. A logical way to communicate with patients if you can't be in their homes is, of course, through the telephone.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: And we wanted to check on you.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: How are you doing today?
BURRESS: Scattered around a half-dozen office cubicles, a handful of PREMEDEX employees don telephone headsets. They identify as calling on behalf of the clients and they ask simple questions.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: And do you have any difficulty breathing?
BURRESS: How patients answer could mean the difference between a hospital's profit and loss. Under the Affordable Care Act, hospitals are penalized if Medicare patients are readmitted within a month for several specific illnesses.
Willis says that's creating a new market for companies like PREMEDEX.
WILLIS: We've got clients across the country - small clients, large clients. They all have to feel the same pressures.
BURRESS: PREMEDEX started with five employees. It's up to 25 and growing. And its story is one told over and over across Georgia.
TINO MANTELLA: We like to say it's the health IT capital of the nation.
BURRESS: Tino Mantella heads the Technology Association of Georgia.
MANTELLA: There's 20,000 technology companies in the state. That came out to be $113.1 billion of impact, which represents about 17 percent of the overall economic industries of the state.
BURRESS: And health IT is a fast-growing segment. Mantella says the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta actually has as many tech companies as startup mecca Austin, Texas.
Medical device company EndoChoice is one company that calls Alpharetta home. It manufactures equipment like flexible cameras used to check for colon polyps. Here, workers assemble and wrap in green plastic single-use EndoKits.
MARK GILREATH: It has a dual enzymatic detergent...
BURRESS: Mark Gilreath is EndoChoice's founder and CEO. He says the company's workforce has grown exponentially in a short amount of time.
GILREATH: We were in my basement a few years ago with an idea. And today, we're approaching 400.
BURRESS: Gilreath says the company's technology helps doctors perform procedures more effectively, control infection and give better care to patients. That kind of efficiency is a goal of the Affordable Care Act. Despite his company's success, Gilreath is concerned a provision in the health law will actually stifle innovation. That's because a law imposes a 2.3 percent tax on medical device company revenues.
GILREATH: So it's shaking the investment community. It's shaking the device industry.
BURRESS: Even so, his company is on track to generate more than $100 million in revenue this year. EndoChoice is a textbook example of the type of tech venture Georgia wants. A recent Commonwealth Fund study projects in 2022, the state will spend about $1.3 billion to attract such companies.
For NPR News, I'm Jim Burress in Atlanta.
CORNISH: This story comes to us through our partnership with NPR, WABE and Kaiser Health News.
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Chris Hardwick just might be the nerd king of television. On AMC, he hosts a talk show that's basically a bunch of people sitting around dissecting every scene of "The Walking Dead," one of TV's most popular programs. Over on Comedy Central, he's also ringmaster of a game show about social media called "@midnight." As NPR's TV critic Eric Deggans explains, Hardwick has found success making TV out of America's pop culture fixations.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: No one is a better guide for TV-obsessed fans than Chris Hardwick.
CHRIS HARDWICK: The governor is back. He's here with us for the entire hour tonight unless he kills one of us with an oxygen tank.
DEGGANS: Hardwick's biggest gig, hosting "Talking Dead," he and his guests dissect the gore and heartbreak in each episode of AMC's zombie drama "The Walking Dead."
HARDWICK: I'm just lucky that people need therapy after a show like "The Walking Dead." That's what we provide. We provide a comedown so you can get into bed and your brain stops buzzing.
DEGGANS: Hardwick also hosted "Talking Bad," helping fans of "Breaking Bad" process the final season of the most brutal show on TV. His nerdy obsession with the Internet and pop culture led to "@midnight," a game show on Comedy Central. It's a bunch comics riffing on social media.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, '@MIDNIGHT')
HARDWICK: Tonight's hashtag is lamecomicbookcharacters and go. Yes, Bronger(ph).
BRONGER: Wolverlisterine(ph).
DEGGANS: Born Christopher Ryan Hardwick, he's a chess club nerd from Memphis and son of the late pro bowler Billy Hardwick. But he's also become the wisecracking face of geeky pop culture obsession. Entertainment these days is dominated by nerd-friendly stuff like science fiction, fantasy and comic books, so this is the perfect pop culture moment for a witty goofball like Hardwick. And he already has a perfectly named media empire.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Now entering Nerdist.com.
DEGGANS: The Nerdist is a geek-centered website and podcast. It's grown into a self-help book for nerds, a YouTube channel, a collective of nerdy media creative types and much more. But the 42-year-old Hardwick politely declines status as TV's top geek.
HARDWICK: I don't want the crown because it's - I just like what I like. I don't think that I'm the king of anything. I think I just like what I like and I wanted to sort of build this career that was kind of these modular blocks of things that I really enjoy doing.
DEGGANS: In an entertainment world where fans rule, Hardwick is their enthusiastic TV guru.
JAMES FRAZIER: Chris has kind of put a face to it.
DEGGANS: James Frazier is a "Walking Dead" fan who now co-hosts the popular "Walker Stalker" podcast and convention series. He says Hardwick's charm helps non-fans understand the nerds who obsess over this show.
FRAZIER: He's not this geek that you imagine living in somebody's basement. He's a normal guy with a great sense of humor and I think a lot of people can identify with that.
DEGGANS: But Hardwick wasn't always so comfortable on TV. He came to Los Angeles in the late '80s finding work as a radio DJ, standup comic and host of a dating show.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, 'SINGLED OUT')
HARDWICK: Welcome to "Singled Out," the MTV dating show where we like it simple. We take 50 guys and 50 girls, we ask them a lot of ridiculously easy questions and in the end...
DEGGANS: Hardwick wrote in his book about feeling depressed and drinking heavily back then. He was stuck working on a show filled with mindless 20-somethings trying to hook up.
HARDWICK: The first half of my career, the first two-thirds of my career, weren't really spent on pursuing things that I was passionate about. It was more just surviving and getting jobs. And then at a certain point I was like, oh, wait, you know, maybe I should just work on things that make me happy.
DEGGANS: There are Hardwick haters. He gushes too much about shows he is paid to help promote. He's the Ryan Seacrest of nerd TV, seen everywhere, but a bit shallow. The problem? Some of Hardwick's critics are the very nerds he champions.
HARDWICK: The nerd-on-nerd violence has to stop. Like, there is a very dark side to nerd culture, too, which is almost kind of like an abused dog that you rescue that's, like, it's been abused and so it doesn't mean to be, but it will bite because it's been hurt.
DEGGANS: Hardwick won't apologize for focusing on positivity or saying yes to dream jobs. And his life will only get dreamier: "@midnight" will film 40 weeks of shows this year. "The Talking Dead" returns in February. He'll do more standup comedy and the Nerdist will keep pumping out nerd-focused media projects that make stuff like bowling and puppets look cool.
HARDWICK: I wanted to, in my adult life, just let people know that it's OK to like the things that you like because it wasn't OK when I was growing up. You know, I was kind of ashamed and just, I always felt outcast and I didn't want people to feel that. So I'm very much, hey, let's celebrate the things that we care about and it's OK to like these things.
DEGGANS: Finding stardom by embracing his inner nerd just might be Hardwick's biggest success of all. Eric Deggans, NPR News.
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The snow pack in the Mountain West is down, way down from previous years. 2013 was the driest year ever recorded in many parts of California. And there is little relief in sight.
From member station KQED, Lauren Sommer reports that water managers are trying to squeeze every last raindrop out of Mother Nature with an old technology: cloud seeding.
LAUREN SOMMER, BYLINE: Droughts tend to produce a lot of wishful thinking and Jeff Tilley says, as a cloud-seeder, it definitely comes his direction.
JEFF TILLEY DESERT RESEARCH INSTITUTE PROFESSOR: There's only so much we can do. If we could make the clouds appear out of thin air we would, but we can't do that yet.
SOMMER: Tilley runs the cloud seeding program at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada. And he says weather modification, as it's called, is about making rain, not making clouds.
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SOMMER: It happens at the summit of the Alpine Meadows Ski Area, north of Lake Tahoe, right where the chairlift drops off.
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SOMMER: Most skiers don't notice the large metal bunker with a chimney on top.
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SOMMER: So it's going?
PROFESSOR: It's going.
SOMMER: This isn't a snow-making machine, like the ones ski areas are relying on this winter. The chimney is releasing tiny particles of silver iodide. These are the seeds in cloud seeding, rising thousands of feet up into the air. How do they work? Well, clouds are made of millions of tiny water droplets, but those drops don't automatically fall as rain or snow.
PROFESSOR: Water needs some sort of substance to condense upon.
SOMMER: It needs something to stick to, tiny particles like dust. If a cloud doesn't have enough dust, Tilley says...
PROFESSOR: You have these very static, dead clouds that don't precipitate, don't produce any water and just keep moving right through.
SOMMER: That's where the silver iodide comes in. Tilley says it's the right shape and size to help snowflakes form. Cloud seeding only works in certain conditions - you have to have clouds, of course - and it has to be colder than 20 degrees. But over a season, Tilley says it can make a difference.
PROFESSOR: What we find is a range of anywhere between eight and 15 percent increase in water.
SOMMER: The silver iodide ends up in the local environment where some worry it's a contaminant, though Tilley says tests show only trace amounts. Cloud seeding in California started more than 50 years ago. Though back then, it was a closer to magical thinking, an idea Tilley says has stuck around.
PROFESSOR: We get voodoo. We get, you know, Dr. Frankenstein. We get all sorts of things. But we've been able to refine the technology.
PETER GLEICK: For a long time there's been hope that we could somehow figure out a way to squeeze more water out of nature.
SOMMER: Peter Gleick is president of The Pacific Institute, a water policy think tank. He says it's hard to verify exactly how much water cloud-seeding produces, and if it's worth the money. A review by the National Academy of Sciences, in 2003, found that more research needs to be done to prove its effectiveness.
GLEICK: But even more importantly, it's limited no matter what. We get a certain number of clouds with moisture in them. If we can wring a little more out of those clouds, that's sort of the idea behind cloud seeding. But we're not going to wring a lot more out of those clouds. And so it's not a silver bullet. There is no silver bullet for California's water problems.
SOMMER: Across the state, water agencies spend three to $5 million a year on seeding, which is estimated to boost runoff by about four percent. That might not sound like much, but as water resources get tighter, cloud seeder Jeff Tilley says his field is getting a second wind. Nine other Western states also use seeding, including Colorado, Texas and Utah, where it's commonly done with airplanes.
PROFESSOR: I think for the entire inner Mountain West, it's becoming more important. It's not going to be the whole answer but it can be one tool in the toolkit. And it's a cost-effective one.
SOMMER: Tilley says cloud seeders are looking to cut costs further by using drones instead of planes. The demand is on the rise, he says, as the West relies more than ever on every last raindrop.
For NPR News, I'm Lauren Sommer in San Francisco.
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You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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Natural gas production is increasing faster in Pennsylvania than in any other state. Companies are using hydraulic fracturing to unlock vast amounts of gas in the Marcellus Shale. The state is no stranger to extractive industries, like timber. By the early 20th century its forests had been decimated. They've since been replenished and trees are now harvested sustainably. But scientists say this surge in gas development poses a new threat to the state's forests.
Marie Cusick of member station WITF reports.
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MARIE CUSICK, BYLINE: I'm standing on the side of a mountain road trying to avoid a steady stream of heavy truck traffic. Acres of freshly cut tree stumps stretch out in front of me.
KEVIN HEATLEY: This is up here in Tiadaghton State Forest. And you're looking at some of the impacts associated with forest fragmentation.
CUSICK: Kevin Heatley lives in the area and has come to these woods for years to hike. He's an ecologist by trade, who's concerned about what he's seeing. It's called forest fragmentation. And it's what happens when human development crisscrosses the landscape, carving up large swaths of contiguous forest into smaller pieces.
HEATLEY: Everything from the noise and the traffic, to the lighting, to the pad placements, to the pipeline construction, to the road expansion, this is all industrial infrastructure. It's inherently incompatible with sustainable forest management.
CUSICK: Here in Lycoming County, a heavily-wooded part of North-Central Pennsylvania, the U.S. Geological Survey has found that most of the disturbance from gas drilling is happening in sensitive ecosystems, known as core forests.
HEATLEY: And that is forest next to forest.
CUSICK: It's very different from so-called edge habitats - that's forest next to something else, like a grassy field or a suburban home. Big tracts of core forests are rarer and they're home to species that don't do well near people.
Margaret Brittingham is a professor at Penn State University who's also studied forest fragmentation. She says when core forest is lost, so are the host of important services its plant and animal species provide.
MARGARET BRITTINGHAM: Insect control, climate control, water purification, you can go on and on - recreation, aesthetics.
CUSICK: Pennsylvania currently has roughly two million acres of public forest land. About a third of it is available for drilling.
ROB BOULWARE: We are probably currently one of the largest and more active drillers in state forest lands in Pennsylvania.
CUSICK: Rob Boulware is a spokesman for Seneca Resources. He says his company works to minimize forest fragmentation. For example, it tries to use existing roads instead of building new ones. He points out though other industries cut down plenty of trees too.
BOULWARE: If it is a concern we are engaged in this activity that we are engaged in as humans and not just the activity that's being engaged in through the oil and gas industry.
CUSICK: But the gas industry is pushing a new measure that may lead to more forest fragmentation. Drillers are backing a controversial bill that would limit the authority of state agencies to designate endangered species. Boulware argues it's a matter of consistency for businesses. For example, he says companies are sometimes required to conduct expensive and duplicative wildlife surveys before they can begin drilling.
BOULWARE: These are little things that companies are looking for that would be cost-savings for each individual, and that's what you don't have with the current system.
CUSICK: Republican State Representative Jeff Pyle sponsors the bill. He says the agencies involved in endangered species designations shouldn't hinder economic development.
STATE REPRESENTATIVE JEFF PYLE: Their mission is to protect the game species of Pennsylvania. And me, as a legislator, part of my mission is to make sure my people don't see widespread unemployment.
CUSICK: As the pace of Pennsylvania's gas production continues to surge, energy markets will dictate how much development occurs. The key question is how much disturbance forests can withstand. It's a question scientists are still trying to answer.
For NPR News, I'm Marie Cusick.
CORNISH: This story comes from StateImpact Pennsylvania, a public radio reporting project focusing on Pennsylvania's energy economy.
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One of America's most important and controversial literary figures has died. Amiri Baraka co-founded the black arts movement of the 1960s. He called himself a poet and activist; and wrote plays, essays, short stories, a novel as well as several books about African-American music.
Baraka died today of undisclosed causes at a New Jersey hospital. He was 79 years old. NPR's Neda Ulaby has this look back.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Amiri Baraka's literary legacy is as complicated as the times he lived through - from his childhood where he recalled not being allowed to enter a segregated library, to the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
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AMIRI BARAKA: Somebody blew up America. They say it's some terrorist, some barbaric Arab in Afghanistan.
ULABY: In that poem, which quickly became infamous, Baraka hurls indictments at forces of oppression throughout history.
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BARAKA: Who the biggest terrorists, who changed the Bible, who killed the most people, who do the most evil, who don't worry about survival, who have the colonies, who stole the most land, who rule the world, who say they good but only do evil.
ULABY: The poem is a furious blaze of references, from the invasion of Granada to the Jewish Holocaust, and conspiracies ranging from who shot Malcolm X to who killed Princess Di. Then, critics said, Amiri Baraka took it way too far.
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BARAKA: Who knew the World Trade Center was going to get bombed? Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day? Why did Sharon stay away? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who?
ULABY: The poem had immediate consequences. Baraka was reviled even by former fans. And his post as the official state laureate of New Jersey was dissolved. A few years later, the host of the NPR show "News and Notes" pressed him about the incident.
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FARAI CHIDEYA: So you've got no regrets, though? No regrets about the poem, no regrets about...
BARAKA: I don't have regrets, no. I have regrets that they didn't pay me my money. You know, the cheap criminals, I have regrets about that, you know, naturally. But I don't have regrets about writing that poem because the poem was true.
ULABY: Over his life, Amiri Baraka would express an extremely broad range of beliefs - some offensive, some achingly beautiful. He was born in 1934 in Newark, N.J., as Everett LeRoi Jones. As a child, he was transfixed by poetry and music. He remembered the passing of musician Miles Davis for NPR, saying he wanted to be just like Davis as a teenager.
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BARAKA: I wanted to look like that, too, that green shirt and rolled-up sleeves on Milestones, that cat in seersucker, I always wanted to look like that. And be able to play "On Green Dolphin Street" or "Autumn Leaves" or "Walkin'" or "Blue Haze" or "'Round About Midnight" or yeah, yeah, yeah, hey.
That gorgeous chilling sweet sound, that's the music you wanted playing when you was coming in a joint or just looking up at the sky with your baby by your side, that mixture of America and them changes, them blue African magic chants.
ULABY: As a young man, the writer was part of New York's then-mostly white Bohemian community. He hung out with Allen Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac and wrote a book called "Blues People" that emphasized the importance of African-American culture, says scholar Kumozie Woodard.
KUMOZIE WOODARD: I think the "Blues People" might be his signature work, and that introduced jazz studies to the American academy.
ULABY: Then in 1964, the writer still known as LeRoi Jones wrote a play: the "Dutchman."
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SHIRLEY KNIGHT: (As Lula) What do you think you're doing?
AL FREEMAN JR.: (As Clay) What?
KNIGHT: (As Lula) You think I want to pick you up?
ULABY: The "Dutchman" won a prestigious Obie Award, and established the playwright as a literary star. It's set on a subway train, where this 1967 version was filmed. In it, a beautiful white woman strikes up a conversation with a young black man, and begins to tease him mercilessly.
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KNIGHT: (As Lula) You look like you live in New Jersey with your parents. You're trying to grow a beard, that's why. Look like you've been reading Chinese poetry.
ULABY: But the teases become taunts and the interaction grows ugly. Eventually, she stabs him in the heart. The play, said critics, expressed deep hostility towards women, a charge that followed the playwright for much of his life. After the murder of Malcolm X, he left his white wife and two daughters to live by radical black nationalist ideals.
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BARAKA: In the '60s, after Malcolm's death, black artists met and decided we were going to move into Harlem and bring our art and bring what we thought the most advanced art by black artists into the community.
ULABY: That's Baraka on NPR in 2007. The black arts movement was basically a counterpart to Black Power, and Baraka wrote a number of books now seen as foundational for a certain kind of black aesthetic and cultural identity. He converted to Islam, changed his name and in 1970s, turned towards Marxism. His work would always emphasize social and political issues.
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BARAKA: The people's struggle influences art. It's what the people are doing on the ground and the most sensitive artists pick that up and reflect it.
ULABY: Baraka's work galvanized generations of younger artists even as his stridency alienated him from the mainstream. But he managed to work in both worlds. He was a full professor for decades at SUNY Stony Brook and recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
At the same time, he ran a community arts center in Newark with his second wife. Professor Kumozie Woodard says all of these roles - teacher, activist, artist, leader - came together as soon as you walked into Amiri Baraka's front door.
WOODARD: One time, I came to his house and there was all this noise downstairs and I asked him what it was. And he said it was a group of students, junior high school students who had a jazz history class downstairs. And then I heard noise upstairs and I said what's that, and he said, well, the kids have taken over my office and they have a newspaper, so...
ULABY: In Amiri Baraka's house - and throughout his life - the black arts movement never stopped. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. Today, President Obama hosted a select group of lawmakers at the White House. The topic of the talks, the National Security Agency's controversial spying programs and how to change them to deal with privacy fears. In a moment, we'll hear from Colorado Senator Mark Udall who was in the meeting, but first, NPR's White House correspondent Tamara Keith has this update on the president's review of NSA practices.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Some time in the next two weeks, President Obama will give a speech outlining changes to the way the government gathers intelligence. This is how he described it at his end of year press conference on December 20.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I'm going to make a pretty definitive statement about all of this in January.
KEITH: Time for that definitive statement is drawing near and the all of this the president referred to is a lengthy report from the review group on intelligence and communications technology. He appointed the group after the leaks from former federal contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA collects bulk data on phone calls made by millions of Americans.
The review group made 46 recommendations, which President Obama has been considering, though he made it clear in December he wouldn't be accepting all of them.
OBAMA: The question we're going to have to ask is can we accomplish the same goals that this program is intended to accomplish in ways that give the public more confidence that, in fact, the NSA is doing what it's supposed to be doing.
KEITH: According to White House aides, the president is still finalizing his decisions, but he's getting close.
JAY CARNEY: He is still soliciting input, which he did today.
KEITH: White House spokesman Jay Carney gave a quick readout of the president's meeting with lawmakers.
CARNEY: This meeting was an opportunity for the president to hear from the members about the work that they have been doing on these issues since they last met and to solicit their input as we near the end of our internal review.
KEITH: There has been a flurry of meetings at the White House this week. Already, the president has met with leaders from the intelligence community and members of The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Tomorrow, White House staff will meet with representatives from tech companies. But Michael Allen, managing director at Beacon Global Strategies, who served on the National Security Council staff during the Bush administration, says at this point, these conversations are only likely to change the president's thinking around the margins.
MICHAEL ALLEN: Most of this is probably baked in his mind and he wants to consult with them on the way to a decision, but I think his mind is largely made up.
KEITH: And, he says, the president is going to have to propose some serious changes to satisfy the public and European allies. Tamara Keith, NPR News, the White House.
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To better understand the proposals for reforming NSA data-gathering, we turn to someone who was in the White House meeting today. Senator Mark Udall is a Democrat from Colorado and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He's been a long time vocal opponent of the NSA's surveillance tactics. He says he urged President Obama to follow the recommendations of the president's own taskforce on the subject.
SENATOR MARK UDALL: What I would like to do is take what's known as the 215 program and keep it in place, but keep it in place in a much more limited and transparent manner. Right now...
CORNISH: And this is the bulk phone records collection program?
UDALL: This is the bulk phone records. Right now, the phone companies keep all those records. We agree to them keeping those records as customers. When we need that data on a very focused basis, then we could go - and when I say we, the government can go to the phone companies and generate that data when necessary.
But the dragnet operation that we have under way that results in a haystack that's bigger than you can imagine, I think breaks faith with the American people, it's a violation of our privacy and, as importantly, has not shown itself to be particularly effective. And the president's panel made that case in their report.
CORNISH: Now, there have been critics of this particular reform who say you're simply having private companies now hold onto massive amounts of data and isn't the goal to prevent them from doing that?
UDALL: The telephone companies today hold that data. They own that data. They use it for business purposes. So this is already in place. The idea that the government is collecting also all of this data, holding it in its own way, to me, is not only inefficient and ineffective, but it's also a violation of our privacy.
CORNISH: But between Congress and the White House, what direction are lawmakers headed in? I mean, are they really doing any fundamental shifts here or are they, in a sense, codifying a program that exists?
UDALL: We have been on track to codify a program that already exists. That's not acceptable to me. It's not acceptable to Coloradans. We shouldn't codify a program that violates Americans' privacy, raises questions about the Fourth Amendment and is, in the end, not proven to be effective. The 215 bulk collection has not produced uniquely valuable intelligence.
CORNISH: Senator, I'm getting a sense from you of what you think should happen, but I'm not getting a sense of what you see happening. I mean, given your experience with the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has rebuffed amendments that you've put forward, given your meetings with the White House, do you see any of these reform proposals that would justify to you the continued existence of these massive data collections?
UDALL: Yeah, I'm going to keep pushing, Audie, the momentum is on the side of us who believe that there is an overreach in what's been happening. There is a way to do this that respects our privacy and also keeps us safe. I'm going to keep pushing and the president's panel laid out the case that I've been laying out for the last two and a half years.
CORNISH: But have you abandoned the push to end bulk collection altogether?
UDALL: No. In fact, I'm not only not abandoning it, I'm continuing to push to end bulk collection and I hope the president listens to his own panel, to the American people and to those of us in the Congress who want to work with him.
CORNISH: Beyond phone records, there's also a massive program called Marina to collect and store other metadata, people's online activities, Web browsing history, email and so on. Is that being addressed in the same way as phone records in terms of reforms?
UDALL: We're not addressing that in our conversations today. I would tell you that, to be fair, we need a broad societal conversation about privacy. We need to be clear about the ways in which the private sector accesses our personal information, but as a United States senator, I think it's incumbent on me to look particularly at what the U.S. government does and when you have a program like 215, it just seems to me it's commonsense based in the program in the ways that I've been promoting for many years now.
CORNISH: Senator Udall, at this point, what are the sticking points?
UDALL: The sticking points are that there are still some in the Congress who believe that the bulk collection makes us safer and does not violate the privacy of Americans. There is almost equal number of us now who believe that bulk collection is unnecessary. It violates Americans' privacy and may well be unconstitutional.
If you think about freedom, Audie, one of the key freedoms is the freedom to be left alone and that's really at the heart of what the concept of privacy is and means to many, if not all, Americans, the freedom to be left alone. And when your phone records are being collected without your knowledge on a daily basis after a while those phone records, although a set of numbers and times and the like, provide a pretty clear roadmap as to what you're doing.
And I think that so-called metadata becomes a form of content and that is objectionable to many Americans. That is a direct violation of Americans' privacy.
CORNISH: That's Senator Mark Udall, Democrat from Colorado. Thank you so much for coming on the program.
UDALL: Thanks, Audie.
CORNISH: The outgoing deputy director of the NSA tells NPR that he still defends the 215 program as a way to prevent terrorism.
JOHN INGLIS: I think we as a nation have to ask ourselves the policy question of what risk do we want to cover. Do we want to cover 100 percent of the risk or do we want to perhaps take a risk that from time to time something will get through.
CORNISH: The NSA's John Inglis makes that case to Steve Inskeep. You can hear their conversation tomorrow on NPR's MORNING EDITION.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
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Two years after allegations of rape divided a central Missouri town and gained national attention, a special prosecutor has concluded her investigation. Today, prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, who was brought in from another county, filed a misdemeanor charge against the young man who was accused.
Peggy Lowe, of member station KCUR, has been following this case and joins us from the town Maryville, Mo. And, Peggy, first give us some quick background on this case.
PEGGY LOWE, BYLINE: Well, this case, it's about 2 years old as of yesterday. It was a Saturday night in this small town, Maryville, Mo. We're about 95 miles northeast of Kansas City. And two young girls, 13 and 14, were texting with some boys and they went over to Matthew Barnett's home. They were drinking. And one of the girls - her name is Daisy Coleman - she accused Matthew Barnett of raping her. He said the sex was consensual.
The charges were quickly brought by the local prosecutor. And then just as quickly, just about three months later, they were dropped. And there was never really given an explanation. And so some people believed that perhaps the Barnett's family connection to the local Republican Party was the cause of that. So it was just very controversial.
SIEGEL: Well, tell us about what the special prosecutor did today, and why.
LOWE: Well, it's very interesting. So because of the charge of, you know, a Republican group of people who had wanted these charges to be dropped, a judge - the only Democratic judge in Nodaway County, up here in Missouri - appointed this special prosecutor, Jean Peters Baker. She's out of Kansas City - Jackson County; and she's a Democrat, too.
Basically, she completely went back and redid the entire investigation. And what she came up with was a plea bargain for Matthew Barnett. He is now 19. He pled guilty today to a misdemeanor charge of child endangerment - because after this one-hour party at his parents' home, he basically dumped a very drunk, incoherent Daisy Coleman on her mother's front porch in freezing temperatures, and just left her there without a coat, without shoes. And so he pled guilty to that today.
SIEGEL: And was the young man - Matthew Barnett - was he present today in all this?
LOWE: Yes, he was. He's a 19-year-old college student from a local town. And he was there, clad in a tie; and very politely said yes, sir and no, sir to the judge. And his parents were with him as well.
SIEGEL: I understand that his probation includes some special circumstances. What are those?
LOWE: There are seven special considerations that Peters Baker gave us today. He can't drink alcohol, he can't have any contact with the victim or her family; he has community service. You know, those are the kinds of things that you hear about - drug testing. And something that Peters Baker said today that she absolutely insisted upon was his public acknowledgment of wrongdoing, and that he apologize to the victim. And then, apparently that has already taken place. And so she said she was happy about that.
SIEGEL: And reaction from the victim to this decision today?
LOWE: Peters Baker read a statement from Daisy Coleman today. She said she was grateful that he actually took responsibility - that Matthew Barnett took responsibility for this. And she believes it's time to move forward. That said, Robert, she is still really dealing with the fallout from this. Just this last weekend, she attempted suicide for the third time, and she remains in a Kansas City hospital.
SIEGEL: OK. Thank you, Peggy. That's reporter Peggy Lowe of member station KCUR, speaking with us from Maryville, Mo.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
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Congress has until January 15th, that's next Wednesday, to avert yet another government shutdown. When lawmakers finally struck a budget deal last month, it was hailed as a rare act of bipartisanship. But the truce in the budget wars was brief.
NPR's congressional reporter Ailsa Chang is here with more on Congress's attempts to hammer a trillion dollar spending plan. Hey there, Ailsa.
AILSA CHANG, BYLINE: Hey there.
CORNISH: So how low are the chances that these congressional committees will actually strike a deal? By that I mean both chambers, if they'll pass it, and all by January 15th?
(LAUGHTER)
CHANG: Well, at this point, it's looking less and less likely. They were hoping to announce an agreement yesterday. Obviously that didn't happen. I'm told by appropriations staffers there might be something tomorrow. But it's likely that all of this could just slip into the weekend. And if that happens, remember, both chambers will have to vote on this package. And to do that all before Wednesday would be really, really tight. So what's the more realistic outcome at this point? It seems like Congress will likely pass a continuing resolution in the short-term.
That's a stopgap measure that would just hold constant the current spending levels and it would just buy more time to get this bill through both chambers. That legislation would hold for just two or three days. That's really the only extra time lawmakers say they need to hammer everything out.
CORNISH: So I'm getting the sense from that there's no need to start freaking about a possible government shutdown.
(LAUGHTER)
CORNISH: At least at this stage.
CHANG: No, no, no. No one seems to have the appetite for that right now.
CORNISH: Now explain a little more. Why has this gotten so complicated at this point?
CHANG: Well, what they're putting together now is an omnibus bill. Now, this is a package that's hundreds of pages long, thousands of line items. It's the composite of 12 different individual appropriations bills all wrapped up into one, so it touches on every corner of the government. And, you know, that December budget agreement, it only gave Congress a rough framework for spending. What lawmakers have to do now is flesh all of that out.
And I recently talked to a long time House Appropriations staffer. And he said these omnibus bills they're very much like a solar system. There are the small planets and then there are the giants. The small planets - those are the easy budget items, they get more quickly resolved because there tends be more bipartisan agreement. These are things like Defense, Commerce, Transportation, and Military Construction. And Senator Barbara Mikulski, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, she did confirmed that those areas are now figured out. But it's the giant planets, the areas that involve the most prickly policy issues that are really dragging things down at this point.
CORNISH: So what are we talking about here? Which are the giants?
CHANG: Well, the Affordable Care Act. That's the biggest one. And there are some conservative lawmakers who are already saying they're not going to help pass this spending bill unless they see some real restrictions on funding the health care law.
So Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa has had one of the toughest jobs. He's been overseeing all the health-related provisions to the omnibus bill. And I asked him how progress has been going.
SENATOR TOM HARKIN: My staff met until 1 a.m. And they were back at eight this morning. I think we're close - it's just we're working out some language right now.
CHANG: His exact words after that was: We're very, very, very, very, very close. There were like five verys in a row.
And in addition to health care, there're also environmental protection regulations - those are another prickly area. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Senator Mikulski said this week that lawmakers have requested something like more than 130 policy provisions to attach to the underlying bill. And they relate to all kinds of things: carbon emissions, restricting abortion, limiting the power of the IRS, fiddling with the Dodd-Frank financial reforms. They totally run the gamut.
CORNISH: And with so many in the pipeline, what are some of the more, I guess, extreme or some of the requests that are really going to be a problem for congressional leaders?
CHANG: Well, I talked to a staffer who's close to the ongoing drafting right now, and he told me he's seen some really crazy proposals. Like there's, for example, one proposal that would make it easier to hunt antelope in states like Texas. There's another proposal that would exempt Alabama from standards that try to make school lunches healthier.
So lawmakers have had to sift through all of these various requests and proposals, and figure out what in the end is going to actually pass both chambers of Congress.
CORNISH: That's NPR's congressional reporter Ailsa Chang. Ailsa, thank you.
CHANG: You're welcome.
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At the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, a bevy of tax breaks expired in Washington D.C., everything from a tax benefit for people who commute to work using mass transit, to a subsidy for NASCAR racetracks. Some of these are probably less crucial for the national economy, but others are vital to the health of certain industries. At least that's what the businesses that benefit say, as NPR's Chris Arnold has been finding out.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: In all, more than 50 different tax breaks expired at the end of the year. And if Congress doesn't vote to extend them, many companies and millions of average Americans will be paying higher taxes - by one count, $50 billion a year more. The list includes students who write off tuition, underwater homeowners and clean energy companies.
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ARNOLD: An animated video on the company Sieman's website shows offshore wind-farms withstanding big storms at sea, complete with heroic music. Company executives also tout a recent order for new wind turbine blades, calling it the biggest order of its kind in history.
ROB GRAMLICH: Actually if you were to stack the blades end to end it would be almost 45 miles.
ARNOLD: A factory in Iowa will build all those, which the governor there is happy about. But new construction in this industry has been getting a big boost from one of these tax breaks that just expired.
GRAMLICH: Most people don't realize how important our tax policy is for our energy strategy of the country.
ARNOLD: Rob Gramlich is a vice president with the American Wind Energy Association. He says something called the Production Tax Credit gives federal money to companies that generate clean energy. That allows them to sell electricity cheaper so that they can compete with fossil fuels. And he says this is such a big deal that when this subsidy has expired in the past new construction has crashed.
GRAMLICH: Wind energy development in the country has dropped, year on year, from 70 to 90 percent. It really is disruptive each time the credit expires. And just a year, year and a half ago, we were in a situation where literally tens of thousands of jobs were being lost. People were being laid off left and right.
ARNOLD: After that happened the subsidy got extended and the industry is now lobbying for another extension.
Some economists like these targeted tax incentives because they think they foster the growth of industries and technologies that will be good for the country. Likewise, giving people a tax break to save money for retirement encourages them to do that and that's good. But other economists don't like any tax credits or tax breaks at all.
JOHN MAKIN: I certainly am for the simpler system.
ARNOLD: John Makin is an economist with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. He thinks the government should get rid of all tax breaks. And with the money that it's saved it could lower tax rates for ordinary people. And he says that that would boost the economy.
MAKIN: If you phase out all the tax breaks - those for saving, those for housing, all wonderful ideas - and give people lower marginal rates, they'll end up better off.
ARNOLD: Basically, Makin doesn't trust the government to make good decisions about which industries or behaviors should be promoted through tax breaks.
MAKIN: You push one lever and a lot of other things happen.
ARNOLD: For example, decades ago, the government said employees who got free parking at work didn't have to pay taxes on that perk. But that incentivized driving over mass transit.
Larry Filler is a transportation consultant. He helped to champion another tax break to encourage more people to ride the train to work. But part of that just expired so now we're back with a bigger subsidy for people who drive cars, which for a transportation consultant is...
LARRY FILLER: Well it's definitely backward. I mean it's one of the most horrendous situations you can imagine.
ARNOLD: So right now in Washington, lobbyists on the left right and center - everyone from big banks to rum distillers in Puerto Rico - are asking Congress to extend the tax breaks that help them.
Chris Arnold, NPR News.
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
And I'm Audie Cornish.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie held a marathon news conference today. This after revelations that top staffers apparently caused massive traffic jams in Fort Lee, New Jersey as political payback against the city's mayor. As of this morning, two members of Christie's team had been let go, and the governor himself had begun answering the many questions raised by the scandal. NPR's Joel Rose begins our coverage.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: When Governor Christie had been asked before about the lane closures that led to terrible traffic tie-ups in Fort Lee, he tried to downplay their significance. He even joked that maybe he himself had set up the traffic cones. But his tone today was very different.
GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE: And I come out here today to apologize to the people of New Jersey. I am embarrassed and humiliated by the conduct of some of the people on my team.
ROSE: Christie apologized for days of major traffic jams last fall near the George Washington Bridge, which connects his state to New York. Christie says he learned only yesterday that one of his top aides had emailed one of his appointees to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that it was, quote, "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee," unquote, apparently an act of retribution against the mayor, a Democrat who did not endorse Christie in his re-election bid last year.
CHRISTIE: I would never have come out here four or five weeks ago and made a joke about these lane closures if I had ever had an inkling that anyone on my staff would've been so stupid.
ROSE: In a marathon, 90-minute news conference today, Christie announced he had fired Bridget Kelly, the aide who wrote that now-infamous email and then, according to Christie, lied about it.
CHRISTIE: I am heartbroken that someone who I permitted to be in that circle of trust for the last five years betrayed my trust.
ROSE: Christie also cut loose another close aide, Bill Stepien, who apparently knew about the lane closures too. He's a former Christie campaign manager who had just taken over as the head of the New Jersey GOP. He's one of several high-ranking Christie aides whose name appear in emails and text messages released this week as part of an investigation into the lane closures by a committee of the state legislature.
Just after Christie finished speaking, one of the central figures in the scandal, David Wildstein, the former Port Authority operative who ordered the lane closures, took the witness stand.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Mr. Wildstein, could you state and spell your last name for the record?
DAVID WILDSTEIN: David Wildstein, W-I-L-D-S-T-E-I-N.
ROSE: But where Christie had been voluble, Wildstein had very little to say.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: And most recently, where were you employed?
WILDSTEIN: On the advice of my counsel, I respectfully assert my right to remain silent under the United States and New Jersey constitutions.
ROSE: Wildstein pled the fifth to a long list of questions. And the committee's chairman, Democrat John Wisniewski, says he still has a lot of unanswered questions, starting with what did the governor know and when did he know it.
JOHN WISNIEWSKI: It's strains credibility to say that somebody in as high a position as a deputy chief of staff, somebody in as high a position as his campaign manager, all whose names are in these emails, did not ever communicate this to the governor. It's just strains credibility.
ROSE: Wisniewski's committee isn't the only body that's looking for answers. The U.S. attorney for New Jersey says he'll look into the lane closures as well. Governor Christie has promised to cooperate. Joel Rose, NPR News, Trenton, New Jersey.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Mike Murphy is a Republican consultant. He's advised several GOP governors, typically moderate-centrist Republicans. And he joins us now from Arizona. Welcome to the program.
MIKE MURPHY: Oh, good to be here, Robert.
SIEGEL: Chris Christie is seen as a contender for the 2016 presidential nomination. Where would you land today on a scale from showed he can weather a crisis to he's damaged goods to nationally he's toast?
MURPHY: I think he's done well today. I do think in this big kerfuffle here, you're seeing both the strength and weakness of Christie, the strength that he's kind of an anti-politician. He's blunt. He's not blow-dried. He kind of tells it the way it is. He has that big personality. The minus is, will that big personality wear on people, and will the fact that he clearly - or at least had a staff that played pretty rough-and-tumble politics, will that erode the non-politician vibe he has? So I don't think it's fatal. I think he's still a big contender. But we haven't seen the end of how this will affect his future.
SIEGEL: On the other hand, I'm trying to think of some precedent for this. Usually, governors or mayors are faulted when it comes to traffic for sins of omission, not fixing streets and the like. I've never heard of somebody, his office at least, taking responsibility for making a traffic jam.
MURPHY: Yeah. I think what happened is - I've worked in New Jersey. I was a consultant for the Republican governor before Governor Christie. And it's a rough and tumble political culture there, and there are no shortage of small-time feuds. So my guess, and it's only a guess, is this staffer, for some reason, had a big beef with this small-time mayor and dropped the atomic gridlock bomb quite inappropriately. And I think Christie has done the right thing by being pretty ruthless about firing people and taking responsibility.
But we don't know all the facts yet. So my guess is this is one of these things that it'll be a big thing now but, you know, the election is three years away, and we're seeing how it plays in the long term.
SIEGEL: Governor Christie took questions from reporters. I was reminded of Geraldine Ferraro back in 1984 when she was running for vice president and there were questions about her husband. What's the point here? What's the strategy of having a news conference that goes on seemingly forever?
MURPHY: Well, these funny rituals that kind of come out, I don't know how these rules are made. But one of the rules is that when you have one of these clearing-the-air press conferences, I guess you're supposed to - said somebody - to go on until you, quote, "answered every question," which you can brag about later. So my guess is that was his intent.
It reminded me a little bit of what could be a microcosm of his so far brilliant political career. I thought he started out very strongly. And by the end of it, there was sure a lot of the first-person singular pronoun, maybe a little too much of it. So Christie will be a big dominant figure in this primary should he run because he's larger than life and he just - he doesn't go anywhere quietly. Whether or not that gets him elected, that rocket fuel or whether it's going to be a big political mushroom cloud over New Hampshire in two years, we just don't know.
SIEGEL: What do you think of the observation made by some that the behavior of his staff in this case connected with the criticism of Christie that he's a bullying guy?
MURPHY: That is the negative narrative on Christie. If you accept the successes of getting things done, that blunt style, must there be a negative to that style, which is a heavy-handed, quote, unquote, "bullying." I think the media goes to that narrative in a quick and somewhat lazy manner, but it will the criticism. I think that's the big question, not how this particular fight over a bridge closing and political hijinks by his staff plays out but how the Christie persona plays in the long term through the primaries, both the strength of that strong, unique, anti-political leader and will people take that blunt style and get tired of it.
SIEGEL: Mike Murphy, thanks for talking with us once again.
MURPHY: Thank you.
SIEGEL: Republican consultant Mike Murphy spoke to us from Phoenix, Arizona.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
We can't let this story go today without one more minute on the key player in this scandal, the George Washington Bridge. According to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, it's the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge. Last year, 102 million vehicles crossed it.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
The suspension bridge spans the Hudson River, and it opened in October 1931. It has exposed supporting steel towers. They were meant to be encased in concrete and granite but the Great Depression got in the way.
CORNISH: It's a model of efficiency, not of romance or of any great legend. Case in point, this anecdote from the recent movie "Inside Llewyn Davis."
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OSCAR ISAAC: (As Llewyn Davis) I had a partner. Threw himself off the George Washington Bridge.
JOHN GOODMAN: (As Roland Turner) George Washington Bridge? You throw yourself off the Brooklyn Bridge, traditionally. George Washington Bridge? Who does that?
SIEGEL: The bridge does have at least one claim to fame. It's the subject of a song creatively titled "George Washington Bridge," and those are the lyrics, too, all of them. Here's a rendition by Bert and Ernie.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE")
ERNIE: (Singing) George Washington Bridge.
BERT: (Singing) Uh-huh.
ERNIE: (Singing) George Washington, Washington Bridge. George Washington Bridge. George Washington, Washington Bridge.
BERT: (Singing) Ernie.
ERNIE: It gets real sad now, Bert. (Singing) George Washington Bridge.
BERT: Ernie, cut that out.
ERNIE: (Singing) George Washington, Washington Bridge.
BERT: Real cute, Ernie.
ERNIE: But it ends up real happy now, Bert. (Singing) George Washington Bridge.
BERT: Oh, Ernie.
ERNIE: (Singing) George Washington, Washington Bridge.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
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Today, California Governor Jerry Brown announced that the state's healthier finances will mean billions of dollars of new spending. The winners in the governor's proposed record budget include schools and welfare. He also wants millions spent on maintaining roads and parks.
But after years of cuts, Governor Brown made clear that he's keeping the purse strings tight, warning that prudence should be the order of the day. NPR's Richard Gonzales reports.
RICHARD GONZALES, BYLINE: In this, his third term as governor, Jerry Brown is trying to establish a balance between fiscal restraint and yet, also finding money for his legacy projects, such as education, water and high-speed rail.
GOVERNOR JERRY BROWN: For this year, there's very good news - good news in the fiscal stability and resources available for the state of California.
GONZALES: Brown's proposed budget is a record $155 billion. There's $10 billion in new spending for K through 12 schools that had taken major hits in the past decade; three billion dollars more for higher education, where rising fees had prompted massive student protests; and millions more for deferred maintenance for state parks, highways, prisons and hospitals. But after years of multibillion-dollar budget deficits, Brown warned Californians that by no means are we out of the wilderness.
BROWN: We have serious issues before us in terms of long-term liabilities, debts, and we must be very prudent in the way we spend public funds.
GONZALES: For example, Brown said now is not the time for new spending initiatives. Instead, he says, the state needs to take steps to reduce short and long-term liabilities, what the governor calls the wall of debt. Much of that is in unfunded pension liabilities. His 2014 budget doesn't address that problem head-on, but Brown does propose paying off $11 billion in money the state raided from other funds to balance its budget in past years. And he wants to put away $1.6 billion in a rainy day fund. His plan is drawing some applause from advocates of spending restraint.
Mike Genest was state finance director under former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
MIKE GENEST: It's very hard in that the governor is sticking with his commitment to pay down debt, and especially to resist the temptation to create new programs, new state commitments.
GONZALES: The budget plan does seek to restore some cuts to social spending that were made in the past but not enough to satisfy social service advocates. Anthony Wright is the executive director of Health Access California.
ANTHONY WRIGHT: You know, the governor has talked about the parable of Joseph, of saving during the years of feast for the years of famine. But for many California families, were still in the years of famine.
GONZALES: Governor Brown's announcement today is only the first act in the state's budget play. Final budget numbers will come in what's known as the May revision. Richard Gonzales, NPR News, San Francisco.
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With over a billion users worldwide, Facebook is arguably the most popular social media site around. Teens and early 20-somethings are its biggest users. But as NPR's Patti Neighmond reports, there are growing signs of disenchantment with the site.
PATTI NEIGHMOND, BYLINE: Genevieve Brown is 19 years old, a sophomore at New York's Sarah Lawrence College and an avid Facebook user since junior high. It used to be a great joy. But lately, not so much.
GENEVIEVE BROWN: I mean, it's kind of like everyone's life is a movie on Facebook.
NEIGHMOND: A movie that she is not a part of.
BROWN: You'll see that someone has gone to this new restaurant that maybe you were wanting to go to or they're out with their friend or their boyfriend or something like that and they're taking a picture of them all smiling with their delicious-looking food.
NEIGHMOND: We're having a great time out at a concert. Now, Brown knows that no one's life is one grand adventure after another. But even so...
BROWN: Sometimes I feel really sad after logging on to Facebook and going through it.
NEIGHMOND: It's not just Brown. A number of studies have found people feel worse after scrolling Facebook - more envious, lonely, even angry. In one German study, people were particularly unhappy after viewing vacation photos. They were also more envious when browsing Facebook instead of actively using it by posting comments and photos of themselves. Passive use is how Facebook officials describe it. Moira Burke is a social psychologist at Facebook. In a study she did when she was at Carnegie Mellon University, she found big differences between browsers and active users.
MOIRA BURKE: We found that talking to your close friends, writing on your friends' walls, having them like a comment on your posts was associated with improvements in well-being. So we found that people were happier and felt more connected to their friends.
NEIGHMOND: Burke says it's a lot like face-to-face life.
BURKE: You can be a wallflower or a social butterfly. You can connect one on one with your friends or not. And the outcomes that you experience really depend on how you interact with other people.
NEIGHMOND: But kids say you can post as much as you want but if nobody likes your post, it still makes you feel bad. In response to a recent NPR posting on Facebook use, nearly 800 young people weighed in. And most of them said they'd considered leaving Facebook, but at the same time, most said they just couldn't. It's their main connection to friends, school activities, even homework. But some did make the break.
JORDAN PERRY: My name is Jordan Perry(ph). I'm 23 years old and I deactivated my Facebook account about a month ago.
NEIGHMOND: Perry's in grad school at the University of Central Florida. And as he moves into adulthood, Facebook has started to feel intrusive.
PERRY: If you're friends with somebody and you're out with them and they post what they're doing, they can tag you in that status, and then it shows up on your feed or to all your friends and so they know like where you are. So if you're out at a bar or at a movie, somebody can say, at the movies and tag you, and then everyone knows where you are. And I just felt that was weird.
NEIGHMOND: Too much information, he says. Even younger kids can feel overwhelmed. The Pew Research Center recently did focus groups with kids between 12 and 18. Senior researcher Amanda Lenhart says many felt exhausted by the pressure to present a perfect version of themselves.
AMANDA LENHART: Whether that's through having the perfect photo of yourself as your profile photo and curating the other materials that were posted either by you about yourself or by other people. And certainly, that's - that can be stressful, particularly if you have lots of other people who are posting material about you, which you don't necessarily control.
NEIGHMOND: And today, with more parents, family members and even grandparents roaming the site, Lenhart says kids feel less and less control.
LENHART: Whether that's because parents would comment on things that they had posted on and would make faux pas in terms of sort of the social norms of the teens on Facebook and embarrass their children, or if it's a - you know, parents are just watching what their kids are doing and then asking a lot more questions in ways that makes teens uncomfortable.
NEIGHMOND: Which may be one reason why some kids are spending more time on photo-driven apps like Instagram or Snapchat where pictures disappear in seconds, or Twitter where you get 140 characters to express yourself. Use of those is on the rise. A survey from the Pew Research Center finds the number of new young Facebook users flattening, not rising, for the first time since the site began nearly a decade ago.
Patti Neighmond, NPR News.
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And I'm Audie Cornish.
Now to Brazil and reports of beheadings, murder, and rape at a prison in the north of the country. The United Nations has called for an investigation after a graphic video surfaced from inside the jail.
(SOUNDBITE OF A VIDEO)
CORNISH: The footage shows decapitated, mutilated prisoners allegedly killed by a rival gang. The violence has spilled into the streets outside the prison on orders of imprisoned gang leaders.
NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro is on the line from Sao Paulo. And before we begin, a word of warning to our listeners, this story involves graphic descriptions of violence.
Lourdes, start by telling us where this prison is and how this video came to light.
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, BYLINE: Well, everyone knew for a long time that this complex of prisons called Pedrinhas, in Maranhao State, was completely lawless and out of control, Audie. Last year alone there were 60 deaths there. In fact, it's much more likely that you'd been killed inside that prison than outside of it, statistically. There were reports that inmates' wives were being raped during conjugal visits - just really a violent place. And so, the security forces launched a crackdown in late December.
But the gangs' reach extends well beyond the prison walls and they ordered a retaliation. So, last week in Maranhao State, we saw attacks on police stations and several civilian buses were set on fire, on the orders apparently of gang leaders inside the prison.
In one tragic story, one little girl - she was six years old - she was set on fire and she later died in the hospital. Her great-grandfather, when he heard the terrible news, then died of a heart attack. It's just something that's gripping the country right now.
CORNISH: And it's obviously sent shockwaves through Brazil.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It has. The violence is part of a continuing struggle for power between two gangs inside the jail. Just to show you how out of control things were, when military police took over the jail, they found 300 improvised weapons, including knives and machetes in addition to drugs, alcohol, mobile phones. Outside the prison, now to prevent more arson attacks, Maranhao police have banned the sale of jerry cans that can contain gasoline. Drivers can only fill up their tanks directly at the pump.
CORNISH: And you were talking about the reputation of this prison, but generally, Brazil's prisons are considered the worst and most overcrowded in the region.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, to be honest, there's tough competition in the region for that top spot. Latin American prisons are generally known to be terrible. But Brazil has a massive prison population, 550,000 people are incarcerated here. There's been a surge in jail sentences in the last few decades. But they are vastly overcrowded because, while the prison population has grown, there aren't many new prisons being built - so, more people, not more space.
Inmates complained of having to eat raw chicken and rice, of having no place to sleep. Many human rights organizations decry the conditions inside Brazil's prisons.
CORNISH: Tell us more about the state the prison is located. I understand it's among the poorest in the country.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, what's really interesting about the state is that it's run almost like a fiefdom of the Sarney family. The family owns most of the land. They own the main paper. They own radio stations. They own the TV stations. And not incidentally, they sit in the governor's mansion. Governor Roseanna Sarney is the daughter of former President Jose Sarney. There have been five decades of Sarney family ruled there - really highlighting, I think, some of the problems in Brazil regarding political corruption.
So there's been a lot of focus on that in the papers here, while this crisis has unfolded; how the governor is ordering lobster and shrimp to entertain in the governor's mansion while the state, quote-unquote, "burns."
The state is the second poorest in the country and it has one of the highest rates of illiteracy in Brazil, at nearly 21 percent. But the Sarney family is one of Brazil's richest.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro in Sao Paulo.
And there's been reaction from Brazil's federal government. Earlier this week, the Justice Ministry announced plans to transfer prison gang leaders from Maranhao State to federal jails.
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Later this month, the Kansas Supreme Court will consider an appeal by the man convicted of murdering Dr. George Tiller. He was killed back in 2009 in his Wichita church. Tiller performed late term abortions and his killer, Scott Roeder, had been planning the murder for years.
As Aileen LeBlanc of KMUW reports, the crime has had a lasting impact on the city and on the abortion debate.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Somebody shot someone?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Yes, Dr. Tiller, Dr. George Tiller was just shot.
AILEEN LEBLANC, BYLINE: In May of 2009, George Tiller was serving as an usher at his church in Wichita. He had left the congregation to move into the foyer area when Scott Roeder followed him.
SCOTT ROEDER: I did what I thought what was needed to be done to protect the children. I shot him.
LEBLANC: At his trial, Scott Roeder said that he had considered driving his car into Tiller's or shooting him with a rifle. He says he chose the church because Tiller was more accessible there. Today, the South Wind Women's Health Center is fortress-like. Julie Burkhart opened this clinic last April, in the same building where Dr. Tiller's clinic operated.
JULIE BURKHART: You know, when Dr. Tiller was murdered, I felt like there was just this huge gaping hole in the world.
LEBLANC: Outside the clinic's entrance are a couple of right-to-life sidewalk counselors with their signs and literature. When I stop and talk to Brian Burkkemper, he misses his opportunity to flag down a woman's car as she drives through the gate. And he's not happy about that.
BRIAN BURKKEMPER: She could potentially be doing a life-altering - and make a decision in there that's going to affect the rest of her life.
LEBLANC: Burkhart's clinic has a solid concrete facade, a large metal gate and layers of security.
BURKHART: Cameras, metal detectors, guards, you know. And that's sad because what other medical facility really has to have all of these things?
LEBLANC: You're not wearing the bulletproof vest?
BURKHART: Not right now, no.
LEBLANC: Scott Roeder was convicted of first-degree murder by the jury and given an enhanced sentence by the judge under Kansas' Hard 50 law. But the judge denied his attorneys the chance for the jury to consider voluntary manslaughter. And now, because of a Supreme Court ruling, enhanced sentences like Roeder's can be appealed.
Nola Foulston, who prosecuted the case, thinks that the voluntary manslaughter appeal will likely fail. But she also thinks that the court may indeed consider reversing the Hard 50 sentence.
NOLA FOULSTON: And in that instance, we couldn't re-impanel the original jury. In other words, in order to have the same impact, the jury's going to have to hear the whole case again, even though it's just for the sentencing phase.
LEBLANC: Scott Stringfield runs an alternative clinic next door to Burkhart's, which tries to discourage abortions. He laments that pro-lifers like him are blamed for George Tiller's murder.
SCOTT STRINGFIELD: It's tragic at so many levels. One, because how it, in a sense, is blowback to us. We are criticized all the more because pro-lifers are all lumped into one big category.
LEBLANC: George Tiller's Murder still resonates throughout the country, and his killer's appeal is already stirring up passions on both sides of the abortion issue. For NPR News, I'm Aileen LeBlanc in Wichita.
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Now a pair of corrections. On Tuesday, we reported on the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Surgeon General's report on the dangers of smoking. In our story, we noted that half the people on the panel that came up with the report were smokers and that one expert even smoked four packs a day. However, the expert from Harvard was a chemist, not a statistician as we said.
CORNISH: Also on Tuesday, we spoke with a plumber in Atlanta who was getting lots of calls because of the unusually cold weather there. But his description of exactly why pipes burst in freezing temperatures wasn't quite right. They burst because ice expands inside the frozen pipe, causing cracks or worse. Still, we should be clear. Our plumber's advice for what to do with a frozen pipe was still spot-on: turn off the main valve, open the faucets and try to thaw it.
SIEGEL: We also have time for a quick listener note about another story on the program. Earlier this week, Daniel Zwerdling reported about toxic leaders in the Army. Those are officers who make their subordinates miserable. It's a problem that researchers worry may be contributing to the number of suicides in the armed services. And our story generated a good deal of discussion on our website.
Corrie Jagger of Indianapolis was one of a number of veterans who wrote to say that she had experienced some of the punishments described in the report. And she writes this: As far back as armies have existed, there's been a trend and even a penchant for abusing leadership privilege. Excusing it as some expression of leadership being fed up with bad behavior or less than exemplary soldiers, sailors, or Marines is just excusing abuse.
CORNISH: Jagger goes on to say: There is a time-honored tradition of ignoring or denying abuse, as it is nearly always considered to be some sort of attack on military honor and integrity.
We welcome your comments. You can write to us at our website, npr.org. Just click on contact at the very bottom of the page. Or send us a tweet. We're @npratc.
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This week, "Saturday Night Live" hired Sasheer Zamata, its first African-American female cast member in six years. Zamata's hiring follows recent criticism of the comedy show's lack of diversity. Author Danielle Evans(ph) says she has an idea what it's like to be in Zamata's shoes as the only black woman on the show. Evans has never done sketch comedy, but she has read a book of short stories that draws on the theme. It's called "Get Down" by Asali Solomon.
DANIELLE EVANS: Asali Solomon is a writer who understands what race has to do with performance. "Twelve Takes Thea," the opening story of her collection, is about two black girls at a wealthy prep school. Thea is awkward. At home her brother calls her Jane and teases her for acting too white, but at school her classmates treat her like an emissary from the land of urban danger.
She's also often confused for her friend Nadja(ph). It's almost as if their friendship means that they can't be themselves, their personalities collapse into their own role as the class' only black girls. When Nadja leaves the school, and a new black classmate arrives, Thea feels pressured to be friends with her. She finds herself twisting into cruelty to differentiate herself.
In another story called "The Star of the Story," Solomon writes it was during that time in Eduardo's(ph) arms that Akusa(ph) came in to one of her favorite selves. She shoplifted bright, beaded, slinky things from Macy's and wore strappy sandals in the dead of February.
Akusa isn't the only one in this collection who thinks a new self can be as simple as a costume change. All of Solomon's characters are aware of how close behind them their histories are, how they'll never quite break free from the prisms through which they're viewed. It's something they grapple with, and it's something that Sasheer Zamata will also definitely grapple with.
CORNISH: The book is "Get Down" by Asali Solomon. It was recommended by author Danielle Evans. Her latest collection of short stories is called "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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The recent legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington isn't just about people smoking leaves and buds. Among young users, the most popular form of pot is now something called butane honey oil. It's a concentrated marijuana resin. It is legal where marijuana is legal, but its popularity worries public safety officials. That's in part because making the substance can have explosive side effects. NPR's Martin Kaste reports from Seattle.
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: There have always been forms of hash oils out there, but these days they're much stronger, thanks to the expertise of people like Jeremy Kelsey.
JEREMY KELSEY: This starting out, this is the pure THC concentrate that comes from the plant.
KASTE: Kelsey's showing off a Pyrex dish that contains something that looks like green syrup. He dabs at it with a toothpick and tries to convey just how much marijuana this represents.
KELSEY: There's pounds literally that went into this dish.
KASTE: Pounds of marijuana bud?
KELSEY: Yeah, yeah. Yes. This is straight flowers that makes this. This isn't leaf or nothing. This is straight flowers.
KASTE: Kelsey runs a medical marijuana store north of Seattle and he calls this syrup pain medication for cancer patients. Recreational users have other names for it: wax, honey oil, shatter or just plain dabs. They smoke it, vaporize it, even eat it. It produces a gut-wrenching high that makes regular pot seem weak, a high that motivates some of them to share their fun on YouTube.
(LAUGHTER)
KASTE: Some people like hash oil so much they make it at home. All you need to do is soak the marijuana in some kind of a chemical solvent which extracts the resin. Do-it-yourselfers like butane because you can buy it at the hardware store. But the trouble is butane can blow up.
(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO)
(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: The house is on fire. The house is on fire.
KASTE: Yeah, that's on YouTube too. But you could've seen something like that in person if you'd happen to be standing outside a certain building on the south side of Seattle earlier this week. Verner O'Quinn is with the city's bomb squad.
VERNER O'QUINN: It blew out the windows, blew the wall six inches off the foundation in an area, cracked the siding.
KASTE: There's been an uptick in fires caused by people making hash oil, and not just in pot-friendly Washington state. Last year there was a bulletin about the trend from FEMA. Around Seattle, some of the explosions have been happening inside of refrigerators. O'Quinn says people here seem to think that the best place for their marijuana butane marinade is in the freezer.
O'QUINN: Maybe the process works better when it's colder. At some point what happens is it makes its way into the refrigerator or down to where the compressor is. A small spark will set it off and it generally blows the door off.
KASTE: Washington state allows adults to possess up to an ounce of pot. And turning your pot into hash oil isn't illegal per say. But if you're using explosive solvents, you might be looking at a zoning violation at the very least. The state will require commercial marijuana processors to use safer chemicals and equipment. But officials initially balked at allowing hash oil to be sold at all. Randy Simmons runs the state's pot licensing process.
RANDY SIMMONS: We're trying to move as many people out of the illicit marketplace as possible. And in order to do that, if we would have excluded these oils, we would have left a whole lot of the marketplace in the black market.
KASTE: In other words, they decided that the concentrates were just too popular not to legalize. As a compromise they said that it had to be diluted with food or some other substance. But with experience those rules could change. Simmons points out that liquor laws were constantly fine-tuned after prohibition. And he expects that the same may happen with marijuana and its more potent derivatives. Martin Kaste, NPR News, Seattle.
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This week, thousands of astronomers gathered just outside Washington, D.C., for their annual meeting. The talk there was of big things like the birth of universe and the death of stars. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel met one scientist who was chronicling the last moments of a star's life, using sound.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Alicia Soderberg works at Harvard University. She says it's tricky to witness a star's death.
ALICIA SODERBERG: Because if you want to watch a star die, you have to be in the right place at the right time, and often we're not. So all we can do is do a stellar autopsy and go back and try to pick up the pieces and figure out what happened.
BRUMFIEL: Soderberg's autopsy involves collecting every signal she can from the explosions of dying stars: radio waves, light, X-rays. Then she tries to make sense of it.
SODERBERG: The data analysis itself is very detailed.
BRUMFIEL: Now, a few years ago, Soderberg met a graduate student.
WANDA DIAZ-MERCED: Wanda Liz Diaz-Merced.
BRUMFIEL: Diaz-Merced is blind, so she studies astronomy not with sight but by turning data into sound.
DIAZ-MERCED: I have been able to listen, for example, to meteors passing through the atmosphere, solar storms. That is just to give you a gist.
BRUMFIEL: Stars, comets, planets, all sound different.
DIAZ-MERCED: Every sound I listen from the skies, it has its own voice.
BRUMFIEL: Soderberg wondered what all the data from her dying stars might sound like. So she had her team work with Diaz-Merced to translate data points into musical notes. Soderberg says each signal collected as part of her autopsy gets its own place in the orchestra.
SODERBERG: The radio gets the drums, the X-ray gets the harpsichord, and everything in between gets a different instrument, like a violin or a flute.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BRUMFIEL: Listening to these signals together, Soderberg started hearing things - things she hadn't noticed when she looked at graphs and numbers.
SODERBERG: I hear the data points.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SODERBERG: I hear a very fast crescendo and I hear the sound doesn't trickle off as slowly as I would expect it to.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SODERBERG: This one, it sounds completely different.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BRUMFIEL: They sound different because the death of every star is different.
SODERBERG: Stars can die by running into each other, for example, like a car crash, or they can die by just running out of fuel. A lot of stars will do interesting things before they die, like pulsate or spin or get overheated.
BRUMFIEL: Each song eerily replays a star's dying moments as it explodes into a supernova, expands and cools into a cloud of gas and dust.
SODERBERG: It is eerie. At the end of the day, you end up with a supernova remnant. It's just a nebula of just gas.
BRUMFIEL: But these aren't only deaths. Supernova explosions release enormous quantities of elements like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen - elements we need. Elements we're made of.
SODERBERG: I mean, supernovae fertilize the universe. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for supernovae.
BRUMFIEL: In a way, these funeral songs also announce a birth. Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.
SIEGEL: We've posted some of Soderberg's music along with images of what's left behind when stars explode. It's all at our website, npr.org.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. Cate Blanchett is in the states this week. It's summer vacation time for her kids in Australia, where she and her husband are artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company. It's also the movie awards season, and Blanchett makes a compelling claim for one. She plays the title role in Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine." Jasmine French is a latter-day Blanche DuBois, or a Ruth Madoff. She's the financially broke and mentally disintegrating widow of a Wall Street con man, and she descends on her sister's modest household and family.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE: "BLUE JASMINE")
SIEGEL: Cate Blanchett, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
: Thank you. Pleased to be here, Robert.
SIEGEL: I want to ask you about something you said about the part that you play in the movie "Blue Jasmine," which is that when you read the script, you said you thought it was funny; it was comedy.
: Maybe - yes. Maybe that's a bit of a litmus test. Maybe I think life is funny. I remember thinking, when I was playing Hedda Gabler, that several sequences of the play were utterly absurd. So maybe when I say funny, I mean absurd. And I think that's where Woody Allen - the hallmark of Woody Allen's work is that he understands the painful absurdity of life, and it's in those juxtapositions that lives often are very black sense of humor.
But tone is everything, really, I think, when you're working with Woody, because he's made so many diverse - films of such diverse tone, you know, from "Bananas" to "Interiors." And having never worked with him before, you're not quite sure where the playing of it is going to lie. And I thought you could take it in either direction and hopefully, I think, the final product of "Blue Jasmine," you have a buoyancy to the pain that makes it truly sort of pathetic.
SIEGEL: But did you play it differently? After I heard you say this, I went back and looked at a DVD of "Blue Jasmine" and, you know, it did strike me that the scenes in which your character's working at a dentist's office - rather unhappily - this - another way of playing it, this could be Lucille Ball, almost. I mean, it's...
: Oh, one of my heroes. Yes.
SIEGEL: Well, it could be very broad comedy, if you play it that way.
: Yes. I mean, you know, Woody did say three weeks in, you know, this is a serious movie. And I said, God, why didn't you tell me that three weeks ago?
(LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: Out of - three weeks out of how many, by the way, shooting with him?
(LAUGHTER)
: We had - I can't remember now. I think it was about eight. It was quite fast and furious. But no, we were in the dentist's office. I mean, that whole situation, you know, when he's commenting on Jasmine's teeth - I mean, the writing is absurd and, I think, hilarious. But I think he wanted to make sure that there was a depth to it. And when I say depth, I don't mean weight. I think those two things are quite different.
I think you can play - it's like when you're playing Hedda Gabler or Blanche DuBois or Richard II, or any of those great roles, you have to find the buoyancy to the depth so it doesn't become heavy. Because I think often when people are in crisis, they're not sinking into it. They're trying to find those moments of lightness. And it's the pull in those two different directions, I think, that allows the audience to - to reach the audience, and for it not to become a dirge.
SIEGEL: In "Blue Jasmine," you're virtually playing two characters.
: Many characters on any - well, depending on who she was speaking to, I think.
SIEGEL: In flashbacks, though, she is riding high. And she is a Park Avenue matron, extremely rich; and we're watching her in the process of unraveling, in the present.
: Oh, Robert. Rich doesn't necessarily mean happy.
(LAUGHTER)
: I mean, look, I think...
SIEGEL: But she's composed, in the flashbacks.
: Yes, but - I mean, I think - I hope what I brought out in Woody's screenplay is that she's utterly constructed. I mean, the references that are made to her teen years - you know, she's changed her name; she's estranged from her biological beginnings, you know, to avoid thinking of what? You know, the chasm, I think, that has always existed, that she's filled with her husband, with her social network, with the clothes that she buys.
And I think, you know, a lot of people have said, well, why should we feel anything for her? But I tried to find a connection to that universal problem that so many of us feel as, who am I, without all the trappings, you know, of our lives?
SIEGEL: But frankly, this is not the most sympathetic character we could imagine you playing. And does that make a difference to you? Is it more attractive to play somebody who's difficult to sympathize with?
: I think, for me, obviously, I don't know how to do it unless you're doing it with other people. So strangely, the part is the last point of connection. It's who is going to be in it, and who's directing it, and what's the story? And I was compelled and utterly gripped by the story, the tale. I mean, having worked - you know, I've been running the Sydney Theatre Company with my partner for the last six years, producing theater and performing on stage.
So having not made a film for a very long time, I've been reading play texts. And it had the depth and complexity - and the level of craftsmanship - that a lot of theater texts have. And then, you know, I thought, this is a part to swing a cat in, and how do I - so you just have to throw yourself at it.
SIEGEL: Did you say, this is a part to swing a cat in?
: Yes. Do you not say that in your country?
SIEGEL: No. I haven't heard that. Let me check with the crew through the glass here. No, they're all...
: Looking bewildered.
SIEGEL: ...they're all bewildered by that. But I'm trying to imagine that.
: Yes. Well, that's what I did every day.
(LAUGHTER)
: For eight weeks, I swang the cat.
SIEGEL: I see. As you said, you've been doing a lot of theater recently - more so than films; theater in Australia, and also traveling. Is that much more satisfying to you? What you're saying about "Blue Jasmine" is, you're describing the great virtues of this project because it resembled a stage play, from what you've said. Is it much better work?
: Well, no, it's different. And, you know, I've been very grateful that I've been able to move between the two forms because they're not diametrically opposed. I think they feed each other. You know, you do have a self-awareness, as an actor. I mean, that's - I think that's what you bring from the theater, is that you're very aware that you have to hit that light whilst also talking about the fact that you've lost your children. And you know that someone is answering their mobile phone in Row G, and that someone else is opening a lolly wrapper in, you know, in the back of the stalls.
And so you have all of these awarenesses, and it makes you fearless, in a way. Because you can tell whether something is living or dying, when you're on the stage, and you can do something about it. And I think sometimes, if you were - you know, when you're working consistently in film - and maybe this is just me - but you do feel quite dislocated from your audience.
And I was acutely aware of the audience in the cinema, I think, when I was doing "Jasmine." And I don't know whether that was the piece itself, or whether that was just my recent experience.
SIEGEL: Well, Cate Blanchett, and the most important thing is for you to verify that I'm correct in saying Blanchett, not...
: Blanchett.
(LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: Not Blanchett, but...
: No, no. Look. I mean...
SIEGEL: You accept Blanchett, you've told people.
: I will accept that. From you, Robert, I will accept that.
SIEGEL: But it is...
: As long as you don't spell it Blanchard.
SIEGEL: But to put our listeners in the know, it is accurately Cate Blanchett.
: Well, it's actually Blanchett. You do it in this...
SIEGEL: Blanchett.
: That's much better.
SIEGEL: Cate Blanchett.
: Now, I know - now, I'll come to - now, I'll come.
SIEGEL: Well...
(LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: Cate Blanchett, thank you...
: No, that's so good.
SIEGEL: ...thank you very much for talking with us.
: Come and work at the Sydney Theatre Company.
(LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: OK. That's a deal. Thanks a lot for talking with us about "Blue Jasmine."
: Thank you. Thank you.
SIEGEL: Cate Blanchett plays the title character Jasmine French in Woody Allen's movie "Blue Jasmine." You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, from NPR News.
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The town of Spencer in central Massachusetts is about to become a really big deal, at least in beer-drinking circles. Spencer is home to a Trappist monastery which has just become one of the ten official Trappist breweries in the world. Reporter Katherine Perry has this tour of St. Joseph's Abbey where monks are making the first American Trappist beer.
KATHERINE PERRY, BYLINE: Call up your idea of a Trappist monastery. If it's a stone abbey full of robed monks who start chanting before the sun comes up, you're actually right.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FATHER DAMIAN CARR: It starts at 3:30 in the morning in church. We're heading into the monastic cloister.
PERRY: That's Father Damian Carr, the abbot of St. Joseph's. The monks generally don't allow the public inside the monastic enclosure. In fact, that chanting you hear is a recording they made and they don't get out much.
CARR: We're not in parishes, we don't teach schools, we don't go to the missions, et cetera. But along with that it's self-supportive.
PERRY: And they've supported themselves for more than 60 years by making religious garments and preserves, jams and jellies. But Father Damian says it's not enough to he looked into brewing and was surprised at what he learned.
CARR: I've only come to understand the beer world, getting involved in this, but apparently the Trappists have a reputation for quality in their products.
PERRY: That's something of an understatement. Many of the other beers with the authentic Trappist product label are regulars on lists of the world's best.
MARTHA PAQUETTE: I think it's a once in a generation thing that's happening. There's never been an official Trappist beer produced in North America or indeed anywhere outside Europe.
PERRY: That's Martha Paquette, co-founder of Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project in Sommerville, Mass. Years ago, one of the monks called for help with an impossible-sounding task: building a world class brewery while knowing nothing about brewing, or even drinking, beer.
PAQUETTE: They'd maybe drunk some Budweiser. So, we had a lot of fun with the monks introducing them to hops, introducing dark beers and richer, stronger beers.
PERRY: Learning to drink beer was the easy part. To learn to brew it, the abbey sent two monks to train at Belgian monasteries and hired a professional Belgian brewer. The monks wouldn't say how much, but they got some major financing and now, five years from conception, behind the stone abbey, there's a sleek, state-of-the-art building.
FATHER ISAAC KEELEY: You know, it's a 36,000-square-foot building.
PERRY: Father Isaac Keeley is the brewery's director. He walks through the surprisingly quiet stainless steel, mostly automated brew house.
KEELEY: There's also a mash tun, a lauter tun, then back to the mash tun for boiling and then a whirlpool.
PERRY: Father Isaac says they wanted to create a new Trappist beer that didn't taste like old Trappist beers. They tried all the classic sweet, high-alcohol styles, but found they liked what was being made just for the monks' personal consumption: a lower-alcohol type called a refectory ale.
KEELEY: The recipe allows monks to drink them on occasion and still go on and do monastic things. Ours is a golden-hued, full-bodied ale. It has a nice aroma, which kind of whets your appetite.
PERRY: To get the official label, the monastery must conform to the rules of the International Trappist Association, one of which is that the brewery must be part of the private grounds. Father Damian, the abbot of St. Joseph's, says he thinks that mystique will help them compete and they've had great luck so far.
CARR: No door is closed and they could've at any one point and I knew that and that would've been, to me, a sign, OK, this isn't what God is asking us to do. But the doors didn't close and here we are.
PERRY: Spencer Trappist Ale will be available by the middle of next week in retail stores in Massachusetts, but Father Damian says they hope to expand soon - God willing. For NPR News, I'm Katherine Perry.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. Have you ever gotten into trouble for something that your big brother did? Well, that's what some bankers are saying is happening with a new rule designed to regulate the banking system. NPR's Zoe Chace reports for our Planet Money team.
ZOE CHACE, BYLINE: Lots of big banks have been getting into trouble lately, as lawsuits multiply over stuff that went on at the too-big-to-fail banks during the financial crisis. According to analysis from SNL Financial, JPMorgan has paid out more than $26 billion; Bank of America, $44 billion. And now, there's Tioga State Bank.
ROBERT FISHER: Tioga State Bank - we're a community bank in upstate New York. Our headquarters is in the village of Spencer, N.Y., which is - has about 800 people in the village of Spencer.
CHACE: Are you one of those banks that's like too big to fail, would you say? Are you a systemic risk to the economy?
FISHER: People might say I'm systemic in the village of Spencer, but no; for the economy, no.
CHACE: Richard Fisher is the bank president. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: The Tioga State Bank president is Robert - not Richard - Fisher.] He got caught up in Footnote 1,861 of this thing called the Volcker Rule. The Volcker Rule is supposed to limit a potentially risky behavior the banks engage in, called proprietary trading. Big banks have entire floors of traders using the bank's own money to speculate in the markets.
Maybe you've heard of the London whale trader who cost JPMorgan over $6 billion. He worked in the European headquarters of the investment bank. A 30-odd-floor skyscraper in London's financial district makes Tioga State Bank look kind of shrimpy.
FISHER: It's kind of a single-story building.
CHACE: So where's your - where's your big, proprietary trading floor?
FISHER: Uh - (Laughter). We don't have a proprietary trading floor. We take deposits. We make loans.
CHACE: So what is Fisher's bank doing wrong, according to Footnote 1,861? Well, it turns out banks like Fisher's have money leftover that they haven't lent out to the area for businesses or for new homes or whatever, and they used some of that money to buy a popular investment. It's called a trust-preferred security. You don't need to remember the name. The point is, the footnote makes this investment against the rules. So Fisher's possibly going to have to sell these off and take a hit.
FISHER: It's 25 percent of my annual income. So it's a big deal.
CHACE: It's a big deal - and ridiculous, according to Fisher, that a bank like his, that had nothing to do with the financial crisis, shouldn't be allowed to hold on to an investment that had nothing to do with the financial crisis. Nathan Stovall, who covers the banking industry for SNL Financial, says the regulators just don't want banks investing in something that could even just smell a little risky.
NATHAN STOVALL: What it's trying to do is say, we want you to be a lender - period. And since you're investing some of those deposits and bonds, we want it to be in very vanilla stuff.
CHACE: The American Bankers Association does not consider these particular investments risky and is challenging the rule, saying some community banks could have to close their doors over this footnote. So the regulators are reconsidering. It turns out, it's kind of hard to write the rules over what could pose a risk to the taxpayers, and what won't. The new rules that govern the banks, they are currently 6,810 pages long - and counting.
Zoe Chace, NPR News.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. The final competition to determine the U.S. men's figure skating team in next month's Olympics begins tonight in Boston. And one hopeful for the Sochi games is hometown favorite, 22-year-old Ross Miner. His performance is meant to tell the story and convey the emotion of last year's Boston Marathon bombing. NPR's Tovia Smith has this profile.
TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: Miner's had his challenges this year, pushing through an ankle injury to keep up his training, some 60 hours a week, all in hopes of realizing his Olympic dream. In some ways, he says, tonight is easy.
ROSS MINER: I'm glad it's finally here. The waiting I think is the hardest part. And once you get into the swing of it, it's like, okay, we're at competition now. This is normal. This is what we do.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Skating the short program, Ross Miner.
SMITH: Practicing this week, Miner sailed his way through a kind of ode to a childhood spent skating. Watching from the side, his mom, Gloria Miner, clenches her fist against her mouth at his every trick and tuck, while Ross just smiles his way through.
GLORIA MINER: He does look like he's having more fun, doesn't he?
MARK MITCHELL: Yes, that's Ross Miner. That's how he is on everyday basis.
MINER: His coach, Mark Mitchell, says Miner has always been both a determined athlete and what his mom calls a hambone, but Mitchell says this year, Miner is showing off something different.
MITCHELL: He's always portrayed some kind of character. He's Humphrey Bogart or he did a surfing number. And, you know, this year we said, you know, he's portraying Ross Miner, he's being himself.
SMITH: His long 4 1/2-minute routine tells his story through moves and music of being traumatized, then buoyed by the Boston bombing.
MINER: The opening is the running of the marathon itself. It's very patriotic. And then, all of sudden, there are these two discordant crashes that sort of just came out of nowhere. And then, there's a section which is to me the immediate aftermath. It's sort of like you're watching it in slow motion and, oh my God, I can't believe this happened, 'cause, I mean, I think that was everyone's emotion at time.
And then there's this very sharp immediate music, which we always talk about as like the manhunt.
SMITH: That part hits hard for Miner, who was locked down at home in Watertown, where the suspects were on the loose.
MINER: It was crazy. There were armored vehicles driving down my street. I could hear the flash-bangs going off and the helicopters were flying overhead. So it was surreal. And then, really uplifting, proud, glorious music comes in and to me that was, you know, the pride and the relief of knowing that we got the people who did this to us and of being safe.
SMITH: In an odd way, Miner says, having such a heavy story underlie his performance is calming.
MINER: This year's been a little bit up and down, and there were times where skating felt very big and I was kind of under the weight of it. And then, when I get on the ice to do this program, it takes almost a little bit of the pressure off. 'Cause it's like, okay, it's figure skating. You know, as stressed as I am, you know, I keep in mind all these people who have gone through so much and it keeps it in perspective.
SMITH: Miner never set out to be a figure skater. He first hit the ice as a kid playing hockey.
MINER: My mom was like, you've gotta get out of the house. I was 3 or something. And she was like, you're driving me nuts, go burn some energy.
SMITH: Miner saw the figure skaters at the rink and became hooked, though as his mom says, as with many boys in figure skating, there have been obstacles.
MINER: Sometimes, like, in school, they would get things like this isn't a sport because you have sequins, or whatever, you know, because it is also theater. And it is somewhat more difficult to understand for people, because of the scoring system perhaps. Boys have said they've gotten teased in school that it's not a sport. Triple flip. Yeah. He can do it a little better, but it was good.
SMITH: Because of his injuries, Miner says, in Boston, he'll only do a triple jump, not a quad. That'll change, he says, if he moves on to Sochi, but meantime, even with the stakes so high, Miner glides through his routines looking confident and calm.
MINER: We work on looking calm, you know. I wouldn't say I'm calm, but I'm focused and ready to do my job.
SMITH: And hopefully, Miner says, one more job in Sochi after this. Tovia Smith, NPR News, Boston.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. In North Korea, the purge continues. Leader Kim Jong-un shocked the world last month when he accused his uncle and mentor Jang Sung-taek of treason and had him executed. Now Kim's government is rounding up officials once loyal to Jang, but this purge is having a chilling effect on ties with China because Jang was in charge of trade with North Korea's neighbor and longtime ally. NPR's Anthony Kuhn traveled to the border between them and filed this report.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: A Chinese freight train rumbles across a bridge over the Yalu River and into North Korea. Northeast China is just about North Korea's only point of contact with the outside world. To many Chinese, the place is a rust belt. But to the few North Koreans lucky enough to make it, a visit here can be a mind-expanding experience.
A 58-year-old woman who came to visit her relatives says that on her first visit to China, she was dazzled by the affluence and abundance that she saw. She and the other North Koreans I spoke to requested anonymity so as to avoid severe punishment back home.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: (Through translator) What I found here was unimaginable. So much food here is wasted. The roads, the cars, the electricity. It's always bright, whether it's night or day. I wondered, where is all this electricity produced? In North Korea, it's very dark at night, you can't do anything and it's very lonely. And even if you tell people, it sounds like a dream. They won't listen to you, or they'll wonder if you're telling the truth.
KUHN: But she says that in North Korea, it's dangerous to talk too much about her experiences in China. So when she returns home, she says she takes the amazement and the envy she felt and she hides them in her heart.
(SOUNDBITE OF SINGING)
KUHN: On Monday, citizens in Pyongyang marched through the streets, pledging support for Kim Jong-un's policies outlined in a New Year's address. Kim said in the address that the purge of his uncle had strengthened the unity of the ruling Worker's Party. In addition to charges of treason, Jang Sung-taek was accused of selling North Korean resources, such as coal, to China cheaply. Clearly, on one level, Jang's purge was an internal power struggle.
But Cai Jian, a Korea expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, says that it was also, in part, a swipe at China.
CAI JIAN: (Foreign language spoken)
KUHN: Jang's purge, he says, reflects the fact that North Korea does not want to see China wield excessive political or economic influence over it, and the purge may be a move to weaken China's control and influence. Cai says that for the moment, the purge may appear to have helped Kim consolidate his rule, but it also reveals a split over economic policies.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRUMS)
KUHN: Back at the border, one former North Korean truck driver, who asked that we disguise his voice says that North Koreans are angry that the coal they use to heat their homes became more expensive as coal exports to China increased.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Through translator) Jang should have sold the leftover coal that our people don't use. He's a bad person. How could a good person sell coal to China for a few cents when North Koreans are freezing in their homes? The people think that it's right that he died.
KUHN: A North Korean woman who works in a Chinese department store, who also asked for her voice to be altered, says that political tensions appear to have taken a toll on border trade in recent months.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: (Through translator) There are fewer North Korean customers buying Chinese goods and there are fewer products going into North Korea. But I didn't notice any changes. After all, how could North Korea survive without trade with China?
KUHN: The former truck driver says there's still a market for Chinese goods because there's nothing else to buy.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Through translator) The North Korean economy is now paralyzed. There are no government factories left working. Metal and coal mines, factories which earn foreign exchange and those that make soybean paste and other foodstuffs, those are the only ones left running.
KUHN: Fudan University's Cai Jian says that Chinese find North Korea's hereditary Kim dynasty rather anachronistic. But they've decided that the stability of the Kim regime is in China's strategic interest so they will continue to support it at all costs. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Beijing.
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Democrats in Congress are pushing to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. They also want to tie further increases to the cost of living. At the same time, minimum wage efforts are underway in more than a dozen states and cities. NPR national political correspondent Don Gonyea caught up with several activists who say, in blue states and red, the moment for a wage hike has arrived.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: You never know where you might find a volunteer with a clipboard looking for signatures, trying to get a referendum on the local ballot. I caught up with Ed Flanagan on his cellphone in the town of North Pole, Alaska.
ED FLANAGAN: OK. Well, I'm out in what's called the North Pole transfer station. This facility has about 50 metal dumpsters arranged in a fenced area. Folks back up and throw their household trash in there. This is a very busy place.
GONYEA: There's no residential trash pick up here, so people have to haul their own. So for Flanagan, it's a great place to do some politicking for the minimum wage hike his group hopes to get on the August primary ballot. A car pulls up.
FLANAGAN: Hang on just a second. Hello. We're trying to raise the minimum wage. Are you a registered voter? OK. Have a good day.
GONYEA: Thousands of miles away, Lew Finfer spoke to me from his office in Massachusetts. He's with a coalition looking to get a minimum wage hike on the November ballot there.
LEW FINFER: This would be something like 700,000 people in Massachusetts who earn between eight and 10.50 would get a raise. And there would be a billion dollars that would go back into the economy because people would spend it locally.
GONYEA: One of those Massachusetts workers who would benefit is 41-year-old Patty Federico. She makes 9.10 an hour at a movie theater. She says they won't put her on full time.
PATTY FEDERICO: Right now, with the money that I'm making, it just is a nightmare. It's not paying the bills. So I am desperately looking for a full-time job.
GONYEA: Elsewhere, there are minimum wage hike campaigns in South Dakota, Illinois, Minnesota, Hawaii, Idaho, New Mexico, Maryland and several cities. There's also Arkansas, where the current state minimum wage is a dollar an hour less than the federal level. Stephen Copley heads the Give Arkansas a Raise Now coalition.
STEPHEN COPLEY: No, that's right. If any state needs an increase, we do. And you know, Arkansas traditionally has been a pretty poor state anyway. So we have a number of folks who are working hard and, you know, they're trying to share in the American dream but they just can't make ends meet.
GONYEA: Arkansas also has a hotly contested U.S. Senate race this year. Some Democrats hope a referendum can boost turnout for their side in 2014, though political analysts say that's hardly a sure bet. Anywhere a minimum wage increase is on the ballot, expect an aggressive campaign to defeat it. At a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event in Washington this week, the organization's Randall Johnson laid out the counter-argument.
RANDALL JOHNSON: Employers will react to this either by hiring less people or by reducing benefits and payroll in different ways to adjust to the money they've got to pay for this. So it's not a free lunch. And the people on Capitol Hill who push this understand it but they just don't want to admit it.
GONYEA: But Patty Federico, that movie theater employee in Massachusetts, says she hopes voters are swayed by the numbers as she has to view them.
FEDERICO: It's basically starting to get you over that hurdle. Where, say like you need an extra 200 a week, at least you'll be making an extra 50. So your deficit is not as bad, but it is still bad.
GONYEA: Polls do show strong support for increasing the minimum wage nationally. Federico says they just have to make sure that translates into votes. Don Gonyea, NPR News.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. We begin this hour with 900 pages, a stack of correspondence just released today that may shed light on one of the week's biggest stories, what appears to have been an act of political retribution in New Jersey. Governor Chris Christie fired his deputy chief of staff yesterday morning after it became clear she had a hand in several massive traffic jams that paralyzed Fort Lee, New Jersey.
NPR's Joel Rose has more on the scheme and its intended target.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: In emails released this week, Chris Christie's political allies have harsh words for the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey. They refer to Mark Sokolich as, quote, an idiot and the Serbian. He is, in fact, Croatian. Monmouth University political scientist Patrick Murray says it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Sokolich was the target of their manufactured traffic jam.
PATRICK MURRAY: Calling him the Serbian and actually expressing joy over the fact that they were keeping him in the dark, so it really does look like Sokolich was the target.
ROSE: Sokolich is a Democrat who declined to endorse the Republican Christie in his reelection bid last year. But that, in itself, is not unusual. Christie and Sokolich seem to agree that the governor never even sought the mayor's endorsement. There's another theory circulating about why Christie's staffers were so keen to punish Fort Lee.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW")
ROSE: On her show last night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow posited that perhaps the real target of the Christie administration's ire was another Democrat, New Jersey Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, who represents Fort Lee. She and Christie have clashed on a lot of issues, including nominations to the state supreme court. Are you the target?
STATE SENATOR LORETTA WEINBERG: I can't get it into the governor's mind or heart, but what I can say is that the governor has been less than forthcoming. The whole idea that this governor suddenly realized the day before yesterday that somebody in his front office was implicated in this is a pretty bizarre thing for the average person to believe in.
ROSE: Political scientist Brigid Harrison from Montclair State University says it may not matter who was the intended target.
BRIGID HARRISON: What is perhaps more important here is that there seems to be this practice of retaliatory politics. You know, reward our friends, punish our enemies.
ROSE: But Christie insists he is not a bully. In yesterday's rambling news conference, the governor painted the lane closures as the work of a few rogue staffers, but Monmouth University's Patrick Murray says the longer Christie talked, the less sense that story seemed to make.
MURRAY: The governor spoke for two hours and ended up raising a lot more questions, and that means that this investigation is going to go on for a long time and it's not going to go away anytime soon.
ROSE: Today, the state assembly committee that's investigating the traffic jams released more than 900 pages of emails and other documents. They show that there was an attempt to study how the Fort Lee lane closures affected traffic on the bridge, but they do not answer other big questions about who in the governor's office new about the lane closures or why they were ordered in the first place. Joel Rose, NPR News.
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It's time now for our weekly political talk with columnists David Brooks of the New York Times and E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and the Brookings Institution. Hello to both of you.
DAVID BROOKS: Hello.
E.J. DIONNE: Great to be with you.
SIEGEL: Let's start with Governor Christie of New Jersey. David, I've heard broadly two judgments about him this week. One, he dealt with an embarrassing disclosure the right way, with candor and contrition; and two, what kind of governor has a staff that blocks traffic for payback. What do you make of this?
BROOKS: Completely admirable and flawless, you didn't hear that one. You know, I actually don't think this is going to hurt him so much, mostly because I think some politicians have characters that are what you might call scandal vulnerable. They seem pure. They seem pristine, and when they lie and they do something scandalous, then it disrupts everybody's opinion about them.
But we sort of knew Chris Christie was a bit of a bully, and whether he knew about what was going on, I really don't have a view upon, but I do think if he is popular in the presidential run, or presumed presidential run, it will be because people don't like Washington. They want a bully to take it on. So I think this will not hurt him that much.
SIEGEL: E.J., what do you think, a scandal-free politician from New Jersey? That's what David is proposing here.
DIONNE: The jumbo shrimp, why not? You know, I think for - I disagree with David for almost the same reason he said, which is the big problem with this scandal is that it plays into the knock on Chris Christie. When a politician has to say I'm not a bully, that's a real problem. That doesn't work very well. Richard Nixon famously said I'm not a crook.
And I think at that news conference, what he never answered is why he didn't deal with this until the smoking gun appeared, and I think that raises a lot of questions that - and I agree with the story that we just heard, that this isn't over yet. The one thing we do know is he will not run if he runs for president on the slogan let's get America moving again.
SIEGEL: Actually, between the Christie aides whom he jettisoned and Robert Gates' memoir about his stint at the Pentagon, we've had some object lessons in political loyalty this week in this city.
BROOKS: And when I was covering British politics I ran across the phrase he jumped ship so fast the rats were left gaping and applauding. And I actually give Gates a pass on this. I think if you're going to write a book, you might as well be honest about it, and so I think he had a lot to get off his chest. And I think the book is much more subtle and nuanced than some of the early headlines, appreciative of Obama in some ways, not appreciative in others. And so I think if you're going to write a book, honesty is generally the best policy.
DIONNE: I agree that the book is more nuanced. I think the question about Gates is there was a tradition, I think it went away before Gates, that you waited a bit before - you waited at least until the guy was out of power before you wrote a book. But it really bothers me that the traditional loyalty, in general, has gone away. I always loved what an old Chicago machine politician once said: If you can't be loyal to a friend, how in the world can you be loyal to an idea? And while there are sins committed in the name of loyalty, I think most of the sins these days are committed against it.
SIEGEL: This week we also marked the 50th anniversary of a remarkable time of government activism. This time of year in 1963, first, the surgeon general took on smoking, we should say, and President Lyndon Johnson took on poverty. This week President Obama marked that milestone.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It's now been 50 years since President Johnson declared an unconditional war on poverty in America. That groundbreaking effort created new avenues of opportunity for generations of Americans.
SIEGEL: And Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida also noted Lyndon Johnson's declaration of war 50 years ago.
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: He said that the war on poverty: the richest nation on Earth can afford to win it. And with those words he foreshadowed the belief that's still held by liberals to this day: that government spending is the central answer to healing the wounds of poverty.
SIEGEL: E.J., first, do liberals still believe that and should they?
DIONNE: Well, they should in the following sense. They don't believe it the way Marco Rubio said, which is I don't know any liberal who thinks government spending is sufficient for healing poverty, but redistribution is absolutely essential and it is a big lie that the war on poverty didn't work.
Sharon Parrott at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote a great paper based on a lot of analysis that shows that if you compare 1967 to 2012, poverty overall fell from 26 to 16 percent. And remember, 16 percent is after a bad recession. So poverty has dropped 10 percent. It's down among children. Among the elderly it's down 47 percent then, 15 percent now.
So we have had, as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, more successes than we want to know.
SIEGEL: I thought it was in the teens back then still, in the high teens.
BROOKS: I recall 19 to 15 being the...
SIEGEL: Fifteen is what I thought it was.
BROOKS: So some drop, but I guess I would say it's a bit of a mixed bag. Medicare was a successful program, but their projections of how much it would cost were wildly out of whack. And now it's unaffordable. Food stamps, I would say, was successful. Head Start was a good idea. It was executed poorly. It's had no good results. But the bottom line is poverty didn't come down that much, meanwhile social disorder skyrocketed in the '60s and '70s.
And I would say the difference probably between E.J. and I is E.J. will emphasize the material realities of poverty. I would say the social fabric was weakened unintentionally by a lot of (unintelligible)...
DIONNE: Just on that number, I just want to be clear. This is a poverty measure based on today's living standards. So if you correct for today's living standards, you have a very substantial drop. I care a lot about social measures. I think we do need to figure out what we can do to help families. I think family breakup is a problem. What I'm saying is not that you shouldn't worry about those things. I'm saying that if you're not willing to accept a substantial government role in helping the poor, you're not going to solve the problem, and we've got to deal with new challenges, including the decline of well-paying blue-collar jobs.
SIEGEL: David, you wrote today in a column about new thinking, new conservative thinking about these issues. Is there? Is there some new thinking?
BROOKS: There is some new thinking. It's much more specific, much more pragmatic and much less anti-government. So if you look at some of the new conservative writers, they're looking at what is the problem, how do we get poor kids into accelerated programs, what do we do with people getting out of prison rather than just let's talk about government, whether government's good or bad. Much more specific, it's much more pragmatic, and that's part of the Rubio speech.
Republicans, really, if you're just anti-government, you have no positive agenda for real problems, and I think there's a slow, and I should emphasize very slow, evolution beyond that.
DIONNE: And if we could actually agree that there is a public role, and we also agreed that we wanted to strengthen civil society, we could actually have a real conversation. I'm just worried that a lot of conservatives are not yet ready to say what David said and to say that there is an important - there is a real importance to public action if we're going to deal with this.
SIEGEL: Thank you both for a real conversation.
DIONNE: Thank you.
BROOKS: Thank you.
SIEGEL: E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post; David Brooks of The New York Times.
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The record-breaking temperatures of the polar vortex caused much of the U.S. to shut down earlier this week. With so many schools and offices closed and flights canceled, the hit to the economy was in the billions. But the deep freeze had at least one surprising upside, putting warm smiles on the faces of entomologists. That's because it may have been cold enough to kill some damaging species of insects, including the tree-killing emerald ash borer.
From Chicago, NPR's David Schaper reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHOPPING)
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: Chopping into an ash tree with a hatchet in his frigid bare hands, Tom Tiddens(ph) peels back the bark, looking for emerald ash borer larva. Tiddens is an entomologist and supervisor of plant health care at the Chicago Botanic Garden. And in this wooded area just off a busy thoroughfare, emerald ash borers have been eating and destroying scores of native ash trees.
The wood under the bark shows the telltale signs: squiggly S-shaped trails where the larvae have been feasting, disrupting the flow of water and nutrients up the tree before they burrow into the bark.
TOM TIDDENS: There's one right there.
SCHAPER: It's a small, white, worm-like creature about a half-an-inch long.
TIDDENS: Yeah, there's one right here, and let's see if I can kind of pull him out for you.
SCHAPER: Tiddens wants to see how this tiny but devastating insect has been faring through this week's bitter cold snap that sent temperatures here to 16 degrees below zero. Many arborists are hoping that these tree-killing beetles are all freezing and dying off.
TIDDENS: It turns out that that's not really the case. This insect, like a lot of other insects, actually have a strategy for over-wintering.
SCHAPER: He says the process called super-cooling begins in the fall.
TIDDENS: They'll cease feeding. It'll stay under the bark so it's protected there. It will actually purge all the stomach contents of its gut because that could freeze. And they actually fold themselves in half when they do that.
SCHAPER: And sure enough, many of the larvae we find are folded up to try to stay alive. Tiddens and other experts say temperatures inside the bark need to get to about 13 degrees below zero for the troublesome bugs to really begin dying off, and that means air temperatures need to be even colder than that, according to research biologist Rob Venette(ph).
ROB VENETTE: So around minus-20, there can be as much as 50 percent mortality, and as temperatures approach minus-30, we can see nearly 100 percent mortality.
SCHAPER: Venette works for the U.S. Forest Service in Minnesota.
VENETTE: I'm probably one of the few people that really root for an extremely cold day because I really do think it helps with some of the major insect problems that we have.
SCHAPER: Venette says it got cold enough in parts of Minnesota to possibly wipe out up to 80 percent of the emerald ash borer population and significantly slow the advance of the invasive insect there. The cold may reduce the population by 10 to 20 percent in parts of southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, but Venette cautions that the cold is just a temporary setback for the emerald ash borer.
VENETTE: We're simply not having the cold weather that we've had in previous years. So we can't count on the cold as being the solution to the problem.
SCHAPER: Venette and other experts say this week's record-breaking cold might slow the spread of other invasive species, too, including the gypsy moth and the woolly adelgid, which has infested and killed hundreds of thousands of hemlock trees in the Northeast. And the numbers of some kinds of ticks should be reduced by the bitter cold, too. Another plus: biologist Greg Mueller at the Chicago Botanic Garden says the bitter cold won't hurt many beneficial species of insects, including pollinators such as honeybees.
GREG MUELLER: They actually kind of cluster together and form a bee ball around the queen and then vibrate their wings, and that keeps the whole nest up at warm, in the 90s.
SCHAPER: So even while it's howling outside, the bees are warm in their hives. So go ahead, join the entomologists and hope for another even colder polar vortex to come settle over the country again this winter. David Schaper, NPR News, Chicago.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. The late John Wooden coached college basketball and was more successful at it than any other coach. And it's at least arguable that he was more successful than any college coach of any sport. He took over the hapless basketball program at UCLA in 1948 and by 1964, he led the Bruins to a NCAA championship.
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SIEGEL: He repeated in 1965 and then, from 1967 through '73, UCLA won the national championship every year. In 1975, the year that he retired, John Wooden led his team to one more national title. Ten championships for UCLA under the Indiana native who was himself an all-American player at Purdue. The one-time high school English teacher was so famous as a coach that he became a popular speaker on success and leadership during his very long retirement.
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SIEGEL: John Wooden died a few months shy of his 100th birthday, in 2010; and he's now the subject of a biography by Seth Davis, who covers college hoops for "Sports Illustrated" and CBS Sports. It's called "Wooden: A Coach's Life." Seth Davis, welcome to the program.
SETH DAVIS: Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: And let's start - first, how good a coach was John Wooden?
DAVIS: Well, you made the comment that he was the best college basketball coach of all time. I think that's pretty definitive. I would actually go further, Robert, and argue that John Wooden is the best coach in the history of American sports. In fact, "The Sporting News," several years ago - right before he died - did a mass survey of writers and coaches and athletes, and asked them to rank the all-time greatest coaches. And John Wooden came first, right ahead of Vince Lombardi.
I think the difference there is that he had to win all kinds of different ways. I mean, John Wooden, over the span of, you know, 12 years, coached very different teams. He had, you know - five of his championships, of course, were centered around great centers; then Lew Alcindor, now known as Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and Bill Walton. But, you know, his first team - in 1964 - didn't have a starter over 6-foot-5. And then his last team, in 1975, didn't have any, you know, Hall of Fame - had some very good players on it - Marcus Johnson, Dave Meyers - but certainly, no one of an Alcindor and Bill Walton caliber.
So he had to win a lot of different ways, and then he also had to coach through an incredibly volatile era on campus in Westwood, Calif.; late 1960s, early 1970s. For a conservative, Midwestern, older gentleman to have to manage all that and still come out on top - to me, was extraordinary.
SIEGEL: Now, there is a sentiment, which - as I learned from your book - was not originally said by Vince Lombardi, of the Green Bay Packers, but by the old UCLA football coach Red Sanders: Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing. John Wooden seems to have had a very different, and extremely complicated, attitude toward winning. What was it?
DAVIS: He never talked about it. (Laughter) Now, let's be clear - John Wooden loved to win. One of the things that I think that readers are going to be very surprised to learn is just what a controversial reputation, a negative reputation he had, with respect to referees. He harangued referees often during the course of a game because he didn't necessarily believe in talking to his players.
But he never mentioned the word "win" to his players. His whole attitude was if you maximize your potential, then you have succeeded. That was his whole definition of success; where you get peace of mind because you know in your heart, mind and soul that you've reached your full potential. But by the time he got to the end of his career, his players were so good that, you know, he believed that if they reached their potential, they would win.
And by the way, that if he could keep their mind off of winning, that if he could get them to focus on the process of getting to a game - the hour-to-hour, day-by-day practice and little, itty-bitty improvement that you make day to day, that that is actually the best way to win.
SIEGEL: But I gather that the famous stretch, when he won 10 national championships in 12 years, he would call that the unhappiest time of his working life.
DAVIS: That is correct because he never meant for that to happen. I mean, he was a high school English teacher and to the day that he died, that is how he thought of himself. I mean, think about a guy who was born in 1910; happened to be born in the cradle of basketball just as it's really being invented as a high school sport, really, in central Indiana, Dression-era Indiana. Nobody would have any inkling that someday, he's coaching a basketball game in a futuristic football stadium called the Houston Astrodome.
I mean, this was not what he set out to do. Not only did he move into a world, but he helped create a world that valued winning above all else. And it was extremely uncomfortable for him. This notion that he was never criticized, or never had a bad day, is wholly inaccurate. He was rather thin-skinned, and a little bit paranoid and protective, when it came to his players and the press. It definitely got very far away from what he set out to do, and that was just basically be a teacher of English and a teacher of life and a teacher of the game of basketball; keep things simple.
SIEGEL: You also write, as one must in writing the story of basketball at UCLA under John Wooden, a lot about a man named Sam Gilbert. He was a rich guy who loved UCLA basketball; a UCLA dropout, I gather, who lavished gifts and attention on UCLA players. And while the school was ultimately penalized for their relationship to Gilbert, the NCAA went out of its way - it seems, according to your account - to make sure that they only dealt with events after John Wooden's period as the coach.
DAVIS: Sam Gilbert, as you described, was a man who became involved first with Lucius Allen and Lew Alcindor, to address their financial circumstance - which was pretty dire. And they were put in touch with Sam Gilbert. And he could point them to stores where they could get coats and not have to pay for them. He could send them to restaurants. He bought them meals.
So what I can tell you, Robert, is this: This is, clearly, not something that Wooden orchestrated. He didn't create it. He did go to his athletic director on several occasions and asked him to look into the situation. He mentioned his players. He wasn't comfortable with it.
But there is also no question that at a certain point, he stopped. So it's a very, very mixed part of his legacy but one that I felt, No. 1, needed to be addressed and also, most importantly, Robert, it needed to be placed into its proper context.
SIEGEL: One of the oddest things about John Wooden that I, at least, come away with from reading your book is that here was a coach who seemed to be more interested in teaching his players how to put their sneakers on - proper foot care - than ever scouting an opposing team. He didn't care about what the next team was...
DAVIS: (Laughter) That's right.
SIEGEL: ...he just - you play your game. You play it right. It doesn't matter what they're going to do.
DAVIS: That's right. He wanted them focusing on what they were doing. Let's worry about us, and the results will take care of themselves; keeping it simple. The shoes and socks thing is a huge part of his legend. First of all, it was rooted in a very practical concern, and that's blisters. John Wooden didn't want his players getting blisters because that makes you less effective as a ballplayer.
Another was by busying them in the finest details of being basketball players, it would help - in a lot of ways - free their minds over whether or not they were going to win, which would make it more likely for them to win. But, you know, as a lot of his coaching rivals would point out, you know, it's a lot easier to win games if you're teaching Lew Alcindor how to put on his shoes and socks as opposed to the guy that I'm coaching.
So at the end of the day - one of my favorite quotes from Wooden, someone said to him, well, you know, who's the best coach you went up against? And his answer was always, the guy with the best players.
SIEGEL: Seth Davis, thanks for talking with us about John Wooden and your book about him.
DAVIS: It was a thrill, Robert. Always great to talk to you.
SIEGEL: And the book is called "Wooden: A Coach's Life."
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Is it a bad economy or just bad data? That's the question today after a new round of disappointing employment numbers. The government reported the economy added just 74,000 jobs in December, well below expectations. The other surprise, the unemployment rate still dropped.
NPR's John Ydstie spent the day talking with economists about the report, and many say they just don't believe it.
JOHN YDSTIE, BYLINE: Mark Zandi is chief economist at Moody's Analytics. He says, today's report is a statistical aberration.
MARK ZANDI: It doesn't represent reality. It's not consistent with any of the other economic data that we've got which shows a better economy.
YDSTIE: Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS, a global research firm, agrees.
NARIMAN BEHRAVESH: We've had good numbers on things like unemployment claims, surveys of businesses saying that they're going to high more. So, other indicators suggest that this number is a fluke and probably too weak.
YDSTIE: Earlier this week, the payroll processing firm ADP released its survey of job creation in December. It found 238,000 jobs were added last month. Mark Zandi's firm crunches the numbers for that report, which includes an even larger sample of businesses than the government's monthly survey. Zandi believes the ADP number is much closer to the actual job creation taking place in the economy.
ZANDI: The reality is, the economy is creating at least 200,000 jobs per month. That's what it's been doing for much of the past year. I think that's what it's doing right now. I think that's what it did in December. And I think that will be born out in subsequent data.
YDSTIE: But how could the government data be so far off the mark? Zandi says, even large surveys can have statistical hiccups a couple times a year.
ZANDI: You just have noise. I mean, these weird things happen. Some companies report late that normally don't report late. It's just the, you know, the sausage-making of data. And every once in a while, you get a bad piece of sausage, and I think that's what happened here.
YDSTIE: Zandi says cold weather in December also likely hurt job creation, especially in construction and manufacturing. The other curveball in today's data was a sharp drop in the unemployment rate, from 7 percent down to 6.7 percent. But the data behind that number isn't good news. That's because the decline was largely due to nearly 350,000 people leaving the labor market. Many, no doubt, because jobs are still too hard to find.
Kourtney Leibman, who lives in Overland Park, Kansas, knows all about that. She's been looking for a job that makes use of her college degree in English, like teaching. But she's been able to find only a couple of low-paying, part-time jobs.
KOURTNEY LEIBMAN: I'm a receptionist at a church, and then I work at a yarn shop on the weekends.
YDSTIE: Leibman says she has become discouraged about finding a job in her chosen field.
LEIBMAN: I'm not really pursuing that at this time. I'm kind of more trying to get into a different field, maybe like Web design.
YDSTIE: So it's still a difficult job market, would you say?
LEIBMAN: Yes, I would.
YDSTIE: But despite today's disappointing jobs report, Mark Zandi thinks things will get better in 2014. So does Nariman Behravesh, for a number of reasons.
BEHRAVESH: Consumer optimism is good. We're seeing the export situation improving. We're importing less oil. Housing's still doing well. So the variety of factors that lead us to be relatively optimistic about the outlook.
YDSTIE: Financial markets reacted calmly to today's disappointing jobs report. Stocks were mixed. And in the bond market, interest rates were lower. There was some speculation that the weak report might delay the Fed's plans to wind down its stimulus. Fed policymakers will likely consider that when they meet again at the end of this month. John Ydstie, NPR News, Washington.
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The Department of Justice said today it will recognize more than a thousand same-sex marriages that took place in Utah recently. The announcement comes despite the state's questions about their validity. Utah is appealing an earlier court ruling that allowed the unions. From member station KUER in Salt Lake City, Terry Gildea has this report.
TERRY GILDEA, BYLINE: News of the federal government's recognition of gay married couples in Utah didn't change the minds of state officials.
MISSY LARSEN: The state of Utah will not recognize same-sex marriages.
GILDEA: Missy Larsen is a spokeswoman for the Utah attorney general's office. She says those same-sex couples married in Utah for the brief period it was legal would be recognized in the 17 other states that allow gay marriage. On December 20th, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Shelby overturned Utah's law banning same-sex marriage. Seventeen days later, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the lower court ruling, putting gay marriage on hold.
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GILDEA: Just outside the attorney general's office in the state capitol, hundreds of supporters of same-sex marriage held a rally. They delivered more than 45,000 petition signatures asking Governor Gary Herbert to recognize same-sex marriage in Utah. Among the protesters was Derek Kitchen, one of the plaintiffs in the original lawsuit against the state.
DEREK KITCHEN: I am surprised and disappointed in the state of Utah for not recognizing those marriages that they issued themselves during those two weeks when marriage was legal here. We'll see where it goes from here.
GILDEA: The state is preparing an appeal to the 10th Circuit court based in Denver. In the meantime, gay couples who were legally married in Utah will have to go outside the state to receive recognition of their union. For NPR News, I'm Terry Gildea in Salt Lake City.
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In West Virginia, federal authorities have launched an investigation. They're tasked to find out how a chemical spill contaminated the water supply of more than 300,000 people. Scores of businesses and schools closed today and residents were told not to use tap water for anything but flushing the toilet. West Virginia Public Broadcasting's Ashton Marra has the story.
ASHTON MARRA, BYLINE: At West Virginia State University today, people were lined up with jugs waiting to get water from tanker trucks. The trucks brought in thousands of gallons of clean water from Pennsylvania to the nine counties around the capital of Charleston affected by the leak. Barry Copley was frustrated.
BARRY COPLEY: You know, no coffee, can't take a bath, can't wash dishes. I mean, this is probably the worst thing we've ever had to happen, you know.
MARRA: Copley says his state made it through big weather disasters the past two years but what's happening now is quite a bit different.
COPLEY: I didn't realize how much water affects your life. You know, it's something I guess we all just take for granted because it's always there.
MARRA: The contamination came from a leak in a storage tank at Freedom Industries. It produces specialty chemicals for the coal and steel industries. They're also located less than a mile upstream on the Elk River from where the region gets its drinking water. As many as 5,000 gallons of methylcyclohexene methanol leaked from a storage tank. It's not known how much actually made it into the river. The chemical is used to separate newly mined coal from rock and dirt.
West Virginia health officials are still unsure of other things, not just the size of the spill but how much of the chemical can be ingested safely. Jeff McIntyre, president of West Virginia American Water, says there's also no timeline for when customers can use the water again.
JEFF MCINTYRE: We don't know that the water's not safe, but I can't say it is safe.
MARRA: The state poison control center has received more than 500 calls from people complaining of vomiting, eye irritation and skin blisters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is working with state officials to continue to truck in water. Meanwhile, U.S. attorney Booth Goodwin says he's opened a criminal probe into the cause of Thursday's spill. For NPR News, I'm Ashton Marra in Charleston, West Virginia.
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The retail giant Target delivered more bad news today. The company was the victim of a massive security breach before Christmas, and today it announced that that cyber-attack was much worse than originally reported. NPR's Sonari Glinton explains.
SONARI GLINTON, BYLINE: Starting on Black Friday, hackers were able to break into Target's internal systems. The company didn't find out about it for weeks. At first, Target said as many as 40 million credit and debit card numbers had been compromised. Today, the company said the personal information of 70 million customers had also been involved. That's things like names, phone numbers, mailing and email addresses. Brian Krebs is a security blogger who first broke the story of the breach.
BRIAN KREBS: It more or less guarantees that the people whose information is breached are going to get more solicitations. They're going to get more phishing attacks because that information is going to trickle down to other miscreants in the underground to typically buy huge lists of email addresses.
GLINTON: Target's CEO apologized for the breach and offered credit monitoring and identity theft protection for consumers for the next year. At the same time, the company's stock took a hit and it lowered projections for future earnings as well.
HOWARD DAVIDOWITZ: It's always an opportunity for other people. When Target falls on its face - and it did - you've got other retailers appealing to the middle class.
GLINTON: Howard Davidowitz is a retail consultant and investment banker. He says this is going to cost Target hundreds of millions of dollars at a hard time for retailers.
DAVIDOWITZ: But I don't this is going to be a long-term damage to a very a solid business. I think, also, people know the world we live in.
GLINTON: That's a world where everyone is under the constant threat of identity theft. Davidowitz says you should probably check your credit report even if you didn't shop at Target over the holidays. He just did. Sonari Glinton, NPR News, Culver City.
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Changes are coming soon to the way the National Security Agency gathers information about people all over the globe. President Obama is slated to speak next Friday about what action he'll take to revamp the NSA surveillance programs, which were revealed in news leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The president has been meeting with stakeholders for several months, including executives from some of the biggest technology firms.
Wired senior writer Steven Levy has also been talking to tech execs about the Snowden revelations. He wrote an article called "How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet." Levy says tech companies have been pushing the president to get them off the hook.
STEVEN LEVY: They were really gob-smacked. They got a phone call from The Washington Post. The Guardian was also calling, chasing the story. They have the same leaks. And they were saying, what is this thing about this program called PRISM that gives the NSA access to your servers there? And they'd never heard the word prism in that. And, of course, there was a program that they were cooperating with that didn't give direct access to the servers, but it did require them to hand over information, sometimes without warrants to the government.
CORNISH: But this is going to sound surprising to people who are under the impression, after all these leaks, that these companies very much were cooperating with the NSA. So for them to say, hey, we didn't know what was going on doesn't seem plausible.
LEVY: Well, they did hand over the certain information from what I'll call the front door. What really surprised them a little later on was that the NSA was also getting a lot of information from the back door, without permission basically by hacking their systems there. And this is what really enraged the companies.
CORNISH: Tell us a little bit about your visit to some of these tech firms. What did you learn from them that surprised you?
LEVY: I think the most surprising thing really was how now that the U.S. government was their biggest adversary there. I think that they hadn't expected to have to fortify themselves against the most sophisticated attacker, if you will, in the world.
CORNISH: But aren't they doing it against international hackers all the time?
LEVY: Yeah. But as sophisticated as, you know, the top international data thieves and dark-side hackers are, they are no match to governments. And the fellow from Google, who's head of security of Google told me, well, first, we were fighting these dark-side hackers there, these very sophisticated criminals. And then we had to step up after China attacked us. And now we're up essentially against the A-team, you know, the most sophisticated attackers in the world there.
CORNISH: Now, isn't this essentially disingenuous? I mean, as long as they're gathering and storing this amount of data, isn't there always going to be a privacy problem? And I ask because many privacy activists have talked about companies retaining too much data for too long, collecting too much for no good reason. I mean, they've made themselves vulnerable.
LEVY: That's right. The companies do have a lot of information about us. Some of them are more transparent than others about the amount of information they have. In some cases, like a company like Dropbox, it's just information that we very consciously say, OK, we're going to store our data on your servers there. So we'll put it in a cloud. But this is a continuing concern. And the companies have faced regulation on their own. This is one reason why they're somewhat reluctant to really go full tilt against the government because the same government could turn around and regulate them on that.
CORNISH: So it's not that the companies have lost customers, right, because I don't get the sense that people have been dropping their email accounts left and right.
LEVY: No, they haven't. And right after the revelations came out, the companies did a lot of testing. And they found that after initial drop in trust, that things came back up there. But as these revelations came one after another, they became more and more concerned, particularly among overseas customers. You know, President Obama within a couple of days after the first revelation said, don't worry, Americans, we're only spying on people overseas.
And since most of the companies have over half their business overseas, this was a big concern to them. And then there's this other threat called balkanization, that some countries are so outraged they're now saying that they don't want the information of their citizens stored on U.S. servers, that information has to stay within their borders. And this balkanization of the Internet is really a threat to the way the whole net operates.
CORNISH: Balkanization meaning every country will have its own Internet, in effect?
LEVY: That's right. Or at least the countries that demand this. And Brazil is actually far along on this. We've heard this from Germany, India. Other countries are threatening to limit the data to service inside their borders.
CORNISH: You know, at the end of the day, is there, at this point, any real expectation that there's privacy on the Internet, I mean, between the companies that trade on your information and a government that's interested in it?
LEVY: I came to kind of a pessimistic conclusion there. The fact is that we're in this rush of digitizing everything and getting all this information into the cloud, you know, where it can be accessed there. And both the NSA and the technology companies are taking advantage of these amazing technological advances that just changed the way information is stored but also the amount of information we generate that can be accessed there.
And it's irresistible to an agency like the NSA to somehow get access to that in its effort to protect us, just as it's irresistible to these companies to make use of this in building their businesses there.
CORNISH: Steven Levy is a senior writer for Wired magazine. Thanks so much for talking with us.
LEVY: My pleasure.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
An Olympic team spot isn't the only glittering sports prize up for grabs this weekend. Eight teams gear up for the NFL divisional playoffs on the road to next month's Super Bowl. Sportswriter Stefan Fatsis joins us now for his regular Friday update on what's happening in football. Hey there, Stefan.
STEFAN FATSIS, BYLINE: Hey, Audie.
CORNISH: So let's start with those two games tomorrow. First, Indianapolis at New England. In a nutshell, what do we expect?
FATSIS: All right. Indianapolis and their second-year quarterback Andrew Luck are coming off that absurd 45 to 44 comeback win over Kansas City last weekend. It was their season in microcosm. According to some numbers crunching by the website Football Outsiders, Indy is one of the most erratic teams in the league.
They had big swings in game performance this year. New England, one of the most steady teams, but also one of the most injured. They lost six starters in the last three months. Tom Brady had one of his worst seasons as a pro and who would pick against him?
CORNISH: All right. Well, what about the other game, Seattle and New Orleans?
FATSIS: All right. Seattle's defense is considered one of the top five or 10 in football history based on performance. Russell Wilson has entered into that realm of prepared, disciplined, creative, gifted quarterbacks and he's also really likeable. Seattle does really well at home. New Orleans doesn't do so well on the road and it's supposed to rain in Seattle, which should be an advantage over New Orleans, which plays in a dome, except for one thing. The Saints won in snowy Philadelphia last weekend, so who knows?
CORNISH: And then, two more games on Sunday. We've got San Diego at Denver and San Francisco at Carolina?
FATSIS: Yep. Did you see 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick last weekend, no sleeves in zero degree Green Bay? That was crazy.
CORNISH: Hardcore.
FATSIS: He will not be as cold in Carolina, neither will the Panthers vastly improved, equally exciting quarterback Cam Newton, but both of these teams have been successful because of their strong defenses. San Diego at Denver looks like the blowout game of the weekend, except for one thing. The Chargers won at Denver during the regular season and while the Broncos and quarterback Peyton Manning scored an NFL record 606 points this season, San Diego held them to under 30 points both times they played.
CORNISH: So Stefan, you mentioned the Patriots' slew of injuries and there's been more attention on head injuries with the NFL's big concussion settlement. Are we actually seeing changes in how the game is being played?
FATSIS: Well, the rules and their application have certainly changed, especially regarding blows to the head. There's been talk that players are targeting the legs instead but it's not obvious whether that's true. There's not data to back that up yet. But let's be clear, there have been a lot of notable injuries this season and plenty of concussions.
A half dozen prominent Kansas City players had to leave last weekend's playoff game, three of them had concussions. We saw a Green Bay player run back into the game for a play while being examined by doctors for a concussion, which was, in fact, diagnosed later. And we saw a New Orleans player refuse to leave the sidelines after he was diagnosed with one. Both of those were in violation of the NFL's concussion protocol.
CORNISH: But how has the NFL responded?
FATSIS: Well, kind of the way they have. It still feels a lot like denial. The NFL's commissioner, Roger Goodell, spoke at a public event in New York earlier this week. It was a controlled setting. He was questioned by a PR guy for a firm that has done business for the league and at least one of its teams. Goodell was asked whether concussions were a threat to the league and whether the sport, when played as intended, can cause lasting damage.
He responded that using the head is not the way football is intended to be played and this is the new party line. Heads up football, tackling with the head up and out of contact is safer. But the notion that the head encased in a hard plastic helmet with a face mask can be taken out of football, human instinct, the speed of the game, just make that impossible. You're going to see plenty of head collisions this weekend.
CORNISH: Stefan Fatsis, he's the author of "A Few Seconds of Panic: A Sportswriter Plays in the NFL." He joins us on Fridays to talk about sports and the business of sports. Stefan, thanks.
FATSIS: Thanks, Audie.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Here around Los Angeles, there are plenty of celebrities who look unnaturally young. One character in particular looks especially amazing for someone who died in 1946.
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PAUL F. TOMPKINS: (as H.G. Wells) I am H. G. Wells. I'm your host this evening and every evening. Oh, please. I don't do that for applause. I do that to see who doesn't applaud.
RATH: That's comedian Paul F. Tompkins. He becomes H. G. Wells for a monthly series at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. Wells activates his time machine to pull famous writers back from the beyond for improvised interviews called "Dead Authors." The night I was there, it was Wells in conversation with Tennessee Williams played by the hilarious Kristen Schaal wearing a white suit and fake mustache. You'll hear that in a bit.
But first, I asked Paul F. Tompkins exactly how much historical research he expects from his actors.
TOMPKINS: People are always daunted at first, like, I don't really know that much about, you know, whoever. And I say, it doesn't matter. You can pick anyone you want. I will do all the research, and I will only ask you questions that you can answer any way you want. I call them emotional questions so that I will never ask for a fact or a date or anything like that. I'll just say, this happened - I'll lay it out for them and for the audience - how did that make you feel? And then they're free to say whatever they want.
RATH: I want to give people a little taste of your H. G. Wells who has - he's been called the father of science fiction.
TOMPKINS: That's right.
RATH: And what I like about it is that we get to hear H. G. Wells talk some trash about other writers.
(LAUGHTER)
TOMPKINS: That's right.
RATH: Let's hear a little bit of you as H. G. Wells.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "DEAD AUTHORS")
TOMPKINS: (as H. G. Wells) Jules Verne, of course, the author of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," which it's very title is incorrect. League is not a measure of depth. It is a measure of distance going rather more horizontally. Although at least it shows some imagination because the rest of the book, frankly, just takes things that exist and then writes them down. Oh, no, a giant squid. There are giant squids. That's neither science nor fiction.
(LAUGHTER)
RATH: What do you do for research to get into the mind of H. G. Wells?
TOMPKINS: I have - of all the research that I've done on authors for the show, I think H.G. Wells is the one I've researched the least. Sometimes it's completely unnecessary. I did one - episode 20 had John Hodgman of "The Daily Show" and the author of those great books as Ayn Rand, and I spent - there's pages and pages about Ayn Rand, pages and pages on Wikipedia.
And I spent a couple hours in a hotel room in San Francisco - this is the part of the San Francisco Sketch Fest - turning down lunch invitations, all this stuff, condensing, condensing, condensing.
RATH: So you were cramming.
TOMPKINS: Yeah, I was cramming. Yeah. And then he, I think, let me get out two questions. He just, in character, was just rambling on and on and on. And it was hilarious. But I did regret not accepting those lunch invitations.
RATH: So one of the shows that I caught recently was you had Kristen Schaal as Tennessee Williams.
TOMPKINS: Yeah.
RATH: Maybe gender bending is a theme with these authors with you.
TOMPKINS: It - yeah. It's happened many times.
RATH: And she just chewed it up.
TOMPKINS: She's hilarious.
RATH: Tennessee Williams was savaged by critics late...
TOMPKINS: Yeah.
RATH: ...in life. And, well, let's hear. Here's Kristen Schaal as Tennessee Williams talking about that.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "DEAD AUTHORS")
KRISTEN SCHAAL: (as Tennessee Williams) Have you heard of "Red Devil Battery Sign"? "Red Devil Battery Sign"?
TOMPKINS: (as H.G. Wells) I've heard of it, yes.
SCHAAL: (as Tennessee Williams) They said it was (bleep). They all - they said it was (bleep). I used to be the one they said was saving the American theater by myself, and then all of a sudden, you write something like "Red Devil Battery Sign" and now you're (bleep) and then you drink more, and then that makes you write weirder stuff.
(as Tennessee Williams) And then you start taking sleeping pills and drinking and you're writing. Things are coming to you, and you're putting them out there and everybody's like you're (bleep). So I died.
(LAUGHTER)
RATH: That's actually a pretty good summary of the end of Tennessee Williams.
(LAUGHTER)
TOMPKINS: Yes.
RATH: This is - not to laugh about it, but I think it's...
No, certainly not. But it is - it is succinct, yes, absolutely.
TOMPKINS: Yeah. One of the things that I've noticed about the show is that all the performers seem to gravitate towards the bitterness that can come out of a career in writing. And there's a lot of jealousy, there's a lot of anger at people that rip people off and so much anger at critics, so much anger at critics. And it comes up again and again.
RATH: So you also - you do interviews not in character. You have this podcast series in which you give these great interviews, which is kind of rude. I don't really do standup.
(LAUGHTER)
RATH: Is there something about this format?
TOMPKINS: You know, I - yeah. I really like talking to people, you know? And I - my social trick always in a situation where someone's asking me about my life is to turn it back around on them. And honestly, it's not completely just a deflection move. It's like I'm genuinely interested in hearing what they have to say. There's always something about the way people choose to tell you about themselves that is interesting.
RATH: Paul F. Tompkins is the host of the "Dead Authors" podcast. Paul, it was a real pleasure speaking with you. Thank you.
TOMPKINS: The pleasure's mine, Arun. Thank you so much.
RATH: And if you want to hear more of Kristen Schaal as Tennessee Williams, it's chapter 27 in the "Dead Authors" series available now on iTunes.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
And if you want to delve really deeply into the tortured soul of the great playwright, be sure to check out the new book "The Trip to Echo Spring," by Olivia Laing. The phrase "the trip to Echo Spring, it's a line from "The Glass Menagerie," code for hitting the liquor cabinet. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: The phrase is from Williams' "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof."] Laing's book investigates the role of drinking in the life of Tennessee Williams and five other great American writers - Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Cheever, John Berryman, and Raymond Carver.
I sat down with Laing last week and began by asking her why, of all the writers who drank, she chose these six.
OLIVIA LAING: I really didn't want to come in and do a hatchet job. I didn't want to expose them more than was necessary. And I think the best way to counterbalance that was for it to be people whose work I genuinely loved, that I thought was extraordinary, and whose work dealt with alcoholism, whose work dealt with alcohol and drinking with the whole mythos of the boozing writer.
And these six were all obsessed with the subject. They returned to it over and over again in poems and stories and plays and novels. It is one of their great subjects.
RATH: And in a way, I mean, do you think that because of the way that they lived with this and wrote about it that they might be responsible for this - there's a stereotype, really, of the great writer - and I think especially with novelists - that you're this heavy drinking type, especially like the 20th century male novelist, I think.
LAING: Absolutely. And I think Hemingway has a lot to do with that.
RATH: Yeah.
LAING: Hemingway created it very much and has made it something intoxicating and addictive in itself, I think. We still, in many ways, are in love with it. I grew up in an alcoholic family myself, and I really wanted to sort of pull that apart, see what was behind it, see what was going on with it.
And it's very interesting, when you look at Hemingway's work and his letters, the ways that he established that myth in order to conceal and protect his own drinking, to let him himself kind of get away with the amount of drinking that he wanted to do. And he was very contemptuous of people like Fitzgerald who he didn't think were good drinkers, who he felt couldn't really handle it.
RATH: How many of these greats were writing while under the influence?
LAING: Well, that's an interesting question, because they tended not to actually write drunk, which I think is something that when we think about writing drinking, we're assuming that they're getting drunk and getting to the typewriter and, you know, writing in these states of intoxication. And that tends not to happen.
Fitzgerald did do it sometimes. He wrote quite a bit of "Tender is the Night" drunk, and he wrote later: I bitterly regret doing that. You can tell when I did. So think it's more that it runs contemporaneously through their lives. So you see them, like Hemingway, say, working very hard in the mornings - Tennessee Williams did this too - with the black coffee but later on in the day as a sort of change of tune, change of channel, they start really hitting it hard and the next morning get up and do the whole thing over again.
RATH: Even if they didn't write while drunk or under the influence, how many of them really believed that alcohol enhanced their ability or that they needed it to loosen them up somehow?
LAING: I think it's not so much to loosen them up in order to produce the creative material. Sometimes Fitzgerald would say that, that he was drinking in order to loosen up his ideas, to free his ideas, but I think what tended to happen more is they tended to suffer quite strongly from - in different combinations - anxiety and depression from really quite a young age.
And the drinking and the writing seem very much associated with that, that drinking becomes a way to escape from or to medicate all kinds of difficult feelings that might also be driving the creativity too.
RATH: Someone who really definitely spent a lot of time depressed that you write about, the poet John Berryman. And he was actually somebody where there was this sort of mythology, this sense that alcoholism was just part of who he was, was part of his creative process somehow.
LAING: Absolutely. Yeah. And you see that even after his death. I mean, he killed himself having failed the third time of going through recovery. His story is incredibly distressing. But even after his death, you still see people kind of talking about, you know, the whole shtick of the drunk poet turning up to give his readings, as if that's a kind of glamorous thing.
And it doesn't really take much picking away at Berryman's life to see how incredibly unglamorous his drinking was and the vast consequences it had on the structure on his life, on his work, on the people he loved, on his children, that it was incredibly damaging and detrimental.
RATH: Well, it's interesting, you know, in your book, how it feels like in a way that this myth of the glamour of the drinking writer perpetuates itself. You write about Tennessee Williams how when he died he wanted to be buried near the poet Hart Crane who he, in a way, maybe modeled himself after. And Crane was also an alcoholic. And I wonder, you know, did Williams or others start down that path to excess thinking they might, you know, emulate those greats before them?
LAING: I'm sure there's something of that. There's a scene that I have in the book where Cheever describes sitting on his porch reading biographies of Fitzgerald and crying his eyes out over them. And there's this sort of sense that they're kind of in love with these stories, that they follow them and then other people are following them. So there's a sort of hand-me-down quality to it.
But I think also, it's really important to remember how much the alcoholic desires an excuse note. And this provides such a wonderful excuse note for them. It's like, well, I'm an American male writer, and this is what I have to do. This is how I must live. And once they get dry, once people like Cheever and Carver get dry, they very much reject that sort of way of thinking.
RATH: Has this exploration of yours changed your experience of reading these writers?
LAING: I've been left with a real fondness for them. I mean, some of them, I felt very uncomfortable about the things that I was finding out. And actually, ironically, it was Raymond Carver whose sobriety I end with. I was expecting that to be a very celebratory story. But writing about that, I realized that there were still things that weren't likeable about him.
There were still things - there were still elements of denial in his character. But it's human. It's a human thing. And I think I did end the book with a sense of compassion for them and a sense of the kind of courage and the kind of doggedness without wanting to sort of hero worship them. There's a real courage to just getting up every day and carrying on writing. I found that very impressive.
But at the same time, I don't want to let them off the hook of it's not necessary to drink to those levels, and they were choosing to do that over and over again.
RATH: So, I mean, it's very easy to lose track of when you're thinking about all the great writing that these men have done. What your book digs down into is that, you know, there are victims for these people, for their alcoholism.
LAING: That is such a good point. Yeah. And I think we do forget that, and that was something I was really at pains to try and look at is the collateral damage: the wives, the children, the friendships that gradually get destroyed, the teaching jobs, all sorts of things.
And that to me seems really significant that there's an ordinary life outside of the sort of writer myth life. And that's part of the story of literature. Surely, it's not the whole story, but it's a part of it.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RATH: Olivia Laing's new book is called "The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking." And for Saturday, that's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath. Tomorrow, we have R&B legend Sharon Jones on the show. Until then, thanks for listening and have a great might.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Everyone loves hugs, right? Well, no. For those of us who aren't fans, things can get really awkward. In a recent piece for time.com, research psychologist Peggy Drexler was not ashamed to state her position.
PEGGY DREXLER: Nope. I'm not a hugger.
RATH: So how do you get out of it?
DREXLER: Well, if it's in the office, you keep something between you and the hugger until the moment passes. Another is to be straight out and say: Sorry, I'm not much of a hugger. You can resist and take physical control with a stiff handshake and a firm elbow that keeps personal space intact. You can escape and find something that requires your immediate attention. And if nothing comes to mind, drop your cellphone...
(LAUGHTER)
DREXLER: ...and then just pick it up.
RATH: What motivated you to go public with your anti-hugging stance?
DREXLER: Well, you know, it started first when I had graduated after my Ph.D. I saw a well-loved professor on the street, and she was coming towards me. And all of the sudden, I knew that she was going in for the hug. And I thought - it struck me, I don't want this, but how can I get out of it without being hurtful or graceless?
And then - I don't know if you remember in July the mayor of San Diego was a serial harasser.
RATH: He gave hugging a bad name, I think. He said: I'm just a hugger.
DREXLER: Yes, he did. He said: I'm a hugger. He said: I'm just a hugger. So it got me thinking again that it is part of the culture at this point, what is acceptable and what isn't, and we all have feelings about it.
RATH: I guess we should draw the distinction for different social situations here because there are some people who are comfortable, say, hugging their friends. But this thing of now hugging in the workplace, I think for a lot of people, they're not quite sure how to handle that.
DREXLER: I think it is a concern. In the workplace, hugging has different implications for men and women. Women can look like the office mom.
RATH: Hmm.
DREXLER: And too much hugging can make a man look creepy.
RATH: I think we've all seen that too.
DREXLER: Yeah. Yeah. And my feeling is you don't hug anybody you supervise. In a big win, you might hug sideways, you know, put your arm around their shoulder, in personal loss. If somebody gets married, you can give a congratulations hug. But hug sparingly. If it's someone you see in your everyday life, you can become known as a serial hugger, and it's a bit creepy.
(LAUGHTER)
DREXLER: Don't whisper anything creepy or scary. Don't close your eyes. Don't hug anybody from behind, never in a restroom, for obvious reason. But I think the main rule is if you wonder if a hug is appropriate, it probably isn't.
RATH: Now, is this hugging mania particularly American?
DREXLER: Now, these are generalizations, OK?
RATH: Mm-hmm. Sure.
DREXLER: But Asian cultures generally hesitate about physical affection, especially in public. But then you get to Latin America, and it's kind of like, bring it on.
(LAUGHTER)
DREXLER: And Russia. They hug, they kiss, they slap on the back. And France is a quick peck on the cheek with minimal body contact.
RATH: So - I mean, I guess there's just something difficult about America, the wonderful thing about the diversity, but it's difficult to figure out what's the single right way to interact with people.
DREXLER: Well, I think that's the point, that there is none at this point, and there is hugging anxiety. It's something that's in the zeitgeist, but we really haven't, you know, made any rules. My own rule is: I won't hug if you don't.
RATH: Peggy Drexler is a research psychologist who has recently come out against rampant hugging that seems to be taking over America. Peggy, thank you so much.
DREXLER: Thank you, Arun.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WITH ARMS WIDE OPEN")
CREED: (Singing) With arms wide open...
ARUN RATH, HOST:
The McDonnell Douglas DC-9 once ruled the skies, but those days are long gone.
(SOUNDBITE OF COMMERCIAL AD)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Get up and go. Cover mid-America at 560 miles per hour aboard Ozark Air Lines' new DC-9 jet spy Douglas. The time you save will be all your own.
RATH: The DC-9 first took flight in 1965 and production stopped in 1982. While most airlines fazed the planes out in the 1990s, Delta held on, overhauling the fleet and keeping them in the air until now.
On Monday, Delta Flight 2014 from Minneapolis to Atlanta marked the last scheduled commercial flight for a DC-9 on a major U.S. airline. At Atlanta International Airport, Captain Scott Woolfrey stands inside one of the now retired planes that will head to its final resting place in Blytheville, Arkansas.
CAPTAIN SCOTT WOOLFREY: The DC-9 is a workhorse.
RATH: He knows how these planes perform. Woolfrey's flown them since 1997, and he piloted Monday's final flight as the sun set across the horizon.
WOOLFREY: As we took off at 4:30, it was light out. And as we got closer and closer to Atlanta, the skies turned kind of an amber to a deep purple, then set completely on the aircraft. We arrived, it was dark, and taxied to the gate - very symbolic of the flight.
Woolfrey calls the DC-9 a pilot's plane in a way you just don't see anymore. Entering the cockpit is almost like stepping back in time.
It's all analogue gauges. Pilots are very intimately involved in flying the aircraft, flying by needles and balls and with a single autopilot.
RATH: And there's no GPS.
WOOLFREY: We navigate by ground-based radio beacons. Our needles point to a station, and then we get a distance from a station. So we know where we are. We use the old paper charts, and we navigate that way.
RATH: Over nearly a half century of service, the DC-9 opened up jet travel to hundreds of smaller communities. Its compact size let it land on short runways in places that previously had to rely on slower propeller planes. Woolfrey says the best memories he has are flying these planes over mountains to land at airports in little towns that dot the west.
WOOLFREY: It's indescribable in clear weather to start your descent, and it's almost a two-dimensional view. And then once you get down into the mountains like Helena or Bozeman and see the majestic peaks around you, it's just absolutely an amazing sight.
RATH: These days, the DC-9s are outdated. They're noisy and not fuel efficient. But Woolfrey says they're fun to fly, and he'll miss taking them up.
WOOLFREY: It brought us from Minneapolis to Atlanta safely and comfortably. And kind of nostalgic just setting the brakes for the last time.
RATH: That's Captain Scott Woolfrey. On Monday, he flew Delta's last DC-9 flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
Each week, we check in with the online magazine Ozy about some of the most exciting stories they're following. This week, we're going to dig deeper into one piece in particular by freelance writer Samantha Schoech. She's struggled with her weight for most of her life.
SAMANTHA SCHOECH: I am a sort of a lifelong yo-yo dieter, and like many women, weight is a frustrating topic for me.
RATH: Recently, Samantha crossed the line into clinical obesity.
SCHOECH: That bothered me on a lot of different levels, but I couldn't quite figure out how to lose weight on my own. So I sought out a diet clinic in the Bay Area and was prescribed phentermine at my first meeting.
RATH: Phentermine - one half of the infamous diet pill cocktail fen-phen that was big in the 1990s. The other half, fenfluramine, was taken off of the market after a multibillion-dollar lawsuit. Even with that notorious association, phentermine is the most prescribed diet pill in the U.S.
SCHOECH: I chose to take it because I felt like anything that might help was welcome. And that's - yeah, that's how it started.
RATH: And in your writing, you've described yourself as a feminist, and you talk about it being sort of a tricky thing to - you have to, as a woman in the world, I guess, struggle with what society throws you in terms of body image, but also being a feminist, you don't want to give into that thinking either.
SCHOECH: Exactly. I live, as many women do, in sort of this frustrating dichotomy between wanting to be filled with self-acceptance and a sense of power and efficacy and value and being constantly told: oh, that's great, but if you're overweight, you're sort of a loser.
RATH: So with all of that stuff swirling through your head, what was it like for you when you had that pill in your hand for the first time?
SCHOECH: So honestly, I took that pill without a backwards glance. I was sort of at a point of desperation, mostly because I was tired of how much brain space my weight was taking up in my life. I have a family, I have a career, I have a marriage, I have friends. I don't have time to spend 50 percent of my time loathing my body.
Plus, I just honestly didn't like the way I looked, so, you know, there's vanity in there too. Honestly, I didn't take the time to do any research before I started taking phentermine. And it was only after I dropped about 25 pounds that I went and found out what the side effects are. I personally have not had any negative side effects. So I'm - I'm still taking it.
RATH: What are the side effects?
SCHOECH: The more serious side effects are cardiovascular side effects, and those are less than one percent. And I'm not here to defend phentermine by any stretch of the imagination.
RATH: So you've been very open about this in this piece. Before the piece, were you open about using phen?
SCHOECH: No. In fact, I didn't tell anybody.
RATH: Really?
SCHOECH: I didn't even tell my husband, in part because I didn't want it to lessen my accomplishment. I felt like if people saw my use of phentermine as this crutch, they would write off my efforts. And then I was a blogger for a long time, and I've sort of had it with people weighing in on my decisions and my life.
RATH: Of course, now, you've published this piece, and I have to imagine there's a lot of chatter you must be getting. What have the responses been like?
SCHOECH: You know, mostly, it's been overwhelmingly positive. And people have been grateful for me stepping into this conversation about feminism and body image and dieting and health and secrets we keep and all of that. But there's been some criticism too. I mean, somebody told me that it was irresponsible of me as a mother to take phentermine.
You know, I got a comment on the story, saying: Don't listen to the lies. Go on an ego diet and binge on love. And I thought, you know, that's great. But it's also just way too facile. I mean...
RATH: Yeah. Pay your bills with love too.
SCHOECH: Yeah, exactly. I mean, the truth of the matter is, you know, I care about how I look to a certain extent. I am not trying to be a supermodel, by any stretch of the imagination. I am trying to be a healthy 43-year-old mother of two.
RATH: Samantha, thank you so much for sharing this with us.
SCHOECH: Thank you so much for having me.
RATH: Freelance writer Samantha Schoech is the co-editor of the book "The Bigger the Better, the Tighter the Sweater." Her piece "Even a Feminist Take Phentermine" ran this week on ozy.com.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Back in the U.S., the White House has been working hard to fix the well-publicized problems with the Affordable Care Act. But there's at least one big problem that's outside the president's power to fix: the question of whether employers should have to provide contraception coverage to their employees. The Supreme Court will be deciding that one. They're currently considering a challenge to the contraception requirement by a group of nuns called the Little Sisters of the Poor.
But the case raises questions that reverberate beyond health coverage. How do you protect religious freedom when the beliefs of individuals and churches or businesses come into conflict? That's our cover story today.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RATH: We start with a case before the Supreme Court. The Little Sisters of the Poor are being represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Kristina Arriaga is the fund's director, and she says the sisters are as selfless as their name implies.
KRISTINA ARRIAGA: They devote their lives to serving the poor, elderly, people that have nowhere else to go in their last years. And the sisters, under the new HHS - Health and Human Services - mandate, are being forced by the government to either sign a form allowing a third party to provide contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs to their employees or they're being threatened with fines.
RATH: A lot of critics are asking, what's the big deal about signing a form? The form is there expressly for church-affiliated groups like the sisters so they can register loud and clear that they're opting out of contraception coverage. But Arriaga says the provision doesn't do enough to protect religious liberty.
ARRIAGA: Well, the Little Sisters of the Poor feel that whether they provide the contraceptives or these potentially life-terminating drugs to their employees or they make someone else do it, it's the same thing. It's a sin. They're not allowed by their God to provide these medications to their employees. And they simply cannot, in good conscience, sign that form. And their conscientious objection should absolutely be respected by the government.
RATH: And this gets us to the core questions: Who has the right to religious liberty? And what does it mean to exercise that right?
Jay Michaelson is a fellow at the liberal Political Research Associates, who wrote a report titled "Redefining Religious Liberty: The Covert Campaign Against Civil Rights."
JAY MICHAELSON: I think we'd all agree that a church shouldn't be compelled to perform a religious ceremony that it doesn't want to perform. Then the next level up is religious organizations. So Catholic hospitals, Catholic charities - do they have to obey the same laws as everyone else, or can they - do they have a separate set of laws that applies only to them?
RATH: And what about religious liberty for individual people, Americans who bring their religious beliefs outside the church and into their businesses? To answer that, we're going to Lakewood, Colorado, west of Denver.
JACK PHILLIPS: Yeah. I'm Jack Phillips from Masterpiece Cakeshop. And we make specialty cakes and cookies and brownies here in Lakewood, Colorado.
RATH: The shop's website boasts that if you can think it up, Phillips can make it into a cake. He's owned the shop for 20 years.
PHILLIPS: I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, and so I try in every aspect of my life to reflect that. That in every way I want to have integrity in my life and honesty and love for my fellow man and do everything to the best of my ability to honor him.
RATH: Phillips says his faith affects everything he does, including how he runs his business. Last September, that became a problem.
PHILLIPS: Two gentlemen came in my store and said that they were here to look for a wedding cake. It was for their wedding. And so I replied that I don't do cakes for same-sex weddings. They were surprised and kind of asked for an explanation like, what? And so I explained to them that I would make their birthday cakes and sell them cookies and brownies, but I just don't do cakes for same-sex weddings, at which point they both stormed out of the shop. I just didn't feel that as a Christian that I would want to participate in a same-sex wedding by providing the cake and my talents and my business for that event.
RATH: A few weeks later, Phillips got a notice from the state. The ACLU had filed a lawsuit on behalf of the two men. They say his refusal is a legal discrimination. Phillips says he is protected by his First Amendment right to live according to his religious beliefs.
In December, a judge sided with the ACLU and ordered Phillips to provide the cakes for same-sex ceremonies. Phillips has appealed the decision, but his case is just one of many like it. In Washington, another baker and a florist were both sued, and an Oregon bakery is under investigation for refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple.
Kristina Arriaga of the Becket Fund says devout business owners have a right to refuse.
ARRIAGA: Many of these bakers and service providers for weddings feel that by participating in the wedding ceremony itself, they're acknowledging in some way that these are valid marriages and their religion tells them otherwise.
RATH: What about the argument that this is looking at liberty and rights from the wrong direction, that, you know, say the freedom of same-sex couples to be married and express their vows before God in a way that's consistent with their religion and prohibiting them from getting married suppresses their basic right to their religious expression?
ARRIAGA: Oh, we at the Becket Fund think that they have a right to get married in states that (unintelligible) that right. However, they should not be forcing individuals who do not agree with their marriage to participate in the ceremony. They should seek out parties that share their religious beliefs.
RATH: Jay Michaelson believes that the legal battles reflect a cultural shift in America.
MICHAELSON: I think there's a real sense of a cultural war being lost. And that sense is not entirely inaccurate. We are changing as a country. Having our first African-American president is a massive change. Having same-sex marriage be legal for over 30 percent of Americans is a significant change. And these changes are authentically terrifying. I think it is a sincere movement. There are a number of people who really believe that we've lost our moral center when it comes to matters of sexuality and gender.
And you could - they have pretty good reasons for that. I just think that the cure is not abridging people's freedom, but coming to a more expansive understanding of what being in a civil democracy is about.
RATH: At Masterpiece Cakeshop, the fight continues. Jack Phillips has appealed his case on religious-liberty grounds. But what if he loses and the courts say he must provide cakes for same-sex ceremonies?
PHILLIPS: I won't provide the service. It goes against my core beliefs, and I can't be forced to do something against my will, regardless of what the law says.
RATH: He knows he could be fined or even have his business license taken away.
PHILLIPS: Yeah. That's a small price to pay for my faith and for my citizenship.
RATH: Jack Phillips is just one of many Americans locked in the battle over competing notions of religious liberty.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon died today at the age of 85. The controversial military and political leader had spent the last eight years in a coma following a stroke. From Jerusalem, NPR's Emily Harris reports.
EMILY HARRIS, BYLINE: Ariel Sharon was part of the nearly-gone generation of leaders who fought for Israel before the state's founding. That history built trust, says Israeli military analyst Jonathan Spyer.
JONATHAN SPYER: You know, Sharon was a man who Israelis turned to in moments of extreme national emergency.
HARRIS: Spyer says Sharon would do whatever he made up his mind to do, and sometimes that brought Israel victory, for example, in the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
SPYER: You know, he found that gap between the two Egyptian armies, he pushed across the Suez Canal and he reversed the course of the war. So it's one of those things where, yeah, on the one hand, this could be a potentially dangerous or unwelcome characteristic. On the other hand, timid and conformist military officers, you know, wouldn't have crossed the Suez Canal in 1973 and cut off the Egyptian Third Army, and Sharon did.
HARRIS: But Sharon's legacy is controversial even within Israel, because he changed his mind on big issues, says Israeli political analyst Eytan Gilboa. For example, Sharon championed building Israeli settlements on Palestinian territories occupied after the 1967 war, but in 2005, he pulled Israeli civilians and soldiers out of Gaza. He pushed troops further into Lebanon than the Israeli government planned in the 1982 invasion, but he drove Palestinian militants out of that country. Eytan Gilboa.
EYTAN GILBOA: The left, which opposed him and criticized him for the settlements and the war in Lebanon, praised him for the disengagement and his willingness to negotiate a peace settlement with the Palestinians.
HARRIS: Israel's right had mixed feelings too.
GILBOA: The right felt that by disengaging from Gaza and his willingness to allow the establishment of the Palestinian state, he betrayed the right ideology and claim for the entire West Bank and Gaza.
HARRIS: Palestinians see Sharon's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza as a strategic move to help Israel, not help create a Palestinian state. It wasn't a real withdrawal, says Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouthi.
MUSTAFA BARGHOUTHI: Where Israel managed to achieve two goals, first, maintain control of the borders, of the sea and of the airspace, and at the same time separating Gaza from the West Bank.
HARRIS: Israeli settler activist Boas Haetzni also sees Sharon's Gaza pullout as a failure, but for different reasons.
BOAS HAETZNI: The situation today that the southern part of Israel is under cover of Hamas rockets, this is his present to Israel.
HARRIS: Early Israeli eulogies to Sharon have mentioned his dedication to the state and his military daring. Palestinians remember Sharon's visit to Islam's holiest spot in Jerusalem, widely credited with triggering the second intifada, his building of the separation barrier in and around the West Bank, and Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon led by Sharon, which included massacres in two Palestinian refugee camps. Although controversial, Sharon is widely seen as a leader who helped shape Israeli history. Ariel Sharon will lie in state tomorrow. His burial is planned for Monday.
Emily Harris, NPR News, Jerusalem.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Arun Rath.
Reporting on Iran is difficult and frustrating, and for those on the ground there, dangerous. It was especially bad after the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, which triggered massive protests. Iran cracked down hard on the dissenters and heavily restricted Western reporters' access. But the country's recently elected president, Hassan Rouhani, has started to change things.
President Rouhani has helped initiate the first high-level talks with the U.S. in decades. There's some progress in negotiations on Iran's controversial nuclear program. And his government has opened up the country to some Western reporters.
Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor is one of them. He was able to return to Iran for the first time in four and a half years.
SCOTT PETERSON: Since the dispute about that election in 2009, which led to weeks and even months of street protests and this so-called Green Movement, there really has been hardly anybody that's been able to be inside and reporting, and certainly very few who've been able to report freely.
RATH: So in that span of time, that substantial gap, how have things changed in Iran since the last time you were there?
PETERSON: Well, things have changed in a lot of different ways. I mean, first of all, what I heard from Iranians, the way they described the last four years, especially kind of between the presidency - the second term of President Ahmadinejad and then this new election, which has brought about so much hope for so many Iranians with President Hassan Rouhani, that period they really described as a very dark time.
Many people told me after the election and the violence of 2009, they told me they would never cast a ballot again, that they couldn't trust that their vote would be counted or anything like that. So one of the dynamics that has yielded this kind of resurgence of hope or re-engagement of Iranians and their political future and in the politics of today is the fact that they themselves overcame their doubts about the election system and basically went out to vote and elect by a very thin majority, this more moderate cleric as president.
RATH: And as you mentioned, you know, this new president who elected last year, Hassan Rouhani, he's been hailed as a moderate and reformer and even seems to have the backing of some of the religious authorities. So several months into his tenure now, how much support does he have there?
PETERSON: Well, it's remarkable because this is a character, in fact, who really occupies the largest portion of Iran's political spectrum that we've had as a politician over at least the last 20 years. So he not only has, in many respects, the trust of Iran supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but he also gained the support of some of the most powerful reformists and moderate blocs. So that really has meant that he occupies this big space.
And the way that I saw this kind of manifesting itself on the ground in Tehran is you really get a sense of people having optimism now for the first time in a lot of years. Now, they're not sure where it's going, but for them, today is much better than the situation - the political situation that they saw six months ago.
RATH: And something else, though, that might temper the optimism that you've written about is that it sounds like there are still some fairly powerful hard-liners that are not happy with the idea of a new order.
PETERSON: One of the most striking things that I saw during this visit was going to the Friday prayers. And, of course, Friday prayers for the last 34 years have defined kind of where the political weathervane was pointing for the Islamic Republic. And in this instance, I heard Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, who's kind of a renowned hard-liner, and he was, you know, at the beginning of his political speech, and he's sitting there - of course, he sits there, his left hand is kind of clutching the barrel of an AK-47 rifle.
And while he's holding that, he's speaking to these thousands and thousands of people who are there. And he kind of blandly ticked off some of the usual things, the anti-American stuff, how we can't trust the Americans because they're deceitful, we need to be very careful. But as soon as he began to speak about the internal political dynamic, as soon as he started to speak about the sedition, which is what the regime has termed these events in 2009, these protests, as soon as he started speaking about that, his eyes lit up.
He became very agitated, very angry, and said - with these new political changes. He said, these people have come in. They feel that they've been given new life. They feel that they've been given, you know, given kind of new hope. We must remind them that we are vigilant and that we will not allow them to, you know, kind of relaunch the sedition.
This gives you a sense, you know, the hard-liners, those who are against what Rouhani is trying to do, those who are against reaching out toward the West are suspicious of any contacts whatsoever with the United States. They live in that world of suspicion. They are still very, very powerful. And even though the election demonstrated that they are minority, they have a very loud voice, and they also have many, many resources to use to their advantage.
RATH: Scott Peterson reports for the Christian Science Monitor. He's also the author of "Let the Swords Encircle Me: Iran - a Journey Behind the Headlines." Scott, thank you.
PETERSON: Thank you.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Now to another country where the political process has been animated by an intense mix of optimism and fear: Egypt. Voters there are deciding whether to adopt a new constitution this week. The hopes that sprang out of the popular uprising that ejected President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 had been tempered by the political instability in the years that have followed. Last summer, President Mohammed Morsi was overthrown in a military coup. And this week's constitutional referendum is the third in as many years.
Nathan Brown is a professor of political science at George Washington University and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment. I asked him, why so many rewrites?
NATHAN BROWN: To be fair, the first one was really about an interim constitution. The next two, the one in December 2012 and this one, really are not about a fundamentally different document. It's much more about who's writing the document. The document that was passed in 2012 was written by an assembly dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is now out of power, treated as a terrorist organization by the government, and there's a new group in charge that's writing this document.
RATH: So how is the document different? What are the changes?
BROWN: Well, if you were to read through the two documents, you wouldn't see an enormous number of differences. What you would see would be a little bit more robust human rights protections in this one, a little bit less religious language and also what probably hasn't attracted enough notice, an awful lot of insulation for some institutions of the Egyptian state, like the military, the religious establishment and even the police.
They really are going to escape, I think, any kind of political oversight by any other branches of government. They're basically autonomous and able to run their own affairs as they see fit.
RATH: Do you think the referendum is going to pass?
BROWN: It's absolutely going to pass because the only people who are opposed to it are going to boycott it.
RATH: That would be the Muslim Brotherhood supporters.
BROWN: Absolutely, yes.
RATH: So why wouldn't they just vote against it, engage in the process?
BROWN: Well, there's two things. Number one, I think they might lose. That is to say the Muslim Brotherhood support has gone way down. They can't really campaign freely. But most of all, they think this entire process has been illegitimate. Egypt elected a president, they said, back in 2012. And any political process that moves forward has to be based on a recognition of the legitimacy of that election.
RATH: There are still factions in Egypt that are budding heads over the constitution, you know, even just beyond the Muslim Brotherhood. Assuming that it does pass, as you say it will, how far do you think that the constitution will go towards solving some of Egypt's very serious problems?
BROWN: Well, it's certainly not going to heal Egypt's deep political wounds, these divisions between the Islamists and the non-Islamists. It may perhaps result in a more powerful, more coherent government. The government that is there now is this kind of motley coalition of civilian political figures with the military and the security apparatus lurking very much in the wings.
You could have an elected president who would have a little bit more of a mandate, especially if that president comes from the military and can therefore rule partly from the military and partly from the regular constitutional framework. That's not a recipe for a real democracy, but it might be a political system that at least can make some firm decisions rather than the current pattern, which is of a government a little bit adrift.
RATH: Is it too cynical to ask if, you know, say, in another year or so, we'll be back here again talking about another referendum?
BROWN: It's not too cynical at all. Even some of the people who are writing the document said, well, this is really a document that might only last five or 10 years anyway. It's really for a transitional phase. So I don't think it's too cynical a question, but I'm not sure that we're going to see a continuing rewriting of the constitution.
What we will see, I think, is a political and authoritarian Egyptian political system that will gradually entrench itself. I don't think it'll solve the country's divisions, but I think it will be able to cling to power. And so the constitution that Egyptians are going to vote on and likely pass is one that they'll probably living with for a while.
RATH: Nathan Brown is a professor of political science at George Washington University and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment. Nathan, thank you.
BROWN: Thank you for having me.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Again, you're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SHARON JONES: (Singing) When I was a child, I believed what they told me. To each one shall come what each one shall earn...
RATH: This is the sheer excitement and boundless energy that is Sharon Jones. She and her band, the Dap-Kings, have been leading a classic soul revival for more than 10 years now. You're listening to a track from their latest album, coming out on Tuesday, "Give the People What they Want."
I hesitate to call it their new album, though. It was supposed to be released back in August. But earlier that summer, Sharon Jones got the word that she had stage two pancreatic cancer. Everything came to a halt. Her illness didn't creep up on her, though. It hit her square in the back during a performance in Boise, Idaho.
JONES: I was on stage one night, and the pain hit me so hard I doubled over. But, you know, I brushed it off, came off the stage. And, I mean, that night, I could barely straighten up, you know, from the pain. So what do I do? I go get a massage thinking it's muscle relaxing, you know, this and that. And I couldn't even lift the bag on the plane when I would go to put my bag overhead. I was like, I would jump down real fast from the pain in my back.
And the doctor told me at the time it was probably my pancreas and gall bladder letting me know. That was the sickness coming on. I mean, it was pancreatic cancer stage two. And usually, stage three and four pancreatic cancer, there's all that survivor or people don't survive. It's really aggressive. You know, we really have to pay more attention to our bodies. The signs are there. It tells you everything, but we just don't pay attention.
RATH: So it sounds like your treatment has been pretty successful. And are you finished with the chemo now?
JONES: Yeah. My last chemo was New Year's Eve.
RATH: Oh, congratulations.
JONES: I know. That was so cool.
RATH: Just brutal to go through that. You must be so happy to be done with that.
JONES: I am. But I wanted to get away faster. But, you know, I have to be patient and not to go out and overdue things yet because I'm still in the healing process, you know? And the funny part is I'm going to be out on the road. As these changes are going, as the hair is growing and my eyelashes and eyebrows are coming back, I'm going to be working. And people are going to be seeing all this stuff happen as I see it, you know?
So it's - I'm like - I'm nervous. I'm like, I'm so happy that I'm getting back into the swing of things, but I'm nervous.
RATH: Because your performances on stage, I mean, they're pretty mad energetic.
JONES: I know. And right now, I'm just like - I can't walk a good half a block right now without, you know, so...
RATH: You know, I know for a lot of people that have been through chemotherapy, everybody's got headphones on. Like, a lot of people just use music to help them get through it.
JONES: And I was the opposite.
RATH: No kidding.
JONES: No music, no headphones. Music is my joy. It's my happiness. And that's what everyone doesn't seem to understand. They're like, what? You didn't listen to music? Like, no. I didn't feel happy with my music. I couldn't keep it on my mind because that's a whole another Sharon.
But I'm getting the music back into me. You know, it's been a rough road these last few months. And, you know, music is my joy. And since I've been sick, I can't concentrate on the music. I just basically concentrate on trying to get well.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
JONES: (Singing) But the sun is coming with all of his smile. I'll know, I know it'll be all right. Mm, yeah. Yeah. We've proved again and again and again through all of our lives through sorrows and strength.
RATH: Now, was the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, was that the first time you performed since?
JONES: Well, that was the first time I really did perform. But in October, I did - my pastor at - my preacher at my church, she was celebrating her 10th anniversary. And that Saturday, they had a dinner for her. And I sang for the first time. I was able to do - I did "In the Garden." You know, that song, (singing) I come to the garden alone. You know, I did that song. And then that Monday, I had rehearsal with the band, and we went through all 10 songs on the album.
RATH: I loved at the Macy's Day Parade you sang "Ain't No Chimneys in the Projects."
JONES: Thank God we lip-synced. I didn't have to really sing. So that was pretty...
RATH: Everybody lip-syncs at the parade, though, right?
JONES: Yeah. You lip-sync. But that waving, and that turning, and it was cold. That's something you do once in a lifetime. You know, I can sit back and say, yeah, in 2013, I did that old Macy's Day Parade.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AIN'T NO CHIMNEYS IN THE PROJECTS")
JONES: (Singing) When I was a child I used to wonder how Santa put my toys under the tree. I said, Momma, can you tell me how this can be when there ain't no chimneys in the projects, Not in the ghetto.
RATH: My guest is Sharon Jones. She and her band the Dap-Kings have an album coming out on Tuesday called "Give the People what they Want." What strikes me just from - right at the beginning, right from the first track "Retreat" is that even though you all have been at this for a while, the band has been together for a while, it sounds so fresh.
JONES: When I recorded that, it's been over like a year and a half. And "Retreat" was the first release. When I got sick, "Retreat" had a whole different meaning. It wasn't - no longer I was talking to this guy: that was the cancer, and I'm telling this sickness to retreat.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RETREAT")
JONES: (Singing) I'll chew you up and then I'll spit you out. So if you know what's good for you, retreat. Retreat, yeah. Step back, boy, because you can't fix crazy. Retreat. Retreat. (Unintelligible).
RATH: You know, because it was interesting listening to the album and the rest of the songs on it. There are several that I think probably might have a different meaning for you having gone through your recovery.
JONES: Oh, yeah. Even when I was recording "Stranger to My Happiness," you know, the guys said, we're going to do the video. And I looked in the mirror, and I said, wow, do I really want to do this video with no hair? Do I really want to do this video with this port sticking out the top of my chest?
And then the more I thought about it, yeah, let me do this. Let my fans see what I'm going through. And I - that's part of my healing process is to not try to hide the way I look or stay away another eight or nine months until my hair grow back or until I think I'm strong enough. And then I think also maybe someone out there that's going through cancer and is going through what I'm going with can see that.
You know, life doesn't stop. All sickness isn't unto death, you know, and you got to keep going. Because if you get into it, that's part of the healing. That'll help you heal faster if you try to get back into your routine.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
JONES: (Singing) Oh, yeah. But it's a misery, just how you came right in and stole my heart away and left me there again. (Unintelligible)
RATH: It's hard to pick a favorite, but I love the groove on "You'll Be Lonely."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU'LL BE LONELY")
JONES: That was written by a baritone sax player, right?
Chemea, Cochemea. You know, his people are from the Yuchi Indians up in Alaska. So, you know, he got that Indian thing in him. And that's why when I first heard that, so I think the groove - isn't it a beautiful groove?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU'LL BE LONELY")
JONES: (Singing) You've been searching all of your life for a good (unintelligible) that'll treat you right.
RATH: How does it come together when you do that? Like, how do you sort of test drive the tune? I imagine, obviously, he wrote that with you in mind. And how do we come to the version here on the album?
JONES: Yeah. You know what? The guys, when they write a song, they know I'm going to sing it, and they know it's got to be a story that I want to tell, you know, because if you write something stupid, you know, portraying me as like a maniac or someone that's running somebody down - like my drummer Homer wrote the song, I'm like, what do this mean? I said, you got me sounding like I'm chasing some guy. I'm nobody's fool.
You know I'm not going to run nobody down and beg nobody. So that's not me, so don't even have me sing it like that, you know. But Cochemea, his song about "You'll be Lonely," and knowing him over the years - and I know what he's going through. So when he wrote that song, I understood what he was talking about.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU'LL BE LONELY")
JONES: (Singing) is going to come around, babe. It's a (unintelligible). You'll be lonely after I'm gone.
RATH: So I'm looking at your tour schedule here. You're playing...
JONES: Don't look at it. Don't tell.
RATH: Well, it's brutal. You're playing 13 cities next month from New York to Dallas.
JONES: Oh, I know.
RATH: The following month is just as busy. Are you concerned about overdoing it now?
JONES: No. The doctor told me just take my time. The doctor has faith in me, Dr. Leonardo. He's such a great doctor. He was like, you know, don't push yourself. You know, you feel how you feel.
And the guys in the band got my back no matter what. If I go out, and if I'm out there 15, 20 minutes, I look at them, I go, I can't do it, they know I can walk off and they can jam something and I can come back on.
Whichever we - I have no idea. But I - the way I believe in my faith, and I sing this song in church, I don't believe he brought me this far to leave me. I got a feeling that all these shows, all this, everything is my - part of my blessing. In my heart, I know I'm going to do every show and everything is going to be okay.
RATH: What do you think you're going to be saying to your fans when you hit that stage next month?
JONES: I have no idea. I'll just follow my heart. I know there'll probably be a lot of crying. Get some tissues ready.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
JONES: (Singing) Long time since I've seen your face.
RATH: Sharon Jones leads the band the Dap-Kings for a long-awaited new album. It's called "Give the People What They Want." Sharon, thank you so much.
JONES: Oh, thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
JONES: (Singing) I'm coming home baby don't you cry. What am I going to find?
RATH: And for Sunday, that's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Arun Rath. Check out our weekly podcast. Look for WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED on iTunes or on the NPR app. And you can follow me on Twitter @arunrath. That's A-R-U-N R-A-T-H. We're back next weekend. Until then, thanks for listening and have a great week.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Arun Rath.
Rosemary Mahoney's greatest fear was going blind. It makes sense for the award-winning writer. Mahoney's vision lends her books an uncanny quality that makes you really feel like you're with her. Weirdly, she says, she had never met a blind person. So Mahoney was apprehensive when she was assigned to write a profile of a woman running the first school for the blind in Tibet. Her experience there served as a prelude for a fuller immersion in the world of the blind, detailed in her new book, "For the Benefit of Those Who See."
After just a few days at the school, Rosemary Mahoney realized that she had to rethink everything she thought she knew about vision.
ROSEMARY MAHONEY: When sighted people cover their eyes or find themselves in a dark place, this is something that's very terrifying for us. And so in general, we assume that this is what blindness means. But of course, it isn't. For people who were born blind or who go blind at a very young age, that's not at all what blindness means. And even people who lose vision at an older age, yes, they go through a period of depression and utter despair. But eventually, most blind people learn how to live in the world. And the world doesn't feel black to them. I've rarely met a miserable, self-pitying blind person.
RATH: You talk about these misconceptions and actually take us through the history of blind people in human society. And what's shocking is that obviously, blindness has been with us since we've been human. But the attitudes, the association of, say, blindness with mental infirmity, that's lasted up until very recently.
MAHONEY: To me, the remarkable thing is it's pretty much unanimous the way blind people have been perceived in all cultures and for millennia. The first is, if they can't see, they must be stupid. The second one is, and this is a very old one, that blindness is such a terrible thing that it must be a curse from God for some evil that you committed.
When Jesus and his disciples meet a blind man in the road and the disciples say to him, Master, why was this man born blind? Who did sin, he or his parents? Because there was no other conception of why a person would be blind. It was a punishment from God. So the blind person must be evil and must be avoided and must - don't touch a blind person. And so blind people have suffered these things everywhere for centuries.
RATH: You know, one of the deep ironies - you kind of note this in your book with the school in Tibet - is that these children who were told that they have no future, they're a burden, that by coming to this school, they actually have a much wider universe than they would've had in their villages.
MAHONEY: That's right. And this is one of the remarkable things about Sabriye Tenberken who is blind. And she went to Tibet. And when she saw the way blind children were being treated, you know, abandoned by their parents, people throw - were throwing stones at them and spitting at them and calling them idiots and parents would tie their kids to a bed all day so that they wouldn't hurt themselves. And, of course, there was no education for them.
Sabriye got on horseback and rode across Tibet with two sighted people going from village to village asking, are there any blind children here? I'm starting a school. Would you be willing to send your child? And many of these people were happy to get rid of the kid. So what has happened in Tibet because of this school - it's called Braille Without Borders - many blind children have been given an opportunity for an education in a way that many sighted people in these small villages have not been.
RATH: It seems that every blind person that you spoke with, when you talked about the possibility of restoring their vision, they seemed like they didn't want it. Why?
MAHONEY: Well, that is a very interesting subject. You know, we always think, well, for a person who's blind, it must be an amazing, joyful miracle if by some chance their sight is restored to them. Now, this may be true for blind people who lost their vision at a later age. It's rarely true for people who were born blind or who go blind at a very young age.
We are not born with effective vision. The human infant has to learn how to see. The eyes gather information. They transmit it to the brain, but the brain doesn't know how to process it yet. We learn how to see in a way that's very similar to the way we learn how to speak. It takes a couple of years. If the brain is deprived of this visual information at a very young age, it can never learn how to see again.
RATH: On the other side of things, some who have lost their sight as adults, talk about what they've ended up gaining.
MAHONEY: Right. Well, that is - I don't want to paint a pretty picture of blindness. It's not. It isn't ultimately a gift. It's what people make with their blindness that becomes the gift. Having to finally accept the fact that you are not just a sighted person who can't see anymore, but you are a blind person. There are, however, people who finally adapt to it after a great period of depression. And the more they embrace their blindness, the more they begin to realize what they were missing.
One day, these two blind Tibetan teenagers blindfolded me, and they guided me through the streets of Lhasa as a way of showing me what it's like to be a blind person living in the world and navigating. And they would say to me, OK, now we turn left. They had a very specific destination in mind. And I would say to them, well, how do you know we turn left? And they would say, do you hear the sound of many televisions in a shop right next to us?
But I never noticed it because I'm so used to communing with the world with my vision that I don't notice what I smell. I don't - I rarely notice what I hear, and I certainly don't notice the pavement under my feet. And I began to think, this is interesting, not because these people are handicapped but because I'm finding out I am, in some ways, equally handicapped.
RATH: Rosemary Mahoney talking about her new book "For the Benefit of Those Who See: Dispatches From the World of the Blind."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ARUN RATH, HOST:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
The Golden Globes are taking place tonight. If you're feeling like television is infested with award shows these days, well, you're right. Networks have been noticing that ratings for most of these shows have been climbing year by year. So they're cramming all the award shows they can into their schedules, coming up with new awards and reviving some dead ones.
Matt Belloni is the executive editor for The Hollywood Reporter. And he says award shows hit a sweet spot that's rare in programming today.
MATT BELLONI: Well, I think there's two things at work here. For one, the notion of live event television has become even more important when you factor in social media. People like to talk about things that they're watching. And there are very few places in this splintered media universe where you can turn on your TV, watch something live, have something to talk about, and then go on and start talking with people online.
Networks love it because, you know, it's one of the few DVR-proof programs out there. That's the buzzword in television right now - anything that you can put on that might DVR-proof is going to be extra high value. I mean, you saw that a little bit with NBC getting a big rating for The Sound of Music Live! special that they did.
RATH: Right.
BELLONI: And there were a lot of people being very mean and snarky on Twitter and Facebook during that show. But according to NBC, they're like, who cares?
RATH: They're watching.
BELLONI: You're watching. You know, say as many mean things as you want as long as you're paying attention.
RATH: And the only thing I can think of that's like that would be sports maybe.
BELLONI: Yeah. Sports is the mother ship. Sports is what's really driving everything. The number one rated show is Sunday Night Football. So sports appeal to a particular demographic, though, and award shows appeal to a more female demographic.
RATH: Interesting. So that's getting the other half of the audience that way?
BELLONI: Yeah. I mean, there's a reason why the Oscars are referred to as the Super Bowl for women.
RATH: So in terms of the numbers, obviously, the networks wouldn't be doing this, you know, for all the reason we talked about if they weren't having the audience going to it. What are the audience numbers like?
BELLONI: Well, you saw the Oscars got up to 40 million total viewers. The Globes are about 28, 29, 30 million, if they're doing well. The ratings for the Billboard Music Awards were up. But keep in mind, those are the A-list award shows. You know, it goes downhill from there to where, you know, between 7 and 15 million will be a very good number for a lot of these shows.
RATH: Well, let's go down that hill. How ridiculous do these shows get?
BELLONI: Well, what you're seeing now is everything from NBC launching a comedy awards to - there's going to be a dog award show on the Hallmark Channel. You know, the SAG Awards now air on TNT and TBS. There's something like 19 award shows between January 1 and the Oscars. I mean, that's a pretty incredible number of award shows in one, you know, two, two-and-a-half-month stretch.
RATH: And the award shows have spinoffs now too.
BELLONI: Yeah. I mean, one way networks are capitalizing on these award shows is they're creating surrounding programming. For instance, the Grammies, instead of just announcing their nominations at a press conference, they do a special on CBS where they get some performers together and they create programming out of the nominations. It's a way to bring in more viewers that want to see stuff associated with the Grammies brand.
RATH: You mentioned that "Sound of Music" live broadcast. Are there any other kind of areas of live entertainment that might be mined aside from sports and award shows?
BELLONI: Well, I think that that's the exact conversation that's going on at networks. So if you have ideas, you should pitch them. I think that, you know, a lot of people are looking at what "Sound of Music" did, and they're saying, OK, what's the equivalent there? What's the stunt? I mean, there's, you know, live magic shows. There's a lot of different "Saturday Night Live"-style variety shows that are in development. They're trying to get into that to create more of the live events-style broadcasts.
RATH: Matt Belloni is the executive editor for The Hollywood Reporter. Matt, thanks for your time.
BELLONI: No problem.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
New Year's resolutions are a cliché, but I have one I bet you haven't heard before. Tons of people resolve to give up things like eating too much, drinking to excess, or staying in bad relationships. We have a man who decided to give up God, and that man is an ordained minister in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Last year, Ryan Bell left the congregation he led and earlier this month, he announced his plans to try on atheism. Soon after that, the Christian university and the seminary where he taught asked him to resign. Bell says the questioning that led to all of this actually started long ago.
RYAN BELL: My entire adult life, I've been a leader in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. And I think the expectation of church leaders is that they would have fewer questions and more answers, and that the members or the seekers or people who come to the church are the ones with the questions. And I can't remember a time when I wasn't wrestling with my faith. I mean, I think faith is one of those things that we - people wrestle with.
RATH: How, then, do we get from there to this experiment you've embarked upon - to try to live for a year without God?
BELL: Like when things start to come unwound, sometimes they unwind all the way. And then, you know, perhaps you can wind it up a little bit again later; who knows? But I feel like I lost my church leadership position, and then I really didn't have any compulsion to go to church internally. Like, I just didn't feel like participating in church. Like, I tried a number of times, and it woke me up to the kinds of things people had been saying to me all these years - like, I love what you're doing at the church but church just isn't for me.
And it wasn't that I was against it, necessarily, or that I thought the people who were there were doing something wrong. It was just that it wasn't connecting for me. So I just decided not to fight it. You know, I just decided to say, well, let me just give church a rest. And as I did that, I just began to wonder about the very existence of God.
RATH: How are your old friends - you know, from the church - have they been reacting to this?
BELL: Some people have been just encouraging. Some people have just been sort of silently watching. Some are a little heartbroken. It's almost like people respond as though I've lost a loved one, you know, and I'm going through a deep grieving process and doing strange things as a result, you know? And some people have just tried to talk me off the ledge. Others have said, I have these same questions. And I'm really glad that you're doing this, and I'll be following along. Maybe I'll figure some things out along the way, too.
I'm not saying to my former members, follow me out the door - you know, nothing like that. I don't want them to do that. I want them to be on their own journey, authentically.
RATH: And what has been the reaction from the atheist community? Has there been a lot of excitement about, well, we got one on our team - or a little more subtle than that?
BELL: A little bit. Yeah, maybe a little bit from some quarters. Some people are, in a way, gloating. They're like, congratulations on coming to the other side, or whatever. But other people are skeptical. There are a lot of atheists who are really not sure what I'm doing. So they say either you are an atheist or you're not. You can't be a little atheist, like you're a little bit pregnant. In a way, what I hear them saying is you're not authentically atheist.
RATH: Not a proper atheist?
BELL: Not a proper atheist. And I - my internal reaction to some of that is to say, oh, I was a Christian leader for a long time. I've heard that argument on the other side as well. You're not properly Christian. You're not Christian in our way of being a Christian, so you don't really fit here. And my response to that is, look, I'm used to not fitting places, so that's fine with me.
There are people that have reached out to me that said, look, I grew up in a family. We went to the Unitarian Universalist Church. I'm an atheist, and I go to church every Sunday. And it's not a problem. I think it depends on where your starting point is. And if your faith community and if your social community can contain those questions, then you ask and answer those questions within the framework of that community. If your community cannot contain those questions, then you step outside of it, and it's more painful and messy.
RATH: Ryan Bell is going to be living this year without God. He joined us here in our studios in Culver City, Calif. Ryan, thank you so much. Very interesting talking with you.
BELL: It's been a pleasure to talk to you as well. Thank you.
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ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
We posed a simple question on our Facebook page this week: How satisfied are you with your Internet service provider? We heard a lot of frustration.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: How do I like my Internet service? I hate my Internet service right now.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: I'm not a big fan of my Internet service.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: I don't like my Internet service.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: It goes out at least once a day.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: It's overpriced.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #4: Painfully slow, painfully slow.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #5: But there aren't any other quality options in my area.
RATH: The American Customer Satisfaction Index surveys large swaths of consumers about various industries. And in last year's survey, Americans rated Internet service providers at the very bottom for satisfaction. That puts ISPs below the postal service, health insurance, even airlines. Critics of the telecom industry say Americans are paying too much money for slow speeds and bad service. The industry says those charges are way overblown. That's our cover story today: Has the country that invented the Internet fallen behind?
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RATH: Now, not everyone we spoke to has had a bad experience.
JON LEMICH: I'm Jon Lemich. I live in Columbia, Maryland. I really like my Internet service actually. I get pretty good download and upload speeds, exactly as advertised. It very rarely has any problems. And their customer service has been great.
RATH: And Lemich says he has several options. His neighborhood has cable but also access to Verizon's high-speed fiber optic Internet. That's not true for everyone, because the map of broadband access is a patchwork. In rural areas, you might have only satellite. Even in cities, the menu can be limited. Some people just get access through their smartphone. Others might be stuck with a single cable provider or DSL.
BREANN NEAL: My name is Breann Neal, and I am from Hudson, Illinois.
RATH: Breann Neal has DSL, and her service is much slower than advertised. That makes life frustrating, especially for her daughter who spends a lot of time waiting for a video to load.
NEAL: She watches a lot of TV series on Netflix. I think "Vampire Diaries" is the one she's currently watching.
RATH: But it's more serious than keeping up with the vampires. Working from home or online banking can be fraught with headaches and delays. Neal says there are no other viable options in their area. She and her family are stuck.
NEAL: There's no incentive for them to make it better for us because we're still paying them every month, and they're still making money as a company, and there's no competition.
RATH: Hudson, Illinois, is a small town, so you might think there would be more options in a big city a few hours north.
SAMANTHA LAWS: Samantha Laws, Chicago.
RATH: Samantha Laws gets Internet through her cable provider. She says it's her only option, and she does not like it.
LAWS: It goes out at least once a day, and it's been getting worse the last few months. With the pet-sitting company I work for, we handle all of our scheduling through email and our company website. So there's been times where the Internet's down, so I can't do my job. And then I have to text my boss and ask her if she can do it because I don't have Internet access at the moment.
RATH: We also heard from one part of the country where things sound a bit better.
MAYOR ANDY BERKE: My name is Andy Berke from Chattanooga, Tennessee. We have the largest, fastest, most pervasive Internet in the Western Hemisphere.
RATH: Andy Berke isn't just any resident of Chattanooga. He's the mayor. Several years ago, the public electric utility, the EPB, upgraded the power grid to fiber optic, mostly to help deal with power outages. But the utility saw an added benefit: That same grid can carry very high-speed Internet. So for $70 a month, the utility now offers customers upload and download speeds of up to one gigabit per second. That's more than 100 times faster than the average U.S. connection.
Just to give you a sense of that speed, imagine this six-second Black Sabbath riff is a gigabit per second.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IRON MAN")
RATH: And now, here it is slowed down to the average U.S. connection speed.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IRON MAN")
RATH: Those six seconds turn into more than 10 minutes. For a lot of people, going to a gig a second might be a little overkill.
BERKE: Well, it's funny, because I tell people all the time, you don't need gigabit per second technology to load espn.com faster.
RATH: But Mayor Berke says the fiber optic grid is an investment in the future when more businesses will need that superfast broadband.
BERKE: We're starting to see companies who are looking at us, coming here making decisions, who understand that they will need more capacity in the future, and Chattanooga has that today.
RATH: For example, he says a text startup called Quickcue is growing and creating jobs in Chattanooga. But it's all come at a steep price. Installing the grid cost about $300 million. In some other places, private companies have made the investment. There's Verizon FiOS, and Google has installed fiber in Kansas City and plans to expand to Austin, Texas, and Provo, Utah. Elsewhere in the country, options are more limited.
SUSAN CRAWFORD: At least 77 percent of the country, your only choice for a high-capacity, high-speed Internet connection is your local cable monopoly.
RATH: That's Susan Crawford. She's a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and the author of "Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age."
CRAWFORD: Imagine that you run a gold mine, and there's just one single railroad line running to your gold mine. That single railroad line on which you depend for getting your product out from the world and for hearing from the outside world, the equivalent of that is high-speed Internet access infrastructure. And just as in the gilded age, those railroad lines were controlled by a very few moguls who divided up the country between themselves and never competed and gouged everybody. Today, high-speed Internet access in America is controlled by a series of local cable monopolies who are similarly not subject to competition and also not subject to any kind of oversight.
RATH: Crawford says as a consequence, the U.S. has fallen far behind other countries in providing broadband.
CRAWFORD: I think it's fair to say the U.S. is at best in the middle of the pack. And when it comes to fiber optic penetration, we're way down at the bottom in terms of speed and price.
RATH: Well, how did, you know, America did invent the Internet. How did we get so far behind?
CRAWFORD: We got there because of failures in policy. This doesn't happen by magic. These major infrastructure businesses aren't like other market businesses. It's very expensive to install them in the first place. And then they build up enormous barriers of entry around them. It really doesn't make sense to try to compete with a player like Comcast or Time Warner Cable for another private actor to do it.
RATH: So what Crawford is calling for is a major public works project to install fiber optic infrastructure, a public grid that private companies could then use to deliver Internet service.
CRAWFORD: The right approach for us is to have the mayors of America stand up and say, this is ridiculous. You know, we need to make sure that businesses move to us. And the way to do that is to use your power over your rights of way and your streets and simply rip up the streets once. And then make sure that every home and every business in your city has this fiber to the home connection, which is upgradable into infinity.
RATH: Not everyone agrees with Crawford's comparison of the broadband market to gilded age railroad barons.
MICHAEL POWELL: I think it's a badly exaggerated view, and the analogy's not particularly compelling.
RATH: Michael Powell is a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. And he's now the president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which lobbies Congress on behalf of the industry.
POWELL: She mentions the cable industry but fails to mention the telephone industry, which is a very vigorous competitor for broadband as well. And I also think, with all respect, she tends to admit - omit the entire wireless market in which the United States is one of the world's leading providers. And I think to exclude it as a substitutable competitive alternative I just think is an error that leads you to believe the market is substantially more concentrated than it actually is.
RATH: Another complaint Susan Crawford and other critics have is that the U.S. has fallen behind a lot of other countries in terms of broadband affordability and speed. You found those comparisons false, right?
POWELL: I think by any measure, America is unquestionably in the leadership pack. This reminds me a little bit of an Olympic speed skating race. And if you take a picture, maybe there's a few seconds separating them, and you could rank them, but nobody's meaningfully out of the race. I think taking a snapshot and declaring us as somehow dangerously falling behind is just not substantiated by the data and is an inaccurate way to look at these comparisons.
RATH: Well, you know, however we do compare it, you know, American Customer Satisfaction Index surveys rate Internet service providers at the bottom of their ranking. It seems that customers across America are not happy. They're feeling like it is too slow and too costly. So why do you think that providers are getting the low marks?
POWELL: Yeah. You know, I read that. I haven't seen the data behind it. So specifically, is it because of speed or cost is unclear. I do think there is an experience that's very different in the United States, which can bring in a whole host of feelings. And that is most Internet high speed is sold in bundles in this country. You know, there are feelings and there are reactions around that total package. It sometimes can't be that easily separated into its parts.
You know, and I think we as an industry have recognized that is an important deficiency that we're working hard to address. I think customer satisfaction's really critical. But at the same time, you know, the growth and use of those services and the amount of increased money consumers tend to invest in communication services, even when they have other alternatives, I think, to some degree, speaks for itself.
RATH: What do you make of efforts for cities to provide municipal broadband in places like Chattanooga, Tennessee?
POWELL: I'm one of the people who don't scream about this. I think the citizens of individual communities are free to make those choices through their elected representatives if they want. I think as a citizen, I would raise serious questions about the value of using public funding to the degree that is required to both build and I think what often is missed in localities, the constant expensive maintenance over years and decades worth of operation.
And given that there is a robust private market serving virtually every corner of the country, I think it can be a questionable public decision. But, you know, these are choices to be made by local citizens.
RATH: That's Michael Powell, president and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.
As we heard, a lot of people are unhappy with their Internet service. If you're unsatisfied, the government has a block-by-block database of broadband providers. We'll link to that at npr.org. There, you can find out if you have other options, or maybe, like some, you're stuck with service you just don't like. This is NPR News.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
The U.S. and other world powers have agreed on a plan with Iran to start rolling back parts of the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for some sanctions relief. Secretary of State John Kerry says the deal goes into effect later this month.
SECRETARY JOHN KERRY: As of that day - Jan. 20th - for the first time in almost a decade, Iran's nuclear program will not be able to advance. In fact, parts of it will be rolled back while we start negotiating a comprehensive agreement to address the international community's concerns about Iran's nuclear program.
RATH: Kerry was speaking in Paris, where he has a lot on his plate including plans to hold a long-delayed peace conference on Syria next week. He's urging the Syrian opposition to attend the meeting, and to negotiate with a regime they've been trying to topple. The war in Syria has raged for three years and has befuddled the international community. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Jan Egeland describes Syria as the challenge for our generation, and that's something coming from a man who used to oversee U.N. aid operations around the globe.
JAN EGELAND: Since the turn of the millennium, we have not had such a massive displacement of people. Nine million - and counting - people have lost their homes. It is beyond anybody's imagination.
KELEMEN: Egeland, now secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, says the international community is failing the people of Syria. But he's hopeful that in all the meetings this week - in Paris, and at a donors conference in Kuwait - countries will push Syria to give aid groups the access they need.
EGELAND: And there should be consequences for those who break these humanitarian principles. And we haven't seen that, so far. So now, humanitarians are struggling alone, uphill. We are completely overwhelmed especially inside of Syria; where the aid operation is too weak, and the problems are too great.
KELEMEN: Secretary Kerry says 160,000 people are trapped, without aid, in a suburb of Damascus. He says there's an urgent need to focus on this, and to get a long-delayed peace conference off the ground.
KERRY: There is no other alternative to ending this violence and saving the state of Syria than to find a negotiated, peaceful outcome.
KELEMEN: Kerry is urging the fractious opposition to attend next week's conference in Switzerland, and he calls this a test of everyone's credibility. The president of the Syrian opposition council, Ahmad al-Jarba, isn't making any promises to attend just yet. But in Paris, standing alongside Kerry and other foreign ministers of countries that have been supporting him, the opposition leader said the goal must be a Syria without Bashar al-Assad. Jarba spoke through an interpreter.
AHMAD AL-JARBA: (Through interpreter) The most important aspect of today's meeting is that we all agree to say that al-Assad has no future in Syria. The al-Assad family has no future in Syria.
KELEMEN: And Jarba says there can be no ambiguity about that. Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, says he's hopeful Jarba will now decide to attend the conference; though he acknowledges it's a difficult decision as rebels fight extremists among their ranks, and as Syria continues to bombard cities.
AHMET DAVUTOGLU: The regime continue to attack in Aleppo, by barrel bombs; continue to punish Syrian people, by starvations. Therefore, there is - they have some concerns about this. We will be doing everything possible to stop these massacres and crimes against humanity.
KELEMEN: It's not clear yet whether those assurances - heard many times before - will convince the Syrian opposition to attend peace talks, or if negotiations can really succeed. Secretary Kerry is urging observers not to be too cynical, and give these talks some time.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Paris.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
When it comes to American foreign policy, the hot topic this week wasn't Syria. Instead, pundits and commentators of all types were furiously debating how President Obama handled the wars in his first term. That was thanks to retired Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' new book "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War." Even though the book hasn't hit stores yet, critics of the White House have been crowing over Gates' unvarnished critique of President Obama and Vice President Biden.
But npr.org Washington correspondent Liz Halloran says that Gates' assessment of the president was tame compared to the beat down he delivers to members of Congress.
LIZ HALLORAN, BYLINE: Oh, Arun, where to start? How about this? Uncivil, incompetent, parochial, egotistical and putting self and re-election before country, or maybe that some Congress members became, quote, "raving lunatics" when the TV cameras are turned on. Yeah, seriously, it was harsh, bare-knuckled language, to put it mildly. And we felt that even after a majority of Americans hold Congress in pretty low esteem, this was pretty significant. I mean, he even went as far to say that some of the members of Congress seemed to suffer from mental duress that warranted confinement.
RATH: Well, maybe Joe Biden feels a little bit better after hearing that. But, you know, as you say, a majority of Americans, if you look at national polls, share that opinion of Congress. Why do we care that Gates said it?
HALLORAN: Well, look, he's a serious, highly respected senior official, and he served eight Republican and Democratic presidents in his career. He led the CIA. He was a top national security advisor. And he also served as president of Texas A&M University. I mean, he's not a bomb thrower. He's known as a very measured man. I've had him described as, you know, having this Midwestern calm, steady hand. And it's really just plain unusual for a public servant of his stature and temperament to be so blunt and so publicly critical of Congress, and to name names.
RATH: Yeah. And speaking of naming names, you write about how he was especially harsh in his assessment of Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, the Democrat.
HALLORAN: Yes. I mean, he criticized Congress as a whole for what he called its kangaroo court hearings on war and war spending, and even ridiculed members of Congress for pushing their parochial interests. For example, he talks about Republican Senator Mitch McConnell's insistence on funding for a home state chemical weapons disposal plant.
But it's true, Reid really seemed to get under Gates' skin. He writes that Reid once asked him if the Defense Department - and you'll recall at the time they were engaged in two wars - Reid asked if the Defense Department could invest in research on irritable bowel syndrome. And that Gates said he didn't know whether to laugh or cry at that. But what really angered Gates happened back in 2008 during the debate over extending the Iraq troop surge. Reid opposed it, and he held a press conference where he declared that this war is lost.
RATH: Wow. That could not have gone over well with the secretary of Defense.
HALLORAN: In a word, no. In fact, Gates writes that he was so furious at the time that he shared with his colleagues an Abe Lincoln quote to express how he felt. That quote in a nutshell, Lincoln basically says that congressmen who damage morale or undermine the military during wartime should - and I'm quoting Lincoln here - "be arrested, exiled or hanged." And I think - yeah, that strongly - I think it gives you a pretty good idea of how maddening Gates found the situation and his frustration with what he saw as a lack of competence of many members of Congress.
RATH: That is remarkable. NPR.org Washington correspondent Liz Halloran, thank you.
HALLORAN: Great to be with you, Arun.
RATH: And tomorrow on MORNING EDITION, host Steve Inskeep speaks with former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates about his memoir and the uproar surrounding it.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
And I'm Audie Cornish. The Winter Olympics to be held in Russia next month promise a mesmerizing athletic spectacle on ice and snow. But each Olympics also affords a brief global platform for dissidents and host countries to grab the world's attention. The primary root, through the media. And as NPR's David Folkenflik reports, America's exclusive broadcaster of the games, NBC, is coming under pressure from gay rights activists.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Jim Bell is the NBC Sports executive overseeing the 2 1/2-week extravaganza, with more than 1,500 hours of coverage over five NBC channels and online of Olympics events from the Black Sea resort of Sochi. If an athlete unfurls a rainbow flag, he'll broadcast it. Otherwise, Bell says...
JIM BELL: Show the Olympics. Show the events, show the competition, show the athletes. This is the athletes' moment. I mean, you know, that's really what it's about.
FOLKENFLIK: Bell says the network will sketch out for viewers the context in which the games take place.
BELL: Our approach is to do a thorough explanation, to talk about President Putin and his really being a driving force behind these games, talk about some of the issues from security to gay rights, to whatever else.
FOLKENFLIK: Let's look at that second element: gay rights. Last June, Vladimir Putin's government banned so-called gay propaganda. That affects reporters and gays. Even neutral news coverage of issues involving gays and lesbians appears to violate that law.
Konstantin Yablotskiy is co-chairman of the Russia LGBT Sports Federation.
KONSTANTIN YABLOTSKIY: Probably it's our last chance to try to change this situation, to change attitudes of Russian society, to show people that we are not marginal sodomites.
FOLKENFLIK: In the past, Yablotskiy participated in the gay games as a figure skater. Now, he says, national networks devote documentaries to denouncing homosexuals. He looks to the Olympics for hope.
YABLOTSKIY: We are normal people who have their normal lives, who can do sports and win medals.
FOLKENFLIK: But how much responsibility for that should NBC bear? Again, Jim Bell.
BELL: We're not there to poke a sharp stick in anybody's eye, but we're not going to shy away from reporting anything either. My colleagues in NBC News will do what they have to do to report stories as they develop. I don't think we're worried about that at all.
FOLKENFLIK: Indeed, over at NBC's news division, Senior Vice President Alexandra Wallace recently noted the network has paid attention to gay rights in Sochi itself and in stories about President Obama's appointment of gay athletes to the official U.S. Olympic delegation.
ALEXANDRA WALLACE: Billie Jean King is on the "Today" show on Thursday. We had Brian Boitano on last week. I would hold up our reporting on LGBT issues in Russia, maybe not with Foreign Affairs journal, but I think we've done a good job of it, actually.
FOLKENFLIK: The scenario resembles the 2008 Beijing Olympics: A regime seeking legitimacy is serving as host. Minky Worden says that gives the International Olympic Committee and its media partner both an obligation and a lot of sway. Worden is a senior official at the activist group Human Rights Watch.
MINKY WORDEN: The IOC and Olympic sponsors, including NBC, really dropped the ball last June.
FOLKENFLIK: Worden doesn't distinguish a lot between the two. An NBC official sits on the IOC executive committee, and the network's corporate parent paid $775 million for the rights to broadcast these winter games. She says they should have campaigned against Russia's anti-gay propaganda law.
WORDEN: It's really a double bind. I think the only principled way forward for a company like NBC is to report in a robust way on the Olympics and on human rights abuses that have defined these Olympics.
FOLKENFLIK: The IOC says it has firm assurances from Putin that no one attending the games will face discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, though a public protest by athletes would be provocative. Violence met protests at which Russian gays and lesbians kissed.
Videos capturing and celebrating other violent attacks on gays have been uploaded to Russian social media platforms. Human rights advocates say no arrests have ensued. So far, while the network has accelerated its pace of coverage of the nonathletic side of the games in recent weeks, the stories have been more reactive than enterprising.
NBC News executive Alexandra Wallace says her journalists have a single mission.
WALLACE: Our job is to report on what's going on in the world. We're not activists. We're observers and analysts.
FOLKENFLIK: Later this week, the Committee to Protect Journalists will release a report concluding that Russian authorities have intimidated the national media and bought off smaller outlets. It says freedom of the press requires that international news agencies step up and create running room for local news organizations by covering issues such as the rights of gays in Russia.
David Folkenflik, NPR News, New York.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Today, a federal judge in Little Rock, Arkansas, approved a settlement that ends decades of litigation over school desegregation. The city was one of the first tests of the Supreme Court's historic Brown versus the Board of Education ruling. And in 1957, President Eisenhower sent federal troops to integrate Little Rock's Central High School.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED AUDIO)
BLOCK: As NPR's Debbie Elliott reports, Central High School remains a symbol of the ongoing struggle to achieve integration.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: Just about anyone you speak to about the Little Rock desegregation case says it's time for the contentious and ongoing litigation to be over. But no one is really celebrating either.
STATE SENATOR JOYCE ELLIOTT: I'm happy courts are out of this. I am absolutely not satisfied of where we are.
ELLIOTT: Little Rock State Senator Joyce Elliott.
ELLIOTT: Little Rock above all places should be the shining star of what integration was supposed to have meant.
ELLIOTT: Expectations were high given the city's history. But Max Brantley, senior editor of the Arkansas Times, says for all of the pessimism about racial inequities that remain, there has been a measure of progress here when you compare Little Rock to other cities.
MAX BRANTLEY: Little Rock is only 66 percent black in its public school enrollment. I don't think there's an urban city in the South that has retained as many white students as the Little Rock school system has retained.
ELLIOTT: One way Little Rock sought to desegregate was to enhance programs at schools located in poor, mostly black neighborhoods as a tool to attract more middle-class and white students. One of those schools is historic Central High School, which offers an international studies curriculum.
A diverse mix of kids bustle through the tiled hallways between classes. The school is 56 percent black, 30 percent white with a sizable mix of Asian, Hispanic and international students.
(SOUNDBITE OF ALARM)
ELLIOTT: To get a sense of what students think about settling the desegregation case, I sit in on the last period African-American History class. Cynthia Nunnley is the teacher.
CYNTHIA NUNNLEY: So is the work essentially done?
ALICIA WAITS: Not quite, it's more to work on. But it's better than what it was.
ELLIOTT: Alicia Waits sits on the front row in this elective class, one that's all black save for one Hispanic student. She says you see that divide throughout the school.
WAITS: I walked in the cafeteria today. I looked on the left side, I didn't see nothing but white people sitting at the table. I looked on the right side, it wasn't nothing but black people. Why you all, you know, can't mix up, you know, be all together?
ELLIOTT: Senior Darius Porch says the work of the desegregation lawsuit is not yet complete.
DARIUS PORCH: This school is integrated but I don't feel like we are as one.
ELLIOTT: The divide here is what you might find at hundreds of high schools across America, but Central remains in the spotlight as perhaps the most famous high school in the country because of the crisis here in 1957. That provides a powerful frame for students to think about their legacy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ALARM)
ELLIOTT: After school, I stop by civics teacher George West's class.
GEORGE WEST: Let's set up the circle here and...
ELLIOTT: He's one of the advisors for what's called the Memory Project, students who conduct oral history interviews about the effects of discrimination. They've published two books of essays. Not surprisingly, they have a lot to say about where Central has come in nearly 60 years of school litigation.
Junior Malik Marshall.
MALIK MARSHALL: We are desegregated. We were desegregated in 1957. So, you know, the government and everybody around us that doesn't go to the school sees us and says: Oh, Central High School is integrated. But we're not. We're desegregated. We're not integrated, because integration comes from the heart of the people that go here.
Integration is not something that somebody can tell you to do. It's something that you have to want to do. And if the people in the school don't want to do it, it doesn't happen.
ELLIOTT: Marshall takes Advanced Placement, or AP, courses and says he's usually one of just a few African-American faces in mostly white classrooms. So his friends tend to be white.
MARSHALL: It's kind of like this barrier between me and the other black people just because they know I like to hang out with white people. And then it's also like, the white people that I hang out with, it's just kind of like - it's like always - I physically look different. Like I'm very singled out in that group, but like these are the people I know. And so, it makes me feel like I don't belong anywhere. You know what I'm saying?
ELLIOTT: Moving between groups can bring harsh judgment says senior Micah Booker.
MICAH BOOKER: I get called an Oreo sometimes...
(LAUGHTER)
BOOKER: ...which is like you're black on the outside, white on the inside because of how I talk and all these other things and stuff. And so, it's just - it can be hard.
ELLIOTT: Most of the students here believe the magnet programs and other remedies called for in the desegregation case have improved educational opportunities for minority students. And they worry what will happen without them and the state money that supplement its schools. But they're also skeptical that courts can resolve the kind of social segregation you see at Central.
Junior Rachel Schaffhauser, who is white, says students don't intentionally set out to divide themselves.
RACHEL SCHAFFHAUSER: I don't think I do it, like, on purpose. I'm just like, hey, I know that person. I'm going to sit with them. If you walk into as a freshman on the first day of school and you don't know anybody, except that one person, I'm going to go sit with that one person.
ELLIOTT: High school is hard enough without the pressure to break down society's racial barriers. Sophomore Angela Wang.
ANGELA WANG: When you come to Central and you see not only white people and black people, but also a group of Asian people, then you tend to kind of go towards them. Like, they understand you. You're from the same background.
ELLIOTT: But Junior Sally Goldman says staying in that comfort zone can thwart racial progress.
SALLY GOLDMAN: What I've heard a lot from not just this group but people as a whole is: Oh no, it's not racism. We're just sticking to what we know. And I think that is racism because we are afraid of what we don't know.
ELLIOTT: Having such a frank discussion is something that might not have been possible in 1957. And the students here are proud of what Central High School has achieved. It produces more national merit scholars than any other school in Arkansas.
Just before leading the school chant, Malik Marshall says: This is my school, I love it here.
MARSHALL: Can I get a roll call?
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Central, Hurrah.
ELLIOTT: Debbie Elliott, NPR News.
MARSHALL: I say: Can I get a roll call?
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Central, Hurrah.
MARSHALL: OK. OK.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Consider the piano. Invented sometime in the late 17th century, the instrument has been through several iterations in its centuries-old life. The type of piano that Bach or Mozart composed for looked and sounded very different from the instrument we know today. Now, a new high-tech piano keyboard called the Seaboard is trying to take it a step further. Christopher Werth met its inventor in London and sent us this report.
CHRISTOPHER WERTH, BYLINE: Roland Lamb developed a fondness for the piano as a kid almost out of necessity.
ROLAND LAMB: I grew up in rural New Hampshire, and I was home schooled as a kid. And we had no TV, and the only interesting things in the house were the books and the piano.
WERTH: But he says that early experience left him with a nagging desire to get more out of the instrument.
LAMB: I remember reading about Thelonious Monk, of whom it was said he was searching for the space between the black and white keys. So he'd always play these, like, little chromatic clusters.
(SOUNDBITE OF PIANO MUSIC)
LAMB: And it was like he was pushing the instrument to its limit. And I thought, you know, maybe this is a question for design. Maybe we could reinvent the piano and actually make it capable of playing those notes between the keys.
WERTH: So Roland Lamb, who's now 35 years old, founded a tech start up called Roli, named after himself.
LAMB: This is where we do our physical prototyping.
WERTH: At this workshop in east London, Lamb's staff is building the Seaboard.
LAMB: It looks like a futuristic version of the piano.
WERTH: Actually, it kind of looks like a cross between a keyboard and Apple's iPod. It's clean, sleekly designed, just a few inches thick. But instead of individual keys, there are two rows of rounded bumps that look like hot dogs sliced in half and made of grey silicone. Lamb says musicians can literally dig their fingers into them to make different sounds.
LAMB: It's a soft material and at first, it feels strange and alien and different, especially for piano players because they're so used to the cool, smooth touch of piano keys.
WERTH: But, he says, once they get a feel for it, this squishy keyboard allows musicians to do things they can't do with typical synthesizer keyboards.
LAMB: Try it now. Try it. Turn the piano down a little bit.
WERTH: To demonstrate, Roli employee Heen-Wah Wai sits down to play a bass line on both a Seaboard and on a run-of-the-mill electric keyboard to compare them side by side.
LAMB: All right. Sounds good.
HEEN-WAH WAI: So here we have two of the same - exactly the same double bass sounds.
WERTH: Heen-Wah starts with the standard keyboard...
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WERTH: ...which he says sounds flat and, well, like a keyboard pretending to be a double bass.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WERTH: Now, listen to Heen-Wah play the same tune on the Seaboard.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WERTH: Heen-Wah can bend and slide notes as though he were playing a double bass by rotating his fingers across the silicone bumps and sliding along the edge of the keyboard to slur notes like it's a bass string. And he says the Seaboard's rubbery surface also allows him to control the intensity of each individual note by digging his fingers deeper into the keyboard's soft material.
WAI: You can press harder or softer to control the volume, to simulate the volume swell of a stringed instrument.
WERTH: Which means a single player like Heen-Wah can sound like a full ensemble of musicians. He switches the Seaboard to the sound of a cello as Roland Lamb and I have a listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LAMB: So if you close your eyes and you imagine, each key has a kind of bow in it and has that kind of orchestral feel. And each key can be controlled separately, so it gives the effect of five or six people with cellos playing different notes at different volumes.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WERTH: Conceptually, Lamb says these innovations have been possible for a long time. But he says it's only lately that computer processing speeds have advanced enough to turn the idea into a reality.
LAMB: To create this, we have to read data very, very rapidly. And five or 10 years ago, even the kind of benchmarks within the industry wouldn't really have been enough to achieve what we're achieving today.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ROB GENTRY: Ooh, the computer is going crazy.
WERTH: That's Rob Gentry. He's a local London musician who works for Roli, demonstrating the Seaboard to potential buyers and investors. And he says the instrument does feel natural and intuitive. There's just one caveat.
GENTRY: You need to be a little more precise when it comes to playing. I mean, you can play a little out of tune, for example, if it's - if you're not careful. But that's like anything. It's just practice. Whilst it's really heavily based around a keyboard, it's its own instrument.
WERTH: Oh, and buying one will set you back anywhere from three to four and a half thousand big ones, depending on which size Seaboard you get. For NPR News, I'm Christopher Werth, London.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The North American International Auto show begins this week in Detroit, previewing the most exciting car technology on the horizon. One of the biggest stars at this year's show: the Ford F-150. The truck been the best selling vehicle in the U.S. for decades and it's by far Ford's most important. This latest reinvention of the vehicle is radically more fuel-efficient but the body of the new F-150 is made partially out of aluminum, making the truck several hundred pounds lighter.
NPR's Sonari Glinton reports from Detroit.
SONARI GLINTON, BYLINE: It's early on Monday morning and I'm in the Joe Louis Arena in downtown Detroit waiting for the unveil of the Ford F-150. And as Howard Cosell would say: This event holds in it the breathless anticipation of a heavyweight championship fight.
I'm here with Jack Nerad who is with Kelley Blue Book. Is the hype worth it?
JACK NERAD: I think it is worth it. And I think you're exactly right in describing it as the heavyweight championship fight. This is a big deal. This is probably the biggest deal that they have so they want to introduce it in a big way. And they can't introduce it in a, oh, excuse me, here's our truck. They have to be big.
GLINTON: Okay. So the show is getting started. For the few thousand people in the Joe Louis Arena, they play a movie. Now, you know how ridiculous those truck commercials are during football games where trucks are crossing boulders and climbing mountains and stuff? Well, multiply that by 11.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: So ladies and gentlemen, this is the new Ford F-150, the toughest, smartest, most capable F-150 ever.
GLINTON: When you're looking at it, if you're used to seeing trucks, it's that different looking. I mean, to be perfectly honest, there aren't too many different ways to trick out a truck, though I did see one with horns once and you can't get much better than that. What makes this truck different is its construction. Much of the body is made of aluminum, which is a lighter weight material than steel. This truck will be as much as 700 pounds lighter and much more fuel efficient.
ALAN MULALLY: You're talking to me about aluminum?
GLINTON: That's Alan Mulally. Before he came to Ford, he was executive at Boeing.
MULALLY: Well, this is definitely a tremendous technical innovation in the automobile industry and one of the things that gives me a lot of confidence, personally, is that the aluminum alloys that we're using are very similar to what we use in commercial airplanes, and they have proven their toughness and their durability.
GLINTON: Meanwhile, Jake Fisher, head of auto testing at Consumer Reports, says aluminum is more expensive and harder to handle, but it has some real advantages. It's lighter and it weathers better. Fisher says if this truck succeeds, it'll change the way car companies do business.
JAKE FISHER: And I think it's not even so much an F-150 story. But if F-150 soldiers the way with a high volume vehicle aluminum, this may pave the way for a lot of vehicles having aluminum body parts. If they change the atmosphere out there so the body shops are ready to paint aluminum and work with aluminum, maybe your next Hyundai might be an aluminum body too.
GLINTON: Each of the Detroit automakers has gotten better at making smaller cars, but they're still reliant on trucks. The average truck on the road is more than 10 years old. So there's a lot of pent-up demand to replace them. Add to that a recovering housing sector, and you've got a potent mix for the future.
NERAD: When you talk about the F-150, you're talking about the future of Ford Motor Company, so what's at stake is Ford Motor Company.
GLINTON: Okay. Back to Jack Nerad of Kelley Blue Book. The F-150, just this one truck is responsible for about a quarter of Ford's sales and even more of its profits.
NERAD: Because so much of Ford Motor Company's profits come from F-150, no, they're not going to go from, you know, selling 650,000 to selling zero. But this is a big, big deal in terms of corporate profits. And if they lose significant market share in this segment, they're losing significant profitability.
GLINTON: At this auto show, the Chevy Silverado nabbed the award as truck of the year. Last year, Chrysler's Dodge Ram 1500 won as well. So if Ford's gamble doesn't pay off, truck buyers have plenty of options. Sonari Glinton, NPR News, Detroit.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Among the many Olympic statistics we've seen, this one sure got our attention: 70,000 gallons of borscht are expected to be served up at the Sochi games. The hearty deep red soup based on beets has graced the high table of the Kremlin and was a staple peasant food across the former Soviet Union. Anya von Bremzen considers herself something of an expert in cooking up a pot of borscht. She's the author of "Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing," and she joins me now from New York. Anya, welcome to the program.
ANYA VON BREMZEN: Thanks for having me.
BLOCK: And why don't you explain to the uninitiated just what is borscht.
BREMZEN: It's a beet soup. It contains potatoes, tomatoes, usually beef, very often pork and it's a national dish of the Ukraine. So we have a little bit of a geopolitical irony here that at the Russian Olympic games, which are, you know, the pet project of Vladimir Putin, they're serving all those gallons and gallons of borscht. Whereas in the Ukraine, just recently in December, as part of, you know, anti-Moscow and anti-Putin protests, they were also serving borscht affirming that it's Ukraine's national dish.
BLOCK: It's just a cross-cultural thing we have going on here.
BREMZEN: It's fuzzier than that because Ukraine means border and all the bordering nations, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Romania, also have their own versions of borscht and they claim it for themselves.
BLOCK: So lots of variations from country to country and I imagine also from house to house, from one kitchen to another you could get a completely different version of borscht.
BREMZEN: Absolutely. And it's dictated by what you have available. For instance, I remember so fondly my mom's very frugal vegetarian borscht that she whipped up seemingly out of thin air, you know. Just a can of tomato paste, you know, a forlorn beet during the Soviet days when food was so scarce. Here in America, borscht is considered a Jewish dish because it was brought over when Jews were immigrating after the pilgrims in the early 20th century.
So you have the borscht belt borscht, which is often cold and sweet, whereas a Ukrainian woman says that, you know, the real Ukrainian borscht has to have pork and sallow, Pork fat back, and is eaten with sour cream. You know, pork and sour cream it's as anti-Jewish as you can get. But I think both versions are correct.
BLOCK: So if people listening are actually headed to Sochi for the Olympics, what would you tell them to look for or maybe smell for for a good bowl of borscht.
BREMZEN: Well, it has this kind of sweet and sour aroma and the earthy smells of vegetables, but, you know, how can you make a great borscht for that many people? I'm just wondering. It might be that institutional kind.
BLOCK: And that would turn them off forever.
BREMZEN: Or maybe with a shot of vodka, not so bad.
BLOCK: Anya Von Bremzen is the author of "Mastering The Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing." Anya, thanks so much.
BREMZEN: Thanks for having me.
BLOCK: And we have Anya's father's luxurious borscht recipe. It's at our food blog, The Salt, at our website npr.org.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
In Egypt, voters go to the polls tomorrow and Wednesday in a constitutional referendum. The vote comes as Egypt is experiencing what many analysts call a full-blown counter-revolution. The country remains dangerously polarized but the space for dissent is closing. The government continues a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.
And as NPR's Leila Fadel reports from Cairo, it's also now targeting the youth activists whose names and faces are synonymous with the 2011 revolution.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: About 50 men gathered outside this police station in eastern Cairo on Sunday night. They were waiting for a lawyer to come out and brief them on their three friends inside. The men were arrested earlier in the evening. Their crime: Passing out fliers with the words no to the constitution. They're from the Egyptian Strong Party, which was mobilizing a no-vote. But now the party will boycott the vote to protest the arrests.
One man outside the police station tells the others, someone else from their party was just arrested in Fayoum, south of Cairo. Another man asks: Why are the people who say yes to the constitution allowed to hold rallies and we're not? He answers his own question. There is no real choice.
For many here, it is a worrying conclusion in a country that has hurtled down an ever more alarming path since the popularly-backed military coup on July 3rd that ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood from power. At first the crackdown only targeted the Brotherhood and its followers. But more recently it's been expanded to include some of the most prominent youth activists in Egypt.
They're the ones who sparked the 2011 revolution and many of them also backed the military coup against Morsi. Three prominent activists have already been sentenced to three years in prison. Others have been convicted as well. And activists who continue to voice dissent are being harassed and threatened. Taped phone conversations are being leaked to smear them publicly. And journalists aren't spared either. Three Al Jazeera English journalists are in jail, described as terrorists simply for reporting on the Muslim Brotherhood.
Samer Shehata, an Egypt expert at the University of Oklahoma, says this week's vote on the constitution is less a vote on the charter and more a referendum on the military-backed government and the presidential aspirations of military chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
SAMER SHEHATA: This is about the ouster of Morsi and General Sisi and Egypt's new path forward.
FADEL: Shehata says for the military-backed government, turnout is key. A big turnout will be seen as a yes to what Shehata can only describe as a counter-revolution.
SHEHATA: If they get a large turnout, which is what they hope, and also a yes-vote with a large margin, that will be used as the justification, the legitimation(ph) for all the changes that have taken place, and more specifically, the ouster of Morsi on July 3, 2013.
FADEL: The changes Shehata is referring to do not bode well for democracy. The Muslim Brotherhood, the largest political force in the country, is banned and was declared a terrorist organization. A new protest law bars unauthorized public demonstrations.
The streets of Egypt's capital are plastered with posters calling on voters to say yes to the constitution and no to terrorism. And television advertisements like this one...
(SOUNDBITE OF A POLITICAL AD)
FADEL: ...tell voters that a yes to the constitution, is a yes to the revolution. It says: Let them know our people, let them know our size.
Local newspapers are sending out mass text messages urging people to vote yes for the love of the country. And the government makes no apologies for the crackdown at a time where Egypt, it says, is facing real dangers in what it describes as a war on terror. There have been bombings over the past few months and there are still regular clashes between security forces and Brotherhood supporters.
Badr Abdel Atty, spokesman for Egypt's foreign ministry, says the constitutional referendum is part of the process of resolving the crisis here. And the arrests he says are aimed at protecting Egypt's path to democracy.
BADR ABDEL ATTY: You have one part of the society using violence and terrorism to achieve political objectives. This is the most dangerous issue here.
FADEL: The fear among analysts and activists is that this war on terror will be used to excuse human rights violations - in some cases it already has. But for a lot of Egyptians tired of the roller coaster of the last three years, the violence and the bad economy, stability is more important than human rights now.
RAMADAN AHMED OMAR: (Foreign language spoken)
FADEL: At a market in central Cairo, fruit seller Ramadan Ahmed Omar says stability is above all else. If there is stability, he adds, there will be democracy.
Leila Fadel, NPR News, Cairo.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
So we've heard about Microsoft and Sony. Where does all the news about Xbox and PlayStation leave the third great game console power, Nintendo? It took Nintendo a year to sell as many Wii U consoles as Sony sold PlayStations in just a few weeks. And some say Nintendo, the company that gave us "Mario Brothers" and "Zelda," is on the way out.
As NPR's Laura Sydell reports, those old franchises may be enough to keep the company alive for a long time.
LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: In preparation for this story, I put out a call to die-hard Nintendo fans. I was inundated. Brian White is a 30-year-old who grew up playing the "Zelda" games.
(SOUNDBITE OF "ZELDA" VIDEOGAME)
SYDELL: Now he's got a daughter.
BRIAN WHITE: We named her Zelda.
SYDELL: White says, as a dad, he's happy Nintendo games aren't filled with violence.
WHITE: It's something I can play and have my daughter sit in front of the TV and not be ashamed of or wonder how corrupt she's going to be.
SYDELL: For those who are not "Zelda" fans, it's a series of fantasy adventure games where the main character, Link, has to save Princess Zelda and the world. The soundtrack is so beloved, it's been performed around the country as a four movement symphony.
MANNY CONTRERAS: I've seen that twice.
SYDELL: Twenty-five-year-old Manny Contreras says the music reminds him of great experiences he's had playing "Zelda."
CONTRERAS: It's great music, just in general. I think even if you're not a fan, if you listen to it, you're probably surprised by just how good it is.
(SOUNDBITE OF "ZELDA" THEME MUSIC)
SYDELL: This love of these long-time franchises is the main reason that game analyst P.J. McNealy thinks that predictions of Nintendo's demise are overblown.
P.J. MCNEALY: If you look at videogame sales over the last 20 to 25, even 30 years, and look at the top 10 games that have sold, Nintendo has probably owned five, six, seven, eight of those games on those lists.
SYDELL: Among them: "Mario Brothers," "Zelda" and "Wii Sports." McNealy thinks the problem for Nintendo's Wii U is that there haven't been enough updates to its beloved franchises made specifically for it. But he imagines that as the game franchises come out with updates, it will help sales.
MCNEALY: Even though the Wii U hasn't been selling as well as Nintendo certainly has hoped, no one is sitting there calling it un-fun.
SYDELL: The Wii U is different from the original Wii console because it has a sort of tablet accessory called a GamePad. Kelly Bohm bought the Wii U as soon as it came out and she's been a little disappointed.
KELLY BOHM: There's not enough games to play on it. It's like, you want to play more with the console 'cause it's a cool concept, having the touch pad.
SYDELL: But this past fall, Nintendo came out with "Super Mario 3D World," specifically for the Wii U. Mario is a plumber who goes on a lot of adventures.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEOGAME, "SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD")
BOHM: This one's a lot better because a lot of the levels in the "Mario" game require you to use the touch pad. But you have to press buttons to unlock things or open pathways and stuff like that.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEOGAME, "SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD")
SYDELL: Later this year, Nintendo is releasing even more updates of popular franchises for the Wii U: "Super Smash Brothers," "Mario Kart" and "Donkey Kong."
But a lot of analysts say Nintendo is getting more competition from new titles created for mobile devices and PCs. Meanwhile, the hardcore gamers will buy the Xbox and the PlayStation for the power and better graphics.
But the love of Nintendo's franchises does run deep with fans like Bohm. She plans on buying every update and hopes to share the experience someday with her kids.
BOHM: It's happy memories from your own childhood. And you always want to pass on stuff that you did as a kid to your own kids.
SYDELL: And Nintendo is betting its future on many people feeling that way.
Laura Sydell, NPR News.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The U.S. has long had one of the highest teen birth rates in the developed world. But in recent years, it's been dropping, fast. There are several reasons why. And in a new study, researcher Melissa Kearney explains why she believes one big reason, it's MTV. Specifically, a show popular with teen girls called "16 and Pregnant," a brutally honest look at life as a pregnant teen.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "16 AND PREGNANT")
CORNISH: Melissa Kearney is associate professor of economics at the University of Maryland. And let's start with the basics. The teen birth rate has been dropping for more than two decades, right? So let's put that out there. But you noticed in around 2008, it started dropping even faster.
MELISSA KEARNEY: That's right. A lot of people noticed that the decline accelerated and, as you said, it started dropping very rapidly. And my colleague and I would read in the newspaper various theories as to why, and everybody promoting their favorite policy being it expanded sex education or expanded abstinence programs. And based on our previous research, we knew that those types of targeted policies could not be the explanation.
And then we came across a quote by Sarah Brown at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, and she speculated that this show was having an effect. And so we wondered if that could be true and we set out to look at the data and see, in fact, if it was.
CORNISH: So let's talk about that data. What can you kind of possibly - what are the data sets that have to be matched together to figure out how you study the effect of one TV program on something like the birth rate. Where do you start?
KEARNEY: So we started by, of course, using the birth rate data in the U.S. So we're able to figure out exactly how many teens gave birth in various media markets. And then we bought data from Nielsen - ratings data - to figure out how many teenagers were watching MTV across the country. And then also in something a bit novel for economists, we got all historical data on Google searches, as well as the universe of Twitter data.
CORNISH: So talk to us about those Google searches or those tweets. What exactly did you see? What kind of terms did you look for?
KEARNEY: OK. In the Google data, we were really looking for what - were people searching for information about how to get birth control around the time the shows were viewed. And the day that an episode airs and the next day, we see large spikes in the rate at which people are searching for how to get birth control. And we see higher volumes of searches in places where more teens are watching MTV.
The Twitter data was astounding. In the Twitter data, we can actually see what teens are tweeting. And there are literally thousands of tweets that say things like: watching "16 and Pregnant" reminds me to take my birth control; "16 and Pregnant" is the best form of birth control. So getting that insight into what teenagers were thinking about while and right after they watched the show was really informative.
CORNISH: So once you've crunched all these numbers, what did you find? What kind of influence did the show have?
KEARNEY: The show had a sizeable impact. So our estimates from the data suggest that teen birth rates, as a result of this show, fell by 5.7 percentage points over this 18-month period. That is a third of the overall decline in teen birth rates over that time. So the full scope of what we find is that this decline in this period, half is due to the recession, a third is due to "16 and Pregnant," and the remainder is due to an ongoing downward trend in teen childbearing rates.
CORNISH: Now, stepping back for a moment, you know, your research really cuts to the heart of a perennial media question about, you know, are teens influenced by what they see on TV, whether it's seeing other teens struggling as teen mothers or watching something violent. Does your study suggest essentially that what they watch makes a difference?
KEARNEY: Yeah. Absolutely. That, we think, is the biggest takeaway from this study is that what teenagers are watching can make a really big difference in what they think and, ultimately, how they behave and really important life decisions.
CORNISH: Melissa Kearney, she is associate professor of economics at the University of Maryland. Thank you so much for talking with us.
KEARNEY: Thank you for having me.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block. For lots of us, the darkness and colder temperatures of winter make us rely a little more on a favorite pick-me-up: coffee.
Now, for all its benefits, coffee does have the reputation of sending us on multiple trips to the bathroom because of a diuretic effect. But as NPR's Allison Aubrey reports, a new study finds the beverage may actually help keep us hydrated.
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: Like a lot of people, Chuck Moran has a serious coffee habit.
CHUCK MORAN: This is a grande, dark-roast coffee.
AUBREY: It was 4 o'clock in the afternoon when I caught up with Moran in a coffee shop at D.C.'s Union Station, where he was waiting to catch a train.
MORAN: I'm in the middle of a really long journey right now. I kind of want to stay awake until I get home, so I figured I'd have a cup of coffee. (Laughter)
AUBREY: Moran knows from experience that coffee does help him push through fatigue, and he's not somebody who gets the coffee jitters. But still, he's always thought, like most of us, that coffee can lead to dehydration.
DOUGLAS CASA: One of the great wives' tales has always been, you know, caffeine is a diuretic and, you know, people - they're always assuming that caffeine is bad for them in terms of the hydration.
AUBREY: That's Douglas Casa, of the University of Connecticut, who has studied the effects of caffeine in athletes. He says while it is true that the caffeine in coffee can elicit a diuretic effect, prompting the body to flush out fluids, what new research has been proving is that in many people, the effect is actually quite small. And in some of us, it's not detectable at all.
CASA: One of the benefits of drinking coffee is you are getting a lot of water while you're drinking that, so that certainly does enhance the hydration process.
AUBREY: The most recent evidence comes from a new study done at the University of Birmingham, in the U.K. Sophie Killer is the lead author.
SOPHIE KILLER: It's well understood that if you drink coffee habitually, you can develop a tolerance to some of these potential diuretic effects of caffeine.
AUBREY: This has been shown in performance athletes. But Killer wanted to know if it held true for everyday coffee drinkers.
KILLER: We felt there was really a gap, and that no one had specifically answered the question.
AUBREY: So Killer recruited 50 men to volunteer for the study, all of whom had been in the habit of drinking coffee every day. The volunteers had to spend three days drinking coffee as their main source of fluid. Then they went off caffeine, and spent another three days drinking an equal amount of water. When Killer tested their fluid levels, surprisingly, she found virtually no difference. The coffee and the water had the same effect.
CASA: So in habitual coffee drinkers, caffeine really had absolutely no influence on hydration status.
AUBREY: Now, Douglas Casa says it's possible that in the uninitiated - those who don't usually consume caffeine - coffee may have a diuretic effect. But for those of us who drink it daily, it looks as if the old wives' tale is just that, a tale. When I told Chuck Moran that water and coffee likely had the same effect on his hydration, it took him a moment to process it.
MORAN: Interesting.
AUBREY: Does that surprise you?
MORAN: I mean, there's water in it but yes, it is surprising.
AUBREY: So with his grande in hand, he headed out to catch his train.
Allison Aubrey, NPR News.
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The Supreme Court also made news today by deciding not to take a case. It let stand a lower court ruling that found an abortion ban passed by the state of Arizona in 2012 to be unconstitutional. NPR's Julie Rovner reports on what this could mean for the dozen or so other states with similar bans.
JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: The idea behind the Arizona law and those like it is to ban most abortions after around 20 weeks of pregnancy on the contested scientific ground that fetuses can begin to feel to pain at that point. But because of the way Arizona legislators measured pregnancy, its ban actually would've begun around 18 weeks of pregnancy. Both sides in the case conceded that was well before fetal viability and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law as unconstitutional, noting that the Supreme Court has long held states cannot ban abortion before viability.
In that sense, the Supreme Court's decision to let the appeals court ruling stand was not that much of a surprise, said Nancy Northup. She's president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, one of the groups that sued to block the Arizona law.
NANCY NORTHUP: Very solid 40-plus years of Supreme Court precedent says that you cannot ban abortion this early in pregnancy, and the Supreme Court did not say we want to take a look at that again.
ROVNER: But the fact that the court didn't take this case, she says, does not mean it won't accept one of the others now working its way through the system.
NORTHUP: You can never read into the court's decision to deny review of a case what the thinking of the court is behind it, so it doesn't say they're not going to take another look at one of these cases.
ROVNER: And those pushing the 20-week bans, like Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Anti-Abortion Susan B. Anthony List, are taking the news in stride.
MARJORIE DANNENFELSER: This is a disappointment but not a major setback. It's part of the crooked line to passage that the partial birth abortion ban took and so we are full steam ahead.
ROVNER: Indeed, the Supreme Court struck down a Nebraska law outlawing that controversial late-abortion procedure in 2000 before a different majority upheld a federal ban in 2007. Julie Rovner, NPR News, Washington.
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And I'm Melissa Block. Supreme Court justices from across the ideological spectrum voiced skepticism today about one way modern presidents have filled executive branch vacancies. Article 2 of the Constitution says the president shall have the power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, but what if there is no recess? NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: The Senate has never liked recess appointments, but has been unable to stop them. Indeed, presidents back to George Washington have made them. The battle between the two branches reached a new high in 2012 when Republicans, facing a 20-day mid-session recess, forced the conducting of super-short Senate session with no business conducted. Here, for example, is the session on January 6, 2012 with a near empty chamber.
(SOUNDBITE OF SENATE SESSION)
TOTENBERG: That was it, the whole thing. President Obama considered these sessions a fake, a legal fiction aimed at preventing him from making recess appointments. And so he went ahead and made three to the National Labor Relations Board, which had been unable to enforce the nation's labor laws because it lacked a quorum. Republicans challenged the appointments as unconstitutional, contending that the Senate had not been in recess.
Inside the Supreme Court today, Solicitor General Don Verrilli told the justices that the challenger's interpretation of the recess appointment clause would repudiate the legitimacy of thousands of recess appointments of presidents going back to George Washington and going forward would write the president's recess appointment power out of the Constitution.
Chief Justice Roberts: You don't suggest that the actions of these recess appointees would be invalid, do you? Answer: Well, it would certainly cast a serious cloud over those actions. Justice Ginsberg noted that when the constitution was written, senators traveled by horseback and were back home for six or nine months. Today, there are no such long-running recesses.
Justice Kagan: Going back to President Reagan, presidents of both political parties have used this clause as a way to deal with congressional intransigence over appointments. But with no long term congressional recesses now, she said, that makes me wonder whether we're dealing here with an historic relic. Solicitor General Verrilli replied that the NLRB going dark is not an historical relic. It may be true, he said, that as a matter of raw power, the Senate has the ability to sit on nominations for months and years at a time without acting, but that is 100 miles from what the framers would've expected.
Justice Alito: You're making a very aggressive argument in favor of executive power, that when the Senate fails to act on nominations, the president must be able to fill those positions. Answer: The recess power may act as a safety valve in some situations of intransigence. What the framers were most concerned about was that Congress would amass authority and drain authority from the executive. We have a stable equilibrium between the branches that has emerged during our history, and what we're arguing for is the status quo.
Justice Breyer: I can't find anything in the briefs that says the purpose of the recess appointment clause was to resolve fights between the branches. Verrilli definitely took the major pounding today, although lawyer Noel Francisco, challenging the recess appointments, was hardly unscathed. He told the justices that the president's position eviscerates the Senate's advice and consent power on nominations. After all, he argued, the Senate gets to make its own rules, not the president.
Justice Alito: Suppose we think that the language in the Constitution is on your side, but that there is a 200-year-old consistent practice going back to Washington and uncontested by the Senate that the language means something else. What do we do with that situation? Other justices chimed in, asking how are we supposed to conclude that thousands of recess appointments over time were unconstitutional.
Chief Justice Roberts wondered if there's any limit to the Senate's power, can it say we are never in recess: Replied Francisco: I think the answer is yes, they could do that that. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
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We have more details now on just who is signing up for insurance through the government's new healthcare marketplace. About a quarter of the people signing up are under the age of 35. As NPR's Scott Horsley reports, the Obama administration released its first demographic breakdown of the insurance customers today.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: More than 2.1 million people signed up for health insurance during the first three months the website was operating. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says the vast majority of those enrollments came in December, after the site's now infamous technical problems were largely resolved.
KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: Among young adults the momentum was particularly strong. There was more than an eight-fold increase in December enrollment.
HORSLEY: This is the first time the administration as offered a snapshot of who is signing up for coverage. Twenty-four percent of the enrollees are aged 18 to 34. Health policy expert Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation says insurance companies are keeping a close eye on that figure because they're counting on the premiums paid by younger healthy people to help cover the cost of treating the old and the sick.
LARRY LEVITT: You ideally want a large number of young people in the system, but really what you want is healthy people. An insurer would much rather have a healthy 60-year-old than a sick 25-year-old.
HORSLEY: The number of young adults signing up for coverage so far roughly matches their share of the population, but it's well below their share of the target market of people who need health insurance. If that continues, insurance companies may have to adjust their rates, though Levitt says the increase would likely be small. He adds the experience in Massachusetts suggests the ages of people signing up will change over time.
LEVITT: Younger people tended to wait until the last minute to enroll and there are still two and a half months left in the open enrollment period. So I would expect enrollment to surge and that younger people will likely enroll in larger numbers.
HORSLEY: Now that the insurance website is working more smoothly, the administration says it's ramping up its outreach, encouraging more people of all ages to sign up for health insurance before this year's deadline of March 31st.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
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Today brings a new wave of questions about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. It's no longer just about whether Christie knew members of his team had ordered a traffic jam on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge. Today we learned the federal government is also investigating whether the Christie administration misused funds earmarked for recovery from Superstorm Sandy.
We're joined once again by reporter Matt Katz of member station WNYC. And, Matt, what more can you tell us about these new allegations?
MATT KATZ, BYLINE: The allegation is that the governor got federal money for Sandy recovery and used a company to produce tourism commercials to attract people back to the Sandy-ravaged Jersey shore. And that he used these federal tax dollars to create these ads, but shows a firm that cost $2.2 million more than a competing bidder. And he did this because this firm was going to put him and his family in these tourism ads.
This was controversial at the time actually last year, because he was running for reelection and his opponents accused him of putting up veiled campaign ads on the air, using federal tax dollars. So the new allegation is that may have happened and that's why the Inspector General's Office with the federal government is looking into it.
CORNISH: But, Matt, just to be clear, the governor did actually seek permission from the federal government to do this and got approval for that.
KATZ: That's right. And part of his response today was that the federal government approved all of this. And actually gave him a waiver to use the federal money to spend it on tourism commercials.
CORNISH: So what has been the response from Governor Christie's office?
KATZ: His office responded pretty quickly and forcefully. They said it's amazing that the inspector general's investigation leaks now when the governor is at his lowest points. They are making the accusation essentially that the Obama administration is going after him because he's weakened. Up until this point, the president and the governor have been on the same page when it comes to the Sandy stuff. And now all of a sudden, a few days after this scandal breaks - related to something totally different - he gets hit with this.
So he's fighting back and it's possible that he'll get some sympathy on the right for fighting Obama on this.
CORNISH: Matt Katz, Governor Christie had been riding high before all of this, right? I mean even reelected by a healthy margin, named to head the Republican Governors Association and, of course, considered a strong candidate for his party's nomination for president in 2016. Any sense yet, looking at the polls, how this scandal is playing in New Jersey?
KATZ: Yes, we have a brand-new poll out. It was taken over the weekend in New Jersey. The governor's approval rating has dropped from 65 percent to 59 percent. Fifty-nine percent is still an enviable approval rating. But it is the lowest his approval rating has been since Superstorm Sandy struck the state over 14 months ago.
There's good news and bad news in the poll. A third of New Jerseyans think that Christie himself was involved in the decision to close the toll lanes, which caused the traffic jam - it's only a third. But two-thirds do not accept the governor's timeline about when he found out about the political retribution involved in this traffic scandal. And so there's some mixed numbers here. It's a great for the governor but it certainly could be worse.
CORNISH: That's reporter Matt Katz of member station WNYC. Matt, thank you so much.
KATZ: Sure thing, Audie.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
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In just a week, the U.N. plans to hold Syrian peace talks in Switzerland. In the meantime, the U.S. is leaning hard on opposition leaders to attend and talk face-to-face with a government they've been fighting hard to topple. Secretary of State John Kerry has been in meetings for the past two days in Paris, laying the groundwork for the conference.
He and his Russian counterpart are calling on the warring sides to open humanitarian aid corridors, and to take other steps to improve the atmosphere for negotiations.
But as NPR's Michele Kelemen reports, the odds of success are long.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: International envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has been trying for many months to bring to the warring parties to the negotiating table. Now the date is in sight, January 22nd, and he's urging everyone - particularly the government of Syria - to make humanitarian gestures and ease the suffering of millions of people.
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: Prisoner exchanges, humanitarian access and also a ceasefire as wide as possible, but even local ceasefires will be welcome.
KELEMEN: That idea of local ceasefires is something he discussed in Paris with Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Kerry says there is an urgent need for a ceasefire in Aleppo. And more humanitarian access to other cities that are being pounded by the regime.
SECRETARY JOHN KERRY: There should be no further delay in our judgment in ending the aerial bombardment of children, civilians, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. We believe the basic disregard for human rights and human dignity that we are witnessing in the area needs to come to an end.
KELEMEN: Lavrov, whose government backs the Syrian regime, says Damascus is ready to open aid corridors including to the suburbs of the capital, where 160,000 people have been trapped by the fighting. But speaking through an interpreter, Lavrov made clear that the opposition needs to do its part. And he raised concerns about the extremists in their ranks.
SERGEY LAVROV: (Through translator) We do not want a ceasefire which would be used by terrorists groups because that would be against the interests of everyone.
KELEMEN: Lavrov and Kerry couldn't paper over their different views of the conflict in Syria. That was true also when it came to the issue of Iran. The Russian foreign minister says he thinks Iran should be invited to the peace conference in Switzerland next week despite U.S. concerns.
LAVROV: (Through translator) One cannot be influenced by ideological sentiments so much that it harms the interest of the cause.
KELEMEN: Kerry says he's not driven by ideology but by the fact that Iran hasn't agreed to the basic idea of the conference: negotiations on a transitional government for Syria, one that the U.S. believes will not include Bashar al-Assad. And Iran, Kerry says, is a party to the conflict, supplying arms to the government and backing Hezbollah fighters who have poured into Syria from Lebanon to bolster the Assad regime.
KERRY: I invite Iran today to join the community of nations, the 30 nations that are already prepared to come, and be a constructive partner for peace. That's the invitation.
KELEMEN: Brahimi, the diplomat who will be chairing the peace conference tried hard to remain above this dispute, saying he's still working with the U.S. and Russia on the final guest list, though he does think Iran and anyone with influence should be there.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Paris.
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And I'm Melissa Block.
Faucets in parts of West Virginia are running drinkable water again. This after a chemical spill leaked into the Elk River and tainted the local water supply. After a five-day ban on tap water in and around Charleston, Governor Earl Tomblin today announced the results of days of testing.
GOVERNOR EARL TOMBLIN: The numbers we have today look good and we're finally at a point where the do not use order has been lifted in certain areas.
BLOCK: Still, officials say, the process of flushing the last of the chemical out of local pipes will take some time. And many of the hundreds of thousands of residents affected are still living under the ban. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: After almost five days of avoiding tap water for everything except flushing toilets, Sarah Travis finally received the instructions she'd been waiting for.
SARAH TRAVIS: It's pretty simple. Turn on all the hot taps. Run them for 15 minutes, turn them off.
WANG: She's reviewing a tip sheet from the West Virginia American Water Company with her husband Greg in their Charleston home, blocks away from the state capitol.
GREG TRAVIS: OK. So when do you want to start?
TRAVIS: Now.
(LAUGHTER)
TRAVIS: OK. Sergei?
SERGEI TRAVIS: Yeah.
TRAVIS: Go all the way to the top floor. Go up to the attic, left faucet, turn the attic on.
WANG: Schools in the area have been closed, so Sergei and Daniel, Greg and Sarah's sons, are also home. They zoom up and down the stairs as the flushing begins at the Travis'.
TRAVIS: And I will now do the kitchen sink and let it run.
WANG: Cooking and cleaning had been unusual challenges for Greg Travis and his family these past few days. They've been relying on bottled water and rain water collected out in their backyard. Are you originally West Virginian?
TRAVIS: No. I'm originally from Maryland. And I don't think if this happened in Maryland that people would be quite as patient.
WANG: Sarah Travis says, for the most part, the tap water ban has been more of an inconvenience than a source of outrage for her and her neighbors.
TRAVIS: We're able to look and say, OK, it's not as bad as, you know, it was before. So I think it's - that's just the West Virginian people.
WANG: Earlier this morning, forklifts piled crates of water bottles outside of a stamping plant in nearby South Charleston, West Virginia.
CATHY FARLEY: Hi. Do you still have water in the (unintelligible) to fill a container?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Yes, ma'am. Pull right over and we'll fill you up.
WANG: Stopping by water distributions sites like these have been part of the morning routine for local residents like Cathy Farley of Charleston.
FARLEY: I've been to work. It's full of dirty dishes and we need coffee.
(LAUGHTER)
WANG: So you're on a coffee run.
FARLEY: Kind of.
OTHO WHITING: This water situation is really a pain. You can't do nothing.
WANG: Otho Whiting of South Charleston stopped by with empty gallon jugs to fill up. It's not the first time he's lived without drinkable running water.
WHITING: I was raised in the country, on a farm. We drawn our water out of a well and, you know, used it that way. And this is more or less pretty close to that way.
WANG: This way of getting water has had a toll on West Virginians not just in households.
ROBBIE BAKER: It's not business as usual. It's business as unusual as it's ever been since I've lived here. I grew up here.
WANG: Robbie Baker works at Sam's Uptown Cafe in downton Charleston, where a handful of restaurants and other businesses with access to potable water were allowed to open earlier this weekend. Baker says his boss at the cafe has been making regular trips for seemingly endless cases of bottled water.
(LAUGHTER)
BAKER: So it's a lot of water bottles. It's a lot of water. Hopefully, everybody is recycling. I don't think that's the first priority right now, though.
WANG: For officials, the priority is for families in the area to start hearing this, a running faucet flushing out the contaminated tap water, like in Sarah Travis' home. Is it a relief to hear that sound now?
TRAVIS: Yeah. It's a big relief. It'll be a relief to hear the shower. That's what I'm waiting for, is the shower.
WANG: And so are hundreds of thousands of other West Virginians. Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News, Charleston, West Virginia.
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We're going to focus on the chemical that's caused all this trouble in West Virginia. It's commonly used to clean coal. But as NPR's Elizabeth Shogren reports, it's also something of a mystery.
ELIZABETH SHOGREN, BYLINE: The chemical is called 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or MCHM. If you've never heard of it, you're in good company. Most chemists and toxicologists haven't either, nor had the water company or emergency responders in West Virginia who had to deal with thousands of gallons of the stuff spilling from a tank and contaminating drinking water.
West Virginia's Secretary of Health and Human Resources, Karen Bowling, says the state relied on advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
KAREN BOWLING: There are unknowns, so we have to rely on what is already known about and what's been tested about this particular chemical.
SHOGREN: At the time of the accident, the CDC didn't have a standard for how much of this chemical in water is safe to drink, so they had to come up with one. The agency relied on an animal study that established what was lethal for rats. Vik Kapil is the chief medical officer at the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health.
VIKAS KAPIL: And from that, you would decrease the proposed levels down further and further, taking into account all the uncertainties.
SHOGREN: Kapil acknowledged that there was very little data to go on. West Virginia officials say they also turned to safety information companies must provide on chemicals they possess. Toxicologist Sharon Meyer says it didn't say much.
SHARON MEYER: And the entries were largely data not available, data not available for this particular compound.
SHOGREN: Meyer is an associate professor at University of Louisiana at Monroe. She says she analyzed the compound's structure and saw nothing obvious that should present a concern to people who drank it.
MEYER: I really think that they were not exposed to extreme levels that would cause serious problems. But I don't have the data to definitively say this.
SHOGREN: Arizona State University professor Rolf Halden wasn't surprised that the scientific literature had so little information about MCHM.
ROLF HALDEN: There's 85,000 chemicals in commerce right now in the United States, and we cannot possibly test all the chemicals for all the different properties.
SHOGREN: Halden researches how chemicals move through the environment and people. He used a computer model from the Environmental Protection Agency to calculate how this chemical would behave in the environment. He says it likely would not persist. Half of it would be gone from the water in two weeks and half from the soil in a month. That's because microbes in the soil will likely eat it.
HALDEN: I would not be terribly concerned about long-term contamination of the environment with this chemical.
SHOGREN: Still, the accident shed a light on how little is known about many chemicals. Lawyer Lynn Bergeson specializes in the regulation of toxic chemicals.
LYNN BERGESON: These incidents are very painful for the local residents there in West Virginia. They are embarrassing to federal and state governments that would appear to not have as much information as they would like to be able to report to local residents.
SHOGREN: Bergeson hopes this accident will spark new interest in updating the 40-year old law that governs toxic chemicals. Elizabeth Shogren, NPR News, Washington.
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Target is apologizing in full-page newspaper ads for a massive cybersecurity breach. Hackers stole the credit card numbers of 40 million Target shoppers over the holiday season. And on Friday, the retailer acknowledged that the names, mailing addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of at least 70 million customers were also stolen. Neiman Marcus has also admitted it was a victim of hacking, but has not said how many customers were affected. And according to Reuters, three other well-known U.S. retailers were the recent targets of similar breaches.
For more on just how this hacking works, I'm joined by Mark Rasch. He's a former Justice Department prosecutor for cybercrimes. Mark, welcome to the program.
MARK RASCH: Thank you.
BLOCK: And technically, help us understand how the payment card data was taken. What happens?
RASCH: Well, so far, Target has not released explicit details on how it was taken. But it seems to have been taken from two different places. One is from the point-of-sale terminal. That's the place where you swipe your credit card. They were able to scrape data off of there. And the second place is from inside Target itself; where they store your name, your address and your email address.
BLOCK: OK. I want to ask you about that term. You're scraping data. What does that mean? What happens there?
RASCH: You have data stored on your credit card, on the magnetic stripe. And it's got to be read by a machine to get into, say, Target's computer system. So it's read into the machine at this point-of-sale terminal, when you hand your card over and it's swiped. It's stored in something called RAM, random access memory. And the computer hackers have come up with something called a RAM scraper. And what it does, it sucks up that data and sends it to the hackers.
BLOCK: The data is supposed to be encrypted, though, right?
RASCH: It has to be read first and then encrypted. So the key for the hackers is to get it before it gets encrypted. And that's why they're using these RAM scrapers.
BLOCK: We mentioned the additional information that we now know was stolen besides the credit card numbers - all of the personal information; names, addresses, phone numbers. What would that allow hackers to do?
RASCH: If you have a lot of personal information about somebody, then you can do more than just commit credit card fraud. You can actually become those people. So you can get new credit in their name. You can apply for mortgages and bank loans in their name, and that's identity theft and identity fraud. That's much more serious than simple credit card fraud.
BLOCK: Help us understand how the black market in these credit card numbers works. Once the information is stolen, what happens to it?
RASCH: The problem for hackers is now they have a bunch of credit card numbers, and they want to turn that into money. So what they do is, they will sell the credit card numbers on the black market through these hacker or carder websites, C-A-R-D-E-R. And people will buy them; and they'll buy them based upon whether they're a gold card or a platinum card, and what the credit limit is, and what bank issued it and whether it's a U.S. bank. And they have different values. So people will buy the cards and once they buy the cards, they'll turn them into actual, physical plastic cards all over the world - buy goods, buy services, then sell those on the black market as well. So it's a fairly sophisticated operation.
BLOCK: Who's running this black market?
RASCH: Well, there are lots of people. A lot of it comes out of eastern Europe. A lot of it coming out of the former Soviet republics. But even within the fencing - that is to turn the goods that you buy at a Best Buy into money - that can happen anywhere in the world; typically, Southeast Asia, Africa and South America.
BLOCK: And for investigators, how do you go about trying to shut this market down?
RASCH: Well, there's two ways you're going to investigate this. One is to look at the Target store - when did they get hacked, how do they get hacked, how did the data get out? And the second one is follow the money backwards. So you see where the products that were bought with the stolen cards are coming from, and work your way backwards. Hopefully, that's how you catch these guys.
BLOCK: Is there much of a history of successful prosecution? I mean, if all of this is as open as you seem to say it is, with these websites where you can trade in these numbers, it would seem like people should be able to shut this down.
RASCH: To a great extent, U.S. law enforcement is playing a game of whack-a-mole. We catch one, and a dozen more pop up. But there have been successful prosecutions, and there are people in jail in the United States - and around the world - for participating in these carder activities. You only catch a small percentage of them. And with tens of millions of credit card numbers floating around, they have a big incentive not to get caught and a lot of resources with which they can hide.
BLOCK: Mark Rasch is a former cybercrime prosecutor at the Justice Department. Mark, thanks for coming in.
RASCH: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
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And I'm Audie Cornish and it's time for All Tech Considered.
(SOUNDBITE OF THEME MUSIC)
CORNISH: The party is over at the Consumer Electronics Show, the electronics industry's annual mega-gathering. Cleanup at the Las Vegas Convention Center is well underway. Now, observers noted the absence of Microsoft, which for years had a major presence. And there was talk about who will replace Microsoft's outgoing CEO, Steve Ballmer. In an interview, Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford Motor Company, said he will not take the job, as had been rumored.
David Linthicum blogs for InfoWorld and joins us to talk about Microsoft. Hi there, David.
DAVID LINTHICUM: Hey.
CORNISH: So let's talk about Microsoft's absence at CES. It's not the first time so how big a deal was it?
LINTHICUM: Wasn't a big deal because I think that a lot of companies, Apple included, have found that there is diminished value in going to CES - which has largely become kind of an innovative, consumer oriented, electronics show. The, you know, laptop, the tablet computer market, the phone market just moves too quickly to just catch up one time a year.
CORNISH: And then this other issue in the news, the CEO of Ford Motor Company deciding not to go to Microsoft. Can you talk a little bit about why people thought he'd be such a good candidate?
LINTHICUM: Well, Microsoft needs some new leadership obviously. They've gone off course on a few things and their revenues are down, and they're not as innovative and creative as they were in the past. And so, people have been looking for a new leader to come in there and take the company off in a different direction.
And the CEO of Ford, obviously a very polished - more what you think of in terms of what a CEO is. So him not taking the job really means that it's going back out to more people that are more like Steve Ballmer and more like Bill Gates, which...
CORNISH: Meaning programmers or...
LINTHICUM: Meaning people who are technology people; people who understand their own systems and really aren't polished CEOs.
CORNISH: So let's talk a little bit more about the technology. What are the key things that a new CEO is going to need to focus on? And in this, I want to get a sense of how things have been going for Microsoft, especially on the consumer electronics side.
LINTHICUM: Well, they've had some successes but mostly it's been fairly underwhelming. So, you know, you can certainly point to the success of the Xbox. And that is certainly a huge consumer product that's very popular out there, almost a religious following.
However, in the tablet computing space, in the operating system space, in the phone space, they haven't been making the splash I think they thought they would make. And they've been missing a lot of the creative and innovative aspects that Microsoft has really kind of dominated at in the past. And they've become kind of a fast follower in the space.
And so they wait to see, you know, who's going to be innovative in that area and try to get in there and compete with them. And while that used to work maybe 15, 20 years ago, it doesn't work now.
CORNISH: So at this point, but when do people expect to hear some sort of announcement about a new CEO?
LINTHICUM: I'd say it's probably going to be within the next 30 days. It has to happen sooner rather than later because, typically, the new CEO is going to set the direction. He's going to bring in his own set of innovators and leaders, and start moving the company in new areas and new spaces. And that needs to occur now in order to have any kind of impact within the next year.
CORNISH: David Linthicum, he's the senior vice president of Cloud Technology Partners and a blogger for InfoWord. Thanks so much for talking with us.
LINTHICUM: Thank you very much.
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Among the big companies spending the money to make a splash at CES was Sony. In its keynote address, Sony announced that its PlayStation 4 videogame console was beating Microsoft's Xbox One in sales. Sony claims it sold more than four million by year's end. In its own announcement, Microsoft claimed to have sold three million.
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Sony also amped-up its years-old talk about transforming the living room by unveiling plans for two new Cloud-based services. One is for gaming - it's called PlayStation Now.
ANDREW HOUSE: The result is nothing short of amazing and marks the beginning of a new era of streamed gaming.
CORNISH: That's Sony Executive Andrew House. He told the audience this new service will make PlayStation's library of games playable through the Internet on all kinds of devices, including TVs, tablets and mobile phones.
BLOCK: The other Cloud-based service Sony announced is an as-yet unnamed TV service. Andrew House said Sony will take the movies and television shows that it makes and offer them through the Internet on all kinds of Sony devices.
HOUSE: Based on the number of users streaming videos on any given day, our network would rank among the top five cable and satellite providers in the U.S.
CORNISH: How big is that? Sony says tens of millions of users will be able to watch its new service through their TVs and PlayStations.
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It was a violent weekend in Mexico's western state of Michoacan. Clashes erupted between so-called civilian defense groups and the Knights Templar drug cartel. The civilian defense group says Mexico's security forces are not protecting people from cartel kidnappings, murder and extortion. Among these groups, one man in Michoacan has risen to become a popular leader. He had immigrated to California but recently returned to his hometown. He found it had been overtaken by criminals and drug traffickers.
NPR's Carrie Kahn reports.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: Dr. Jose Manuel Mireles spent 10 years in the California farming town of Modesto. He couldn't practice medicine with his Mexican license, so took odd jobs in the town's agricultural industry. He decided to come back to Mexico more than six years ago and resume his medical practice and says he would have quietly done just that but the hometown he returned to was nothing like the one he left a decade earlier.
DR. JOSE MANUEL MIRELES: (Foreign language spoken)
KAHN: In this YouTube video posted last summer, Dr. Mireles, with his thick gray hair and bushy mustache, says everyone has been a victim here. Everyone has a brother, a son, or parent that has been killed, kidnapped, or extorted by organized crime. And local, state, even the federal police didn't stop the violence.
So early last year, he and hundreds of residents formed a self-defense group and took the law into their own hands, running out the cartel and organized criminals. Since then, his self-defense movement has spread. Dr. Mireles' rag-tag band of armed men now control more than a dozen towns in Michoacan. And just this weekend, hundreds took over another. The doctor, however, wasn't there to see it. He was recuperating from a plane crash earlier this month at a private hospital in Mexico City.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken)
KAHN: The entrance to the hospital was guarded by two dozen armed federal officers. One, who declined to give his name, says the police have been stationed here for more than a week. Authorities say they are protecting him from the cartels. Dr. Mireles has not given any interviews. And today, news reports say he was flown out of the hospital by helicopter. Stanislao Beltran Torres, a member of the Michoacan self-defense group, says Dr. Mireles' whereabouts are not going to be made public for his security.
STANISLAO BELTRAN TORRES: (Foreign language spoken)
KAHN: Beltran says the doctor is a hardworking person who is dedicated to making life better for those in Michoacan and will return to the self-defense group as soon as possible. The rise of armed civilian groups in Michoacan and neighboring Guerrero is complicated. Many, including Dr. Mireles, have been accused of being fronts for rival drug traffickers and, at times, it's not so clear-cut who is fighting whom. The self-defense groups have also been an embarrassment for Enrique Pena Nieto. The Mexican president has spent much of his first year in office downplaying the drug war.
ALEJANDRO HOPE: This is more than embarrassment.
KAHN: Alejandro Hope is a security analyst at IMCO, a Mexico City think tank. He says despite Pena Nieto's reassurances, his strategy in Michoacan is insufficient and an armed protracted conflict looks likely.
HOPE: Everything is pointing that this will get worse before it gets better.
KAHN: Yesterday, a local congressman in Michoacan warned of a civil war breaking out if the government doesn't step in soon. For his part, Dr. Mireles and his supporters are not backing down.
MIRELES: (Foreign language spoken)
KAHN: In his YouTube video, Dr. Mireles says if the situation gets worse and police cannot protect the citizens that depend on them, then the citizens will continue to protect themselves. Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Mexico City.
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A federal bankruptcy judge in Detroit has mediated a deal that could potentially solve two of the city's biggest problems. The plan would raise money for retirees' pension funds and keep masterpieces from the Detroit Institute of Art from being auctioned off. NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports.
ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: As part of bankruptcy, all assets are on the table. And the Detroit Institute of Art holds what many consider to be the city's most valuable assets, paintings by Rembrandt, Monet, Van Gogh and Matisse, among others. Christie's valued select works in the museum between about 400 and $800 million. City officials suggested those paintings be sold to pay off creditors. That led to an outcry throughout the city and the arts world in general.
Judge Gerald Rosen has been mediating the complicated and sometimes tense bankruptcy proceedings. He came up with a plan that he presented to a number of private donors and foundations, including the Knight Foundation, where Alberto Ibarguen is president.
ALBERTO IBARGUEN: The suggestion was, well, what if we had an additional pool of money that could buy the art, put it in trust, so that it stays as a cultural asset of Detroit and the state of Michigan?
BLAIR: And money from that trust would also be used for retirees' underfunded pensions. How? There are still a lot of details to work out but today, nine local and national foundations agreed to the concept and pledged more than $330 million. They include Ford, Kresge and Knight. Foundations don't usually come together like this to help solve municipal problems, not to mention buy art for a museum. John Gallagher, a business reporter for the Detroit Free Press, says today's announcement is good news for the city but it doesn't settle the bankruptcy case.
JOHN GALLAGHER: The bankruptcy case is still alive. Creditors are still trying to get every penny they can. It helps. I mean, suddenly we have an extra $330 million in the pot that wasn't there yesterday.
BLAIR: The Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan set up a fund to support these twin goals. It's called the Fund to Support Detroit's Retirees, Cultural Heritage, and Revitalization. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.
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When the Olympic Games open in Sochi next month, a rising number of U.S. athletes will come from a collection of tiny towns in New York's Adirondack Mountains. The rural region hosted the Winter Olympics in 1932 and again in 1980. And it's long been an unofficial national incubator for top winter sport athletes.
North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann has our story.
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: OK, first a confession. When I moved to the Adirondacks 15 years ago, the Lake Placid Olympics already seemed like ancient history. Remember the Miracle On Ice in 1980, that huge hockey match?
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Five seconds left. Do you believe in miracles? Yes.
MANN: An amazing moment in sports history, no question. But that was all about the Cold War, the U.S. battling the Soviet Union, which itself is now ancient history. But in the blue-collar towns and resort villages around Lake Placid, I kept meeting locals like Annelies Cook, who will ski and shoot in the biathlon competition in Sochi next month.
ANNELIES COOK: There's such an Olympic spirit here. There's people in front of you that are making the Olympic team, you know, all sorts of role models. So it seems really feasible.
MANN: To athletes here, the Olympics don't seem like a pipe dream and they don't seem like ancient history. The Olympics is just sort of what people do. Cook points out that at the Sochi games, two of her teammates on the U.S. biathlon squad will be neighbors - guys she grew up with.
COOK: I've known them my whole life, you know. They knew me when I had buckteeth and braces.
(LAUGHTER)
MANN: It turns out that a bunch of American Olympic athletes, including Cook, got their start skiing at Dewey Mountain, a little cross-country ski center in Saranac Lake just down the road from Lake Placid. A few weeks ago, Dewey Mountain renamed one of its trails after Cook as young skiers gathered around.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)
MANN: Jason Smith, who runs Dewey Mountain, says these kids get used to the idea of Olympians just dropping by and hanging out. After the Vancouver games, Smith says, local Nordic combined racer Bill Demong let the young skiers check out his gold medal.
JASON SMITH: Kids were handing it from kid to kid to kid. And you can see that it gets them pumped up and makes these kids think that, yeah, this is attainable at this little tiny ski mountain in the middle of Saranac Lake.
MANN: Maintaining this level of Olympic ambition isn't easy, especially for working class families whose kids will eventually have to compete head-to-head with European athletes who live on government stipends and big endorsement deals.
PETER FRENETTE: I've had a lot of help from my community with, you know, local people coming to my fundraisers and, you know, donating, giving money - you know, anything really.
MANN: Twenty-one-year-old Peter Frenette from Saranac Lake is a long-distance ski jumper who competed in Vancouver and is vying again for a spot on the Sochi team. His mom Jennie, a teacher in the middle school here, says winter sports are part of the family tradition, but supporting Peter has meant real sacrifice.
JENNIE FRENETTE: Work extra jobs. You know, I wait tables on the side and you just do what you need to do.
MANN: Sustaining this level of winter sports culture isn't all mom and pop stuff. There's still an official Olympic training center here run by the U.S. Olympic Committee. Ted Blazer heads the Olympic Regional Development Authority, a state agency that maintains Lake Placid's bobsled track and pro-caliber cross-country ski area - venues that still fight to attract world cup races and national championships.
TED BLAZER: It would be easy, I think, for some communities maybe to fall off that map. But what we try to do is create the culture where it's always top-of-mind awareness.
MANN: The pay-off is pretty amazing. In Vancouver, four years ago, athletes who grew up in the Adirondack Mountains accounted for about 1 in 10 medals garnered by the entire U.S. Not bad for one rural area decades after the last local Olympics.
With final team trials and competitions still underway, it's not clear yet exactly how many athletes from here will compete in Sochi. What's certain though is that local athletes will anchor the American luge team and the biathlon team, while also giving the U.S. another real shot at gold in the Nordic combined.
For NPR News, I'm Brian Mann in Lake Placid.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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And finally this hour, Texas football. The Texas Longhorns are trying to regroup after several disappointing seasons under veteran coach Mack Brown. After 16 seasons with Brown, the University of Texas hired Charlie Strong last week to usher in a new era in Austin. Strong will be the first black head coach of any men's sport at the university. But he hasn't been a popular hire with some of Texas' billionaire boosters. NPR's Wade Goodwyn has this profile of the new coach.
WADE GOODWYN, BYLINE: Almost from the moment he first stepped on a football field as a coach in 1986, Charlie Strong impressed those around him.
LOU HOLTZ: Well, I hired him initially at the University of Notre Dame as a defensive line coach.
GOODWYN: Lou Holtz coached at Arkansas, Notre Dame and the University of South Carolina, among other places.
HOLTZ: He came to South Carolina and did a tremendous job for us. He's a great football coach, has unbelievable rapport with his players. He's no nonsense, yet at the same time, he never criticizes the performer but he will criticize the performance.
GOODWYN: Strong was a rising star mentored by a hall of fame coach. But he got not a single head coaching offer. So in 2002, he went to the University of Florida as defensive coordinator.
REID FLEMING: He really was the type of coach that he led by example.
GOODWYN: Reid Fleming played middle linebacker at Florida for Coach Strong. Fleming says Strong changed the defensive team's culture.
FLEMING: Coach Strong would know which buttons to push with each one of those guys, whether it was a guy that you needed to jump down his throat and slap him upside the head and get him going and get him motivated or for the guy that you needed to pull aside and not try to embarrass him in front of his teammates.
GOODWYN: He helped Florida win two national championships. But as younger white coaches with nothing approaching Strong's resume got head coaching jobs, Strong was becoming the poster child for the ugly little secret in college football's premier division. In 2009 and pushing 50, he went public. Mike Bianchi wrote the story for the Orlando Sentinel.
MIKE BIANCHI: His name was always mentioned for jobs. He interviewed for jobs. And he could never get a job. And there was one particular school that he wouldn't name - it was an SEC school - and he said, you know, after he interviewed for the job, he was told that he didn't get the job because he was a black man who had a white wife, and they didn't think that would go over well in the South.
GOODWYN: Snubbed by the Southeastern Conference, Strong was finally hired by a basketball school, the University of Louisville. He became the sixth black head coach in the 120-school Football Bowl Subdivision. And in four short years, he turned the Cardinals into a powerhouse, the last two seasons going a combined 23 and 3. In 2013, after whipping the University of Florida in the Sugar Bowl, Florida's head coach Will Muschamp said his more talented team had lost because he'd been outcoached by Charlie Strong.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GOODWYN: And so the University of Texas came calling. But as soon as UT announced Strong was hired came the blowback and it wasn't pretty.
(SOUNDBITE OF ESPN RADIO BROADCAST)
GOODWYN: Billionaire Texas alumnus and former Minnesota Vikings owner Red McCombs went on ESPN Radio.
(SOUNDBITE OF ESPN RADIO BROADCAST)
GOODWYN: Red McCombs wanted Texas to hire former NFL coach Jon Gruden, a Super Bowl winner. Other Texas big money donors wanted Nick Saban, Alabama's coach. But UT president Bill Powers and his new athletic director, Steve Patterson, hired Strong. It was a message that at Texas, the focus is still on research and academics, that the university is still running the football program and not vice versa. Steve Patterson.
STEVE PATTERSON: You know, we are a top-tier AAU University. We're an international brand. We have a great student body, rigorous academics. And so the expectation is that all the athletic teams and the student athletes that come to the University of Texas understand that. And that's who we are. And so the hiring of Charlie Strong as our head football coach reflects those values.
GOODWYN: When asked at his first press conference if he minded the speculation that he was not UT's first choice, Strong was anything but defensive.
CHARLIE STRONG: I could have been the 15th choice and I'm so happy to be the head football coach.
(LAUGHTER)
STRONG: So 20, 15, it doesn't matter. Whatever choice I was, I'm the head football coach.
GOODWYN: If Charlie Strong turns Texas back into the powerhouse it once was and wins a national championship, black assistant coaches everywhere could begin seeing those head coaching doors open more than just a crack. Wade Goodwyn, NPR News, Dallas.
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(SOUNDBITE OF BEETHOVEN'S "NINTH SYMPHONY")
BLOCK: Kerry Candaele remembers exactly where he was when he first heard Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony." He was 20-something at the time, in the 1970s, driving up the California coast. He'd borrowed a friend's car and popped in a cassette he found. What he heard both shocked him and transported him.
KERRY CANDALE: I think it was the third movement, the slow movement, the adagio of the "Ninth Symphony" that really appealed to me. And, as the 20s was a bad decade for me, so I was probably in some kind of angst-ridden melancholia at the time, so it appealed to me very deeply and touched me in a way that no other music had, just that third movement.
(SOUNDBITE OF BEETHOVEN'S "NINTH SYMPHONY")
BLOCK: Now, Kerry Candaele has turned his obsession with Beethoven's "Ninth" into a documentary film, titled "Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony." He follows the "Ninth" around the world to Chile and China, where it became an empowering anthem of solidarity. And he goes to Japan, where performances of Daiku - the Great Nine - are a cherished annual tradition.
CANDALE: The Japanese identified with Beethoven, for one thing. You know, the quintessential romantic figure of Beethoven as this man who's tortured and struggles and overcomes, and finally reaches this pinnacle of artistic creation with the "Ninth Symphony," his final symphony, three years before he dies. So that appeals to the Japanese.
But then it became this yearly event where sometimes 5,000 people, sometimes 10,000 people, who have practiced singing in German for six months, stand together in December and sing the "Ode to Joy."
CHORUS: (Singing in Foreign language)
BLOCK: It's an amazing thing to see. We see one of these gigantic performances, 5,000 singers in what looks like a stadium or arena gathered around the orchestra, singing the final movement of Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony." And you talk to one of those singers, Iwanaga Yuji. And he describes the actual physical effect that having this group experience brings. Let's take a listen.
CHORUS: (Singing in Foreign Language)
IWANAGA YUJI: You need to sing Daiku, in order to understand how the singers feel after the concert. I don't know. Even after we finished, we still we have Daiku song in our body, in our mind, in our soul.
CHORUS: (Singing in foreign language)
BLOCK: And someone describes it to you as sort of a way to sort of bring good things into the New Year. It's a healing kind of thing.
CANDALE: Yes, that's true. Some people carry notes to themselves when they step onto the platforms to sing. Sort of dedications - dedications to what they want to achieve, what they value, what they want to accomplish the next 12 months.
BLOCK: Kerry, your movie also goes to Chile where the same piece of music, the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's "Ninth," was used in a very different way during the protests in the 1970s against the Chilean military dictatorship. And we actually hear crowds of women, protesters, singing the "Ode to Joy," the "Himno a la Alegria."
CHORUS: (Singing in foreign language)
CANDALE: That was the most touching story for me in the film, these women who, at the risk of their lives, essentially, came out to places where they knew people were being tortured. And of all the songs that would choose, the "Ninth Symphony" was the song that they ended up singing in front of these torture prisons to men inside. And I was so lucky to have found both women who had sung the song but also a man who was inside who heard it.
And it was such a moving thing for me because if you can imagine having been tortured and sitting in a prison, and over the wall you hear people out there singing on your behalf, waiting for you to be released, if you are, being ready to welcome you back into the world, back into their open arms and back into a musical community.
BLOCK: And there's remarkable tape from a man who was a political prisoner. He was tortured under Pinochet. This is Renato Alvarado, who describes being in detention, having been tortured and hearing this music sung by the women outside.
CHORUS: (Singing in foreign language)
RENATO ALVARADO: And one day, I heard the music. It was as having the colorful butterfly in our hearts. It was fantastic. It was hope.
CHORUS: (Singing in foreign language)
BLOCK: That's such an image of this music being a colorful butterfly, able to get in behind those walls.
CANDALE: Yes, he's such an interesting man. He knew about the symphony and about how it was translated in the version that was sung in Chile, because it was part of - came out of the church, then it was translated into more political movements. So he knew that song very well. And he knew that it connected to people that he would be welcomed by when he was released, if he was released.
BLOCK: So that former prisoner, talking about hearing the song and hearing hope, that same idea comes through in a conversation that you have in your movie with a former student leader from the Tiananmen uprising in China, back in 1989. This is Feng Congde. And he tells you this amazing story about rigging makeshift loudspeaker system, a broadcast system around Tiananmen Square, and playing Beethoven's "Ninth" to drown out the government messages that were being broadcast at the same time. He calls it this battle of voices.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FEN CONGDE: And that was why used Beethoven's "Ninth." It gave us a sense of solidarity. All people become brothers and a new, better future.
(APPLAUSE)
CONGDE: It transformed us over one night.
BLOCK: Was this piece of music a really deliberate choice on his part? I mean, was he sending a specific message?
CANDALE: Well, of course, the key line in the "Ninth Symphony" choral part is - (speaking foreign langauge): All men will become brothers. Or translated into contemporary language, all people will be connected. It resonated on that square with all those people who came there, not expecting to risk their lives but essentially did as the movement went forward.
BLOCK: How do you come to terms with the other ways that Beethoven's "Ninth" has been used? I mean, it was famously appropriated by the Third Reich. Hitler had it played on his birthday.
CANDALE: Sure.
BLOCK: It became a triumphalist German anthem.
CANDALE: Part of making this film was trying to reclaim what I think was Beethoven's intentions; a revisiting of his idealism of his youth, when the French Revolution broke out and there was that incredible enthusiasm and hope for a new transformed world. And I think Beethoven is revisiting that in the "Ninth Symphony" at a time when he's very sick and understands and confronts his own mortality and comes back to that place where, yes, this is a symphony of hope.
It is a symphony of connection. It is a symphony of brotherhood and sisterhood. And it is a kiss for all the world. He doesn't say just Germans. He doesn't say Aryans. He says, all the world. And I think he meant it.
BLOCK: That's Kerry Candale. His documentary is "Following The Ninth: In The Footsteps Of Beethoven's Final Symphony." Kerry, thanks so much.
CANDALE: Thank you very much.
CHORUS: (Singing in foreign language)
BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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Hundreds of thousands of residents of West Virginia are enduring day six without tap water and schools in four counties of the state remain closed. That's after a leak in a chemical storage tank fouled the Elk River right above a drinking water plant. Some 39,000 residents have now been given the all clear and told to flush their taps before using their water.
BLOCK: Bars and restaurants in downtown Charleston are hoping to return to normal operation following approval from the Health Department, but the economic effects of the contamination could be profound. Joining me now is the mayor of Charleston, Danny Jones. Mayor Jones, welcome to the program.
MAYOR DANNY JONES: Good afternoon.
BLOCK: And how does this spill affect your city's economy? What does the prognosis look like?
JONES: Oh, you can't imagine. It's literally locked out city up. It's starting to unhinge now, but it was really bad. As you said, every restaurant, every bar, anything that had to do with running water closed. The schools closed. The Marriott Hotel closed. It was just paralyzing emotionally and economically and everything else. And this morning was the first morning that things looked like they might be showing a return to normalcy.
BLOCK: Well, there are a number of lawsuits that have been filed already against the company that owns the chemical tank, Freedom Industries. Is the city of Charleston going to sue for lost revenue here?
JONES: You're the first person that's asked me that question and that's an option. It's not the first option I'm thinking about, but I've already talked to my city manager about it. One problem we would have here is to calculate the damage because I believe the damage is incalculable and it's going to ripple into the future, because it will cost us convention business and people will be a little gun shy about coming back in here if they think this could happen again. And, of course, my message is it couldn't happen again.
BLOCK: But how do you convince people that the water supply is, in fact, safe?
JONES: People want to drink water and people want to bathe in it. People want to use it to cook with and they're looking to take the word. And there have been a lot of precautions. We have a very capable health director here in the county. He's watching this very closely. This water is being tested by the hour, by the day. And I believe if they say to go ahead, I would take their word for it and I think the public, at large, will, too.
BLOCK: I want to ask you, Mayor Jones, about regulation and, in particular, about this company. There are reports that this tank hadn't been inspected since 1991. Three years ago, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board recommended that West Virginia start programs to work on preventing accidents just like this one. No program like that was ever started. Has West Virginia become too friendly with industry at the expense of public safety?
JONES: No, I don't think so. If there was laxity in what you're talking about, we'll find it out. What puzzled me about this was that the three tanks were right along the river and there was a wall around them. And that there were holes in the wall, the wall had been breached and the company was just sold.
And as a condition of the company being sold, there was a million dollars put away to repair the wall. And if that's true, and I believe it to be, then they knew. I believe what we had here was a small group of renegades that were operating and I'm not even sure they cared what happened to the public.
BLOCK: When you say a small group of renegades, are you talking about the company, Freedom Industries?
JONES: I am.
BLOCK: And when you call them renegades, what do you mean by that?
JONES: I happen to know a few of them. I happen to know who they are and their backgrounds and I've talked to Gary Southern...
BLOCK: This is the president of the company, I believe.
JONES: Right. And I asked him about the wall. I asked him, I said, well, how did the chemical get in the river? And he said he didn't know. And then, I said, were aware this gentleman has a picture of the wall and it's deficient? And he said, well, yes, I am. And so I caught him in a white one right there.
And then, there are some other folks that have been involved in this and I consider them to be a little edgy. And all this will come out. We have a very capable United States attorney. I'm sure that if there were any environmental regulations breached from a criminal perspective, I can promise you, Booth Goodwin will do his job.
BLOCK: That's the U.S. Attorney for West Virginia.
JONES: Yes.
BLOCK: Well, given what you're saying about this company and their concern or lack of concern about public safety, what's your message to the people of Charleston?
JONES: This has been a very trying time for us and these folks have been brave and patient. I hope that this was something that won't be repeated. I think that may be what is good that comes out of this, that we will be on guard, that the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection will be on guard and we need to find out if this was just an aberration.
BLOCK: Mayor Jones, thanks for your time.
JONES: All right. It's good to talk to you.
BLOCK: That's Mayor Danny Jones, the mayor of Charleston, West Virginia.
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Now, the contaminant that leaked into the Elk River was a chemical called MCHM, and officials in West Virginia have promised to investigate how it might affect the public and the environment. That prompted NPR's Daniel Zwerdling to ask why didn't they know that before?
DANIEL ZWERDLING, BYLINE: Scientists do know a few things about MCHM. I went online and got a copy of a manufacturer's safety data sheet. It's says, warning, exclamation mark, harmful if swallowed, causes skin and eye irritation. OK, but now people want to know could there be any long-term effects from the huge spill and here's what the company's safety data sheet says about that.
Mutagenicity. In other words, does the chemical cause mutations? No data available. Carcinogenicity, no data available. Reproductive toxicity, no data available. If we could look at most chemicals and industry storage tanks around the country, have scientists studied most of them to know if they're safe or not?
RICHARD DENISON: The unfortunate answer is no.
ZWERDLING: Richard Denison is a biochemist with the Environmental Defense Fund. He's served on government and industry advisory boards.
DENISON: The vast majority of industrial chemicals have never been required to be tested for safety.
ZWERDLING: And to understand why, you have to look back to the 1970s. Congress passed the first major laws, saying we should crack down on water pollution and protect workers from dangerous chemicals. And then public health specialists said, wait a minute, how can we protect workers and the environment when we hardly know anything about most chemicals used in the industry?
So Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act. It's nicknamed TSCA. Nicholas Ashford(ph) says, this was historic.
NICHOLAS ASHFORD: This would be the first time that industrial chemicals across the board could be subjected to testing rules and placing the burden on industry to undergo the testing for safety.
ZWERDLING: Ashford was chairman back then of federal taskforce that advised the government on toxic chemicals. TSCA basically said, look, industry has already been using more than 60,000 chemicals. Let's let industry keep using them unless the Environmental Protection Agency finds evidence they could be harmful. Richard Denison says, there's a problem.
DENISON: And that sets up a catch-22.
ZWERDLING: The way Congress wrote the law, EPA can order companies to study old chemicals only if EPA has evidence that the chemicals might be dangerous. But it's hard for EPA to get that evidence unless the industry does the studies in the first place.
DENISON: It's kind of like looking for your keys at night in a parking lot and you look only under the lamps because that's where the light is better. But in fact, the vast majority of chemicals are out there in the darkness.
ZWERDLING: Still, some scientists have managed to take a closer look at some old chemicals in the darkness and they found big problems. For instance, practically every sofa in America used to contain a flame retardant called PBDEs. Then, in the 1990s, researchers started finding them in practically every person they tested, in their blood, in their fat, and in breast milk.
And studies show they have powerful impact on hormones. Industry voluntarily phased out the chemicals. Some members of Congress, Republican and Democrats, say it's time to overhaul the TSCA law. And the spokesperson for the chemicals industry agrees.
Anne Womack Kolton is vice president of the American Chemistry Council. She says many chemicals are well-known and safe. But she says it's also true that scientists keep being able to measure chemicals in the environment at lower levels, and finding they can have effects. So she wants Congress to pass a better law.
ANNE WOMACK KOLTON: We can increase transparency. We can give EPA the authority it needs. And we can give all consumers greater confidence that the chemicals in the products they rely on every day are safe for that use.
ZWERDLING: The head of EPA said recently that she hopes Congress will overhaul the TSCA law. Gina McCarthy said the way the law works now, it's broken and ineffective.
Daniel Zwerdling, NPR News.
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The House of Representatives bought a little time today. It approved three additional days of funding for the federal government, which would otherwise run out of money tomorrow. It's just the latest sign that, unlike last fall, most lawmakers seem genuinely eager to avoid a government shutdown. House and Senate negotiators have agreed on a huge catchall spending bill, known as the omnibus.
While that's expected to pass both chambers and keep the government operating through September, NPR's David Welna caught up with a few lawmakers who still aren't happy about it.
DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: All 12 annual spending bills are wrapped into one in the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill. That's more than last year's budget but its $50 billion less than what President Obama sought, and $42 billion more than what House Republicans wanted to spend.
Nita Lowey is the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.
REPRESENTATIVE NITA LOWEY: Reaching agreement on all 12 bills was not easy, required a tremendous level of operation and compromise. Nobody got everything they wanted.
WELNA: Still, Hal Rogers - who's the Republican chairman of the House spending panel - said his party from a hard bargain with the omnibus.
REPRESENTATIVE HAL ROGERS: We held the line on Obamacare. In fact, it's been reduced by removing a billion dollar slush fund that the secretary had access to for Obamacare. We took that away.
WELNA: That money, in fact, was not taken away. It was just barred from being used to promote the Affordable Care Act.
Georgia House Republican Phil Gingrey says he won't vote for the omnibus.
REPRESENTATIVE PHIL GINGREY: I don't want to continue to fund Obamacare. And there is definitely Obamacare funding in that bill.
WELNA: Western state Republicans are also unhappy with the package. Utah's Jason Chaffetz says, unlike past years, it has no money in it to compensate counties that have a lot of federal lands that cannot be taxed.
REPRESENTATIVE JASON CHAFFETZ: They need to have a payment in lieu of taxes. That's just the way it's worked for decades. To have that account be zero is painful.
WELNA: And for Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, the omnibus relies on uncertain promises.
REPRESENTATIVE JIM JORDAN: Yeah, it's the old spend $63 billion more today and we promise we'll save 85 billion in years nine and 10. Congress hasn't been - the track record for Congress hasn't been too good at keeping their word. So I'm voting no.
WELNA: It's not just Republicans who oppose this catchall spending bill. Raul Grijalva is a House Democrat from Arizona. For him, the bill does not do enough to undo automatic spending cuts.
REPRESENTATIVE RAUL GRIJALVA: I'm going to vote no because I feel very strongly that we need relief from the Budget Control Act. This is not relief. This is a two-year window. And like I said, you're attempting to fill an empty nest.
WELNA: Still, Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole says when the House votes tomorrow on the omnibus it should do well.
REPRESENTATIVE TOM COLE: I think it'll get a very substantial majority of the majority. And honestly, I think it'll get a substantial majority of the minority. So I think it's going to move through pretty easily.
WELNA: Swift approval is expected by the Senate, as well. David Welna, NPR News, The Capitol.
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Today in Philadelphia, a federal judge rejected a proposed $765 million settlement between the National Football League and many of its former players. The settlement concerned claims against the league for lingering injuries related to head trauma.
Here to discuss what the ruling means is NPR's Mike Pesca. And, Mike, remind us please where this case stood before the judge rejected it today?
MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: Right. So right before the football season started, the NFL settled with all these players and their families - really close to 5,000 who are suing them - and it was because of all the concussions and all the head trauma; chronic traumatic encephalopathy. And the dollar amount that was affixed to that was somewhere approaching $900 million when you include lawyers' fees and so forth. But there were some details to be ironed out - steps in the process.
Recently, the plaintiffs' lawyers released a calculation of how much everyone would get. And it was based on how long you served, how bad your malady was, how old you are now. So someone with ALS, who played in the league for half a dozen years and is 45, would be getting $5 million and the rewards went down from there. It's all submitted to the judge.
The judge gets to approve this. And it was thought she would approve it because not only had both sides agreed to it, there was a negotiator - a former federal judge - that she appointed who signed off on it. So it was seen as maybe something of more than a formality but less than, you know, less than a big question mark. But she did reject it.
BLOCK: And that's stunning development today. So what did Judge Brody say in her ruling to explain why she rejected the settlement?
PESCA: It was very narrow and very specific. First of all, she noted over and over that with a class-action lawsuit, not only do you have to deal with people who are actually signed on to the lawsuit, you have to deal with everyone in the class. One of the reasons the NFL agreed to this was all the retired players would we be swept up into this, even people who weren't applying for the award.
And she did the math. And she said even though they're about 5,000 players right now who may be eligible for this, there are potentially 20,000 players. And when she did the math about how much money was in the suit, you know, she comes out to maybe at something in like $34,000 per player. She said, I'm not satisfied that that's going to be enough, given how much you say you're going to pay everyone.
She didn't say you're lying, she said you failed to include the documentation. You've indicated that there are experts who say it will be enough, but I don't see those calculations. So if I don't see those calculations, I'm looking out for the people who haven't signed off on this suit - the other players who potentially could be awarded the money. And she said I will not allow this to go forward. You have to go back to the drawing board or at least give me good documentation.
BLOCK: OK. So if they do that what happens then?
PESCA: Right, so that's the question. Perhaps they could just resubmit the studies showing that it will be enough money. Perhaps they can come back with a higher dollar amount. Or maybe both sides will just rip it up and start all over again. You would think that the NFL would not want to do this, right? There's a reason they settled. And one of the reasons is they don't want to have to open their books. Maybe a few million more would make them happy. But right now, we don't know.
BLOCK: OK, NPR's Mike Pesca on the news today that a federal judge has rejected settlement between the NFL and retired players. Mike, thanks.
PESCA: You're welcome.
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Listen to how Iran's president today characterized the nuclear deal that's been reached between his country and Western powers. Hassan Rouhani told a crowd: It means the surrender of big powers before the great nation of Iran. Under the landmark deal, Tehran agreed to limits on its nuclear program in exchange for relief from some Western sanctions. The six-month deal goes into effect next Monday, and it's meant to buy time for a longer-term agreement.
For more on what's to come, I'm joined by Robin Wright who has covered Iran for decades. She's a joint fellow at the Wilson Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace, and she recently returned from a reporting trip to Iran. Robin, welcome back to the program.
ROBIN WRIGHT: Thank you.
BLOCK: How do you read the rhetoric today from President Rouhani? I was also looking at his Twitter feed and he tweeted: World powers surrendered to the Iranian nation's will.
WRIGHT: It's called politics. Both President Rouhani in Iran and President Obama in Washington are struggling right now to make sure that their parliaments, or Congress, go along with this very important nuclear deal. President Obama faces opposition with the new move on sanctions by the Senate. And President Rouhani in Iran faces a parliament that is dominated by hard-liners. So this is only the beginning of what's a long negotiating process, but a long political process as well.
BLOCK: Language like that of President Rouhani - the provocative language like that could really backfire here in Congress. I mean, there's a strong faction in the U.S. Congress that's prepared to vote to impose new sanctions on Iran. And wouldn't language like we're hearing from President Rouhani add credence to their argument, that this deal benefits Tehran more than the West?
WRIGHT: Well, the new sanctions bill actually already has 59 co-sponsors, both Republicans and Democrats. So I suspect it doesn't need a whole lot of new momentum. It's getting to the point that even if President Obama vetoes it, it could be veto-proof.
BLOCK: You interviewed Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif when you were there. And you asked him what would happen if the U.S. imposed new sanctions during this time. What did he tell you?
WRIGHT: He said diplomacy would die. That this is a good faith effort by the Iranians, and that both governments have to speak with one voice. The reality is, as we all know, is that Iran has multiple voices, multiple factions that are often debating among themselves. And it's no easier for President Rouhani to bring his own parliament along, than it will be for President Obama to bring Congress along.
BLOCK: So the deal is hanging in the balance, you're saying.
WRIGHT: The real tragedy is that Congress could actually undermine the very thing that the United States wants to prevent a war; and a new sanctions bill would amount to a war resolution. Because without disarmament talks, without a strong diplomatic effort that is now backed by the entire international community, there aren't many options. And that means the military option then reemerges as the way to ensure that Iran doesn't get a weapon.
BLOCK: That argument, that march to war argument, is also being offered up by the Obama administration. But supporters of the sections say: Look, this is what worked. Sanctions are what brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place. Impose more sanctions, you'll get more results.
WRIGHT: Sanctions were clearly a part of the reason that Iran ended up at the negotiating table. But having just been there, I think there are a lot of other reasons. The deal says, in Geneva, there will be no new sanctions. And so, part of this diplomacy is really about confidence-building and a sense of trust, and can we get beyond the hostilities that have characterized 35 years of relations between particularly the United States and Iran.
BLOCK: Let's talk about the timeline here. The deal goes into effect next Monday, more negotiations are to follow. Is it clear to you, that in the six-month timeframe that they've laid out, that these parties could come to a binding long-term agreement on all of these issues?
WRIGHT: The talks in Geneva were tough. The next six months are going to be far tougher. There are some very basic questions, including will Iran be allowed to enrich uranium, the fuel cycle used for both peaceful nuclear energy and to build the world's deadliest bomb.
BLOCK: Which Iran has said is fundamental.
WRIGHT: And Iran claims that it needs it to build whether it's great medical isotopes for cancer research. But it's clear that it will have to back down on a lot of its capabilities. Iran knows that.
I think for the first time, Iran and the international community are on the same page. Whether they can turn that page to do a deal is still an open question.
BLOCK: Robin Wright, joint fellow at the Wilson Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace. Robin, thanks for coming in.
WRIGHT: Thank you.
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The U.S. and Afghanistan are locked in a standoff over a security agreement that would allow U.S. troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014. That's when the NATO mission there ends. Analysts say part of the reason the two countries can't close the deal is because they just don't understand each other.
NPR's Sean Carberry reports from Kabul.
SEAN CARBERRY, BYLINE: The debate over the draft security agreement continues to dominate the Afghan media. Afghan officials keep repeating in the press that the U.S. must meet Karzai's preconditions before he will sign the accord. He wants American forces to stop all raids on Afghan homes and for the U.S. to jumpstart peace talks with the Taliban.
U.S. officials have said they are done negotiating. And if Karzai doesn't sign the agreement within weeks, then the U.S. will have to resort to the zero option, which means withdrawing all troops by the end of this year and possibly cutting off future military support.
WALIULLAH RAHMANI: Now it is more of public diplomacy through which they are trying to reach out to President Karzai, and trying to put an understanding that, really, the U.S. could consider one of these options.
CARBERRY: As political analyst Waliullah Rahmani sees it, the U.S. is using a variety of tactics to pressure Karzai.
RAHMANI: None of our senior leadership takes those pressure tactics serious.
CARBERRY: Rahmani says that Karzai's inner circle simply doesn't believe that the U.S. will leave Afghanistan, and therefore they're ignoring all the public threats over the zero option. Rahmani says that's a mistake. He and other analysts say the two governments still don't understand each other's politics or how to talk to each other.
CANDACE RONDEAUX: Most counselors would probably say the first step to recovery is to acknowledge that there's a problem.
CARBERRY: Candace Rondeaux is a political analyst based at Princeton. She spent five years in Afghanistan with the International Crisis Group. She says that communications have broken down to the point neither government is really sure what the other one wants anymore. Part of the problem, Rondeaux says, is that Washington conducts too much diplomacy through the media. And she says Karzai gets bad advice from his inner circle.
RONDEAUX: They've always had, I think, difficulty within the Karzai administration comprehending the complexities of issues like the NATO alliance system. They haven't really fully understood congressional processes.
CARBERRY: As a result, she says, Karzai is gambling Afghanistan's future without understanding what cards Washington is holding.
Afghan National Security adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta has been holding talks with U.S. officials in hopes of finding a way through the stalemate. But he says the atmosphere in recent weeks has worsened with things like the assertion in former Defense Secretary Robert Gates' book that the U.S. tried to engineer the defeat of Karzai in the 2009 election. Spanta says Afghans like him have long known this. But the Gates book is reopening an old wound.
RANGIN DADFAR SPANTA: This is impacting, this still, the suspicion that Afghan leadership has towards the U.S. politic in Afghanistan.
CARBERRY: The trust deficit grew in recent weeks when the Afghan government announced it was going to release 72 detainees the U.S. contends are dangerous criminals. Spanta says that even though it looks like it, the detainee controversy is not a tactic by Kabul to pressure the U.S. over the security pact.
SPANTA: The timing, from my point of view, was not helpful for our bilateral relation.
CARBERRY: Still, Spanta expresses optimism that back-channel diplomacy outside the media spotlight will break the impasse. And he made a point to mention that the next visitor to his office would be the U.S. ambassador.
Sean Carberry, NPR News, Kabul.
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After a slow start, the Affordable Care Act is now attracting customers at a healthier pace. The government said yesterday that 2.2 million people have signed up for health insurance under the state and federal exchanges. But there's a serious red flag. A disproportionate number of new enrollees are middle aged or older.
Here's NPR's Jim Zarroli on what that means for the program and for insurers.
JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: About 40 percent of the people who lack health insurance in the United States are between 18 and 35. But the Obama administration says only 24 percent of the people who've signed up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act, so far, fall into that age range. Yevgeniy Feyman, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, says that's a potential problem.
YEVGENIY FEYMAN: What that's telling us is that young people are not going to the exchanges. They're probably not getting subsidies and the people who are enrolling are disproportionately older.
ZARROLI: It's a problem because older people have more health issues and an insurance pool that skews older will be more costly. Robert Zirkelbach is a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans.
ROBERT ZIRKELBACH: There's pretty broad agreement that for these reforms to work, there needs to be broad participation among the young and healthy to help balance out the cost of those who were older and have high health care costs.
ZARROLI: And with high health care costs, premiums will have to be higher says Yevgeniy Feyman.
FEYMAN: Even if it's a small difference, let's say it's 2, 3 percent. Two, 3 percent one year; 2, 3 percent another year; 2, 3 percent after that. And that adds up. That adds up quite a bit, especially if you tack it on to the existing medical cost inflation.
ZARROLI: Feyman acknowledges that it's probably too soon to panic. It's early yet and the enrollment pool is likely to change. Brian Haile, senior vice president for health policy at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service, says a lot of the people who rush to sign up for insurance in the first few months were replacing policies that had been cancelled. They were people already in the individual market.
BRIAN HAILE: When you look at the individual insurance market, it tends to skew a little older. So I'm not at all surprised that the enrollees who made up the 2.2 million that was announced yesterday also skewed older. It just reflects where they came from.
ZARROLI: There are a lot of younger people out there who haven't signed up for health insurance yet and probably haven't given the matter much thought. But if history is any guide, that will change. Robert Zirkelbach points to what happened in the state that pioneered mandatory health insurance.
ZIRKELBACH: The evidence for Massachusetts is that the young people tend to sign up later.
ZARROLI: Over the next few months, a lot of those young people will begin receiving their income tax refunds. And when they do, a lot of them will probably use them to buy health insurance, says Tim Jost, professor at Washington and Lee Law School.
TIM JOST: We still have three months for people to enroll or almost three months, and I think the numbers are going to look quite different by March 31st when open enrollment period ends than they look now.
ZARROLI: People who don't have health insurance will have to pay a fine, but the fine is small during the first year, and so young people may not readily see a reason to get policies. For the insurance industry the challenge over the next few months will be to find ways to persuade them that coverage is in their interest. If it can't do that, the cost of premiums and the cost to the U.S. government could become a lot higher. Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
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This week, there's a swirl of conversation and a hefty dose of outrage across Twitter, Facebook and the Web, all springing from the tweets of a woman named Lisa Bonchek Adams who describes herself on Twitter as: Living with stage 4 breast cancer, writing about it, mom to three, doing as much as I can for as long as I can.
Her open detailed conversation about living with cancer led to a column in The Guardian by Emma Gilbey Keller who mused: Should there be boundaries in this kind of experience? Are her tweets a grim equivalent of deathbed selfies? Then, Emma Keller's husband, Bill Keller, the New York Times former executive editor weighed in. In an op-ed in the Times, he critiqued Lisa Adams for what he called her fierce and very public cage fight with death. A battlefield strategy, he said, that may raise false hopes.
There is something enviable, Keller wrote, about going gently. Well, Meaghan O'Rourke is one of many who are writing about this debate and the larger questions it's raised. Her piece for the New Yorker is titled "Tweeting Cancer." Meaghan, welcome to the program.
MEAGHAN O'ROURKE: Thanks for having me.
BLOCK: You write in that piece for the New Yorker that both Emma and Bill Keller's columns are tone deaf. Those are your words. What do you mean by that?
O'ROURKE: I attempt to give them the benefit of the doubt in that I think that both columns probably, in the minds of the writers, were trying to raise complicated questions and to air them and not to shut conversation down. But, unfortunately, I think that the way each column went about doing that felt insensitive at best. And, you know, while raising explicit questions and comparisons about models of death, you know, Keller compared Lisa Adams' long struggle to his father-in-law's, what he called, calm death from cancer.
You know, in explicitly raising these comparisons, they were implicitly suggesting that the calm death was the superior way to die and it seemed like a rather ad hominem way to have that discussion.
BLOCK: Why do you think this story has touched such a nerve, has triggered so many comments and so much anger?
O'ROURKE: I think that today, and this is something I've written a lot about, we're in a very complicated place with grieving and with death. And, you know, one of the things we saw in the 20th century was a kind of privatization of grief and death. You know, death became something that took place in the hospital. People lived longer, so it was less likely that, you know, you grew up having several siblings that died.
We became a more secular society. All of these things served to make death a much more uncomfortable subject for us. And one of the things that I found sadly lacking in both of the Kellers' pieces despite, you know, what their intentions might have been was some historical context. Because while it may seem very strange and novel to us that a person who is gravely ill might be tweeting about her illness, in fact, in some ways, you know, death has long had a public side. And grief has long had a public side.
You know, for many years, we saw kind of public deathbeds, you know, where the town would kind of come to your bedside to watch you die in the hopes of witnessing this grave change and learning something about their own lives. You know, it's something Emily Dickenson wrote about in the 19th century.
So in a way, I see this as a kind of contemporary version of that and I see some of the incredible debates surrounding this as a kind of yearning for finding a way for death to be more part of our lives. But also, you know, people find it strange that in the kind of - in the midst of banality and superficiality that can be Facebook and Twitter, you know, you suddenly have these very profound intense tweets or Facebook posts.
And a lot of people, and I think the Kellers included, you know, found that kind of jarring. I would argue that that's actually kind of possibly a youthful corrective to what can be the more superficial aspects of those, you know, media.
BLOCK: One of the things Bill Keller wrote in his op-ed was: Social media have become a kind of self-medication for Lisa Adams, which made me wonder, you know, is there anything wrong with that really? What's the problem there?
O'ROURKE: Yeah. I, first of all, think there would be nothing wrong with it and also I think that that's a very narrow view of what Lisa Adams is doing. I mean, I think part of her mission explicitly is also to educate and to bring awareness into what is often a veiled experience. And that's probably something I feel really sympathetic toward, probably because I wrote a book about grief that, in some ways, was trying to do something similar, which is to say, you know, what does grief really look like?
We are very - it's all around us, but we don't understand it well. And, you know, something that also, I felt, was lacking from those pieces was the larger consideration of the fact that more than ever, we die of prolonged terminal illnesses. You know, the New England Journal of Medicine released a study last summer of 2012 that showed that, you know, over the past hundred years, our top 10 causes of death really have gone from being fairly speedy killers to pretty slow killers.
BLOCK: Your memoir which is titled "The Long Goodbye" is about the death of your mother and how we grieve today. I imagine that does shape - your experience with that does shape how you view this discussion and this whole conversation we're having about these columns.
O'ROURKE: You know, I have to say, and I imagine a lot of listeners feel this way, I have really complicated feelings about it. And it, you know, and watching my mother really suffer through some chemotherapy made me think maybe I wouldn't do that myself. But on the other hand, you know, she was somebody who was diagnosed with metastatic cancer that had metastasized to, you know, multiple organs, which is a very grim prognosis.
She was 52 and she elected to have, you know, what her doctor called industrial strength chemo. And it was impossibly hard to watch her go through it, but she went into total remission for a little more than a year. And that was a year that, I think, we three children of hers and her husband counted as a really important year. So, you know, part of the difficulty, and this is a profound difficulty that we all have in sort of thinking about these questions, is we never know if that gamble to pursue treatment is going to pay off.
And I would've loved to see more nuance in the raising of this discussion because it's not like it's either a calm death or this, like, burn the barns to the ground, you know, horrible battle. I mean, there's a lot of middle ground in there. And, in fact, I think Adams herself was in remission for many years and her kids were only metastasized a little more than a year ago.
BLOCK: Lisa Adams has also responded to this by saying: Tweeting suffering is not what I do. She says, she's as much about talking about persevering and finding beauty in the world around you.
O'ROURKE: It's kind of a full-time job to be a patient and to be the family of a patient member. And a lot of what she writes about is, like, what is it like to have to incorporate this into your life, like what is it like to wait for tests? What is it like to, you know, deal with visitors in your hospital room? These are kind of pragmatic questions, too. It's not just like, oh, I suffer, you know, or I fall upon the thorns of life.
Or, you know, and she does write a lot about beauty and there's a lot about kind of the every day. But there's also just a lot of really pragmatic, helpful information for cancer patients and their families.
BLOCK: Meaghan O'Rourke, her piece for the New Yorker is titled "Tweeting Cancer." Her memoir is "The Long Goodbye." Meaghan O'Rourke, thanks so much.
O'ROURKE: Thanks so much for having me.
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The debate about whether to rein in U.S. surveillance practices played out on Capitol Hill today, as five members of a presidential review panel testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Here's Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.
SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY: When you think about it, we're really having a debate about what are Americans' fundamental relationship with their own government. The government exists for Americans, not the other way around.
CORNISH: The review panel has made dozens of recommendations, including requiring judicial approval for searches of U.S. bulk phone records. But its ideas are meeting some resistance. NPR's Carrie Johnson joins us now. And, Carrie, this review panel, lots of different perspectives: a former deputy CIA director, a terrorism expert and law professors. What did they manage to agree on?
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: So the review panel made a little joke today here in Washington. They said there was no dissent and no horse trading among the members, very unusual on Capitol Hill. Several key recommendations. First, they wanted to require a particularized search of U.S. phone metadata and to have a judge approve that before the NSA analyst go in and search on their own. They also wanted the FBI to get a judge's blessing before issuing a so-called national security letter.
These are letters that allow the FBI to get financial, credit card information and subscriber data. The FBI got 20,000 of them last year. The panel also wanted to name a public advocate to argue the public's case for privacy in front of the secret FISA court. And it wanted to shake up the process of naming judges to that secret court. Right now, Chief Justice John Roberts is responsible for naming all of those judges.
CORNISH: And there's been some pushback against that recommendation, not just from members of the intelligence committees and the NSA but also from judges.
JOHNSON: Yes, Audie. And the surprise of the day, Judge John Bates, who had been the chief judge of this secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, released a letter in which he rejected many of the group's findings. The letter, which is based on interviews and conversations he had with other judges on that secret court, says that the court does not believe there should be a regular public advocate arguing in front of it, except when those judges ask for one.
They also said that more transparency about court rulings would be confusing for most Americans and would promote misunderstanding. But judges themselves say they don't want to be responsible for signing off on those national security letters, that they'd need lots more resources to do it, and they think it would damage the work they already do. And finally, the court said it doesn't see itself as playing or portraying an oversight role over the NSA.
CORNISH: And any hints about where the White House is going to come down on this? President Obama is set to make a speech about surveillance programs Friday at the Justice Department.
JOHNSON: So the president, a former constitutional professor, was wary of surveillance as a senator. Right now, it's hard to see the White House either accepting or rejecting all 46 of this review group's recommendations. So instead, there are going to be some changes at the margins. And he's certainly listening, as we've heard, to members of the intelligence community. In order to make some substantial changes, though, Audie, Congress may be forced to act.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Carrie Johnson. Carrie, thank you.
JOHNSON: You're welcome.
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A federal appeals court has struck down rules set up by the Federal Communications Commission. The rules required Internet service providers, such as Verizon and Comcast, to treat all traffic on their services equally, what's known as net neutrality. As NPR's Laura Sydell reports, the decision has consumer advocates worried that providers will try to restrict access to certain websites and services.
LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: The FCC established something it called open Internet rules in 2010. The rules said that your Internet service provider can't make a special deal with Netflix and then block traffic or slow traffic to, say, Amazon Prime. Harold Feld is with the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge.
HAROLD FELD: The consumer perspective is I want to choose. I want to choose whether I'm going to get Netflix or Amazon Prime or iTunes, and I'd like them all to work equally well.
SYDELL: Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit said the FCC doesn't have the authority to tell Verizon, which brought the case, or any other broadband provider that it can't block Amazon or iTunes. But in its opinion, the court essentially said that the FCC put itself in this position when it decided not to classify Internet service providers the same way it classifies phone service. Phone companies are called common carriers, and they're regulated more strictly because of how essential phone service is to the public.
In a statement, Verizon lauded the court's decision, saying stricter regulation on broadband providers stifles innovation. Scott Cleland is chairman of NetCompetition. He says the company should be able to do what they want with their networks because they've invested a trillion dollars building them.
SCOTT CLELAND: And it was all based on the assumption that they would have a competitive market where they would have the freedom to price and invest and earn a return on investment.
SYDELL: But the Internet has become increasingly essential to modern life in the same way that the telephone used to be. The FCC has been trying to strike a balance between the public interest and making certain that a new technology like the Internet isn't overly regulated, says George Foote. He's an attorney who represents clients in the telecommunications industries.
GEORGE FOOTE: The FCC has twisted itself into pretzels to avoid treating the Internet as a regulated common carrier.
SYDELL: The FCC indicated that the commission had not given up on trying to enforce some kind of open Internet regulations. In a statement, chairman Tom Wheeler said the commission is assessing all available options, including an appeal to ensure that the networks on which the Internet depends continue to provide a free and open platform for innovation and expression. The FCC does have the power to reclassify the Internet as a common carrier like the phone companies. But Feld of Public Knowledge says when the commission tried to do that in 2010...
FELD: There was a huge political firestorm around it and the FCC backed off.
SYDELL: In its decision, the federal appeals court did say that the FCC has authority to ensure deployment of broadband infrastructure. In other words, making sure everyone has service. This means that there is still room for the FCC to make certain rules. There's also been chatter in Congress about updating the Communications Act for the digital age. But for the time being, all eyes are on the broadband providers who insist they want to keep your business, so they have no interest in blocking or slowing service to your favorite website. Laura Sydell, NPR News.
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Filmmakers beware. The nerds are watching. If your movie includes a computer with what appears to be code on its screen, you'd better make sure it's the right code.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
There's now a Tumblr called Source Code in TV and Films, where the computer savvy watch for misused or nonsensical digital language. The idea came from a British programmer, John Graham-Cumming, when he was watching the big sci-fi movie "Elysium."
JOHN GRAHAM-CUMMING: One of the characters is writing some code to reboot a space station, and I immediately wanted to find out what it was he was writing. And it turned out it came from an Intel manual, which just amazed me, really.
CORNISH: Graham-Cumming and his team post screenshots of suspicious Hollywood code on the Tumblr, crowdsourcing the effort to figure out what it really says.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "ANTITRUST")
BLOCK: That's actor Tim Robbins in the high-tech thriller "Antitrust." In one scene, actors posing as computer experts stare in awe at computer code. According to Graham-Cumming, they're looking at the basic JavaScript.
CORNISH: In "The Terminator," when we see the world through the killer machine's eyes, menacing code scrolls down the screen. It turns out it's the assembly code for an Apple II computer.
BLOCK: And the "Iron Man" movies use a similar effect. The code that scrolls down his visor display in at least one sequence is for a Lego toy robot.
CORNISH: John Graham-Cumming has mixed feelings about all this misuse of programming code.
GRAHAM-CUMMING: Some ways when it's really right, like it was in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," then it shows real depth of producing of the film. It's kind of both ways. And sometimes it's just amusing that they use something that's so wrong.
CORNISH: One final note. Graham-Cumming mentioned "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." The other big film the site praises for its code is "The Social Network." So can you crack that code? Both were directed by David Fincher.
BLOCK: So, Mr. Fincher, kudos to you. The Internet approves.
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Embattled New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was back in the spotlight today. The annual State of the State speech came at an awkward moment for Christie. The Republican governor had not spoken publicly since apologizing last week for politically motivated lane closures at the George Washington Bridge. Christie acknowledged the unfolding scandal at the start of his speech.
GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE: The last week has certainly tested this administration. Mistakes were clearly made. And as a result, we let down the people we're entrusted to serve. I know our citizens deserve better, much better. Now, I'm the governor, and I'm ultimately responsible for all that happens on my watch, both good and bad.
CORNISH: For more on Governor Chris Christie's State of the State speech, I'm joined by NPR's Joel Rose. And, Joel, what else can you us about how Christie actually addressed the scandal?
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Well, he addressed it quickly and indirectly. As you heard in that clip, he took responsibility at the very beginning of the speech and then he pretty much moved on. I would say that Christie was restrained and careful, maybe even tentative, especially at the beginning of the speech. This is a guy who is usually outgoing, loud, even combative, can talk for hours off-the-cuff at town hall meetings. By contrast, he seemed relatively cautious, I would say, today.
Christie talked about the accomplishments of his first term, then he moved on to, I guess what you would call the mundane details of governing. It was a familiar list of topics that includes property tax relief, education reform, stuff that, you know, you would expect to hear from - in the second term agenda of a Republican governor in New Jersey.
CORNISH: And Governor Christie has been talked about as a potential presidential contender. So was there a sense that he was speaking to multiple audiences today, not just New Jersey voters?
ROSE: Yeah, I would say so. I mean, most literally, he was speaking to the lawmakers in the chamber, including some who are investigating Christie's administration looking for possible abuses of power in the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal. He was also speaking to voters in New Jersey and maybe also nationally, voters who may still be, you know, forming opinions about Chris Christie. Some of them may be wondering, is this guy the hyper-partisan bully that his critics describe, a guy who would do anything to run up the score during his re-election campaign last year? Or is Chris Christie the guy that New Jersey voters love, especially Republicans and independents, kind of a straight-talking real Jersey guy who's willing to work across the aisle to get things done?
And I think there's a third important constituency also, which is Republican power brokers and big money fundraisers who will be sort of watching - dissecting the speech and wondering, does Chris Christie looked presidential? Can he take a punch? Can he dust himself off and still move forward with his agenda and, you know, even after a major scandal like the one that he's involved in? So a lot going on here. Christie clearly isn't going to move - put the whole scandal behind him with one speech, but he has to get through it and move forward.
CORNISH: So at this point, what's known about how New Jersey voters are feeling about this whole George Washington Bridge controversy?
ROSE: Well, it's too soon to say how they felt about the State of the State speech today, but we do have some insight into how they feel about the governor's performance last week. There was a Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press poll released yesterday that found 80 percent of those surveyed think that more Christie staffers are going to be implicated in the lane closure scandal. A slight majority - 51 percent - think the governor has not been completely honest. But all that said, Christie remains very popular. His approval rating is 59 percent, which is pretty good for a guy in the middle of a scandal.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Joel Rose. Joel, thank you.
ROSE: You're welcome.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Egyptians went to the polls today at the start of a two-day referendum on a draft constitution. The day was marred by violence in parts of the country. At least 11 people were killed, as protesters boycotting the vote clashed with police. Egypt remains deeply polarized - on one side, supporters of the military, and on the other, those who back ousted President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood. NPR's Leila Fadel sent this report.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: At a polling station in central Cairo, women - young and old - lined up to cast their ballots. They chatted excitedly among themselves, and they all agreed they would vote yes - yes to the constitution and yes to the military. Maha Mutawah waited in line with her friends.
MAHA MUTAWAH: It's important because you want your country to be stable. You want the investment to come. You want the tourism to start to work. We don't have this all the time. We have chaos.
FADEL: She says a yes vote will secure Egypt, and so will a new president. That election will likely come next. I ask if they have anyone in mind for the presidency. Mutawah and her friend, Nazly El Triedy, started to giggle.
(LAUGHTER)
MUTAWAH: Well, there is a person who - the whole nation love him. This is al-Sissi. We need a strong president at the moment to be able to keep the country together.
FADEL: That's military chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, the man who led the coup last July that ousted President Mohamed Morsi.
(SOUNDBITE OF A CROWD)
FADEL: Sissi spent the day touring polling stations where he waved at cheering voters. Prior to the referendum, Sissi was quoted in state media saying that if Egyptians requested it, he might run for president. A big turnout and a yes to the constitution may be the request Sissi spoke of. It is still too early to gauge turnout in the referendum. But in tours of several polling stations today, no one acknowledged casting a no vote.
At another polling station in central Cairo, the minister of scientific research, Ramzy Estino, stood in line to cast his ballot.
RAMSY ESTINO: If you are Egyptian, you have to go for the referendum and say yes.
FADEL: For analysts, the minister's comments highlight how little space there is for dissent. Prior to the referendum, some people who campaigned for a no vote where arrested. Analysts question whether the vote can be fair when one part of society is excluded, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is now banned and labeled a terrorist organization. Nathan Brown is a political science and international affairs professor at George Washington University.
NATHAN BROWN: The outcome could reflect the will of the majority of the Egyptian people. But it's still hard to call it a free and fair election.
FADEL: Brown says while most Egyptians support the military, the results of the vote will likely further divide Egypt.
BROWN: Egypt is embarking on a dangerous path in which important political actors are sitting out or being pushed out - a combination - and that that's not a recipe for stability.
FADEL: There was violence in parts of the country today. A bomb detonated outside a courthouse in northern Giza just before polls opened. And police clashed with protesters boycotting the constitution, mostly supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.
(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION)
FADEL: In one bastion of support for the Brotherhood, the village of Kerdasa, just west of Cairo, plumes of smoke billowed from burning tires in the middle of the street as police and protesters clashed. The walls were covered in graffiti urging people to boycott the referendum.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Foreign language spoken)
FADEL: Nearby, men covered their eyes from the stinging teargas.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Foreign language spoken)
FADEL: And a village resident, Hanafi Abdel Baqi, said the only thing that freedom has brought is chaos. He said he will vote yes to the constitution to support the military because security is more important than freedom. Leila Fadel, NPR News, Cairo.
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The Arab Spring that brought those changes to Egypt began in Tunisia, exactly three years ago today. Tunisians overthrew their dictator, prompting a wave of uprisings across the region. But three years on, lawmakers are still struggling to ratify a new constitution and lay the foundations of their country's future. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley is in Tunis and sent this report.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Today is Tunisia's equivalent of July 4th and Tunis' Habib Bourguiba Avenue was crowded with people out to enjoy the festive atmosphere. On exactly this spot, three years ago, Tunisians were chanting for dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali to go.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Foreign language spoken)
BEARDSLEY: National holiday or not, across town, 200 or so members of the constituent assembly were still hard at work ratifying the country's constitution. It was supposed to be ready today as a present to the nation, but it's no simple matter to rebuild a country after 24 years of dictatorship.
Marion Volkmann with the Carter Center in Tunis is observing the process. She says even though the document is delayed, ratifying it by this, the first elected assembly, is key for Tunisia.
MARION VOLKMANN: The idea of what's behind all that is that the constitution would be written by the same people who did the revolution. And so that constitution should really reflect the spirit of that revolution and create a solid democracy that would, you know, last for the generation to come.
BEARDSLEY: Volkmann says one of the key points in any democratic constitution is having an independent judiciary. That was jeopardized yesterday when the assembly's Islamist majority voted to have judges appointed by the minister of justice. That's ironic, says Volkmann, because the dictator persecuted the Islamists using the judiciary.
VOLKMANN: It's a political inclination to, when one is in power, to try to control the other powers, but it's a bad game, because in a democracy, you're not always in power.
BEARDSLEY: The constitutional article on the judiciary has not yet been ratified and is still being debated.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Foreign language spoken)
BEARDSLEY: There was plenty of sharp debate, even screaming, at today's assembly session. Secular assembly member Abdelaziz Kotti says it's all normal.
ABDELAZIZ KOTTI: (Through translator) We have good relations with the opposition Islamists as human beings. But if they push something we don't agree with, we have to fight back. But we're trying to work through the process with them.
BEARDSLEY: Vokmann says Tunisia's constitution, with regard to freedom of expression, the press and the rights of women is strong and in harmony with international standards. Analysts say it's light years ahead of the rest of the Arab world.
The issue of women's equality in particular is dear to Tunisians. After independence from France in 1956, founding father Habib Bourguiba placed great importance on gender equality. Most secular Tunisians feared the Islamist-led government, in power until last weekend, was trying to chip away at those rights. It did appear to be the case at one point as the Islamists tried to substitute the word equality with complementary. Marion Volkmann.
VOLKMANN: It's also for many Tunisians something that they're really proud of, that they have been the avant-garde on women's rights for decades now.
BEARDSLEY: Volkmann says Westerners like to cast the political fight in Tunisia as secular versus Islamist, but she says it's a lot more complicated than that. Still, Volkmann and other observers here predict Tunisia will have completed the framework for its new democracy within two weeks. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Tunis.
BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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Last week, we were shivering in depths of the polar vortex. Now another sign that Mother Nature is in charge. This time it's California, where right now it should be rainy season. Instead, there's growing alarm over a persistent lack of rain. The state is suffering its third consecutive dry year.
And as NPR's Richard Gonzales reports, there are calls for the governor to officially declare a drought.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
RICHARD GONZALES, BYLINE: So, how dry is it in California? Just take a look at Folsom Lake, a reservoir that serves the suburbs north of Sacramento. The water level here is so low you can find evidence of communities dating back to the Gold Rush that were covered up when this reservoir was filled. Most of Mormon Island, an old mining town, is still under what's left of the water in Folsom Lake. Still, local residents like Laura Jarecki and her friend, Katrina Trumbull, can stroll on the dry lake bed that is usually covered by more than a hundred feet of water and examine a collection of old bottles, broken pottery, rusted nails, and door hinges.
LAURA JARECKI: There's this beautifully made rock wall that was hand-done that survives under the water all these years. And then when the water goes down, it does not fall apart. It's beautiful.
GONZALES: The water level here is lower than in the winter of 1976-77, which saw one of the worst droughts in the state's history. And now, local water managers are calling on their customers to start conserving, says Shauna Lorance, general manager of the San Juan Water District that serves the suburbs around this lake.
SHAUNA LORANCE: This is not operations as normal. This is a water emergency scenario. And based on that, we're requesting that our customers eliminate all outdoor water use.
GONZALES: That means no watering your lawn or landscape. And if there's no rain by February, Lorance says, the district will take further steps, such as banning car washing and the filling of swimming pools. It could also ask customers to reduce indoor use, kitchen and bath, by 50 percent. Counties all over Northern California - Mendocino, Marin, Sonoma - are imposing or planning to impose similar conservation measures. In Fresno, the local Catholic bishop has even asked people to pray for rain.
And the $44 billion dollar ag industry wants people to know that the drought could hit consumers' pocketbooks as some California farmers may not plant at all. Gayle Holman is spokeswoman for the Westlands Water District, the largest agricultural water district in the country.
GAYLE HOLMAN: The availability of food that's grown right here on U.S. soil, we're going to see that crippled, not to mention that the economic engine that agriculture provides for the state of California is going to be greatly hindered.
GONZALES: That's partly why Senator Dianne Feinstein last month asked Governor Jerry Brown to officially declare a state drought emergency. That would help ease some environmental rules and other regulations governing water use and allocations. But Peter Gleick, a water specialist at the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, says water districts don't have to wait for the governor to act.
PETER GLEICK: Now is the time to be informing customers about what they can do to save water, to use water more efficiently. But it seems that the official water policy is hope for rain rather than take any progressive actions.
GONZALES: For his part, Governor Brown recently appointed a task force to advise him on the drought. But last week, he warned: Don't think that a paper from the governor's office is going to affect the rain. Richard Gonzales, NPR News.
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This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
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And I'm Audie Cornish.
Just a week ago, six Republicans joined Democrats to clear the path for a bill to extend benefits for the long-term unemployed. But a compromise on how to pay for the extension still eludes the Senate. About 1.3 million people saw their benefits expire after December 28th, and that number keeps growing every week Congress fails to extend the payments.
For more, we're joined by NPR congressional reporter Ailsa Chang. And, Ailsa, late today, Senate Republicans rejected two proposals to extend unemployment insurance. But as we mentioned, we had six Republicans vote about a week ago for the legislation to move forward. So what happened there to the support?
AILSA CHANG, BYLINE: Well, they agreed to move forward last week but not without conditions. Most of that group of six Republicans made it very clear that they would turn around and work to defeat the bill if lawmakers didn't find a way to pay for the extension. So, the two questions over the last week have been how should we pay for it and how long should the extension last. Now, Democrats say if they have to find a way to pay for these benefits, they want a longer-term bill, more than a three-month extension. So they came up with an 11-month plan that would be paid for largely by extending cuts to Medicare providers a decade from now.
CORNISH: And so Republicans wouldn't accept that plan. Why not?
CHANG: Well, two main reasons. They say that it's not a real cut when you spend money now, and the corresponding cut doesn't come until 10 years from now. And many Republicans also wanted to see a shorter-term extension. So the six of them who voted earlier to let the bill proceed, they tried to cobble together their own proposal to replace the Democratic one. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected that today, largely because the Republican plan only lasts for three months and the way they found the cuts undid some of last December's budget agreement.
There was also a dispute over how many Republican amendments would get votes on the floor. So everything kind of blew up this afternoon. And that's why Republicans moved to defeat today's bills. One of them who's been leading the negotiations is Susan Collins of Maine. And she says today is just going to have to be the start of more talks.
SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS: Our interest is in coming up with a solution, not scoring partisan political points. And I am still hopeful that while it does not look very good right now, that we can come together and accomplish that goal.
CORNISH: You know, Ailsa, that goal is one they hoped to accomplish last week. So when realistically are they going to get to this?
CHANG: Not soon. The Senate needs to move to vote on spending bills this week, and then this chamber goes on recess next week. And then that brings us to late January before this chamber can even return to this issue.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Ailsa Chang. Ailsa, thank you.
CHANG: You're welcome.
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America's uninsured have until the end of March to enroll in health plans under the Affordable Care Act, and insurance companies are eager to sign them up. Some are finding new customers through health screening machines at local stores, and that's making privacy experts nervous.
From member station KQED in San Francisco, reporter April Dembosky explains.
APRIL DEMBOSKY, BYLINE: In a grocery store near San Francisco, there is a tall health screening kiosk next to the shelves of antacid and cold medicine. Sitting down at the machine is like slipping into the cockpit of a 1980s arcade game. There's a big plastic seat for measuring weight, a window for testing vision and a blood pressure cuff.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Please sit as still as possible when this test is in progress.
DEMBOSKY: The guide for the test is an attractive brunette wearing a white lab coat. She asks a lot of questions
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: How many servings of vegetables do you eat per day? Do you have a blood relative who was told they have a heart problem? During the past 30 days, about how many days have you felt sad or depressed?
DEMBOSKY: The machines are owned by a Georgia company called SoloHealth. It started installing the kiosks in Walmart and other retail stores in 2008. Today, there are more than 3500 SoloHealth stations across the U.S. And 130,000 people use one every day free of charge.
SoloHealth first made money by selling ads for pharmacy items displayed near the machines. But in the era of health care reform, the company happened upon a new business model. All the details it's collected from people who use the machines are suddenly very valuable to health insurance companies.
BART FOSTER: As much as we've moved to the market, the market has really moved to us.
DEMBOSKY: Bart Foster is the CEO of SoloHealth.
FOSTER: We're able to provide much more detailed information than the health plans even really know what to do with today.
DEMBOSKY: The company is selling names, email addresses and phone numbers to insurers who want to market health plans directly to consumers, now that most Americans are required to have insurance by March 31st.
Darrel Ng is a spokesperson for Anthem Blue Cross. That insurer brokered an exclusive agreement with SoloHealth to be featured on machines in California.
DARREL NG: We know that engaging consumers early and engaging them with our messaging, helps improve the chances of them choosing Anthem as their health plan.
DEMBOSKY: Other insurers have similar agreements in other states. Here's the catch: The new alliances aren't made clear to people who use the machines. What they see is a drawing of a doctor with a stethoscope around his neck, offering help with the Affordable Care Act.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: We can have an experienced professional reach out to help you find the plan that fits your specific needs.
DEMBOSKY: But the friendly voice doesn't make clear that the experienced professional is actually an insurance rep. That is explained after the person enters their name and email. Privacy advocates say this is misleading.
Pam Dixon is the executive director of the World Privacy Forum.
PAM DIXON: Consumers have every reason to be shocked that this is happening.
DEMBOSKY: She says most consumers don't understand that their information is being sold. There is a health privacy disclosure, but she says it's too easy to miss.
DIXON: The fact that they're not being told about it in a very clear and conspicuous and prominent manner is problematic.
DEMBOSKY: SoloHealth CEO, Bart Foster, says the company takes privacy very seriously.
FOSTER: So we work with our retail partners, our attorneys, and our corporate sponsors to make sure that we're totally buttoned up.
DEMBOSKY: Yet until recently, the company's comprehensive privacy policy wasn't on the machine at all. It was only online. The company added the full policy to its machines a few weeks ago, it said, to improve transparency.
The experience is still unsettling for some consumers. Stacey Winn has been using the kiosk at her local supermarket for the last six months. She doesn't remember ever seeing a privacy policy. What she did notice for the first time last month, were ads for a health insurance plan.
STACEY WINN: I wonder now what they're doing with that information when I hadn't really wondered that before.
DEMBOSKY: Now she feels uneasy about her health details being stored in the company's database.
WINN: You know, there's this saying that if a service is offered for free then you're actually the product that's being sold, and I think that this is kind of turning into an example of that.
DEMBOSKY: SoloHealth says it is reviewing the customer experience of machines, for clarity. At the same time, the company is expanding. It plans to install another 1,500 machines nationwide this year and deepen its relationships with insurers.
For NPR News, I'm April Dembosky in San Francisco.
BLOCK: This story is part of a partnership with NPR and Kaiser Health News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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Next, a story about one of the biggest shows on TV: "Supernatural." All right, to be clear, it doesn't have spectacular ratings, but the fans who do watch are remarkably passionate and engaged. Case in point: On Facebook, "Supernatural" has almost as many likes as "NCIS," a show with six times the audience.
NPR's Neda Ulaby reports on the novel ways the show engages with fans.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Fans say they love "Supernatural" for its complicated plots and great, big heart, and because it's about two really hot guys who hunt monsters.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SERIES, "SUPERNATURAL")
JENSEN ACKLES: (As Dean Winchesters) Sam?
JARED PADELECKI: (As Sam Winchesters) Dean?
ACKLES: (As Dean Winchesters) Sam, look out!
ULABY: Sam and Dean are brothers. Their mom was tragically killed by a demon, so they drive around Middle America hunting down ghosts, chupacabras, even the occasional fallen angel.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SERIES, "SUPERNATURAL")
LYNN ZUBERNIS: It's such a complex mythological world.
ULABY: Lynn Zubernis is a psychologist, professor and "Supernatural" super fan. She co-wrote a book about "Supernatural" fandom; it's called "Fangasm." She says fans helped the show score multiple People Choice Awards, and the cover of "TV Guide" and "Entertainment Weekly." On Tumblr, its stars get more reblogs than almost anyone but Benedict Cumberbatch. What "Supernatural" offers fans is a world rich in details.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SERIES, "SUPERNATURAL")
ULABY: And plenty of unanswered questions
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SERIES, "SUPERNATURAL")
ULABY: The show inspires arguments on message boards and hundreds of thousands of pages of fan fiction. Fans come up with their own stories exploring what kind of powers a fallen angel might have, what were the brothers like as kids, or is a character a good sexy demon or a bad sexy demon.
(SOUNDBITE FROM TV SERIES "SUPERNATURAL")
ULABY: This tiny TV show is now the second most popular program on fan fiction's biggest website. Among the contributors, at least one famous author.
S.E. HINTON: My name is Susan Hinton, and I'm very much a "Supernatural" fan.
ULABY: S.E. Hinton is better known for writing "The Outsiders" and "That Was Then, This Is Now." Fan fiction is generally anonymous, and she's cagey about how to find hers.
HINTON: If you come across one that's just really good, that's mine.
ULABY: Lots of shows have fan fiction. What's different about "Supernatural" is how its writers incorporate its fandom back into the TV show. It gets really meta. So on the show, there are "Supernatural" fan gatherings, like the ones in real life.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Welcome to the first annual "Supernatural" convention.
ULABY: Complete with the kind of fans who dress up and pretend to be the main characters.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #6: (As character) You guys are larping, aren't you?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #7: (As character) Excuse me?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #6: (As character) You're fans.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #7: (As character) Fans of what? What is larping?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #6: Live-action role-playing.
ZUBERNIS: "Supernatural" takes it to a whole other level, the sort of self-reflexive dialogue that it has going on with its fandom.
ULABY: Lynn Zubernis says most shows barely acknowledge fans, but "Supernatural" even gestures towards slash fan fiction. Slash is often written by women and imagines a sexual relationship between the show's male characters.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character) And then Sam touched - no, caressed Dean's clavicle.
ULABY: "Supernatural's" fictional characters are brothers whose last name is Winchester, so people call this kind of slash fiction Wincest. Wincest is probably why the show's publicists declined to return my emails. This kind of meta dialogue between show and fan might seem new, says English professor Katherine Larsen. She's the other author of the book "Fangasm." But, she says, look back through literature. Great stories have always inspired ownership from enthusiastic fans.
KATHERINE LARSEN: Charles Dickens changes the end of "Great Expectations" because the fans are not happy.
ULABY: And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had to resurrect Sherlock Holmes in the face of fan outrage, when he died.
LARSEN: So fans have had this kind of power for longer than we have a really good sense of them having that power.
ULABY: But how can that power serve a TV show economically today? "Supernatural's" empowered, articulate fans have supported it through nine seasons. Mike Prouix wrote a book about social media and television.
MIKE PROUIX: Nielsen has done a lot of research as to whether or not social media is helping to drive people to tune in to TV.
ULABY: Social media may have helped improve "Supernatural's" recent ratings. Prouix says the show's traction on Twitter and Tumblr is starting to affect how networks pitch shows to advertisers.
PROUIX: They're no longer just including Nielsen ratings. They're also including social TV data.
ULABY: Fan engagement lends color and volume to data like ratings. But how do you quantify a depth of fan feeling? When a "Supernatural" fan writes a story, it takes longer, and means more than re-blogging a picture. That's an unsolved problem for television - how to measure a kind of success, a kind of loyalty and love, that resists conventional metrics.
Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
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With the decline in manufacturing has come a decline in the fortunes of organized labor. Union membership is at its lowest point in decades. Recently, Washington state managed to keep a big contract with Boeing and the jobs that come with it only after union members agreed to wage and benefits concessions. And from KPLU in Seattle, Ashley Gross reports that what happened there says a lot about the state of organized labor across the country.
ASHLEY GROSS, BYLINE: The night Boeing workers narrowly passed the offer, the mood at the union hall of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers was quiet, almost funereal. The machinists who had gathered there were the ones who wanted to reject the offer. Wilson Ferguson mourns the pension his union fought so long to get and then keep.
WILSON FERGUSON: We didn't get that pension when we formed a union 78 years ago. We didn't get that pension till 1959. And now it's gone and it will never be back.
GROSS: The Boeing contract phases out the pension over time, replacing it with a 401(k) and it hikes health costs at a time when the company's profits and stock are soaring. Ferguson says the workers felt backed into a corner. Boeing threatened to move the jobs away; local politicians, and even their own national union leaders, pushed the machinists to accept.
FERGUSON: Everybody was fighting against us and we lost by one percentage point. So we put up a hell of a fight. But we lost.
GROSS: This push to wring concessions from Boeing's unionized workers echoes what's happened at other big manufacturers. Two thousand miles away in Joliet, Ill., machinists at Caterpillar went on strike in 2012 during a contract dispute.
(SOUNDBITE OF STRIKE)
GROSS: The workers shouted the word scab at anyone driving into the plant. They rejected cuts to the pension when Caterpillar, just like Boeing, was making big profits. Almost four months later, they wound up accepting an only slightly improved contract. Unions have noticed, says Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union.
ANDY STERN: Boeing not only used the Caterpillar model, where it's extracted enormous concessions from its workers, which they didn't need in order to prosper, but then they went and took it a step further and hijacked and blackmailed the government.
GROSS: Those are strong words. Still, Boeing got almost $9 billion in tax incentives. The company declined to comment, but University of Portland finance professor Richard Gritta says the aircraft industry is cutthroat and volatile and Boeing does have to worry about labor costs ballooning over time.
RICHARD GRITTA: You try to keep all your costs to a minimum because you know this industry is highly cyclical. God knows what will happen to the airline business in the next four or five years.
JAKE ROSENFELD: This here captures the real story of the plight of private sector middle class workers over the last 40 years.
GROSS: Jake Rosenfeld at the University of Washington researches unions. He says pushing for workers to make sacrifices at a time of profits is new.
ROSENFELD: For a period there, surrounding the decades around World War II, many major highly profitable and highly protected manufacturing firms, firms like Boeing today, just didn't take this type of step.
GROSS: They didn't have to. There wasn't as much global competition, but that has changed. Union membership has dropped and the political winds have shifted. Organized labor has few allies in the GOP and has even lost support among some Democrats. But there is a bright spot.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
GROSS: Low-wage workers have struck a chord in the small town of SeaTac, Washington, near the airport. Voters there raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour for airport and hospitality workers. That's been partly reversed in court, but now unions and activists want Seattle to do the same thing. Stern, formerly with the SEIU, says sentiment is changing.
STERN: People are starting to say, you know, I may not like unions and I may not like government and I may not like Democrats, but I really don't like the fact that my kids and my grandkids can't get ahead anymore, and something has to change.
GROSS: Even some Boeing workers are living up to their nickname The Fighting Machinists. They've filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board and are pushing for a re-vote. For NPR News, I'm Ashley Gross in Seattle.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. Just 14 percent of mosques in the U.S. do a great job including and welcoming women. That's according to a recent study co-sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America. As Monique Parsons reports, this less than welcoming climate is inspiring some Muslim women to lean in and demand change.
MONIQUE PARSONS, BYLINE: Edina Lekovic visits a lot of mosques. She works for the Muslim Public Affairs Council and sits on a regional Islamic advisory board in Southern California. She goes to mosques for meetings and Friday prayers, but one recent visit got off to a rocky start.
EDINA LEKOVIC: I was walking towards the front door only to be told by a boy of no more than 12 years old, he pointed to the side of the building and said, oh, the sisters entrance is over there.
PARSONS: Now, Lekovic is religious. She covers her hair. She doesn't mind praying separately from men, but entering through a different door...
LEKOVIC: And I sort of stopped dead in my tracks and looked around for an adult figure that I could have the conversation with.
PARSONS: Nobody else was around.
LEKOVIC: And so I looked at this 12-year-old boy and said, there's a separate entrance for women? Why is that? Just to see what he would say, and he sort of shrugged his shoulders and said, it just is.
PARSONS: Lekovic is also a teacher and she decided to seize the moment.
LEKOVIC: My final response to him was, well, the mosque that I go to on the other side of town has everybody walk through the same set of doors.
PARSONS: Lekovic says there was a time she might have slipped in the side entrance, quietly fuming. But things are changing. Just a few years ago, a woman's place in the mosque was a fringe issue.
LEKOVIC: There was to some degree pushback around this, like, we're dealing with enough challenges right now, that, you know, wait your turn was kind of the attitude. Today more and more women are saying now is the time.
PARSONS: Lekovic says there is a rich history of Islamic teachings that preach equality for women. But she also gives credit to a 34-year-old Chicago woman named Hind Makki. Last year, Makki started an online project called Side Entrance, where women from around the world share photos of their prayer spaces. Not all the photos are negative. Submissions range from isolated, moldy storerooms to soaring, lushly carpeted halls.
HIND MAKKI: The tagline is: We showcase the beautiful, the adequate and the pathetic.
PARSONS: The project began when she snapped photos of women's prayer spaces in some Chicago mosques and posted them on her Facebook page. One showed women praying behind a tall room divider, blocking views; another looked like a walk-in closet with a curtain-covered window. The photos went viral.
MAKKI: I got a lot of response, and one of the most interesting type of responses I got was from men who had no clue.
PARSONS: While some accused her of airing dirty laundry, many Muslim men started asking how they could help.
MAKKI: They just had no idea that this was somewhat typical of women's experiences at a mosque, that you go to a mosque and you don't see a dome; you don't see the imam, certainly; you don't see the architecture. You see a big wall in front of you.
SHAHINA SAEED: I'm surprised that in a big city like Chicago there's a place like that where the women can't even see what's going on in front of them. I would not be comfortable in a space like that.
PARSONS: That's Shahina Saeed. She sits on the board of directors of the Islamic Society of Orange County, one of the oldest and largest mosques in Southern California. She's also president of its school board. She proudly gives a tour of the campus.
SAEED: We have a computer lab, which we just recently got new computers for, which we're very excited about.
PARSONS: Women here pray in a big loft with an outdoor patio and views of the imam and the mosque's colorful glass dome. They can also pray on the main floor in an area beside the men. Saeed says she feels at home here. A recent study by the Islamic Society of North America found that more women showed up for events at mosques like hers: those with women board members, women speakers and attractive women's prayer spaces.
Edina Lekovic at the Muslim Public Affairs Council says this conversation is about more than side entrances.
LEKOVIC: Part of what's at stake is the question of where Muslim women will put their talents. Now, if the mosque is an environment in which they see that the fruits of their labor will be beneficial to the community, they will put their time and energy there.
PARSONS: National Muslim leaders are paying attention. The Islamic Society of North America is urging mosques to recruit more women board members, and a recent conference centered on a campaign to improve women's prayer spaces. For NPR News, I'm Monique Parsons.
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If you've ever looked at a flock of birds passing overhead, you've probably noticed that they tend to travel in the shape of a V. Well, scientists writing in today's issue of the journal Nature say they now know why. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel has this story of high-flying research.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: You may have heard that birds fly in V's to save energy, that they're drafting like bicycle racers. And for a long time, scientists have thought the same thing. But they didn't have any proof.
STEVEN PORTUGAL: All it was was theory. No one ever actually was able to measure anything.
BRUMFIEL: That's Steve Portugal from the Royal Veterinary College in the U.K. Portugal is part of a lab that's built special devices that can fit on a bird's back and record the stuff you need to know if you're into bird physics. These gadgets have GPS and accelerometers. But they don't have transmitters. The only way to get hold of the measurements is to take the device off the bird's back.
And this meant Portugal needed just the right birds to study formation flying: birds that fly in a V, take off and land in a predictable place, who don't mind getting handled by people. And that's where these guys come in.
(SOUNDBITE OF NORTHERN BALD IBIS)
BRUMFIEL: Meet the Northern bald ibis. That's its mating call, and it looks about as ugly as it sounds.
PORTUGAL: Only a mother could love them, perhaps. But they are - they're very endearing. And they're just a bit different.
(LAUGHTER)
BRUMFIEL: Actually, the Northern bald ibis has a lot of fans in Europe. It disappeared from the wild there more than 300 years ago, and now, conservationists are trying to bring it back.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING)
BRUMFIEL: These baby ibises are given human parents right after they hatch.
PORTUGAL: The human foster parents spend every day, every waking moment of every day with the ibis.
BRUMFIEL: Once the ibises are big enough to fly...
PORTUGAL: Then these foster parents hop in a Microlite, these little lightweight planes that you sort of see roaming around. And the birds then follow the Microlite because they're following their foster parent. And they teach them the migration routes that they would have done historically.
BRUMFIEL: OK. So these birds are the perfect test birds. And, as it turns out, they naturally organize themselves into a V formation.
PORTUGAL: When they first start flying around, they will naturally put themselves into a V formation, but it won't be great. But it seems like with practice, they gradually get better and better at flying in a good V.
BRUMFIEL: Portugal and his colleagues put their gadgets on the ibises. Then they compared the data to computer simulations. And the birds are drafting. They catch an uprush of air from the wing tip of the bird ahead. What's more, the birds were synchronizing their wing beats to maximize the effect. Portugal thinks there's a very good reason why the ibises do this. Flying is harder work than, say, running.
PORTUGAL: When we get exercising, our heart rate goes up to about 180 beats per minute on a good day. When birds are flying, it goes up to 400 beats per minute.
BRUMFIEL: Because they're working so hard, Portugal says he thinks ibises notice right away when they're catching a little lift from the bird ahead.
PORTUGAL: Suddenly they hit a spot where they can sense that they're not having to work as hard, and then they go, oh, this feels a bit easier. I'll stay here. And then if all the other individuals are doing the same, eventually they'll create a V formation.
BRUMFIEL: This isn't the end of the research, though. There are still more questions to be answered, like who's the bird that gets stuck at the front? Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.
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For centuries, the British have handed down estates and titles from father to son. That tradition of following the male line continues even today in the lofty corners of the British aristocracy. But now, there's a move to modernize it, as NPR's Ari Shapiro reports from London.
ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE: You could hardly find a bigger megaphone for this issue than the global TV phenomenon "Downton Abbey."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SHAPIRO: In the very first minutes of the very first episode, the heirs to Downton Abbey sink with the Titanic. That's not just a tragedy, it's a disaster. The lord of the estate has three daughters, no sons. British law says only a man can inherit the title.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DOWNTON ABBEY")
SHAPIRO: What happens next, indeed? Questions of hereditary peerage, as the issue is known, are not merely reserved for fiction.
TIM TORRINGTON: I'm a hereditary peer with three daughters only, and my heir in theory is a very distant Canadian cousin.
SHAPIRO: This is Tim Torrington, officially the 11th viscount Torrington. He chairs the Hereditary Peerage Association, sort of like a trade union for lords, dukes, earls and barons. He would like to see his oldest daughter inherit his title, but ultimately it's not so important to him. Torrington's title comes with no land. And unlike some titles, his no longer carries a seat in the upper house of Parliament.
TORRINGTON: The only privilege that hereditary peers have is the right to be called by government departments by their proper name, by their titles. Well, I've never been called by any government department correctly by my name.
SHAPIRO: The issue does have huge significance for Lady Liza Campbell and her political allies. Campbell is quick to acknowledge that lords and ladies occupy a peculiar backwater of British life.
LADY LIZA CAMPBELL: But it exists, and nowhere should girls be born less than their brothers. Yes, it's the aristocracy, but it's still sexism. You can be an atheist and support the idea of women bishops, I think.
SHAPIRO: Campbell's father was the Thane of Cawdor. That title might sound familiar. It's in the play "Macbeth." Campbell was raised in an ancient castle that people today call Macbeth's castle. Liza was the second daughter born in her family.
CAMPBELL: I remember my mother saying how worried she was when I had been a second girl and she didn't have a boy, and feeling loved, but at the same time getting the message that girls were not what was needed.
SHAPIRO: The movement for gender equality in the aristocracy went nowhere until the royal pregnancy came along last year. Parliament changed the law so a firstborn girl could inherit the throne. Lady Campbell and her allies thought now might be the time to apply that principle to lords and ladies. Hence, the so-called "Downton Abbey" Law now before Parliament.
Campbell says what with the economy and Syria, lawmakers might not get around to her little corner of society. But if they don't, she has a backup plan.
CAMPBELL: Half a dozen women who have no brothers, whose titles will hop, you know, to a second cousin, third cousin, or whatever, will take their cases to Strasbourg and claim the titles.
SHAPIRO: Strasbourg is the European Court of Human Rights. The aristocratic women have a human rights lawyer who has agreed to represent them. He also serves in the House of Lords.
Ari Shapiro, NPR News, London.
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And I'm Audie Cornish.
The U.S. and Europe are moving closer to a free trade deal that would create the world's largest single market. Some European activists are stepping up protests against that agreement. They say it would strip consumers of their rights and workers of their livelihoods.
Farmers and environmental groups used pigs to make their point today in front of the office of the German chancellor in Berlin. NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson was there.
SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON, BYLINE: Activists sweep hay into a fluffy pile in front of Angela Merkel's office building to welcome more than a dozen squealing protesters.
(SOUNDBITE OF PIGS)
NELSON: Organic farmer Rudolf Buehler hustles the pigs past amused police officers who are here to make sure things don't get out of hand. The pigs appear happy to oblige. They huddle in an orderly group, drinking water and munching on hay.
RUDOLF BUEHLER: (Foreign language spoken)
NELSON: Buehler tells onlookers that the pigs are from his southern German farm, which his family has worked for nearly seven centuries.
BUEHLER: They are a symbol of free farmers.
NELSON: They also might be seen as a symbol of insult to the chancellor, no?
BUEHLER: Yes. I think she might watch and even NSA will watch us. I'm very sure about that.
NELSON: But he says his trip here with the pigs is no joke. Buehler says he doesn't know how else to convince Merkel that a U.S.-European free trade pact, opening the market to more American meat, could end up wiping out traditional German farms like his. He says it costs a lot more for small farmers to produce pork and other meat products that meet E.U. standards and customers' tastes. And those European tastes are increasingly anti-American when it comes to beef, chicken and pork.
A report released last week by the Green Movement's Heinrich Boll Foundation charge that Europeans do not want U.S. meat pumped full of growth hormones.
BARBARA UNMUESSIG: (Foreign language spoken)
NELSON: At a Berlin news conference, foundation president Barbara Unmuessig said people need to know what animals eat because what they eat, we eat. These concerns, coupled with the secrecy clouding backroom talks between U.S. and European officials in advance of formal trade negotiations, are fueling unease. And while meat production may not be the biggest issue for the governments, it's one that trade pact opponents are latching on to, says Olaf Boehnke, who heads the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
OLAF BOEHNKE: Even if it's a minor issue or not a major one in the entire agreement, it might be one of the few stakes which the protesters can use, actually, to mobilize against the entire agreement.
NELSON: He adds that rumors on Twitter last week suggested Merkel and President Obama had struck a deal on agricultural matters. Such rumors contributed to the anger at today's protests. Again, farmer Buehler.
BUEHLER: So far, we see the discussion is dominated by the large industrial companies and we farmers are not being asked, you know?
NELSON: Buehler says he prefers that Germany forget about striking an all-encompassing trade deal with the U.S. and instead form a free zone with eastern European countries to strengthen the continent's ties.
Merkel's press office, meanwhile, declined to comment about the pig protest or the trade talks. The farmers and environmental activists outside her building said they will hold a second larger demonstration on Saturday but without the pigs. Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR News, Berlin.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. When contenders for the Academy Awards are announced tomorrow, a film called "Blackfish" could be among the nominees. It's on the short list for Best Documentary. But executives at SeaWorld say it is flawed. "Blackfish" examines the death of trainer Dawn Brancheau at SeaWorld Orlando, in 2010. It raises questions about the theme park's treatment of its killer whales.
NPR's Greg Allen reports "Blackfish" has sparked a debate that months after the picture's release, is still growing.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: "Blackfish" made a splash at the Sundance Film Festival when it premiered in January, and got more attention when it was released in theaters over the summer. But it didn't reach its largest audience until October, when millions watched it on CNN. It's a powerful documentary that focuses on Tilikum, the male orca that pulled Brancheau into the water and killed her. In telling the story, "Blackfish" relies heavily on interviews with former SeaWorld trainers, like Samantha Berg.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY. "BLACKFISH")
ALLEN: SeaWorld dismissed "Blackfish" as shamefully dishonest, deliberately misleading and scientifically inaccurate, when it was released over the summer. But then the company went silent. Timothy Coombs, a communications professor at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, says the company seemed to be hoping the controversy would fade.
TIMOTHY COOMBS: But the attention spiked and kept going as more and more music artists began to cancel at SeaWorld. And it just escalated on them very quickly. And I don't think they anticipated that.
ALLEN: Responding to online petitions from fans, Barenaked Ladies, Willie Nelson and several other musical acts canceled engagements at SeaWorld. Using social media, advocates are now attempting to put pressure on SeaWorld partner Southwest Airlines and other corporations. It's a movement that includes many young people, like Kirra Kotler. She's a 10-year-old from Malibu, Calif., who watched "Blackfish" with her dad.
KIRRA KOTLER: It's like seeing you get pullen(ph) away from your family. And I felt a little sad, and I cried in one part of the movie. And I just wish that that did not happen.
ALLEN: After seeing the film, Kotler convinced students and the principal at her school to cancel an overnight trip to SeaWorld, San Diego - a trip the school has done for a decade. The school now is making plans to take students on a whale-watching trip instead.
Last month, SeaWorld finally responded. The park published an open letter in several newspapers that didn't mention "Blackfish," but defended its record of caring for killer whales. And this week, the company released an interim financial report, saying it had record attendance in the fourth quarter and that it expects to report its highest-ever annual revenue in March.
(SOUNDBITE OF BACKGROUND CROWD NOISES)
ALLEN: SeaWorld is still drawing big crowds. Across the street from the park in Orlando this week, Brazilian tourist Eduardo Silva said he hadn't seen "Blackfish," but knew about it. And, he says, it raised questions for him while he was at the park with his kids.
EDUARDO SILVA: I was just wondering and thinking about it and all the animals, and especially about what is happening to the whales. And I was just thinking, are they happy? We really don't know. That's the question.
ALLEN: This was Silva's second time to SeaWorld, but he said he didn't know if he'll be coming back. While SeaWorld has largely avoided taking on "Blackfish" and the film's supporters directly, in recent weeks others have stepped in. Blogs that cover the theme park industry have been critical of the documentary. And on social media, supporters of the theme park have mounted an anti-"Blackfish" backlash that includes former SeaWorld trainers like Kyle Kittleson.
KYLE KITTLESON: I say, as someone who has worked with the animals, I can assure you that they are in the best of hands. There is no harm being done to them. There is only the best possible care being provided for them.
ALLEN: University of Central Florida Professor Timothy Coombs says for now, SeaWorld can't hope to win over its critics. But the defense of the company taking shape in social media is important in that it reinforces SeaWorld supporters and customers, and gives them a reason to come back.
Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
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And I'm Melissa Block. President Obama has been talking a lot lately about income inequality. Today, he visited a factory in North Carolina and announced new steps that he said would create more good-paying, middle class jobs. He plans to do that by boosting American manufacturing and at the center of that plan is a big idea: a new, federally-funded innovation institute.
Here's NPR's Chris Arnold to explain how it would work and why some economists have doubts.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: In his last State of the Union address, the president said he wanted to create these new manufacturing institutes across the country. The goal is to bring together industry, universities and government to spur innovation and to help private companies come up with new products and to hire more workers.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We want to do that here in North Carolina and we want to do this all across America.
ARNOLD: The president spoke at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. He's been asking Congress to create dozens more of these innovations hubs. Congress hasn't passed any of that legislation yet, but the president says he can start the first few of these himself.
OBAMA: And today, I'm here to act, to help make Raleigh Durham and America a magnet for the good high tech manufacturing jobs that a growing middle class requires and there is going to continue to keep this country on the cutting edge. So...
ARNOLD: This particular institute will seek to develop a new generation of computer chips and electronics. The White House has committed $200 million so far to these institutes across five federal agencies. The president said Germany has more than 60 of these types of innovation institutes helping its manufacturing industry and the U.S. should do something similar.
Still, some economists are less than enthusiastic.
ENRICO MARETTI: Manufacturing employment has been declining for four decades now and it's one of the industries that has performed the worst over the long run.
ARNOLD: Enrico Maretti is a labor economist at UC, Berkeley. He says that manufacturing has lost about 7 million jobs in the past 35-odd years and it's gained about half a million of those back during the recovery more recently. But still, he says, the long run trend is down. He'd rather see resources spent to support more promising industries in terms of job growth.
MARETTI: If you look at jobs in life science, they've been growing at a rate that is 12 times faster than the rest of the labor market.
ARNOLD: Maretti says it might sound good to say you want to help the middle class with manufacturing jobs, but he's not optimistic that that will do much to help, mainly because he thinks that those jobs will continue to get replaced by computers and machines. But other economists say that they like what the president's doing here.
Peter Cappelli is a labor economist with the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
PETER CAPPELLI: It's a good idea, you know. U.S. has the capability to do much better in manufacturing than we've been doing.
ARNOLD: David Autor is also a labor economist. He's at MIT and he studies the impact of technology and globalization. What he likes about these government-backed innovation hubs is that they're not picking this technology or industry over that one, pushing a particular company, say, that makes solar panels or something.
DAVID AUTOR: So I think they're aiming at the right target here. Whether it will all work, I doubt it, but some of it will work and some of it works really well, even if most of it doesn't it will still have been a good investment.
ARNOLD: The White House says it will announce the creation of two more manufacturing innovation institutes in coming weeks. Chris Arnold, NPR News.
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Human rights advocates in Nigeria are reporting that dozens of gay men have been arrested under a new law that makes homosexual clubs or associations illegal. That law also criminalizes same-sex marriage. Gay men who have been arrested have reportedly been tortured into giving up the names of others. Michelle Faul with the Associated Press has been writing about this and she joins us now from Lagos.
And Michelle, why don't you give us more details, what you've learned about these arrests and the reports of torture from human rights groups there.
MICHELLE FAUL: As we're speaking, Melissa, we're getting more reports in of more people being arrested in about six of Nigeria's 36 states. I've spoken with human rights activists here who say this has not just happened since the bill was signed into law, but since there's been noise about the bill. So the very idea of the bill has led to this persecution of people because of their sexual differences.
BLOCK: And in particular the reports of torture, what have you heard about that?
FAUL: That particular report comes from Bauchi State in the north of Nigeria, where it's almost a case of entrapment. A law enforcer pretending to be a gay man went to a meeting where an AIDS counselor was speaking to men, who have sex with men, about how they could do this safely. He pretended to be gay, got the names of a couple of people, arrested subsequently one person, used their cell phone - this is illegal in itself for him to go through this person cell phone, contact another gay person and another gay person. Called them for a meeting, arrest them, take them to the police station and beat them up repeatedly and brutally until they gave up 168 names of people who were supposed to be gay.
BLOCK: Michelle, let's talk more about this new law. You've got a copy of it: The Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act. And you write that it's been shrouded in secrecy. It was passed in December, signed by President Goodluck Jonathan this month without announcement. Why the secrecy?
FAUL: I don't know why the secrecy. I've heard suggestions; maybe they were hoping to do this without causing an international brouhaha. Well, we have international condemnation from around the world, today coming from Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, from the European Union, from Britain, the United States, Canada. Some of those countries have said that they will consider cutting aid or tying aid to how a country treats their gay community. I think what a lot of people are asking now is, having made these threats, what are they going to do.
BLOCK: The new law, Michelle, is called The Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act. But homosexual sex was already illegal in Nigeria, right? It could bring a death sentence under Islamic or Shariah law in parts of the country.
FAUL: Exactly, there were no gay people in this country, you know, out on the streets waving banners saying: We want to get married. You know, going out in the streets saying you're gay can get you killed. You can just get lynched by a mob and beaten to death. So, you know, the question is why was this needed? And there are many answers. Some people think the issue of gay rights is being used as a political football.
Nigeria has many, many problems and the president, by signing this bill, can distract attention away from that and make many people happy.
BLOCK: Why don't you put this in some context, too, for the continent? Nigeria is not alone here. There are many, many other African countries that either outlaw homosexuality or persecute gay people, right?
FAUL: There are 39 African countries with laws against sodomy and homosexuality. And according to UNAIDS that is half of the countries in the world that criminalize homosexuality.
BLOCK: Michelle Faul is chief Africa correspondent with the Associated Press. She joined us from Lagos, Nigeria. Michelle, thanks so much.
FAUL: It's a pleasure, Melissa. Thank you.
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Here in our D.C. headquarters last week, we were lamenting the bitterly cold weather - how it freezes you to the marrow, saps your strength, makes you want to curl up in a warm hole with a warm blanket, and do not a darn thing. Then one of us made this confession.
MELISSA GRAY, BYLINE: When I can't take it anymore, I put on "Superstition," by Stevie Wonder.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUPERSTITION")
GRAY: I mean, the funky riff on that song, I get it in the car, and I butt dance all the way from my house to work. But I can only do it once a week because it really wears me out.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUPERSTITION")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
That, folks, was a dramatic re-enactment of the actual confession by the actual ATC staffer-producer Melissa Gray. She explains butt dancing like this.
GRAY: Well, it's not like twerking. I mean you're stuck in the car, so you're just dancing on your behind. I mean everybody does it.
BLOCK: Everybody does it, maybe even without realizing it. So let's give it a go; we're going to follow that funky riff.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUPERSTITION")
CORNISH: Twerk-free, thankfully.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUPERSTITION")
BLOCK: Well, this whole discussion got us curious: What is your break-a-glass-in-case-of-winter song; the song that gets your blood pumping, your bottom moving, despite a string of cold, gray, dreary days?
CORNISH: We want to make an ALL THINGS CONSIDERED Cabin Fever Playlist - just a little something-something to keep us going until spring.
BLOCK: Keep us grooving until spring.
CORNISH: Alive until spring. And yes, we'll share the playlist once we've got it together. Send us your song nominations at NPR.org. Click on Contact Us, and include Cabin Fever in the subject line.
BLOCK: You can also send us a tweet. We are @npratc.
So Audie, we now have Stevie Wonder on the playlist. What's your nomination for the Cabin Fever list?
CORNISH: Hmm, a little pick-me-up - I'd say Aretha Franklin's "Say a Little Prayer."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SAY A LITTLE PRAYER")
CORNISH: This one gives you that little shimmy feeling, right?
BLOCK: And Audie, you'd be singing along here if you were in your car?
CORNISH: I would be, definitely.
(LAUGHTER)
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SAY A LITTLE PRAYER")
CORNISH: Melissa, what about you?
BLOCK: Well, I've been thinking about this. It would have to be - I'm going to go to Southwestern Louisiana to the late, great zydeco king Beau Jocque, who gets you moving with this song - well, any song, really, but one in particular, "Slide and Dip It."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SLIDE AND DIP IT")
BLOCK: You feeling it, Audie?
CORNISH: I do. I picture you dancing it in the kitchen.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: In the kitchen or in Louisiana, better yet. But yeah, all these great, funky, space-hooky riffs onto thoze zydeco rhythms, you can't sit still.
CORNISH: All right, awesome. Well, we've got three suggestions for our playlist to start. Send us more at NPR.org, or tweet us @npratc.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SLIDE AND DIP IT")
BLOCK: This is NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
And I'm Audie Cornish.
It's day seven of West Virginia's water crisis. More than half of households and businesses affected by last week's chemical spill now have safe tap water, that's according to the local utility, West Virginia American Water. Officials say they've been routinely testing for lingering traces of the chemical. Out of an abundance of caution thought, authorities are advising pregnant women to drink only bottled water until further notice. Distribution sites in the Charleston area continue to hand out free bottled water to anyone who wants it.
And NPR's Hansi Lo Wang caught up with several residents who've been told their water is safe, but just not trust it.
LUCRETIA LUCAS: Free water.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: Bottled water is still a hot commodity in Charleston, where volunteers stop passing cars outside of Family Dollar.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Keep it coming...
WANG: Sixteen hundred cases roll off a truck one by one in the parking lot, where Lucretia Lucas - a Family Dollar store manager, volunteering from Whitesville, West Virginia - helps hand out water.
LUCAS: A lot of places still are not out of the zone. So they're still, you know, under the watching thing.
WANG: Tom Gross bypassed the water line and headed straight for this car. He says the water in his home in Charleston is fine.
You drinking it?
TOM GROSS: Yes.
WANG: Showering with it?
GROSS: Yes.
WANG: Cooking, cleaning?
GROSS: Yes.
WANG: It's back to normal at your house.
GROSS: Yeah.
WANG: Early this morning, the water ban was also lifted Dale Whittington's neighborhood in Sissonville. But he's still picking up a few cases for him and his daughter. He hasn't had a chance to go home to start flushing out the contaminated water.
Does it still smell?
DALE WHITTINGTON: You can't stay in the house for the smell.
WANG: What does it smell like?
WHITTINGTON: Licorice or I don't know what all. It just - I don't want to drink it, put it that way.
WANG: Neither does Tammy Coles of Charleston, who's picking up a couple of cases of bottled water on her lunch break. The water utility has given her the go-ahead.
So it's been declared safe by the water department.
TAMMY COLES: It has been declared safe by the water but I'm just not trusting it right now. I shower with it but that's about it.
WANG: Kermit Lawson, of Charleston, says he's lost his confidence. Before the chemical spill he drank and cooked directly from the tap. But now?
KERMIT LAWSON: Well, the trust factor.
(LAUGHTER)
LAWSON: Yeah, there's a trust factor involved now.
WANG: Lawson has flushed his home water pipes three times since the ban was lifted in his neighborhood yesterday. But he's still planning to rely on bottled water. And he's not sure when he's going to stop.
LAWSON: It won't be tomorrow. And I don't think that it will be a month from now either.
ALLISON MCGUINESS: That's a lot chemicals, it's just not going to disappear in a couple of days. There's no way.
WANG: Allison McGuiness, a single mother of two living in Charleston, is also skeptical.
MCGUINESS: We've got blue sludge, dirt coming out of the pipes.
WANG: Even this morning?
MCGUINESS: Even this morning. It's still rough because my little guy had surgery. So I'm bathing him in the baby pool in my kitchen, try to keep them clean because he's got open wound.
WANG: The tap water in McGuiness's home was declared safe two days ago. But as long as water distribution sites are still in place, she says she'll be back for more bottled water.
Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News, Charleston, West Virginia.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Finally this hour, baseball is a game for kids both young and old, so you'd think when a baseball team introduces a cuddly, new mascot, what could go wrong? Well, this week the Chicago Cubs introduced Clark, an appropriately adorable cartoon bear that looks like it came straight out of a Disney movie. But it was not a hit with Neil Steinberg, a columnist with the Chicago Sun-Times - and that's putting it mildly.
NEIL STEINBERG: Had they had a severed calf's head on a stick, dripping gore and buzzing with flies, and said here's our mascot - Holly the heifer head, I could not have been more revolted.
BLOCK: Ouch. And Steinberg is not alone. Social media is shaking with outrage over Clark the Cub. So why? Well, for thoughts on that, we turn to sports writer Wayne Drehs, a native Chicagoan who writes for ESPN and is a self-described Cubs geek. Wayne, thanks for weighing in on this.
WAYNE DREHS: Hey, thanks for having me.
BLOCK: And why do you think Clark the Cub is drawing such outrage among fans? Why is the mascot such a big deal?
DREHS: Well, you have to understand the backdrop right now in Cubs nation, if you will; and that is the fact that the Cubs fan has finally stood up after 106 years, and said he's had enough of losing and he's tired of it.
BLOCK: (Laughter) Oh, is this the first time? I see.
DREHS: Yeah, right? And I mean, they are very grouchy and angry; and on social media and on Cubs blogs, these people look for anything and everything to complain about. And the Cubs introduce a cuddly mascot - ooh, that's just ripe material for these folks.
BLOCK: Yeah. Well, one stream of thought that I've seen in comments online - and they get far worse than this - but some people are saying, like, look at this cub. His eyes are sad. He'll fit in perfectly with the rest of Cubs fans.
DREHS: Yeah, I just don't know how you can analyze the eyes of a cartoon character as like, sad and droopy. And I'm questioning - you know, Mr. Steinberg - listened to what he had to say. I'm just wondering what kind of presents he buys for his children, if he has any, if that's the kind of mascot he'd like. I'm very confused.
BLOCK: All right. Well, Neil Steinberg talked to us a bit about the whole notion of appealing to children with this mascot for the Cubs. Let's take a listen to more of what he said.
STEINBERG: It's an insult. It's a backhand to the idea of children, to say that we have to come up with something corny and stupid and clip-arty and generic, in order for kids to embrace it. That's ridiculous.
BLOCK: Wayne, what do you think? I mean, was this the best the Cubs could do, if they wanted to appeal to kids? - which is what they said is the whole idea here.
DREHS: Yeah, I widely disagree. I mean, as someone who's taken his, you know, then 5- and then 6-year-old daughter to a Cubs game, and had her try to sit through an entire nine innings at Wrigley Field, you know, the Cubs may have had the sort of least family friendly environment of any sports team in Chicago. My daughter used to ask me: How come the Bulls have Benny the Bull, and the Hawks have Tommy Hawk - and there's just nothing for the Cubs, right? And so to me, when they announced it on Monday, I thought: This is a great idea.
BLOCK: Do you think the Cubs fans took pride in the fact that they were one of the very few teams that didn't have a mascot?
DREHS: Absolutely. There's no question. I mean, this is where we go to watch baseball. You bring your team. You watch the game. You look at the ivy. You have a cold Budweiser. It's a beautiful day. The Cubs lose and then you go home frustrated, and complain about it. That's the way it's worked for so long, right?
BLOCK: (Laughter) Isn't America great? Yeah.
DREHS: Exactly. And the Cubs have said, look, we're not going to have Clark jumping up and down in the dugout and - I think he's going to greet some fans when they come in, and help the kids smile. I don't really see what's wrong with that.
BLOCK: Well, there is this, too - I mean, and you do see this a lot in comments online - you know, OK, great. Get a mascot. But what do the Cubs really need? Well, maybe we need an ace pitcher. Maybe we need a great free agent.
DREHS: Yeah. Again - and this is the Cubs fan complaining that they're not winning. And they don't seem to realize that the organization has completely rebuilt itself. They have one of the top five minor league systems in all of baseball. Maybe Clark can, you know, help people settle down for a couple years until those baby Cubs are ready.
BLOCK: Wayne Drehs, it's good to talk to you. Thank you so much.
DREHS: Thank you.
BLOCK: Wayne Drehs is a sportswriter with ESPN, and a self-described Cubs geek. We were talking about the new mascot, Clark the Cub.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block.
At the Supreme Court today, the justices heard arguments in a case testing laws that establish buffer zones to protect patients and staff as they enter abortion clinics. In 2000, the court upheld an eight-foot zone that moves with those individuals as they approach a clinic. But the issue is back now before a more conservative court, and the chief justice appears to hold the outcome in his hands. NPR's legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: The case before the court comes from Massachusetts, where two people were shot and killed and five wounded at abortion clinics in 1994. After first trying a moving no-approach buffer zone, the state in 2007 adopted a fixed, stationary 35-foot buffer zone outside clinics to protect patients and staff. Anti-abortion activists challenged the law in court, contending it violated their right to free speech.
On the steps of the Supreme Court today was grandmother Eleanor McCullen, who for 13 years has stationed herself outside a Boston clinic twice a week trying to persuade women not to have abortions.
ELEANOR MCCULLEN: This is America, thank God. And we have First Amendment right, which means gently speaking to someone, offering hope, help and love. I should be able to do that.
TOTENBERG: But Marty Walz, who co-authored the Massachusetts law and now heads Planned Parenthood in the state, said that while Mrs. McCullen may be a soft-spoken counselor, many others are not.
MARTY WALZ: I experienced that firsthand when I was a state legislator and I saw what was happening at the health centers in 2007 under the old law, with someone inches away from my face, screaming at me at full volume in the entrance way to the Planned Parenthood health center. The current law, having everyone step back 35 feet from our doorway, is the only thing that's ever worked to maintain public safety.
TOTENBERG: Inside the Supreme Court, the questioning was fast and furious, with the justices apparently divided equally, and for the first time in memory, no questions from Chief Justice John Roberts. The court seemed divided even by the question of how far 35 feet is. Justice Breyer said it was from the bench to the front row of the public seat. No, said Justice Kagan, it would stretch to the back of the court room. Two car lengths, said Justice Sotomayor.
Representing those challenging the Massachusetts law was lawyer Mark Rienzi. He immediately faced a question from Justice Ginsburg. The problem the state faced, she said, was a considerable history of disturbances and entrance blocking. The state doesn't know in advance who are the well-behaved people and who won't behave well. Lawyer Rienzi replied that there are other ways to deal with that problem such as prosecuting people for obstructing the entrance.
Justice Kagan: It's hard to prosecute because you have to show intent to obstruct an entrance and there's a lot of obstruction and interference that goes on naturally when lots of people are gathered at the entrance. The justices at this point began posing a series of difficult hypotheticals. Justice Breyer: Supposing the state wanted to put a 35-foot buffer zone around a veterans' hospital entrance to protect patients from anti-war protesters. Justice Sotomayor noted that just three years ago, the Supreme Court itself said buffer zones would be OK to protect people attending funerals.
Justice Kagan asked about a buffer zone that would bar animal rights protesters from interfering with employees and suppliers at the entrance of a slaughterhouse. My intuition, she said, is what's wrong with that? Just have everybody take a step back. But lawyer Rienzi stuck to his guns, maintaining buffer zones to prevent speech on even part of the public sidewalk would violate the Constitution in any of these situations. Justice Scalia: This is a dead speech zone, right?
Defending the Massachusetts buffer zone law was Assistant State Attorney General Jennifer Grace Miller. She told the justices that the buffer zone is a small area and that abortion opponents are still free to protest on the public sidewalk close to the clinics. Justice Scalia objected. This is not a protest case. If it was a protest, keeping them back 35 feet might not be so bad. But here, what they can't do is try to talk the women out of an abortion. It's a counseling case.
Justice Breyer: Did the evidence show that what was involved was calm conversations and counseling? No, replied Miller. The evidence showed pro-choice advocates swearing and screaming at pro-life advocates. There was pushing and shoving and jockeying for position. It was like a goalie's crease at the entrance. That's the box in front of a hockey goal where players pile up.
Under the Constitution, she said, no one is guaranteed close, quiet conversations. Justice Kennedy: Incredulous. Do you want me to write an opinion and say there's no free speech right to quietly converse on an issue of public importance? A decision is expected in the case by summer. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
The Senate Intelligence Committee today delivered its analysis of the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya. Four Americans were killed in that attack, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens. It's a bipartisan report. Democrats and Republicans on the committee agreed, among other things, that the attack might have been prevented if the State Department had taken better precautions at the Benghazi post.
For more on the report, we're joined by NPR's Tom Gjelten. And, Tom, this is the second major report on the Benghazi attack. The State Department had its own accountability review board about a year ago. Does this intelligence committee report break much new ground?
TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: Well, as you said, Audie, the committee says the Benghazi attack was preventable. The accountability review board actually came close to saying that. It said the security arrangements at the Benghazi compound were grossly inadequate given the threat in the region. Now, the Senate report actually takes that a step further. They go into great detail about how much intelligence there was indicating the danger that al-Qaida elements were organizing in eastern Libya and the possibility that they were preparing possible attacks.
Another thing, interestingly enough, this report says the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, himself bore some of the responsibility for the inadequate security in Benghazi. Turns out, the commander of U.S. forces in Africa, General Carter Ham, twice suggested the deployment of a military security team in Libya, and both times, Ambassador Stevens turned him down. That's new.
CORNISH: So this assessment is saying that this might have been prevented once the attack was underway. Could there have been some intervention that might have saved the lives of those four Americans who were killed?
GJELTEN: The committee says no, and this is also important. The committee found there was no order to stand down. Remember, that was initially reported in some media. There was no delay in responding. There was nothing the U.S. military could have done. There are no fighters close by, no aircraft carriers, drones, no special forces available. There were no military assets that could have been sent there in time to do anything, according to the committee report.
Now, the Republicans on the committee, in a separate comment, actually faulted General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, specifically for that, saying he should have had more military assets in the region given the threats.
CORNISH: Now, you mentioned this Republican criticism but this was a bipartisan report, right? And that seems significant given how politicized the debate has been around the Benghazi attack. I mean, is there any - can you say now that there's consensus on what happened there?
GJELTEN: Well, this is certainly the closest thing, Audie, to a consensus we've had on this very divisive issue. In terms of the assessment of responsibility, the Democrats and Republicans alike are spreading it around now, not just putting it on the White House, also on the State Department, the military, the - even the intelligence community. They agreed that al-Qaida elements were involved. That's something the White House, at times, has seemed reluctant to admit. Bipartisan criticism of the White House for not being more forthcoming.
On the other hand, there are still disagreements, partisan disagreements. Republicans say there should be more accountability, both in terms of State Department people being fired for their failures and also for the people that carried these attacks. Republicans pointed out that no one is in custody. Also, the Republicans reiterate a longstanding complaint that they think the White House downplayed the threat that this was a terrorist attack, as opposed to a protest demonstration.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Tom Gjelten. Tom, thank you.
GJELTEN: You bet.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Protests have also blocked much of the center of Bangkok. Demonstrators want Thailand's caretaker prime minister to step down, to be replaced with an unelected people's council. Nonetheless, the prime minister says she plans to go ahead with elections slated for next month. As Michael Sullivan reports from Bangkok, the political turmoil is affecting the local economy.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: The protests haven't had the desired effect of bringing Bangkok to a halt. In fact, there's money to be made in and around the protest sites. Just ask 39-year-old Nang(ph) selling shutdown-Bangkok, restart-Thailand T-shirts on the sidewalk at the Asok protest venue. She's moving a lot of T-shirts at 150 baht, about five bucks a pop. How many?
NANG: I'm not sure, 200 or 300.
SULLIVAN: Three hundred T-shirts a day?
NANG: Yes.
SULLIVAN: This protest is good for you.
(LAUGHTER)
NANG: Good.
SULLIVAN: She won't say which side she supports, only that she's making far more here on a daily basis than she makes at her usual stall a half mile down the road. Sidewalk food vendors in the protest areas are doing well, too. And tourism, which accounts for roughly 10 percent of the province's GDP, that's another story.
YUTHASIL SILAPASORN: My name is Yuthasil Silapasorn. I'm the general manager of the iCheck Inn group.
SULLIVAN: Yuthasil's group runs 10 hotels in Bangkok, including the one we're sitting in. It's a midrange hotel chain that's almost always full or close to it. But occupancy now is a problem.
SILAPASORN: Maybe look from tomorrow until the end of this month, it's not over 50 percent.
SULLIVAN: He says high-end hotels that cater to business travelers and upmarket tourists are doing even worse since the protests intensified. That's a lot of cash during high season, but Thailand's tourism authority continues to put on a happy face in the land of smiles, insisting the country is open for business as usual. Tell that to travel agent Ratia Tontonlan(ph) whose business has dropped by more than two-thirds.
RATIA TONTONLAN: Seventy percent, 70 percent, because there have been nothing, even this week also.
SULLIVAN: But you know what, she doesn't care if the protests manage to get rid of caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her brother, deposed and exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. But she says Yingluck and her brother have perverted Thai politics and taken corruption to a new level.
TONTONLAN: Even I know corruption every country, but this is too big, too big. Even - OK, someone say, 50-50, OK. I don't mind 50-50, but this is 80 and 20.
(LAUGHTER)
SULLIVAN: Eighty percent skimmed off the top is just a little too much for Ratia, and she's not alone in her pessimism. Thailand's stock market has lost about 10 percent since the protests began two months ago. And don't forget the Thai baht, now at its lowest level in more than three years.
Back at the CitiChic hotel, the staff is a perfect mirror of the current political divide. A woman who works at reception is vitriolic in her hatred of Yingluck and her brother, Thaksin, and she wants both gone from Thai politics for good. She is middle class and she's a city girl. But one of her colleagues from the countryside is a firm supporter of Yingluck and her party and sees the opposition effort to create an unelected people's council as an effort to deny him his right to vote.
And this is pretty much the problem here: two sides, neither willing to compromise, says general manager Yuthasil. And it scares him because so far, Yingluck's power base among the rural and urban poor, the so-called red shirts, have been remarkably restrained.
SILAPASORN: I worry because if no one can call a meeting to compromise or to stop this problem, where shall we come?
SULLIVAN: And that, almost everyone agrees, is a recipe for disaster. For NPR News, I'm Michael Sullivan in Bangkok.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.
MELISSA BLOCK, BYLINE: And I'm Melissa Block. President Obama today tapped a California businesswoman to lead the Small Business Administration. He said Maria Contreras-Sweet has experience financing small businesses; first through a private equity firm, and later as a founder of ProAmerica Bank.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
BARACK OBAMA, HOST:
She understands the needs of small-business owners like herself. She knows how they can lift entire communities and ultimately, how they lift our country. So as we work to keep our economy growing, Maria will be charged with looking for more ways to support small businesses.
BLOCK: Contreras-Sweet is a native of Guadalajara, Mexico. If confirmed by the Senate, she would fill the last vacancy in the president's second-term Cabinet.
CORNISH: In other personnel news, the president has nominated Stanley Fischer to serve as the next vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. He would replace Janet Yellen, who's been promoted to chairman of the central bank. Yellen reportedly recruited Fischer personally, to serve as her deputy. He spent much of the last decade running Israel's central bank.
As NPR's Scott Horsley reports, Stanley Fischer is credited with helping that country weather the financial crisis better than most, and with training many of the world's top economists.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Stanley Fischer is an economic oak tree whose acorns have taken root in financial capitals around the world. Outgoing Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was a student of Fischer's at MIT. So was Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank, and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
Another former student, Ken Rogoff - now an economics professor at Harvard - recalls Fischer as an inspirational teacher.
KEN ROGOFF: A lot of people went to MIT economics not thinking about doing macroeconomics. And then they had Stan Fischer as their professor and suddenly, it's all they wanted to do.
HORSLEY: At the time, academic economists were often divided into warring camps: the so-called Saltwater economists, from coastal universities, who tended to concentrate on market breakdowns; and Freshwater economists, centered around the University of Chicago. They prefer to build models in which markets function perfectly.
Rogoff says Fischer managed to swim in both schools and still keep his head above water.
ROGOFF: Fischer was one of the few people that both camps just totally respected - which took a lot of economic understanding but probably quite a bit of political acumen as well.
HORSLEY: That political skill proved handy once Fischer came to Washington, first as chief economist for the World Bank and later as the No. 2 official at the International Monetary Fund.
Mohamed El-Erian, who runs the giant PIMCO bond fund, worked under Fischer at the IMF. He describes his former boss as the rare person who's brilliant but also eager to learn from others.
MOHAMED EL-ERIAN: He's not only a very effective policymaker, but he's also a very popular policymaker. And these two don't go together very often.
HORSLEY: During his tenure at the IMF, Fischer was confronted with a number of regional financial meltdowns, including Mexico's peso devaluation in 1994, and the Asian financial crisis three years later.
EL-ERIAN: He was always as cool as can be. He was very analytical. He always was the adult in the room. He's never let stress get to him.
HORSLEY: Born and raised in Africa, in what's now Zambia and Zimbabwe, Fischer has frequently counseled leaders from the developing world. El-Erian says he often stressed how even small improvements in economic growth could pay big dividends over time.
EL-ERIAN: Let me tell you how many people you can bring out of poverty. Let me tell you about how you can reduce unemployment. For him, it was about making sure that growth is inclusive, that it creates sustainable jobs; and to make sure that you don't end up with a society that is excessively unequal, in terms of income and wealth.
HORSLEY: Those concerns are not limited to developing countries. Slow growth and income inequality are now front and center here in the United States.
While the Federal Reserve's main missions are promoting job growth and keeping a lid on inflation, it's also supposed to act as a banking watchdog, preventing the kinds of risky behavior that contributed to do the recent financial crisis.
MIT economist Simon Johnson worries Fischer may not be tough enough on the nation's biggest banks, since he spent three years as vice chairman at Citigroup.
SIMON JOHNSON: Does he believe that some of our largest financial institutions still are too big to fail? If they are too big to fail, how should we deal with them? Should they be forced to shrink? There's a long list of questions, but they all come back to attitude towards the big banks and how they run themselves.
HORSLEY: That's just one of the hot-button topics Fischer is likely to be quizzed about during his Senate confirmation hearing. Harvard's Rogoff says after a long career making friends in financial foxholes, Fischer should be able to withstand any political flak.
ROGOFF: We live in a world where it's not easy to be a centrist or a moderate, getting attacked from both sides. And that something Stan Fischer has somehow managed to do as an academic, at the IMF and later, as governor at the Bank of Israel - a very fractious society. He's managed to be respected by all sides, to maintain his ground in the middle.
HORSLEY: And Rogoff says Fischer will find that a valuable skill at the Federal Reserve.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
After 15 months of acrimony, the longest labor dispute at a major American symphony orchestra is over. The Minnesota Orchestra and its musicians reached an agreement last night and players will return to work February 1st.
Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr reports that while all sides are relieved, most admit more hard work is yet to come, rebuilding some seriously damaged relationships.
EUAN KERR, BYLINE: Everyone says they're looking forward to setting aside the bitterness of the last 15 months and getting back to work. But when he emerged from last night's vote, musician negotiator Tim Zavadil couldn't help but mention how long they had been out of work.
TIM ZAVADIL: The musicians will look forward to going home at Orchestra Hall after a lock-out that will have lasted 488 days.
KERR: It took almost five hours for the musicians to vote on the settlement proposal. Many had been forced to take jobs far afield to make ends meet and votes came in from the Canary Islands, Japan and around South America. They voted to take a pay cut of more than 10 percent over the next three years, and pay more for healthcare; amounting to a 15 percent concession in all. That's much less than the 35 percent management originally proposed.
But there is also what management negotiator Doug Kelley called a revolutionary idea for the orchestral world.
DOUG KELLEY: We have a revenue sharing agreement. And if the endowment performs quite well over the next three years, we are prepared to share that with the musicians. I believe that that's one of the first provisions for revenue sharing at an orchestra across the United States of America.
KERR: But a lot of questions remain, including who will lead the orchestra. Board chair Jon Campbell is out but president and CEO Michael Henson remains. Both drew criticism for their hard-line stance during negotiations. Of far more concern to musicians and fans is the huge hole left by the resignation of the ensemble's music director, Osmo Vanska, who raised Minnesota's profile on the world stage.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KERR: Filling the music director's job is vital, says Bill Eddins. He's a former associate conductor with the Minnesota Orchestra, who is now music director of Canada's Edmonton Symphony. He points to the way Detroit Symphony conductor Leonard Slatkin helped rebuild bridges after a six-month strike there.
BILL EDDINS: The Minnesota Orchestra desperately needs someone like that, not only from a PR point of view, but also from an artistic point of view, just to settle the ship after these incredible storms.
KERR: The lockout wasn't only hard on the players. Fans also truly missed the music, according to Randall Davidson, director of the Minneapolis-based National Lutheran Choir.
RANDALL DAVIDSON: And I think it behooves the orchestra - all of the folks inside the orchestra - to put that music front and center. That is what we want as a community.
KERR: Meanwhile, orchestra staff is engaged in a whirlwind of activity, not just setting up opening concerts but trying to resurrect and sell an entire subscription season beginning in a matter of weeks.
For NPR News, I'm Euan Kerr.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Millions more Americans now have health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Much of the focus has been on coverage gaps, increased premiums and the clumsy rollout of the new law. But 6.1 million Americans, many of whom would not otherwise have health insurance, are now enrolled.
NPR's Nathan Rott has been talking with some of them.
(SOUNDBITE OF BABY)
NATHAN ROTT, BYLINE: The waiting room at St. John's Well Child and Family Center in South Los Angeles is packed. So packed that Tanya English is having a hard time finding her daughter.
TANYA ENGLISH: Oh, right here. Oh.
ROTT: Tanya's daughter, Charlize, is nine months pregnant. She's here for an ultrasound and a check up, and she's all smiles as she walks back to an examination room because this visit is covered. For a number of years, Charlize didn't have health insurance.
CHARLIZE: And now that I got it, I could just walk into a doctor's office without a problem.
ROTT: Her timing was right. Under the Affordable Care Act and the expansion of Medicaid, she was able to get insurance just weeks before her due date. Nearly 2.2 million people have now enrolled in regular health insurance plans through Obamacare nationwide. Another 3.9 million, like Charlize, have been deemed eligible through Medicaid expansions. And there's a lot of them at this health center.
ALEXIS GOMEZ: This is one. On 2001, he was working in a moving company.
ROTT: Alexis Gomez is a physician at the clinic. His patient, Juan Salvadia, has a long history of heart problems and a pacemaker. This is his first check up in a while.
How long has it been since the pacemaker was checked?
GOMEZ: When was the last time that they (foreign language spoken)
JUAN SALVADIA: (Foreign language spoken)
GOMEZ: Last year or like a year ago.
ROTT: Is that a pretty long time to...
GOMEZ: It's a pretty long time, yeah.
ROTT: Gomez says he's seen a lot of cases like this in the last two weeks - newly insured people coming in for check-ups that are long overdue with prescriptions that haven't been filled or with diseases that have gone unmonitored. And then there's the newly insured that have just never been checked at all.
GOMEZ: At least four or five a day came here, totally asymptomatic, first time, never seen a doctor. Now, they come here and guess what - diabetes, hypertension show up.
JIM MANGIA: We did a lot of work to prepare for the roll out of the Affordable Care Act, and it's way exceeded what I expected.
ROTT: This is Jim Mangia, the St. John's Well Child and Family Center CEO.
MANGIA: At one of our sites on Saturday, we had 36 people walk in that didn't have appointments, all of whom were newly insured that wanted to see a doctor for the first time.
ROTT: Mangia says part of that is due to their location. The center estimates that one in three people in south L.A. are or were uninsured. Groups like SEIU United Healthcare Workers West have worked to sign those people up. Dave Regan is the group's president.
DAVE REGAN: For every example of a problem, a glitch, there are now over a million people in California whose lives are fundamentally changed.
ROTT: And it isn't just low-income people that are experiencing that change. And it's certainly not limited to California.
AMANDA SHELLEY: My name is Amanda Shelley. I live just outside of Phoenix in Gilbert, Arizona. And I'm a physician assistant.
ROTT: Shelley didn't have health insurance either.
SHELLEY: I was not one of the poor people that people think are signing up for Obamacare. I was - I'm one of the well-off people.
ROTT: But she was unable to get insurance because of pre-existing conditions. That changed January 1st. Then...
SHELLEY: On January 3rd, I started having some pain in my abdomen.
ROTT: A piercing, stabbing pain.
SHELLEY: And I tried to ignore it because I'm used to ignoring things because I didn't have insurance.
ROTT: But by the next day, it was so bad that she had to go in. She called first to make sure that she really was covered.
SHELLEY: And two days later, I had my gallbladder out, urgently.
ROTT: She says without insurance...
SHELLEY: This would've been bankruptcy for me, definitely.
ROTT: So even though Amanda Shelley knows the new law isn't perfect, for her, it's already proved its worth. Nathan Rott, NPR News.
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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
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"American Idol" is back for its 12th season tonight. The show's huge success gave rise to an entire genre of reality talent shows on TV. For the last few seasons, though, ratings for "American Idol" have been off. So they've freshened up the format and brought in some new judges. NPR's TV critic Eric Deggans says "American Idol" is trying something new: being nice.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: If you had to use one word to describe "American Idol's" season last year, that word would be hostility.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "AMERICAN IDOL")
DEGGANS: Judges Nikki Minaj and Mariah Carey were all over each other. Country star Keith Urban was often stuck in the middle, while long-time judge Randy Jackson became a helpless bystander.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "AMERICAN IDOL")
DEGGANS: The fighting wasn't what fans wanted to see. But "Idol" turned conflict into a television phenomenon just 12 years earlier as persnickety judge Simon Cowell sniped at Paula Abdul.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "AMERICAN IDOL")
DEGGANS: Back then, Cowell's merciless putdowns of mediocre singers were considered hilarious. But nasty doesn't work so well right now. Keith Urban sits in the judge's table on "Idol" this season. And he says the audience has been transformed by rude comments on social media.
: What it's like to have bad things said about you is starting to affect everybody now because of the Internet and because of blogs and because of Instagrams and Facebook and Twitter. And there's so many portals and platforms now for people to vent their opinion of other people. And suddenly, people are starting to feel what it's like to be on the receiving end of it.
DEGGANS: So, "Idol" producers found a new attitude. They hired charismatic, wisecracking singer Harry Connick Jr., who joins Urban and pop star Jennifer Lopez tonight at the judges' table. And the network is really promoting their easy-going chemistry.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "AMERICAN IDOL")
DEGGANS: Awful contestants don't get a lot of screen time anymore, which makes "Idol" seem a lot more like it's biggest rival, NBC's "The Voice." The NBC show's not-so-secret weapon is the playful banter between superstar coaches like country star Blake Shelton and pop singer Adam Levine.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE VOICE")
DEGGANS: But "Idol's" challenge is to turn toward nice without looking like a pale copy of its biggest competitor. "American Idol's" innovation has spawned a bunch of competitors, from "America's Got Talent" to "The X Factor," which means "Idol" needs more than a trio of jovial judges to stand out from the crowd it helped create.
BLOCK: Eric Deggans is NPR's TV critic.
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So that's one question. And here's another that we're sure has been bothering many of you for years. What happens when you give a bird a guitar? Well, you'll get your answer at a new exhibition opening Saturday at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. It's called "From Here to Ear."
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Picture this: One room, 70 zebra finches, 14 tuned and amplified guitars, no fingers.
TREVOR SMITH: So how it works is that, you know, the room is completely open. The birds are free to flock and move around as they wish.
CORNISH: That's exhibition curator Trevor Smith.
SMITH: What they do is that they land on these guitars. And as they land on the guitars, as they move on the guitars, as they jump off the guitars, they create sounds.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CELESTE BOURSIER-MOUGENOT: My name is Celesete Boursier-Mougenot, and I'm the artist.
BLOCK: Mr. Boursier-Mougenot came up with the idea for the installation back in the 1990s. He started drawing a guitar...
CORNISH: And then, as they say on the TV show "Portlandia..."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW,"PORTLANDIA")
BOURSIER-MOUGENOT: And they put a few birds on it. I remind sometimes you are doing things like, I mean, you don't know why but you did - I did it. My work is not based on ideas. I mean, it's much more practice and experiment.
BLOCK: As for the finches, well, they prefer to wing it.
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In the news business, stringers are freelancers. They're paid by the story. It can be a dangerous way to make a living, especially overseas. A new memoir chronicles the adventures of a young journalist trying to make his mark. It's called "Stringer," and Ted Koppel knows a thing or two about reporting, says it terrific.
TED KOPPEL, BYLINE: The trick for a young journalist is to find a location rich in material but light on the competitive side. The more poverty stricken, dirty, corrupt and dangerous, the better. By those criteria, you couldn't find a richer environment than Congo, which is where Anjan Sundaram embarks on his career as a stringer. Why is never entirely clear. One moment, he's at Yale, about to embark on his doctoral studies in mathematics. And the next, he's telling his adviser that he's off to Congo to try and be a journalist.
Sundaram prepares for his journey into the heart of darkness by plying a Congolese bank teller in New Haven with lunches at Dunkin' Donuts. She in turn introduces him to a community of Congolese emigres and diplomats and, most important, arranges for him to stay in Kinshasa at the home of her husband's brother. But that marks one of the significant differences between a stringer and a staff correspondent for a major newspaper or network. Stringers tend to become totally immersed in a local culture. They lack the resources to do otherwise.
Sundaram bounces in and out of precarious situations like Pip in an African version of "Great Expectations." What he lacks in common sense, he makes up for in grit. When his cellphone is snatched by a young thief, Sundaram plunges after him into a truly vile slum, in the vain hope that he'll be able to buy the phone, with its addresses and numbers, back. Heading off on another occasion in a communal taxi to deposit his U.S. dollars in a bank, he is robbed at gunpoint by his fellow passengers. Enraged but still innocent, Sundaram brings his complaint to a police station, believing somehow that the police will recover his money. They won't even look, he learns, without a substantial bribe to prime the pump.
If Anjan Sundaram was lacking in cynicism at that stage in his career as a reporter, he makes no excuses. And it does lend a fresh and charming candor to his writing. Inevitably, of course, "Stringer" tries to address the atrocities of Congo's endless brutality, and the scope truly does stagger the imagination. The number of Congolese killed in that country's endless wars now tops five million. Wisely, Sundaram takes no more than a passing swipe at the big picture. Congo's enormous mineral wealth that drew Belgian colonialists, the Soviets, the Americans and, more recently, all of Congo's envious neighbors. He is best writing about what he has experienced: Congo's poverty and superstition, its family loyalties and many tiny kindnesses. This is a book about a young journalist's coming of age, and a wonderful book it is, too.
CORNISH: NPR commentator, Ted Koppel. The book is "Stringer: A Reporter's Journey in the Congo" by Anjan Sundaram.
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Now to our Found Recipes series and again we're getting real and going retro. Last week, we were all about the crock pot and this week: casserole.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BLOCK: Today, we have help from a pair of queens out of Austin, Texas.
SANDY POLLOCK: Hi, I'm Sandy Pollock.
CRYSTAL COOK: And I'm Crystal Cook.
POLLOCK: And we're the casserole queens.
COOK: And we're the casserole queens.
POLLOCK: I am often surprised that casseroles are not more embraced.
COOK: And we're just proud to be sort of the spokespeople for bringing back the 9X13.
BLOCK: Why? Because casseroles are delicious and easy. Plus, the 9X13 baking dish can feed a hungry herd, especially if it's a King Ranch Casserole, with chicken, tortillas and cheese.
POLLOCK: Beautiful South Texas flavors, great Tex-Mex, nice and spicy, cheesy, gooey, yummy warmness.
BLOCK: The taste of her childhood. As an adult, Sandy Pollock is a bonified ambassador for this Texas dish.
POLLOCK: King Ranch Casserole, high, proud and loud, baby girl. Whoo.
BLOCK: Her business partner, Crystal Cook, she's not feeling it. She's from Georgia. She wanted to update Sandy's family recipe with a modern spin, but she quickly learned why they say don't mess with Texas.
COOK: When Sandy introduced this casserole to me, it kind of got all the negative connotations that we try to fight as casserole queens every day. It's got not one, but two cans...
POLLOCK: Two.
COOK: ...of cream of something in them so I went to go change the way this King Ranch Casserole was developed, but Sandy, like, came in...
POLLOCK: Put the ix-nay on that buddy.
COOK: Yeah, fast.
POLLOCK: There's just some things that you just don't mess with, you know, and this was something that I have such specific memories about this dish as a kid that it just...
COOK: It's just the way your momma made it.
POLLOCK: It's the way momma made it. Thank you, Momma. Essentially, it is like all the flavors of South Texas. It's got Mexican cheeses. It's got Ro-Tel tomatoes, which are, you know, a mixture of tomato and green chiles and it's nice and it's got a kick and it's got - yeah, so it's got the two cans of cream soups in there, but they really just mellow everything out and some corn tortillas.
It's essentially like maybe a Mexican lasagna or, like, a deconstructed sort of enchilada plate.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
POLLOCK: The King Ranch Casserole, the history of it is a little murky. Nobody really knows 100 percent where it came from.
COOK: I would say it's iffy at best.
POLLOCK: Iffy at best. But the name comes from a ranch. It's the biggest ranch - one of the biggest ranches in the world and it's called The King Ranch and it's in Kingsville, Texas. But it's unlikely that it comes from that area, simply because it's a beef ranch and this has chicken in it and so, you know, there's all that to cook with.
COOK: And they were very, very proud of their beef. And I actually read a funny article. Basically the late Mary Clayberg(ph) who was the wife of the owner of the ranch, said she used to cringe, like her heart would drop every time some little well-meaning hostess would come to her house and present King Ranch Casserole to her because they didn't have anything to do with.
POLLOCK: And they probably particularly didn't like it.
COOK: She's choosing chicken and really all she wanted was a big hunk of beef.
POLLOCK: Exactly.
COOK: Even if it didn't come from King Ranch, I'm just glad it exists. I don't care what the history is as long as it's in my belly.
POLLOCK: Well, what I love about that is, like, any comfort food, it might sound weird to somebody else, but it's very regional, it's very specific to people's families and dear to their hearts and so your love for it has made me love it.
COOK: Thank you, Sandy.
POLLOCK: Thank you, Crystal.
BLOCK: Crystal Cook and Sandy Pollack, the casserole queens. You can get a King Ranch Casserole in your belly by following their recipe. It's at our Found Recipes page at NPR.org.
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Nearly a quarter of a century ago, an epic struggle between environmentalists and the timber industry landed the northern spotted owl on the endangered species list. Protecting the bird accelerated the decline of the timber industry in the Northwest. Well, now, another owl from the east is forcing the spotted owl out of its territory.
NPR's Elizabeth Shogren reports on a radical experiment to fix the problem.
ELIZABETH SHOGREN, BYLINE: It's a moonlit night when Timber company biologist Lowell Diller takes me to a forest that used to be a prime territory for spotted owls in Northern California.
LOWELL DILLER: When I first came here and we started the study, there would be another pair of spotted owls like every mile along the creek.
SHOGREN: Barred owls showed up in the 1990s. They didn't cause much trouble. But now they're so many of them; they're pushing their rare relatives out. It's happening across the Pacific Northwest.
DILLER: It's very upsetting to see that happening and there's nothing that's going to stop this expansion of barred owls from continuing, up to the point where they literally cause the extinction of the spotted owl.
SHOGREN: Diller has studied spotted owls here for 25 years. He's desperate to avoid that outcome. So desperate that for the last few years he's being doing something that goes against his core: shooting barred owls.
(SOUNDBITE OF A BARRED OWL RECORDING)
SHOGREN: First, he plays a recording of a barred owl. Soon a real barred owl starts hooting.
(SOUNDBITE OF A BARRED OWL)
SHOGREN: Barred owls are aggressively territorial. If they hear an unknown bird, they'll try to intimidate it.
DILLER: Oop, one just buzzed us right there.
(SOUNDBITE OF A BARRED OWL)
DILLER: So there's the female right there. See her? She's looking right at us.
SHOGREN: A gorgeous owl perches on a branch nearby. Her light feathers glow in the moonlight.
DILLER: I think you can appreciate standing here how easy it would be - and when I say easy, technically easy or simple - to lethally remove that bird.
SHOGREN: More than 70 times, Diller has lifted a shot gun and killed a barred owl. Diller is a hunter, but he was taught never to kill a bird of prey or anything you didn't plan to eat. At first, someone else did the shooting but that felt hypocritical, so he started doing it himself. He remembers the first time.
DILLER: You know, I was so nervous about what I was doing and emotional, that I had to steady myself against a tree. And I hate it every time I go out and do it.
SHOGREN: The Federal Fish and Wildlife Service took seven years to wrestle with what do to about the invasion. Although it's illegal to shoot barred owls, the agency made an exception for Diller. It can't ignore the invasion because it's legally required to help rare species.
The agency even hired an ethicist, Clark University's Bill Lynn, to help wildlife experts resolve the dilemma.
BILL LYNN: People recognized there's a crisis for spotted owl that barred owls are part of the cause of the crisis. And so they reluctantly, essentially justified the experimental removal of barred owls.
SHOGREN: The Fish and Wildlife Service is starting a four-year experiment to kill up to 3600 barred owls in the Northwest. The advocacy group Friends of Animals is suing to stop the experiment. Its attorney Michael Harris says his group doesn't believe the government can make a moral argument for shooting an animal, even if it would benefit another animal.
MICHAEL HARRIS: To go in and say we're going to kill thousands and thousands of barred owls, literally forever, I don't see this as being a solution. At some point, you have to allow these species to either figure out a way to coexist or for nature to run its course.
DILLER: In this day and age that's an absurd thing to say.
SHOGREN: Diller says humans have altered nature so much already. He says people can and should fix the mess they've made. Where he's shot barred owls, spotted owls have come back. He says come on. I'll show you.
(SOUNDBITE OF A BARRED OWL RECORDING)
SHOGREN: We're on the bank of the Mad River and Diller plays a recording of a spotted owl hooting. He hears a distant response. from a real bird.
DILLER: Let's go up there.
SHOGREN: After a half-hour scramble through a forest dense with brush, we find a two spotted owls up high in the trees. Diller takes out a live white mouse and puts it on a branch.
(SOUNDBITE OF SQUEAKING)
DILLER: I do that squeaking to make a sound like a small mammal.
SHOGREN: One of the owls swoops down, grabs the mouse, carries it away.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
INTERVIEWER: Diller sees a red band with white polka dots on one of the birds. It tells him this is a spotted owl that returned after he shot barred owls nearby. For him, that's success.
DILLER: Probably what makes spotted owls so special is the fact that, as you just witnessed, they fly right up to you. You get to interact with them. It's almost impossible as a biologist not to fall in love with these birds.
SHOGREN: Diller hopes the public will see the value in saving this beautiful creature, even if it means shooting another one. The federal government says if spotted owls come back after barred owls are removed, it may decide to kill barred owls over a broader area.
Elizabeth Shogren, NPR News.
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Washington, D.C. is a pretty old city by American standards. It dates back to the late 18th century. Despite frequent facelifts, parts of it are wearing out - for example, its underground gas pipelines.
NPR's Christopher Joyce reports on new research that reveals thousands of natural gas leaks in the nation's capital.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY)
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: Washington, D.C. is a city in a constant state of reconstruction. That includes the streets, like the one I'm standing on, First Street Northeast, about a mile from the Capitol. Two blocks of asphalt have been opened up like a gutted fish. Somewhere in there, a gas pipeline has been leaking. It turns out a lot of old gas lines have been leaking here. Washington, as scientists have just discovered, is a pretty gassy city. And here's how the scientists found that out.
ROBERT JACKSON: We drove 1,500 road miles in Washington, D.C. and found about 6,000 leaks. That's roughly four leaks every mile.
JOYCE: Robert Jackson is an environmental scientist at Duke University. Four leaks a mile is even more than this team found in Boston, where they did the same thing - drive the streets with a special instrument that detects methane, that's natural gas. In fact, the average amount of gas lost to leaks in Washington is over twice the national average for cities. And not only were there more leaks...
JACKSON: But in Washington, D.C., the leaks were higher concentrations than anything we saw in Boston in a lot of cases.
JOYCE: In 12 cases, the gas concentration was potentially explosive. Jackson says he informed the local gas company about those early last year.
JACKSON: The really surprising thing was, when we went back four months later - after calling these leaks in - nine of the 12 hadn't been fixed. And that really shocked me.
JOYCE: The city's gas company, Washington Gas Light Company, declined an interview request about this study, which appears in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. In a written response, the company said it, quote, "immediately responds to every report of natural gas odor and repairs leaks seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year."
Jackson notes that leaks can be hard to trace. Sometimes whole blocks have to be investigated to find one leak. Also, one-third of Washington's gas mains are cast iron, old technology that's prone to leaks. Washington Gas is replacing many of these. But plugging leaks is like plugging holes in a dike.
DOUG JOHNSON: We have been plagued by a series of ongoing gas leaks.
JOYCE: Doug Johnson lives in an old neighborhood of Washington. Like much of the city, though, there's remodeling going on, lots of new construction and truck traffic. Johnson says gas company workers return over and over to fix leaks on his block. He always asks the foreman, what's going on?
JOHNSON: Basically these streets weren't really built to handle the large construction, the cranes. And he says, look, you know, the pipes are old, they're being put under enormous stress, that probably is your answer right there.
JOYCE: Besides the inconvenience and the cost, methane leaks contribute to global warming. Duke's Jackson is one of many scientists measuring how much comes from cities, industry, farms - wherever. But it's been hard to get consistent numbers.
JACKSON: The scientific community is still trying to figure out, you know, why those differences occur, and what the differences are in practices that might explain them.
JOYCE: Even within Washington, there was a lot of variation. One area that turned out to be fairly gas-free was the National Mall, with the White House at one end and Congress at the other. Science is full of surprises.
Christopher Joyce, NPR News.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. When it comes to the Winter Olympics and an athlete's chances of winning a medal, the odds favor speed skaters. That's because the sport is tied with cross country skiing for the most events, 12. As a result, a lot of energy has been spent trying to give U.S. skaters and edge and today, the sporting goods company Under Armour and defense contractor Lockheed Martin unveiled photos of a new speed skating suit.
As NPR's Ted Robbins reports, the suit hasn't even been used in a race yet, but the entire U.S. team will be wearing it in Sochi.
TED ROBBINS, BYLINE: The new suit has been kept so tightly under wraps that the sport's governing body, U.S. Speed Skating, wouldn't even allow it to be worn at the Olympic trials last month in Salt Lake.
KEVIN HALEY: They want to keep the technology a secret for as long as possible so there's less time for people to try and knock it off.
ROBBINS: Kevin Haley is VP of innovation at Under Armour. Under Armour and engineers from Lockheed Martin designed what they're calling the Mach 39. It's a dark clingy, full-body skin suit with a hood, same as any other speedskating suit. Unlike other suits, it's not made entirely of smooth, slippery fabric to reduce air drag.
Haley says wind tunnel tests showed it was faster to disrupt the air the way a golf ball is designed.
HALEY: We're putting little bumps or dimples onto the suit to disrupt the air in just the right places.
ROBBINS: Another key change seems obvious in retrospect.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: And flying in and he does get there.
ROBBINS: Ever notice the first thing most speedskaters do when they finish a race? They pull off the hood and unzip the suit. Sometimes they even leave it slightly unzipped during a race. Turns out it's not to show off their bodies. Well, maybe sometimes. Kevin Haley says it's because that zipper sticks racers right in the throat.
HALEY: It was just uncomfortable, the way the zipper hit them was just uncomfortable. Of course you unzip it, and you open up the suit to the wind and everything else, and the suit turns into a parachute.
ROBBINS: The zipper on the new suit runs diagonally across the chest. The suit also has an open mesh panel in the back to let out heat, that's new, along with now-common anti-friction fabric in the thighs. It's inevitable that the new speedskating suit will be compared with Speedo's full body laser swimsuit introduced in 2008.
Swimmers broke more than 100 world records in its first year. The swimsuit was eventually banned. Kevin Haley says skating suit designers scoured the rule book to avoid controversy.
HALEY: So if we're allowed to go 5 millimeters, you know, above the surface of the fabric with a given technology and no further, then we went 4, just to be safe.
ROBBINS: Olympic gold medalist and NBC speed skating commentator Dan Jansen thinks the new suit will be evolutionary, not revolutionary. Still, Jansen says even small improvements matter.
DAN JANSEN: When a race is decided by hundredths of a second, sometimes a thousandth and maybe you wouldn't know that's the difference but there's a good chance that that would be the difference.
ROBBINS: Under Armour says it took two years to perfect the new suit. The company isn't saying how much it spent. If it delivers in Sochi, it'll be great publicity. Dan Jansen says he'll certainly be talking about it on TV.
JANSEN: Because it's a story, because it's something, that little edge, that not only the American team's going for, but other teams as well.
ROBBINS: We won't know how much of an edge, if any, the Mach 39 provides until the Olympics begin. Whatever it is, for Sochi, only U.S. skaters will have it. Ted Robbins, NPR News.
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BALOJI: Are you ready to party with us?
CORNISH: And we're going to spend the next few minutes talking about a one-night music festival in New York that showcases artists from around the world. It's called globalFEST, and it's been happening for more than a decade. Over the years, it's become a place for American tastemakers to find new talent from Europe, Africa, Asia and beyond. Anastasia Tsioulcas from NPR Music was there Sunday for this year's globalFEST and joins me now to talk about some of the hottest acts. Hey there, Anastasia.
ANASTASIA TSIOULCAS, BYLINE: Hey, Audie.
CORNISH: This is really fun. Tell me what we're listening to.
TSIOULCAS: So this artist is Baloji, who's a Congolese-Belgian rapper and singer, and he mixes all kinds of old styles, like Congolese rumba and soukous, with hip-hop. And I bet that sounds really earnest and academic, Audie, but I can tell you it definitely isn't. This is party music just like Baloji says.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
TSIOULCAS: And you know, Audie, from the stage, Baloji said this isn't world music, this is our music. And he's mixing all these great sounds, but he's also bringing in kind of the soul and the swagger of James Brown almost. And he works so hard on stage, and I think you can hear it in this music. He started off the set wearing a very sharp suit jacket and big bowtie. And by the end of that set, he was in rolled-up shirt sleeves and sweating and dancing and really working this crowd. And believe me, he had them wrapped around his little finger.
CORNISH: You know, you're talking about mostly modern sounds, you know. You're talking about hip-hop and - I don't know, world music people tend to think of it as being more about traditional forms of music.
TSIOULCAS: Well, Audie, you're hitting on a really sore point for a lot of people. Even within what we call the world music community, nobody likes or is at all satisfied with calling any of this huge variety of sounds from around the world world music. You know, it smacks of all kinds of very loaded issues. People get accused of being cultural colonialists and it brings up questions of authenticity. And I think in people's imagination, anyway, world music kind of tends to mean fairly awful and gloppy, hippy-ish, world beat fusion, too.
(LAUGHTER)
TSIOULCAS: So let's just say that nobody likes calling this world music. Let's just leave it at that, please.
CORNISH: So then what's the deal with globalFEST and the bookers there? I mean, what are they looking for?
TSIOULCAS: So I think the simplest answer is that the bookers of globalFEST, who are three very respected curators and concert presenters based in New York, they're really looking for music that's rooted in a very specific time and place, whether that's Chinese folk music or African hip hop and regardless of what we think is authentic or not authentic. Because they - globalFEST organizers are very sensitive to all this baggage about the term world music that we were talking about.
And even when they include artists who very consciously mash up different genres, they choose those artists who do make these connections from a very particular point of view. And let's take a listen to one of those artists right now.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CORNISH: All right. Where to begin? What is this?
TSIOULCAS: So this is a band called The Bombay Royale from Melbourne, Australia. And they're a little bit shticky. They mix '60s surf rock with the sounds of Bollywood. And the whole band is kind of strenuously costumed. The three front leaders have nicknames like, there's the Skipper. He's wearing an outfit, and the Mysterious Lady and the Tiger. And it's all kind of, like, we're going to be wacky. So there's a kind of bit of even almost Village People element to their performances. And it's a little novelty-ish, but it is a load of fun.
CORNISH: All right. And while we're getting a better sense of the definition of what is and is not world music, does globalFEST include American artists?
TSIOULCAS: Actually, yes. You would not think so for a festival calling itself world music, but yeah, it definitely has come to include American artists. For example, this year's line up included a really great trio of gospel singers from Mississippi called the Como Mamas, as well as a band from Arizona called Sergio Mendoza y la Orkesta. And the Arizona band, they do a mash up of old-fashion mambo, like 1950s (unintelligible) stuff, and cumbia, which is that shuffling rhythm that's very popular now all over Latin America. And they bring in regional Mexican music and all sorts of things. Let's take a listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CORNISH: Anastasia, I love the energy on this one.
TSIOULCAS: Yeah. They are so hot. It's - the room was sweltering, not just heat-wise but just the sound that they are throwing off the stage.
CORNISH: Here's a thing, like, this music, cumbia, I've been hearing a lot about and, you know, I didn't hear about it through globalFEST. I mean, do we still need tastemakers to get us access to world music when we have the Internet?
TSIOULCAS: That's really a good point, Audie. But I think one really important element here is that a night like this lets everyone hear bands live. You know, it's so hard for artists to come to the U.S. in the first place, especially if they're a new act and no one's ever heard of them. And globalFEST is really their way in. You know, it's become extremely expensive for foreign artists to tour the U.S.
Like, there's been the issue of how much a dollar is worth to them, for starters. And after September 11th, it became very hard for a long time for foreign artists to get visas from the State Department to tour the U.S. And because our country is so big, it's hard for bands to even make enough money while they're here to make it worthwhile to them. They've got to fly here and then they've got to get between gigs.
So at globalFEST, after these sets, you actually see groups of bookers. Like, you'll see a couple of people from California and a couple of the Midwestern presenters and a few East Coast folks huddle together in the back corners of the room. And they're literally figuring out how to bunch up tour dates for the band they just heard and fell in love with and to make - how to make an American tour actually viable.
CORNISH: Now, Anastasia, before I let you go, I got to find out, are there any big trends on the horizons?
TSIOULCAS: I really think we're seeing a tip towards big, nearly theatrical acts. Let me take the band DakhaBrakha, for example. They're a group from Ukraine. And they're turned what they call Ukrainian folk punk into this pretty epic live show that involves a lot of fog machines and super-tall, furry black hats that, really, they should sell after the show...
(LAUGHTER)
TSIOULCAS: ...and some really, really fierce musicianship. And audiences just love it. And I really think we'll be seeing more and more of that kind of spectacle drawn into performances.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CORNISH: Well, Anastasia, this was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for bringing this music to us.
TSIOULCAS: So much fun, Audie. Thank you so much.
CORNISH: Anastasia Tsioulcas. You can hear a lot of the artists recorded live at globalFEST plus live concert, videos and some of those musicians at our website, npr.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
This is a big weekend coming up in the world of rodeo. At the State Fair Arena in Oklahoma City, it's time for IFR 44, the 44th annual International Finals Rodeo. It's the event that names the top professional riders, ropers and racers of 2013. Among the crowns to be awarded is the title of world's top cowgirl barrel racer. The contestant on track to win that one is just 16 years old. She's a West Virginia high school student.
And as NPR's Allison Keyes tells us, she juggles her education with her passion.
ALLISON KEYES, BYLINE: All that cheering is from the crowd watching the cowgirl barrel rider competition at last week's Salem, Virginia rodeo, the last one before the finals. Megan Yurko is psyched.
MEGAN YURKO: The thrill of it all is awesome.
KEYES: Yurko is small, just 4 feet 9...
YURKO: And a half.
KEYES: And she depends on her 1,200-pound filly, Beea, in the sport where the fastest rider around three barrels in a cloverleaf pattern wins.
KARL YURKO: First barrel's the money barrel.
KEYES: Yurko's father, Karl, is a veterinarian and, like his daughter, loves this sport.
YURKO: If the first barrel is good, the rest are going to be simple.
KEYES: But Megan Yurko's life is anything but simple. She's been barrel racing since she was 6 years old. She snowboards. She's on the swim team at Wheeling Central Catholic High School, and she's in school five days a week unless there's a weekend rodeo.
YURKO: I'm normally up at 5:00. I go feed the horses, take care of them, say good morning and all that stuff. And I've got to be at school by 7:30 - 7:30 to 2:00, I'm in school. And when 2:00 rolls around, I go home and I ride, and then I sit down with my tutor and do my homework.
KEYES: Add that to hauling Beea around in a trailer to rodeos. So when does she sleep?
YURKO: Never. You never sleep.
KEYES: But Yurko is making money. As a professional cowgirl barrel racer, she racked up just over 21,000 in winnings for the 2013 season. Are we buying shoes?
YURKO: No. We're buying horse stuff for my horse.
KEYES: That means gas, feed, boarding and entry fees and spa treatments for Beea that Dr. Karl Yurko says help a horse in a sport that's hard on their tendons.
YURKO: We have massage therapy for her. We have acupuncture therapy for her, laser therapy, ice therapy. I think if it's out there to make her feel better, protect her, we're looking at it.
KEYES: While champion riders like Megan Yurko labor to be their best, Bobby Row says cowgirl barrel racing had no standard rules until the 1950s.
BOBBY ROW: We'd hear about this barrel racing - what the heck is a barrel racing?
KEYES: Row is producer of the Salem Stampede Days Kroger Valleydale Rodeo and says the International Professional Rodeo Association didn't recognize cowgirl barrel racing as a world championship event until 1961. He notes that many on the IPRA's board had wives who barrel raced.
ROW: So they had a lot of pull - the wives did, you know, so...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Here's Megan Yurko, Wheeling, West Virginia, (unintelligible) and Beea.
KEYES: Finally Megan Yurko and Beea hurtled onto the clumped dirt in the arena for their turn.
YURKO: Come on, Megan.
KEYES: And her time?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: 14.9.
KEYES: Megan's dad, Karl Yurko, can hardly breathe.
YURKO: That's really good. That's smoking.
KEYES: But Megan gives all the credit to Beea and says they're going to have one heck of a ride in the finals this weekend in Oklahoma City. If she wins, Megan Yurko will officially be named the IPRA's 2013 world champion cowgirl barrel racer. Allison Keyes, NPR News.
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In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, near-daily incidents between Jewish settlers and Palestinians keep tensions at a constant simmer. Olive trees and grapevines are destroyed, tires are slashed, mosques are defaced. U.N. figures show that settlers are responsible for the vast majority of incidents and those have nearly quadrupled since 2006.
NPR's Emily Harris has this story of one unusual confrontation and its surprising resolution.
EMILY HARRIS, BYLINE: High on a hill in the West Bank, 23-year-old Pinahasi Baron helps build a house. He lives here in Esh Kodesh, a small community of Jewish families which was built without the approval of the Israeli government. Last week, Baron and more than a dozen other Israelis were trapped in a different half-built house across the valley on the edge of a Palestinian village.
Palestinians say the settlers had come to the village to destroy property. There had already been one relatively small confrontation that day.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHOUTING)
HARRIS: This time, Palestinians cornered the Israelis, an angry scene caught on video and later shown on TV. People had been hurt on both sides.
Pinahasi Baron.
PINAHASI BARON: (Through translator) I thought they were going to kill me. I thought about my wife and children. I thought about the hope that people will come and avenge our death.
HARRIS: Ziad Oday was there too. He and other leaders from the nearby Palestinian village of Qusra had rushed over when they heard what was going on.
ZIAD ODAY: (Through translator) We saw how the settlers' faces were bleeding, how they'd been beaten up by our young men. Our message to them was leave us alone. We don't want to kill you. We do want to show our strength.
HARRIS: Village council head Abdel Wadi said he and other Palestinian authorities put themselves physically between the cornered settlers and the angry crowd.
ABDEL WADI: (Through translator) We did not want to turn this event as a black day for both Palestine and Israel. We acted despite the fact that our citizens were extremely angry, and are always angry because their houses have been burned by settlers before, because their trees were uprooted.
HARRIS: The actions of the village leaders won grudging thanks from settler supporters. One conservative Israeli commentator said although he hated to admit it, many settler attacks on Palestinians are immoral and should be stopped.
Dani Dayan, the leader of a settler political group, agrees. He says an extremist fringe is hurting the settler movement overall.
DANI DAYAN: Not only does it not help our cause, it's the single most dangerous, most detrimental issue. The people that commit these things are both criminals and idiots.
HARRIS: But Gadi Zohar, a former Israeli military commander in the West Bank, says Dayan's group, the Yesha Council, and extremist young settlers share a political goal: stopping negotiations that could lead to a possible Palestinian state.
GADI ZOHAR: They do not want this process to succeed and they do not want to be evacuated, and so on. I don't think these youngsters are part of the Yesha Council policy or being directly supported. But the Yesha leadership is not active enough in order to try to stop these activities.
HARRIS: The settlers trapped in the half-built house were eventually turned over to Israeli troops. They maintain they were only out for a hike that day, but Israeli police later detained half a dozen, putting them under house arrest for five days for entering Palestinian areas and attempting to destroy property.
Pinahasi Baron was among those arrested. He says he will not be trapped by Palestinians again.
BARON: (Through translator) We lost this one, but it will never happen again. Maybe we'll walk with weapons to make sure they won't dare attack us again. We've made some decisions which I can't tell you about. But these scenes will not be seen again.
HARRIS: Several people in Qusra said their leaders did the right thing by saving the settlers. One young Palestinian man said he would have listened to the village council members if he had been part of the incident. But his feeling, he said, would have been to break the settlers' necks.
Emily Harris, NPR News, Jerusalem.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block. Imagine you've just secured a spot on the U.S. Olympic team heading to Sochi, and then you decide to give it up. Well, Tracy Barnes did just that. She surrendered her spot to her sister, Lanny.
The 31-year-old twins compete in biathlon, the sport that combines cross-country skiing and shooting. Lanny fell ill during selection races in Italy this past weekend, dashing her hopes of qualifying. She finished sixth, and only five would make the Olympic team. Tracy was fifth, so she qualified. And then she made a choice.
And both sisters join me to talk about that. Tracy Barnes is in New York. Hi, Tracy.
TRACY BARNES: Hi.
BLOCK: And her twin sister, Lanny, is on the line from Italy. Lanny, welcome.
LANNY BARNES: Thank you.
BLOCK: And Tracy, when you realized that you had made the Olympic team and that your twin sister, Lanny, hadn't, how long did it take you to decide that you would give up your spot?
TRACY BARNES: I think the decision came pretty quick for me. Although it's a very important decision, it was an easy one to make.
BLOCK: It was easy. Hmm. How did you tell Lanny that that was the decision you had made?
TRACY BARNES: I asked her if we could go on a walk. I told her my decision and she protested, you know, and then I told her my reasons and how important it was for me that she go. Yeah.
BLOCK: Hmm. Lanny, you did try to talk her out of it?
LANNY BARNES: Oh, definitely. Yeah. I've seen how hard she works and that she deserves a spot, and she had earned it. But she's been very adamant about this, and I know Tracy better than anybody, and I know this is what she wants. I just want to make Tracy happy.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: So you said, yeah, I'll go. Tracy, why did you - you said earlier this was the right thing to do. So what went into that calculation for you? Why was it the right thing to do?
TRACY BARNES: In some ways, I think of it as just transferring it. I'm still, in a way, going to Sochi. It's just I'm going through her.
BLOCK: Didn't some part of you, though, think - you know, I do want to go? Lanny's been in two Olympics before. I think you've been in one, Tracy. But hey, why not? Why shouldn't I go?
TRACY BARNES: Yeah. You know, I definitely would like the opportunity to go. There's no greater honor than representing your country in the Olympics. But giving her that opportunity is - it far outweighs going myself.
BLOCK: Tracy, do you consider Lanny to be the stronger athlete?
TRACY BARNES: Oh, for sure.
BLOCK: And Lanny, do you consider yourself - thinking objectively, if you can - that yeah, you really do have the better chance at Sochi than Tracy?
LANNY BARNES: You know, Tracy and I always have this false sense of each other. I always think she's better than me. And she always thinks I'm better than her. And I believe in Tracy, and she believes in me. And for her to do something like this, it gives me a lot more confidence in myself and knowing that I can do it.
BLOCK: It does seemed like one of those, you know, heart-warming, selfless Olympic stories that sort of embodies what the games are supposed to be all about. Maybe they don't always rise to that level, but that's the ideal.
TRACY BARNES: You know, a lot of people get wrapped up in winning gold and the fame of that. But I think the Olympics are about more than just competing. And you know, it's about bringing the whole world together and celebrating that. And so...
LANNY BARNES: Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, oftentimes, we get wrapped up in the medal count. That's what I love, that Tracy's story is able to be told because a lot of time, you don't hear stories like this.
BLOCK: Well, Tracy, will you be going to Sochi to cheer your sister on?
TRACY BARNES: I'm hoping to, for sure. Just figuring out if I can swing heading over there.
BLOCK: Lanny, would it be important for you to have Tracy there in Sochi?
LANNY BARNES: Oh, definitely. I'd love nothing better than to have her there because, you know, she's my source of inspiration, and she was there in Vancouver. Having her there, I always do better. When she's gone, it's almost like you're missing a part of yourself.
BLOCK: Well, Lanny and Tracy, thank you so much. And Lanny, best of luck at the Olympics.
LANNY BARNES: Oh, thank you. I'm really excited about it.
BLOCK: Tracy, thank you.
TRACY BARNES: Thanks.
BLOCK: Twin sisters Tracy and Lanny Barnes. Tracy gave up her spot on the U.S. Olympic biathlon team, so Lanny will be going to Sochi instead.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Scientists who study planets outside our solar system have long been hunting for Earth's twin. They want to find a small rocky planet just like our home because it would offer the right conditions for life as we know it. Well, now, a study suggests that other kinds of planets might offer even better conditions for life.
Here's NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: Scientists know of one planet that is definitely habitable: Earth. But Rene Heller says if you're interested in finding other habitable planets that might harbor alien life, you shouldn't assume that the best strategy is to look for another Earth. Worlds that seem very different might be even more suitable for life to emerge and evolve.
RENE HELLER: Maybe there is a population of, as we term them, superhabitable planets, which are even more likely than Earth-like planets to actually be inhabited.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Heller is an astrophysicist at McMaster University in Canada. He and a colleague have just published a new study in the journal Astrobiology that says we need to move beyond the idea that the Earth is the quintessential habitable planet. They list a bunch of features that could make a planet superhabitable. For example...
HELLER: These planets are likely more massive than Earth-like planets, and they will tend to be older than Earth.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: More massive means they'll probably have a better magnetic field to offer protection from radiation. Older means more time for life to take hold. And while the planet should have water, Heller says they wouldn't have one big deep ocean, but rather lots of shallow seas, because on Earth, shallow water is a fantastic place to live.
Rory Barnes is an astrobiologist at the University of Washington who uses computer models to explore the habitability of planets outside our solar system. He thinks the new report is a convincing list of the features that would make a planet an even more cozy home.
RORY BARNES: There are things about the Earth that we could improve upon. You know, we could imagine a world that would have more life on it or allow life to thrive for a longer period of time than our Earth.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: But being able to imagine that kind of world doesn't mean they can find it. So far, scientists have detected about a thousand planets orbiting other stars. Current technology usually can't reveal much, just a planet's size, density and how far it orbits from its host star.
BARNES: We have so little information that we can't really say that a planet is even habitable, which would mean maybe that it just has liquid water and no life. You know, we don't - we just can't get that information today.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: But Barnes says once scientists do have a list of planets that are potentially habitable, the ideas in this new report should help rank them in terms of the potential for life.
BARNES: And so it's sort of more forward-looking than I think what a lot of people are doing right now.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Still, he does have this word of caution. It could very well be that some planets have conditions or processes that are great for life but so alien to us that we'd never think of them.
Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
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Oscar nominations were announced this morning, and there were some surprises. Now, pre-nomination favorites for acting awards included Tom Hanks as the skipper of a commercial freighter in "Captain Phillips."
(SOUNDBITE FROM FILM "CAPTAIN PHILLIPS")
CORNISH: Emma Thompson as the author of "Mary Poppins" in "Saving Mr. Banks."
(SOUNDBITE FROM FILM "SAVING MR. BANKS")
CORNISH: Oprah Winfrey as the wife of the title character in "The Butler."
(SOUNDBITE FROM FILM "THE BUTLER")
CORNISH: And Robert Redford in a shipwrecked and largely wordless performance in "All Is Lost." So what do all these critically acclaimed performances now have in common? Not one of them was nominated. NPR movie critic Bob Mondello joins us now and Bob, let's go through the actual nominees for a few of the big awards. Who got nods?
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: OK. Well, let's start with Best Picture. There were nine nominees, and three of them are considered front-runners - "American Hustle" and "Gravity," each of which got 10 nominations; and "12 Years a Slave," with nine. The AIDS drama "Dallas Buyers Club," the piracy thriller "Captain Phillips" and the father-son comedy "Nebraska" all got six nominations each; followed by Martin Scorsese's "Wolf of Wall Street" and Spike Jones' computer romance "Her," with five; and the British drama "Philomena" rounded out that category with four nominations.
CORNISH: So lots of great choices there. But people are still focused on the snubs. What got left out?
MONDELLO: Well, a lot of people thought that the Coen Brothers' folk music story "Inside Llewyn Davis" would be a Best Picture contender, but it was barely mentioned. It did no better than "The Lone Ranger," and nobody liked that one. "Saving Mr. Banks" was also widely mentioned, though I didn't like it much. And personally, I'd love it if a foreign film like Iran's "The Past" got nominated.
If you look at the Oscars, you'd think that, you know, American pictures were the only thing in the world, and they really aren't.
CORNISH: All right. Well, let's talk about directors because while there are nine nominees for Best Picture, there are only five nominees for Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron, for "Gravity", Steve McQueen, for "12 Years A Slave"; Martin Scorsese, for "Wolf of Wall Street"; David O. Russell, for "American Hustle"; and Alexander Payne, for "Nebraska."
I mean, there's no nominations here for "Captain Phillips" or "Her" or "Dallas Buyers Club."
MONDELLO: I think the Academy voters might argue that those films are all dominated by performances, rather than directing flash. I have to say if I were an actor and got call from David O. Russell right now, I would take it. Last year, it was considered quite a hat trick when his "Silver Linings Playbook" got nominated in all four acting categories; first time that had happened in like, two decades. And now he's done the hat trick twice, two years in a row. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: The expression "hat trick" - which refers to achievements based on threes - is misused here.]
His "American Hustle" got nominated for Best Actor, Christian Bale; Best Actress, Amy Adams; Best Supporting Actor, Bradley Cooper; and Best Supporting Actress, Jennifer Lawrence. It's really impressive.
CORNISH: All right. But any other takeaways from the acting categories?
MONDELLO: Well, body sculpting matters for men. Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey both lost dozens of pounds for the AIDS drama "Dallas Buyers Club," and Christian Bale gained a couple of dozen for "American Hustle," and all of them got nominated.
Let's see. Oh, getting lost at sea doesn't seem to be a good career move.
(LAUGHTER)
MONDELLO: And getting lost in space is a good one. And just being Meryl Streep seems to be the best career move of all. "August: Osage County" marks her 18th nomination.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Now, were there any other categories that caught your eye?
MONDELLO: Yes, one man. Roger Deakins, who's been nominated 10 times for Best Cinematographer, got nominated again for "Prisoners," and for the 11th time he's going to lose because "Gravity" is going to mop up. But man, can this guy make darkness gleam. He shot "The Shawshank Redemption" and the James Bond film "Skyfall," and a whole bunch of those Coen brother movies. He's amazing.
CORNISH: All right, so now what happens? The Oscar telecast is still six weeks away, right? Sunday, March 2nd.
MONDELLO: That's right. There will presumably be fierce campaigning, much arguing about whether the based-on-reality films actually get reality right - as if that mattered. And then about five weeks from now, the 6,000 or so members of the Motion Picture Academy will vote and an awful lot of folks will have to learn to just - can I do a sound cue here? In the words of a nominee for Best Song...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LET IT GO")
IDINA MENZEL: (As Elsa) (Singing) Let it go. Let it go...
CORNISH: That's NPR's Bob Mondello. Bob, thanks so much.
MONDELLO: It's always a pleasure.
MENZEL: (As Elsa) (Singing) Let it go. Let it go. You'll never see me cry. Here I stand...
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block. The budget deal-making that's made its way through Congress has been hailed as a sign of bipartisan cooperation - extremely rare in Washington, but not everyone is happy. Veterans group have been protesting a cut to military pensions, a key part of the deal that saved $6 billion.
We'll hear in a moment why the Pentagon wants the cut. But first, NPR's Quil Lawrence spoke to veterans' organizations about why they say the deal breaks faith with those who serve.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: The number can seem small inside a trillion-dollar spending bill. It's a 1 percent cut to the cost-of-living increase for military pensions. But a retired master sergeant, for example, might lose more than $80,000 over his or her lifetime.
PAUL RIECKHOFF: It may not be a lot of money to a millionaire serving in Congress, but it's a lot of money to our veterans.
LAWRENCE: Paul Rieckhoff, with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, says politicians who say they support the troops have to show it.
RIECKHOFF: Now, the political finger-pointing has begun. You know, the Republicans will blame the Democrats; the Democrats will blame the Republicans. But the bottom line is, they both signed off on this. You know, people are being wounded and killed in Afghanistan right now, and this is the wrong message to send to them.
LAWRENCE: Pressure from vets already pushed a change to an early version of the deal. The current version doesn't hit disabled vets or family of fallen troops. So it targets about 1 in 5 veterans, people who served at least 20 years. Norb Ryan, president of the Military Officers Association of America, says these are the wrong people to single out after a decade of war.
NORB RYAN: They're the most experienced non-commissioned officers and officers that we've ever had in our armed forces. But they're at the 10-year point. They're exhausted; their families are exhausted. And they're wondering, is it worth it? What's pulling me to that 20-year point?
LAWRENCE: Twenty years - what's always done it, says Ryan, beyond patriotism, is the promise of excellent health and benefits - now in question. Ryan's worried once the budget is passed, it'll be nearly impossible to dial back the cuts. And politicians may have already done the election math, says Joe Grassey(ph) of the American Legion.
JOE GRASSEY: It's only 1 percent or less of the American people who served in the military. Politicians believe that they could survive any type of turbulence because it's a very small group. You know, I hate to be cynical, but maybe that's the situation.
LAWRENCE: Grassey says this may be a test to see if politicians can get away with crossing veterans. And if it works this time, who knows what veterans' benefit could be cut next?
Quil Lawrence, NPR News.
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NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman joins us now to talk about the Pentagon's view on cuts to military benefits. And Tom, we just heard from Quil that retirees feel the military is essentially breaking faith with those who served. But what do Pentagon leaders say to that?
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Well, Audie, I spoke with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Martin Dempsey earlier this week and I asked him about these pension cuts and here's what he had to say.
GENERAL MARTIN DEMPSEY: Look. I have one sacred obligation to the young men and women who serve and only one and that is that if I ask them on behalf of the president to go to places like Afghanistan or some other conflict, they must be the best trained, best equipped and best lead force on the planet. And I don't want to win, you know, five to four. I want to win 50 to nothing.
To do that, we've got to make the appropriate investments in training, readiness, leader development, modernization and manpower.
BOWMAN: So what he's saying is that these pay and benefits are crowding out everything else in his budget, money for training, better weapons, body armor and other equipment. And he said this will reach what he called a crisis beginning in the next decade.
CORNISH: So I'm getting the sense that this benefits debate is about more than just veterans. Is General Dempsey also talking about those still in uniform?
BOWMAN: Absolutely. And this cut in veterans' pensions is just the beginning. We're clearly talking about those in the military today who receive benefits, healthcare, education assistance, housing subsidies as well across the board.
CORNISH: So what does Pentagon actually plan to do? I mean, is it looking for more cuts to benefits?
BOWMAN: Well, General Dempsey wouldn't get specific. I asked him about that and he said, listen, the budget for next year hasn't been sent to Capitol Hill yet. It'll go up there in February. But he did say they're looking at things like smaller pay raises, for example, possibly higher enrollment fees for the military healthcare system called Tricare, and along those lines, maybe more co-pays or deductibles for healthcare as well.
And also things like housing allowances for active duty soldiers. They get, you know, a rolling amount of housing allowance depending on where you live. It could be higher in more urban areas as opposed to more rural areas. And that could also be trimmed, he said. Now, in all these areas, Dempsey said that's where the money is. And he also used the term slowing the growth of these programs so they become more manageable over time.
CORNISH: You know, Tom, in Congress there have been a lot of deficit hawks out there who have started to eye the military's budget much more aggressively. What are the prospects about getting any of these future benefits cuts through Congress?
BOWMAN: Well, they've tried this before the past couple of years. They've been unsuccessful. It's been known as dead on arrival on Capitol Hill. This is something a lot of lawmakers don't even want to touch. And one reason is, they don't want to break faith with the soldiers. That's the way they see it. And also, some of these veterans' service organizations are very strong at lobbying and they also see this as breaking faith with the soldiers.
So it's going to be very, very difficult, I think, to get through.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Tom, thank you.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
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Time now for your letters, and one correction. Last week, we reported on the Volcker Rule and its effect on community banks. Well, in our story, we mistakenly identified the president of Tioga State Bank as Richard Fisher. In fact, his name is Robert Fisher. Our apologies, Mr. Fisher.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Now to your letters.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ODE TO JOY")
BLOCK: On Tuesday, I spoke with Kerry Candaele who's turned his obsession with Beethoven's "Ninth" into a documentary film. It's called "Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony." In it, Candaele tracks the "Ninth's" influence around the world, from Japan to China to Chile, where it became an anthem of solidarity. Women would sing it over prison walls to those who were inside being tortured.
Eric McDowell of Bellevue, Wash., writes this: I had just finished an eight-hour workshop on the things that divide us - racism, hatred and prejudice, to name a few. I got in my car to drive home, exhausted after such an intense day. As I turned on the radio to NPR, I heard the story on Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" and was immediately moved and refreshed. It was wonderful to be reminded that despite our differences, despite all obstacles, music and beauty can unite us.
CORNISH: Betty Modin of Oakridge, Ore., was also touched by our story. After humming "Ode to Joy" while doing a few chores, she says she felt compelled to look up the words in the music her choir uses.
She writes: The last verse in the translation we use says it all: Mortals, join the mighty chorus which the morning stars began. Love divine is reigning o'er us, binding all within its span. Ever singing, march we onward, victors in the midst of strife. Joyful music lead us sunward, in the triumph song of life.
BLOCK: Thanks to all who wrote in, and please keep your letters coming. You can go to NPR.org and click on Contact at the very bottom of the page.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ODE TO JOY")
CORNISH: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Inhumane, dangerous, like dancing in a frying pan, those are just some of the ways players at the Australian Open are describing the stifling heat plaguing the tennis tournament with temperatures on court topping a ridiculous 120 degrees. Players have passed out, vomited, complained of blurred vision as they try to carry on in a virtual blast furnace. Nearly 1,000 fans have been treated for heat exhaustion and yet the tournament goes on.
Jon Wertheim is in Melbourne covering the open for Sports Illustrated. Hey, Jon.
JON WERTHEIM: Hi, Melissa.
BLOCK: And describe the scene there as players are trying to get through these matches in this 120 degree heat.
WERTHEIM: This has really taxed our capacity for metaphors. You mentioned blast furnace, it's a kiln, it's an oven. I think I wrote that this was a heat wave masquerading as a sporting event. But these jokes that came the first few days have really gotten increasingly less funny, as these conditions have persisted.
BLOCK: I've seen reports of water bottles melting, shoes sticking to the surface.
WERTHEIM: Yeah, exactly. I mean it's all like one big science experiment. And yet the matches of continued.
BLOCK: Well, what's the explanation for that? Because they do have what's called an extreme heat policy at the Australian Open? I'm not sure, if 120 degrees isn't extreme heat, what exactly is?
WERTHEIM: Yeah, and players have asked that very question: Why you that this policy if you're not going to invoke it when it's, you know, 108 degrees outside. And, you know, I mean cynically there are commercial pressures to finish these matches, and let fans come in and pay for tickets and buy food.
I think there's something a little cultural going on. A local reporter said it's all the sort of survive the outback, survive these extreme conditions. But, you know, the organizers have said: Look, it's not as hot as you might think. These are well-conditioned athletes. And my response to that is, first of all, this has veered into dangerous when these well-conditioned athletes are suffering heat stroke.
But also, it's not just the athletes. There are fans. There are, you know, nine, 10, 11-year-old ball kids running around. There are officials. I mean they did invoke this policy for the first time, you know, Thursday local time. But to me, that was three days too late.
BLOCK: They invoked it and suspended play for a stretch, right?
WERTHEIM: Exactly, and that meant that the outdoor courts play stopped. And on the two main courts they close the roofs. And I think that's significant. I think there was a little bit of reluctance there for the competitive imbalance. If you've played a match in basically in an air-condition and I've been flogging it out in 110 degree heat, when we play in the subsequent rounds you probably have an advantage. And I think that's part of the reluctance.
But again, you'd walk by court to court and one player would have a necklace of ice and the other would be flat on his back. And the other would be woozy like a boxer. And you just sort of said why are we doing this?
BLOCK: And is the heat affecting all the players equally? Or do some seem to be better able to handle it than others?
WERTHEIM: Yes, some seem better able to handle than others. And I think there is this minority of players that says look, I trained and this is where my training comes in to play, and this is competitive sport. No question, some players are getting through this better than others. And what we see - one of tennis's great virtues is that there's no clock, there's no time. But it really makes a huge amount of difference if you can finish your match in two hours versus four. That will pay dividends in the latter rounds. I mean there really is a sort of element of get off the court quickly this week.
BLOCK: Jon, are you seeing fewer fans at the tournament because it is just so hot, they just can't stand it, they're staying home?
WERTHEIM: Yeah, unlike the U.S., they count attendance here by fans through the turnstiles and not just paid tickets, which is probably more honest. And the crowds are down fairly dramatically. This is a very, very popular event. Last year, for the Tuesday session, for example, there were almost 50,000 people. This year for that identical session, there were about 35. So I mean that's a 30 percent.
I mean attendance has fallen off dramatically to which I say: The fact that 35,000 people were willing to sit out and watch tennis in the circumstances is pretty remarkable.
BLOCK: Jon Wertheim with Sports Illustrated, covering the Australian Open, or oven, in Melbourne. Jon, thanks so much.
WERTHEIM: Thanks, Melissa.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Water officials in West Virginia are gradually lifting do not use orders for customers, after last week's chemical spill into the Elk River. But late yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control advised pregnant women not to drink the tap water still, out of an abundance of caution.
A lot of what's been revealed about this spill has come through the reporting of Ken Ward, Jr., who covers coal and the environment for the Charleston Gazette. State environmental inspectors told him when they went to the storage facility of Freedom Industries they found a 400 square foot pool of liquid several inches deep. And inside that pool...
KEN WARD, JR.: The word they used was an up-swelling of some of the chemical. And I said what are you talking about? And they said: Well, kind of like an artesian well. And I said so it's like you had this little fountain of chemical coming up. And they said yes.
BLOCK: Ken Ward, Jr. says that pool was in spilling out of the facility and ultimately into the Elk River.
JR.: This facility is kind of a nexus where a bunch of different laws intersect. Federal emergency planning laws for this sort of thing apparently don't apply to this facility because it's not listed by the federal Department of Transportation as a hazardous material. So local emergency planners never looked at it to figure out, you know, what to do about something like this. The state emergency planners never looked at it because of that.
There's also federal laws that require utilities and water regulatory agencies to consider threats to drinking water sources. There's no evidence that anybody ever day that. I mean what you have here was a major regional drinking water plant that was very close to a facility storing significant quantities of toxic materials. And everybody knew it was there but nobody ever did anything about it.
BLOCK: The chemical that we're talking about here is MCHM. Ken, remind us what it's used for.
JR.: It's a chemical that's used in the process of cleaning impurities from coal so the coal can be shipped to power plants.
BLOCK: You know, I talked with the mayor of Charleston, Danny Jones, of the program earlier this week. And he described this company, Freedom Industries, as, in his words a small group of renegades, indicating that this company was, you know, a bad apple, an aberration.
Based on the reporting you've done, does what we're seeing here with Freedom Industries point to a far broader question of industry in West Virginia, how it's regulated and what's known?
JR.: Well, I think there certainly is a far broader problem than one set of what the mayor calls renegades. Because certainly, you know, there have been plenty of major accidents here that involve companies that were hardly smalltime renegades. You know, the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, Massey Energy was a significantly-sized coal company.
So I think, you know, there's a misconception that the public has and certainly it is fostered by business and industry that, you know, these government inspectors are bunch of jackbooted thugs that are knocking down the doors of factories to shut down jobs. When the fact is that most industrial facilities in this country will never ever see an OSHA inspector, will never ever see an EPA inspector.
One of the few industries in this country where inspections are actually mandated is the coal industry. The government has to do them. Congress has never mandated that every chemical plant be inspected by the EPA. And I think that probably citizens think that is what happens, but it's not. And that's how you end out with a situation like this.
BLOCK: What is still not known? What are the main unanswered questions about this spill for you?
JR.: The major unknown is what exactly is this stuff and at what level will it hurt us and our children? And how long is it going to take it to get it out of our systems? I mean there's an influx of people to emergency rooms. And we had one local doctor expressing serious concerns about the sorts of symptoms that she was seeing. And the Centers for Disease Control and the EPA need to answer some questions about that.
And I think the other thing that really needs to be known is how much of it got into the soil and how long is it going to be there? And how long is that going to take to clean up.
Now, Randy Hoffman, who's the secretary of the State Department of Environmental Protection here, promised yesterday in an interview with me that there was no way they were going to stop cleanup efforts at that site, or allow the cleanup efforts to be stopped until there was 100 percent certainty, that no more of this was ever going to get in the Elk River. And I said, well, how long is that going to take? And he said, well, that's the multimillion dollar question, isn't it?
BLOCK: Ken Ward, Jr. with the Charleston Gazette. Ken, thanks very much
JR.: Thank you.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
The Los Angeles duo, Lucky Diaz and the Family Jazz Band, is a kids' music act with a prestigious reputation. They've won plenty of praise from the critics and they were the first Americans to win a Latin Grammy in the Children's Album category. Our kids' music reviewer Stefan Shepherd says their latest album comes in the form of a radio variety show.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
STEFAN SHEPHERD, BYLINE: Lucky Diaz is a troubadour from Los Angeles. Alicia Gaddis, his wife and partner is his Family Jam Band, is a comedienne and author. Together they share a fondness for catchy pop songs and silly words such as "Thingamajig."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SHEPHERD: That's from their fifth album "Lishy Lou and Lucky Too," on which the duo brings a playful attitude to the foreground. The album, structured around the Lishy and Lucky radio show is set in the time of transition to TV so it's filled with corny jokes and sketches.
: Hey, Lishy, how are you?
ALICIA GADDIS: I'm great, Lucky. I learned a new joke.
: Let's hear it.
GADDIS: Did you know that your shoes have a favorite unit of measurement?
: No, I didn't. What's their favorite unit of measurement?
GADDIS: Feet.
SHEPHERD: But to my ears, the true stars are songs like "Duck Ellington," that burst with energy.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SHEPHERD: Set aside the sad puns and the canned radio laughter of the sketches. At its heart, this is an album celebrating people like Jackie Robinson and Amelia Earhart who worked hard and took risks chasing their dreams.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SHEPHERD: Diaz and Gaddis have been flying especially high themselves lately, attempting to scale even greater heights. Dreaming big is scary, but this couple has shown they're not afraid to reinvent their sound.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BLOCK: Stefan Shepherd reviewed "Lishy Lou and Lucky Too" by Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band. Stefan writes about kids' music at Zoogloggle.com.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
And I'm Audie Cornish.
It's been more than seven months now since Edward Snowden shared top-secret NSA documents with the media and the world. Since then, a debate has raged about how the U.S. gathers intelligence and whether it's been invading Americans' privacy, for instance, by collecting records of their phone calls. Well, tomorrow, President Obama will officially weigh in with changes he'll make to the way the NSA does business.
And some of those changes may come from a report released last month by a blue-ribbon panel created by the president. To help set the stage for tomorrow's announcement, we're joined by Richard Clarke. He's one of the five members on that presidential panel and a longtime counterterrorism and cyber security expert. Welcome to the program.
RICHARD CLARKE: Good to be with you again.
CORNISH: So the task force actually issued some 46 recommendations. Now, it's a long list, but I was hoping you might be able to explain the two you consider most important.
CLARKE: Well, I think the two are the so-called section 215 program, in which the government has acquired every record of every phone call made in the United States and put it in government storage facilities and can then look at that to and from information.
CORNISH: So it's not just the collecting. It's the collecting and holding on to it, building a database.
CLARKE: Collecting, holding on to it and looking at it without any outside review. That's the first one. The second one is what's called a national security letter under which the FBI can, without any outside supervision, issue a subpoena and go and get records from phone companies, Internet companies and banks only on the grounds that it's interesting to them, only on the grounds that it's relevant to an investigation. We think both of those search requirements should have search warrants, court orders and outside review.
CORNISH: Now, I want to talk about one of those in particular, this recommendation that phone companies or some third party instead store those phone logs, those records that we discussed that the NSA currently keeps for itself. But The Washington Post spoke earlier this week with one phone company executive who said of the NSA: If they call us at 3:00 in the morning and say we've got a big issue and we need something in an hour, we couldn't do that. But if they say give it to us in the next two weeks, we could probably do that. Now, what do you say an analyst at the NSA who's arguing, I don't have two weeks?
CLARKE: Well, the phone companies are putting up a lot of red herrings because the phone companies don't want to do anything other than what they're already doing. We know and the phone companies do, too, in truth, that it's technologically possible to allow a direct feed into their databases and to acquire the information without waking anybody up at 3:00 in the morning and to acquire that information immediately. It's sitting in phone company databases today.
CORNISH: Richard Clarke, this report also found that the collection of phone records had no impact on preventing acts of terrorism. If so, why collect the metadata at all? There are obviously several members of Congress who say we should end this program altogether.
CLARKE: Well, I think, Audie, there's a difference between the efficacy of the program - does it work, has it worked in the past - and the appropriateness of the program. We really made our recommendation on the basis of the appropriateness. We don't think it's appropriate for the government to keep in government databases a record of every phone call everybody ever makes and be able to look at those records without judicial review.
As to the efficacy, what we found was just simply factual, that there was not a case where the phone metadata program was essential to stopping a terrorist attack. It could be in the future. It just hasn't been so far.
CORNISH: But I guess most Americans are hearing you say that it's not essential to date...
CLARKE: Has not been.
CORNISH: ...and then, at the same time, that there's still some value in keeping it. I mean, explain.
CLARKE: It has not been essential to date. I mean, has your burglar alarm gone off before? No, but you still might have a burglar alarm.
CORNISH: Going forward, as the president is about to weigh in and say what he wants to do with the NSA, what would you like to hear from him?
CLARKE: Well, I'd like to hear him accept all 46 of our recommendations.
(LAUGHTER)
CORNISH: That's a long list, though.
CLARKE: It's a long list, but it's not an unreasonable list. We believe essentially two things here: that you can secure the United States as well as we are today and still protect civil liberties and privacy rights. And right now we're not doing a good job of that balance. But we think it is possible. Secondly, we think that - God forbid, there were to be another 9/11, given the technology that exists today, we could create a police surveillance state.
So we think now, while we are in a period of calm, we should put in place more roadblocks so that some future Congress and some future president would not have an easy time creating a police surveillance state with that technology.
CORNISH: Richard Clarke is a member of President Obama's intelligence review group. He previously served as a top counterterrorism adviser in the Clinton and both Bush administrations. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
CLARKE: Thank you, Audie.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
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Close to 200 leaders from colleges, universities and organizations dedicated to higher education went to the White House today. They all met with President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama. They were there to discuss how to raise the number of low-income students who attend college. No more than half of low-income high school graduates apply, so the president has asked the first lady to spearhead a national effort.
As NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports, the idea is to encourage selective colleges to admit and graduate more poor students.
CLAUDIO SANCHEZ, BYLINE: President Obama opened the meeting laughing, joking, then pointing out more seriously...
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We want to restore the essential promise of opportunity and upward mobility that's at the heart of America.
SANCHEZ: To that end, the president said, young people, low-income students in particular, must have access to a college education. He was preaching to the choir; after all, every institution and organization present had to show up with a plan to help needy students into college.
Eric W. Kaler, president of the University of Minnesota, promised to offer more financial aid and advice to kids from poor communities. Admitting these students, says Kaler, doesn't mean you have to lower your standards.
ERIC W. KALER: I'm proud of the fact that we don't accept students at the University of Minnesota who we don't project to succeed. We look for the potential.
SANCHEZ: Nonprofit groups say they're ready to help more students navigate the Byzantine college application and financial aid process. Jim McCorkel, president of College Possible, submitted a plan to reach out to 20,000 students in Nebraska, Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota and soon Pennsylvania.
JIM MCCORKEL: But one of the big issues that the Obama administration is highlighting, and its a big problem for America, is what's called undermatching, where low income students, instead of going to a four-year college or a school that would be a good academic fit for them, they just go to the local community college. Sometimes that's the right fit but many times it's not.
SANCHEZ: The only governor in attendance was Delaware's Jack Markell, a Democrat. He says enrolling more low-income students in public institutions is a costly proposition, given the huge cuts in state funding for higher education in recent years. But the nation's economy, says Markell, cannot afford to lose bright young people just because they're poor. He says his plan, in partnership with the college board and several Ivy League schools, is already helping a thousand of these students get into college.
GOVERNOR JACK MARKELL: They're low income students who are probably not going to apply absent our intervention.
SANCHEZ: But there are two big problems that hit these kids especially hard, says Jim McCorkel, president of College Possible: spiraling tuition cost and student debt.
MCCORKEL: When you look at the average student loan debt in America, it's approaching $30,000, so something has got to be done. The question is what's driving tuition up at a rate so much greater than inflation?
SANCHEZ: People in attendance say everybody tip-toed around that question during the long-day panel discussions. Administration officials insisted on discussing college access, saying that the administration is tackling the college cost issue separately.
Claudio Sanchez, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
We're going to hear now about one big race in the upcoming 2014 election cycle. Republicans need to pick up six seats to capture the Senate. They hadn't been counting on Virginia, where a popular incumbent senator, Democrat Mark Warner, is up for re-election. But Republicans there suddenly have a candidate they think can beat Warner.
Today in a Web-only video, Ed Gillespie announced his candidacy. He's a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and top White House aide to President George W. Bush. Gillespie said today that he wants to help Virginia's middle class and change policies to improve the lives of working families.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)
BLOCK: NPR national political correspondent Don Gonyea has the story of this Washington heavy-hitter who has never run for public office.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: The Virginia U.S. Senate contest has long been considered in the safe category for Democrats. Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac poll says incumbent Senator Warner's voter approval rating topped 60 percent. He's a very well-liked senator. Before that, he was a very popular governor.
PETER BROWN: There are not a lot of incumbents in the country who have his job approval rating and his financial resources.
GONYEA: But, Brown says, Republican Ed Gillespie sees an opening.
BROWN: What's really going on here is a bet by Mr. Gillespie that this will be a big Republican year and that in that kind of environment, Democrats who were thought to be safe aren't so safe.
GONYEA: Meanwhile, the University of Virginia's Larry Sabato sees Gillespie's entry into the race this way.
LARRY SABATO: Oh, he is a heavy underdog. At the same time, his is a serious candidacy, certainly more serious than Mark Warner had ever expected to face.
GONYEA: Ed Gillespie started working in national politics for the Republican National Committee almost 30 years ago while still in his early 20s. He eventually became chairman of the RNC. He built up a huge rolodex along the way. He's worked on presidential campaigns and in the White House. The general public may know him best from his many appearances on TV.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FOX NEWS SUNDAY")
GONYEA: And don't overlook Gillespie's ability to raise money. He's been a highly successful lobbyist. He joined with Karl Rove to create the superPAC known as Crossroads GPS. Sabato says there'll be no surprise when it comes to the campaign's message.
SABATO: Gillespie's target will be Obama and Obamacare. And, of course, Warner has voted with Obama the vast majority of the time, and he voted for Obamacare. After all, all the Democrats did.
GONYEA: The Warner campaign, meanwhile, is still hiring staff and hasn't yet started running ads or doing big campaign-related events. The incumbent will play up his credentials as a Democratic moderate. It's an image that plays well in the battleground state of Virginia. Here he is in an interview on local radio WTOP.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO INTERVIEW)
GONYEA: And look for Democrats to hit Gillespie hard for being a lobbyist and political insider. Already, the Warner campaign has sent out email fundraising pitches showing photos of Gillespie and Karl Rove, laughing and sharing a joke. Again, Larry Sabato.
SABATO: You could be certain that Mark Warner has already spent a great deal of money on opposition research.
GONYEA: Ed Gillespie's uphill campaign begins today in a Senate race that's now going to get a lot more attention than anyone expected.
Don Gonyea, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Rachel Joyce burst onto the literary scene two years ago with a widely acclaimed novel, "The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry" was nominated for Britain's Man Booker Prize. This month, Joyce has a new novel out. Reviewer Ellah Allfrey doesn't think this one holds up to close scrutiny.
ELLAH ALLFREY, BYLINE: It's 1972, when we meet Byron Hemmings. He's an English school boy living in the country with his mother and sister. Byron's father works in the City and only comes home to see his family at the weekends. He pays for the big house, his wife's Jaguar and private schools, but in reality, he's just a visitor in their lives. And it doesn't take long to see that that might be for the best. They don't seem like a happy family.
The story begins during a Leap Year, when Byron's best friend tells him that two extra seconds will be added to the clock. Byron becomes obsessed with this wrinkle in time and the danger he thinks it poses. And, of course, his worst fears are confirmed when on the way to school, his mother takes a route forbidden by her husband and there's an accident.
From then on, everything is out of kilter and the lives of all these characters begin to unravel. This is Rachel Joyce's second book and the structure is ambitious. She tells a 1970 story of Bryon and at the same time, she introduces us to present day Jim. He's a supermarket worker in his 50s trying his best to cope after decades in institutional care.
He has no friends or family and he lives in a broken down camper-van. But even though the descriptions of Jim are stark and affecting, in the end, the novel is made up of two separate and unequal parts. The story of Byron and his family is less (unintelligible) structured than the modern sections and at times, the book seemed to lack cohesion.
There might be just too much going on. Hints that Byron's mother was rescued from a disreputable past, the snobbery of the local middle class housewives, the emotional distance of the father along with issues of class tension, races and domestic subjugation of women and the general critique of society, it was hard to know where to focus my attention.
As the summer passes, Byron's mother gets caught up in a doomed attempt to salvage the order and routine of their lives. But slowly, Byron begins to see that there will be no redemption for this family. Thankfully, Joyce allows us to hold out some hope for Jim. He eventually does form a meaningful friendship with a woman named Eileen.
Even with its flaws, this is a book populated by characters trying their best to find a place in the world. And while Joyce only succeeds in part, there is pleasure in witnessing Jim's grim determination to conquer the demons of his past, and to claim love, home and happiness for himself at last.
BLOCK: The book is "Perfect" by Rachel Joyce. It was reviewed for us by editor and critic, Ellah Allfrey.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
China is home to the world's largest car market and it added nearly 18 million drivers just last year. But getting a license isn't easy. There's a practical test and a written one where a passing grade is 90 percent. Oh, and foreigners get translated questions, which they often find incomprehensible. NPR's Frank Langfitt recently took the written test several times and filed this postcard from Shanghai.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: So I'm here at the Shanghai traffic bureau. I'm about to go in and take the test. And I can tell you, this is actually a really, really hard test because I failed it the first time. It's chosen from over 900 questions. You have to do 100 questions. And I'm going to hope that this time I pass. It took me 20 minutes to finish this time. I felt confident. I shouldn't have.
So I failed again. I did improve. The first time I got a 77 out of 100. This time I got an 86, which anywhere else would be a solid B, but not on the Chinese driving test.
What makes the test so hard? First, you have to memorize a ton of information. Consider this yes or no question. Reading verbatim: If a motorized vehicle driver has cause a major traffic accident in violation of the traffic regulations, which has caused human death due to his escaping, the driver is subject to a prison term of three years to seven years.
The answer, it turns out, is no. What's the actual prison term? I have no idea. The second reason the test is tough for foreigners is this.
HUGO ILLOA: It's impossible to understand what they're trying to say.
LANGFITT: Hugo Illoa is an international trader from Chile. We met after he'd failed the test for the second time.
ILLOA: I've been studying for two days already.
LANGFITT: How many hours, do you think?
ILLOA: It was like, last night, it was three hours and I still cannot pass this. I'm getting really frustrated.
LANGFITT: Foreigners do appreciate that officials here offer an English version of the test, but they find some of the translations a hard slog like this one: When there's a diversion traffic control on the expressway, a driver can stop by the side to wait instead of leaving out of the expressway for continually running after the traffic control.
I don't know what that means, but under Chinese law, apparently you can't do it.
JEFFREY KELSCH: My name is Jeffrey Kelsch. I run a marketing research firm here in Shanghai.
LANGFITT: Kelsch tried for his license last year so he could drive out of town with his dog for trips. Kelsch failed the first two times.
KELSCH: Then, I took it the third time and I actually did worse. So at this point, I decided, OK. I'm giving up on this. I did worse than my second score, which was like a - I think it was like an 83 or an 84.
WEI QIU: For Chinese people, it's just another exam and Chinese people are good at exams.
LANGFITT: Wei Qiu, a Chinese TV producer in Beijing, passed the written test on her first try. She says the format is much easier for Chinese people, because they were raised in an education system that emphasizes memorization. But Wei doubts the test produces better drivers.
QIU: Because the test is so complicated, it kind of undermines the purpose of (unintelligible) test. You know, after the test, I pretty much forget everything. So if you now asked me a question now about a traffic rule, I still couldn't quite answer you.
VIRGIL ADAMS: I didn't study. I didn't do anything. I've been driving for more than 30 years.
LANGFITT: Virgil Adams works as a financial manager in Jiangshu Province outside of Shanghai. Unlike other foreigners who approached the test with dread, Adams knew he would pass the first time. That's because he hired a Chinese agent to fix the results.
ADAMS: I sat down at the terminal and I started taking the test. At the end of the test, as per my agent's instructions, I did not submit my answers. I stood up and walked out of the testing room. My best guess is that probably my agent walked in, sat down at my seat, reviewed my answers and corrected any wrong ones.
LANGFITT: Paying people to take your driver's test is common in smaller cities here. That may explain why, as recently as 2011, China had a similar number of drivers as the U.S. but nearly twice as many traffic deaths. As for me, I finally passed the test. On the fourth try I got a 93. Afterwards, a police officer at the testing center who was getting to know me pretty well, came over and shook my hand. Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Shanghai.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
And I'm Audie Cornish.
The U.S. spends billions of dollars each year subsidizing American farmers. But did you know the federal government also subsidizes farmers in another country? The U.S. sends cotton producers in Brazil $150 million a year.
Chana Joffe-Walt of our Planet Money team reports on the fight that led to this strange deal and explains why those payments to Brazil just stopped.
CHANA JOFFE-WALT, BYLINE: The whole thing started with an energetic Brazilian with a bushy black mustache named Pedro Camargo. In 2002, Pedro had a job with the ministry of agriculture. And like any project you or I take on at work one day, Pedro did not know this was the one that would end up sticking to him, haunting him, defining his career. Back then, it was just something that annoyed him.
The United States, depending on the year, pays half a billion to $4 billion to American cotton farmers. Brazil, Pedro notes, also has cotton farmers and they like to make money, too.
PEDRO CAMARGO: We want to compete farmer against farmer, and not Brazilian farmer and the American farmer with the help of the United States government. That's not only is not fair, it's not following the rules.
JOFFE-WALT: The World Trade Organization rules, a set of agreements that govern global trade. Back in 2002, Pedro went to the WTO with his complaint, argued the U.S. was illegally subsidizing cotton and Pedro won. But the U.S. appealed the decision, the U.S. lost, appealed again, lost again.
CAMARGO: We win appeal and we win appeal. And it's - and the United States would ignore, completely ignore.
JOFFE-WALT: Brazil threatened to retaliate with trade sanctions if the U.S. didn't stop subsidizing cotton. And finally, in 2010, U.S. representatives made Brazil an unusual offer. They said, look, it's up to Congress to get rid of subsidies. And at the moment, that's not going to happen, maybe in the next Farm Bill. How about until then, until the next Farm Bill passes, we pay you guys, give you some money.
CAMARGO: And I said, well, I don't want the - how do you say? I don't want a tip. No tips, I want the solution.
JOFFE-WALT: But then the Americans offered a number: $147 million a year. And this changed things for Pedro.
CAMARGO: $150 million is not a tip. Maybe it's a bribe. But it's not a tip. It's a lot of money. For Brazilian farmers, it's a lot of money.
JOFFE-WALT: Pedro wanted the cotton subsidies gone. But back in 2010, he was sounding pretty upbeat.
CAMARGO: Oh, we didn't win but we got compensated to wait because we still expect to win. I think maybe we'll win. And waiting with $150 million in the pocket helps.
JOFFE-WALT: OK. Just to review up to this point, the U.S. was found to be illegally subsidizing U.S. cotton farmers. The U.S. is still subsidizing American cotton farmers. In addition, for more than three years, the U.S. has also been subsidizing Brazilian cotton farmers. Every month, at the end of the month, the U.S. sends money to a man named Haroldo Cunha, president of the now-3-year-old Brazilian Cotton Institute.
HAROLDO CUNHA: Yes. Every month, it was normal. The amount transferred was $12,275,000.
JOFFE-WALT: But then, last October...
CUNHA: Nobody called. We just looked at the bank account and then we realized that no payment was done.
JOFFE-WALT: Zero.
CUNHA: This October, zero, yes. October, November, December, we are already three months with no transfers.
SECRETARY TOM VILSACK: Well, that's not quite accurate.
JOFFE-WALT: That is U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, the man who, for the last three years, has overseen the transfer of nearly half a billion dollars to the Brazilian Cotton Institute. And Vilsack says he did warn the Brazilians last summer that come fall, he would no longer have funds to send every month.
VILSACK: Basically what happened was it was previously included in president's budgets for a couple of years. It wasn't included in this president's budget because Congress had indicated a desire and belief that they were going to get a Farm Bill passed.
JOFFE-WALT: But Congress did not get a Farm Bill passed in October or November or December. And unfortunately for the Brazilians, people in the United States who want the Farm Bill to pass find it helpful to have a bunch of angry Brazilians threatening trade retaliation unless Congress gets the Farm Bill passed.
For Pedro Camargo, this is no longer his battle but he can't stop checking the news on his computer.
CAMARGO: Why are we still talking about cotton? It's a long time, 11 years. I have five grandchildren. I don't want to talk about cotton anymore. It's just too much time.
JOFFE-WALT: Eventually, a Farm Bill will pass. The Brazilians were paid to wait for the Farm Bill with the promise that it would finally deal with their complaint and U.S. cotton subsidies. But actually, a lot of Brazilian trade representatives who have looked at current versions of the bill say the subsidies are still in there, just disguised under a different name. If they still feel that way when the bill passes, they're going to take the whole thing back to the WTO, start the entire process all over again. Chana Joffe-Walt, NPR News.
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From NPR News, it's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
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And I'm Audie Cornish.
Richard Powers has been challenging readers for 30 years. Over the decades, his novels have regularly featured science and technology. In his latest novel, he revisits the ties between science and music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PROVERB")
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Singing) How small a thought it takes...
CORNISH: This minimalist piece by Steve Reich is one of dozens of compositions featured in Powers' new novel, "Orfeo."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PROVERB")
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Singing) How small a thought...
CORNISH: Powers says this book is an attempt to recreate the musical state of mind. Sounds like heady stuff but don't be dissuaded. "Orfeo" is the story of Peter Els, a 70-year-old avant-garde classical music composer who finds himself dabbling in DNA and accused of bioterror.
RICHARD POWERS: Els starts college as a young man studying chemistry, and he's very gifted as a scientist and he's fascinated with this search for the patterns of the biological world. And he moves from this pursuit into - quite easily into musical composition and that same desire to find meaning in pattern. At the end of his life, Els finds himself drifting back to this road not taken and gets obsessed with finding music inside of living things. And his last transgressive artistic gesture is to try to encode a musical strain and insert it directly into a living organism, a bacterium.
CORNISH: Something that will live forever, in a way, or that will have some kind of legacy.
POWERS: Well, but also something that may or may not propagate all around people but that they're unable to hear.
CORNISH: We're talking very seriously. But in a way, the book is sort of funny in that, you know, he's a fugitive but he's a pretty slow moving one. I mean, this is not...
(LAUGHTER)
CORNISH: ...like, you know, a thriller where there's like car crashes, I mean...
POWERS: (Unintelligible) no high speed chases. That's right.
CORNISH: He's got a cellphone and is just kind of clever and moves bit by bit, visiting people that - from his life that he wants to reconcile with. And it's like a low speed chase with Homeland Security.
POWERS: Heading west, that's right. But it does become meditation on the security state, in a way. His house is raided and he does go on the run but he has enough of a jump that he isn't immediately under threat of being apprehended. But he becomes instantly aware of how his every move is leaving a data trail behind. He can't run his credit card through a gas pump. He can't make a phone call or check out a library book.
And, you know, while I was working on the book, I was a little bit afraid that I might have been overstating this kind of paranoia.
CORNISH: Right. Well, your own Google search history probably would've been a red flag, right?
(LAUGHTER)
POWERS: Well, precisely. Precisely. But what was really kind of astonishing to me was that when the book went into final production, the Snowden disclosures about NSA and PRISM broke. And suddenly, I thought, well, I wouldn't mind going back into the story and juking up that part of the novel a little bit because...
CORNISH: Throwing in the NSA instead of just Homeland Security.
(LAUGHTER)
POWERS: Everything that I described now seemed like understatement. I mean, this notion that ordinary citizens are subject to widespread surveillance is now something that we're learning all about, every day.
CORNISH: There is some eloquent descriptions of the music. The character, Peter Els, he's a committed listener. And you have a lot of passages in which he's just maybe in a coffee shop or out listening to birds. And it struck me that this is a very difficult thing to write, right? Like kind of explaining listening.
POWERS: Well, my challenge as a writer was how to create descriptions not just of canonical 20th century pieces but to create vivid descriptions of fictional pieces that did not exist and yet, describe them in a way that was vivid and compelling and recreated the internal drama of the composer as he was at work on them. So it's almost as if I had in my own head to write the music first, and then produce a kind of prose that recaptured the music and the rhythm and the challenge and the transgression of these pieces.
CORNISH: I don't know if you have a musical background but did you end up really doing that? Did you write any music, or what did you listen to as you were writing?
POWERS: Well, the great beauty of being a novelist is that you can spend three or four or five years vicariously pursuing those imaginary Walter Mitty-like lives that you never got to pursue in the real world. And I do have a stack of youthful compositions sitting on the bottom of my closet, so it was a great pleasure to spend these years working on this book, not just rediscovering the 20th century and this avant-garde tradition but also to imagine myself into the life of somebody who sees and hears and feels the world through sound.
CORNISH: Do you identify with this character? Because, you know, people have criticized your books as being cerebral and difficult. And it seems as though you might be in a similar position in terms of asking people to kind of stay with it.
POWERS: Well, his struggle, that is the struggle to find something that can expand or extend what we already know how to hear - and yet, still be somehow seductive or familiar enough to be accessible - is also not only my struggle but anyone who is interested in creating literary fiction. But we have it pretty good compared to composers. I mean, the person who has committed to written out music has watched an art over a hundred years go from being extremely provocative and dangerous and threatening to the status quo to, at the beginning of the 20th century, troubling almost no one.
But this balancing act between wanting to make it new and wanting to make it loved and beautiful is familiar to me. It is something that I've been wrestling with over the course of 11 novels and close to 30 years now. You write the kind of book that you wish you could find on the shelves somewhere. And you wait for someone who has the time and the focus and the desire to go deeper and to read a new story.
CORNISH: Who is your ideal reader?
POWERS: Someone who loves to look for connections, who sees that the kind of hunger that might drive a young artist is the same kind of hunger that might drive an aging scientist. I like a reader who knows that the human story goes beyond the individual self. And even as we are struggling with questions of love and devotion, family, obligation, loyalty, we are also trying to understand the human story, trying to link the little into the big, the private life into these large stories of politics and history and art that go so beyond the short span that we have here.
CORNISH: Richard Powers, thank you so much for speaking with us.
POWERS: Well, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
CORNISH: Richard Powers, his new novel is called "Orfeo."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PROVERB")
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Singing) It takes to fill a whole life. How small a thought it takes.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
French President Francois Hollande held an uncomfortable news conference this week. What was supposed to be about policy began with this question: Is Valerie Trierweiler still France's first lady? That question came in light of reports that Hollande has been cheating on his longtime partner with another woman, an actress.
Well, in light of this story, we bring you this week's Must Read, where authors are inspired by the news to recommend a book. Today's author speaks from authority. She's an expert in the art of the romance novel - Sarah Wendell.
SARAH WENDELL: It's hard not to sympathize with a woman who's been betrayed, which is why the most satisfying book for this situation is all about revenge. It's "The First Wives Club," by the late Olivia Goldsmith. It was made into a popular movie in the '90s. But the book is better, sharper and more biting than the film. It's filled with bleak honesty and a deadly sense of humor.
The story begins with a suicide. Cynthia's husband has become successful and traded her in for a younger, slimmer woman. And when her three best friends come together for her funeral, they find that they're each in that same humiliating predicament. So they decide to take action. And since their shame is public, the punishment should be, too.
This revenge isn't just served cold; it's Costco-sized. One ex is arrested in front of a billion dollars' worth of clients in his own gallery. Another sees his priceless art collection sold for a dollar when he tells his ex-wife to just take care of it and send him the profits. The worst is reserved for Cynthia's former husband. It's a fantastic scene of outsized retribution involving his Jaguar and all of New York's high society.
This story doesn't exactly end with a kiss or a ring. But the happily ever after for the ladies in "The First Wives Club" is a real one: They get mad, they get even, and then they move on.
BLOCK: The book is "The First Wives Club," by Olivia Goldsmith. It was recommended by Sarah Wendell. She's author of the book "Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block. Alabama State University will soon have its first woman president. But trustees at the historically black college put a stipulation in her contract that critics say is a setback for equality. The agreement says so long as she remains single, she's not allowed to live with a love interest. NPR's Debbie Elliott reports.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT: Dr. Gwendolyn Boyd becomes president of her alma mater next month. Her contract requires the 58-year-old engineer to move into the president's home on the Alabama State University campus, in Montgomery. Another clause states, quote, "for so long as Dr. Boyd is president and a single person, she shall not be allowed to cohabitate in the president's residence with any person with whom she has a romantic relation."
LISA MAATZ: I would be amused if I wasn't so disappointed.
ELLIOTT: Lisa Maatz is vice president of government relations at the American Association of University Women.
MAATZ: At this point, are we going to be monitoring, like, sleepovers? Does she have a curfew? Like, you know, what are they doing in terms of this new president that they're bringing in? It felt disrespectful to me, quite frankly.
ELLIOTT: Boyd comes to Alabama State from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she's executive assistant in the applied physics lab. She has a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Yale, and a doctorate in divinity from Howard University. President Obama recently named her to the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African-Americans. Maatz says Boyd has cracked a small circle. Only about 20 percent of universities have a woman president.
MAATZ: So she's still a pretty rare breed. I commend the Board of Directors for hiring a woman; for, you know, having those kinds of blinders and hiring the best candidate for the job. But I do wonder if there still isn't a bit of a double standard here, in terms of the kinds of rules and certainly, the kinds of expectations they have for a female president.
ELLIOTT: Maatz is not aware of similar contractual obligations elsewhere. There's an easy comparison right in-state. University of Alabama President Judy Bonner is unmarried, and her terms of employment contain no stipulations about her romantic life. Boyd did not return requests for an interview but through a spokesman at Alabama State, released a statement that said, quote, "I can read. I read my contract thoroughly, I knew what I was signing, and I have no issue with it at all."
Trustees also declined to discuss the matter. Judge Marvin Wiggins is vice chairman of the Alabama State University Board of Trustees, and headed up the search for a new president.
JUDGE MARVIN WIGGINS: The university is proud of our new president that we selected. We are honored to have her head our university. The contract has been signed and both parties have agreed to all the terms, and we are moving forward with our new president.
ELLIOTT: It's unclear just what the trustees mean by cohabitation. Is she barred from living with a partner, or from having any love interest stay in the residence? A statement attributed to Alabama State University officials says the clause has nothing to do with Dr. Boyd, but with the increasing scrutiny university presidents face as the top image-makers; the, quote, "living brand" of the schools that employ them.
A Montgomery native going home to her alma mater shouldn't need behavioral rules spelled out, says economist Julianne Malveaux, a former president of an historically black college in the South.
JULIANNE MALVEAUX: It really does raise a lot of questions about different expectations by gender. I mean, I would dare anyone to show me a single man's contract that said anything like that.
ELLIOTT: Now president emerita of Bennett College, Malveaux was single when she lived in the president's home on the Greensboro, N.C., campus. She says she often hosted overnight visitors to the school.
MALVEAUX: And of course, we kept expenses down by not having to put a lot of people in hotels. So given all that, who's going to go running around sniffing and saying OK, I've got to have people in - what do they register as, lover or non-lover?
ELLIOTT: But Malveaux says she doesn't fault Boyd for signing the contract, even with the questionable cohabitation language.
MALVEAUX: Dr. Boyd is an alum. She's very eager to turn the college around. These jobs as HBC presidents are really, opportunities and challenges to serve, and I think that that probably outweighed any of the nonsense of this contract.
ELLIOTT: Gwendolyn Boyd starts her new job as president of Alabama State February 1st.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
I'm Audie Cornish. And we begin this hour at the intersection of security and privacy.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We cannot prevent terrorist attacks - or cyberthreats - without some capability to penetrate digital communications.
CORNISH: After seven months of debate, often heated, over how the National Security Agency collects intelligence - including the mass collection of Americans' phone records - President Obama weighed in today with a major speech, and a prescription for change. But he made one thing clear from the start. Concerns over how the U.S. gathers intelligence are not new to his administration. In fact, he says, he ordered some changes years ago, after first coming into office.
OBAMA: What I did not do is stop these programs wholesale. Not only because I felt that they made us more secure, but also because nothing in that initial review - and nothing that I have learned since - indicated that our intelligence community has sought to violate the law or is cavalier about the civil liberties of their fellow citizens.
BLOCK: President Obama went to great lengths today to defend the intelligence community and specifically, the embattled NSA.
OBAMA: Laboring in obscurity, often unable to discuss their work even with family and friends, the men and women at the NSA know that if another 9/11 or massive cyberattack occurs, they will be asked by Congress and the media why they failed to connect the dots.
BLOCK: The president did, though, acknowledge that privacy safeguards have to be updated, to keep pace with technology. And to that end, he introduced a number of key policy changes.
CORNISH: At the top of that list, a gradual transition away from the government holding onto bulk phone records, also known as metadata; though who will hold them is still an open question. And during this transition, the president promised that metadata would only be searchable after a judicial finding or in a true emergency.
BLOCK: President Obama also called on Congress to, in his words, authorize the establishment of a panel of advocates from outside government to provide an independent voice in significant cases before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And now to our Friday political commentators E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and David Brooks of The New York Times. Welcome back to you both.
DAVID BROOKS: Good to be here.
E.J. DIONNE: Good to be with you.
BLOCK: We seem to hear the president today in constitutional law professor mode again trying to thread the needle between competing interests, trying to find a balance, say, between secrecy and oversight, between security and core civil liberties. E.J., did his directives today, do you think, strike the right balance?
DIONNE: I am broadly sympathetic to his trying to walk down the middle of the road on this, but I think that this will not satisfy civil libertarians. My colleague, Greg Sergeant, a blogger at The Post, I think put it really well. The president is mostly concerned with how you collect this metadata and he's trying very hard to put more rule of law around this.
And I think it's a good thing, for example, that a panel of outsiders will represent the public before the FISA court. But for civil libertarians, the issue is whether you should collect this metadata at all. So I think he's put some restrictions here to restore the legitimacy of the program, to have some privacy protections. I think he went out of his way to make concessions to our allies who are very upset about this. But this argument is going to continue.
BLOCK: David Brooks, some national security advocates would say these things go too far. Maybe we're loosening the boundaries too much.
BROOKS: Yeah. I think if you had to measure the pain on both sides of this debate, I think the civil libertarians are feeling a little more pain than the national security people and everyone's critical because that's our job. But I think he leaned a little in the national security direction. He feels the pain of the civil liberties. He understands the concerns. But he clearly is the guy who's been a consumer of intelligence for the past six years, getting the daily intelligence briefs, sitting atop the institutions and ultimately, I think, his loyalty and his interests were aligned to the institutions he runs, and he probably made those people at the NSA pretty happy.
DIONNE: In fact, if I could just underscore, I thought you were absolutely right to pick that soundbite where he went out of his way to say, I've learned nothing that our intelligence - that shows me that our intelligence community is indifferent to civil liberties or sought to violate the law. He really leaned, I think, more in that direction.
BLOCK: I was interested to hear President Obama today mention Edward Snowden. He said he wasn't going to dwell on his actions or motivations, but he did go on to say this.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: If any individual who objects to government policy can take it into their own hands to publically disclose classified information, then we will not be able to keep our people safe or conduct foreign policy.
BLOCK: On the other hand, David Brooks, would any of these reforms that we're talking about today have come about without Edward Snowden's disclosures?
BROOKS: Maybe not as fast. It's indisputable that Snowden started the debate and he did some good service. Nonetheless, I remain convinced he's a selfish narcissist and you can't run a government this way. You can't have 28-year-olds deciding on their own that a policy set above their level is going to be destroyed by them. Whistleblowers are right to blow the whistle when somebody's doing something illegal. They're not right to blow the whistle when somebody's conducting policy, which has been decided by a process, and Snowden was narcissistic and really community-destroying in the way he went about it.
BLOCK: E.J. Dionne?
DIONNE: Two things. One is this speech would not have been given without what Edward Snowden did, and I think everybody has to acknowledge that. I think the second thing is journalists in general are in a peculiar position when they knock leaks because we live on leaks.
Having said that, he did violate the law. And I think we should be thinking more about this private company he worked for, what kind of security check did they do on Snowden. And I think that is disturbing. Nonetheless, I think especially if you're a journalist, you have to come down and say there's a real problem with condemning a leaker when he produced so much information that the public clearly wanted to have.
BROOKS: We live off gossip, but that doesn't mean we like gossipers. We're in a dirty business.
(LAUGHTER)
DIONNE: An essential business.
BLOCK: Point taken. I want to switch gears here and talk about a big story in West Virginia with ramifications far beyond that state. It's the chemical leak that had tainted the water supply there for hundreds of thousands of people. In this case, it was a chemical plant near Charleston, and apparently government regulation and inspection of this facility was nonexistent.
David Brooks, I'd be curious for your thoughts on this. Does it point to the need, do you think, for greater government regulation or, as some Republicans are saying, is this simply a matter of enforcing regulations that are already on the books.
BROOKS: Yeah, I think this is a case where, you know, I'm generally for local control and federalism. But this clearly is a case where federalism is not effective. In a lot of cases, the local regulators are, frankly, more interested in economic development, beholden to local interests, and sometimes you do need federal regulators. That doesn't mean you have to go whole hog and start destroying industries, but in some cases the regulators from Washington are just more removed from the local bigwigs than the local regulators, and you have to have some federal role. And I think that's true in education policy, as well as in this case.
BLOCK: E.J. Dionne, are there big gaps that you're seeing that this story has revealed?
DIONNE: Hugely, and I welcome David to the ranks of those who support regulation in the public interest.
BROOKS: Don't get carried away, E.J.
(LAUGHTER)
DIONNE: There's been a lot of - there's been a lot of good reporting: Elizabeth Shogren here; Steve Mufson at The Post. Elizabeth pointed out that we haven't updated the Toxic Substances Control Act since 1976. You look at this plant. Senator Jay Rockefeller noted it hasn't been inspected since 1991, 23 years ago. The tanks here were built in the 1940s and 1950s.
This shows a huge hole in regulation both in terms of the law that exists and in terms of enforcement. What I fear is we - whenever we face a thing like this we say oh, this is terrible and then don't act afterward. I hope this leads to some action.
BLOCK: Do you see any indication that it will, David?
BROOKS: I suppose it will. You know, but let's not fetishize regulation. It's - this is a matter of balance.
DIONNE: I knew you'd have to switch sides before this was over.
BLOCK: He's backing down.
(LAUGHTER)
BROOKS: I'm seeking moderation between cost and benefit. And so, you know, the regulations, they're not wholesale good, they're not wholesale bad. It's a question of each individual case. West Virginia is a state that's economically hurting, and so it's just a question of finding that balance.
DIONNE: When you can't drink the water, something's wrong with the regulation.
BROOKS: I agree.
BLOCK: A point of agreement as we end our conversation. E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution; David Brooks of The New York Times. Thanks so much to you both.
DIONNE: Thank you.
BROOKS: Thank you.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
And I'm Audie Cornish. Syria's bloody civil war is not just being fought by Syrians. Thousands of foreign fighters have poured into the country, too. Many are Sunni militants waging war against government. That includes Islamist extremists and al-Qaida-linked militias.
There are also those who support the regime of Bashar al-Assad: Shiite extremists from Lebanon, Iran and increasingly from Iraq are joining the fight. NPR's Deborah Amos has our report from Beirut.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (Speaking foreign language)
DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE: This video is part of a recruitment drive aimed at Iraqi Shiites. The video combines powerful symbols: a sacred Shiite shrine, Sayyidah Zaynab near Damascus, a place of pilgrimage for Shiite Muslims for generations. The defenders: Shiite militias armed to protect the shrine and their faith. In Iraq, the message is reinforced in the mosques. Shiite Islam is under threat from Sunni extremists. Iraq's Shia are obliged to fight.
PHILLIP SMYTH: This is a holy war. You have to go here. If you don't do so, you're disobeying God. This is how they've presented it.
AMOS: That's Phillip Smyth, a researcher at the University of Maryland. He says militants from Iraq began to cross the border last year. Now, he says, there are thousands of Iraqi fighters in Syria.
SMYTH: There's been increased attempts to recruit in Iraq. I mean, there are billboards up in Najaf and Karbala that are trying to recruit people.
AMOS: These are Shiite holy cities where each recruit gets $500 a month, he says, and free military training.
SMYTH: There are training programs that are in Lebanon. There are also programs in Iran, and the programs in Iran are far more extensive for the Iraqi Shia.
AMOS: This didn't start out as a sectarian war. The Syrian revolt began as an uprising against the government. But the majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims while top officers in the Syrian army, top officials in the government, including President Bashar al-Assad, are Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. What began as a rebellion has deliberately been transformed by both sides into a sectarian battle.
The latest wave of combatants are Iraqi Shiites, says activist Abu Qatada(ph), who has seen them on the front lines. He spoke via Skype from Gutah(ph), a besieged suburb near Damascus.
ABU QATADA: (Speaking foreign language)
AMOS: Each Iraqi brigade has its own flag and distinctive slogan, he says. We also recognize them by their accents. He rarely see Syrian soldiers anymore, he says. In his town, rebels mainly face Iraqis and Lebanese Shiite fighters from Hezbollah. And Phillip Smyth says Iraqi units are now fighting across Syria.
SMYTH: These Shia Islamist forces, which are being used in Syria, are generally all over the country. In a number of these key battle fronts, if they weren't there, Assad would not be able to launch a number of main offensives.
AMOS: The latest offensive is near the Lebanese border, where a video emerged of three Iraqi fighters captured, then interviewed, by Hadi Abdullah(ph), a Syrian activist.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Speaking foreign language)
AMOS: The Iraqis say they are part of an organized militia, paid to fight, trained in Iran. But when the activist accuses the men of coming to Syria to kill Syrians, one of them starts to cry.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: (Speaking foreign language)
AMOS: Now you cry and regret it, says the activist. The families of those you killed are watching this, he adds. Let's see if your tears are any use to those who sent you here. The video has been downloaded more than 100,000 times, mostly in Iraq, says Smyth.
SMYTH: It's spread all over social media.
AMOS: The interview, the exchange, is a rare moment of human contact, he says, in a very brutal war.
SMYTH: When both sides believe they are fighting a war to not just protect themselves, not just protect families, it's to protect a way of life, to protect their belief in a religious system, when you have both sides like that, then the enemy has been completely reduced and dehumanized.
AMOS: This sectarian hatred is spreading across the region, says Smyth, even as international diplomats are urging Syria's warring sides to settle their differences at a peace conference in Switzerland. Deborah Amos, NPR News, Beirut.
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Nearly 98 percent of those who voted in Egypt this week said yes to a new constitution. That's according to results published in Egypt's state media. Many Egyptians boycotted the referendum. Analysts say the vote will be used by Egypt's authorities to legitimize the ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. And as NPR's Leila Fadel reports, the government may also point to the result in justifying the intense crackdown that followed the coup.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: The results, analysts say, is what the military has been looking for, a resounding yes and turnout that reportedly surpassed that of the 2012 referendum held under the Muslim Brotherhood. The government sees it as a public endorsement of the new order following the ouster of the Brotherhood, which lost much popular support during the year it was in power.
But Heba Morayef, the Egypt director for Human Rights Watch, says the broadening crackdown on dissent in the run-up to the referendum was, to put it mildly, alarming.
HEBA MORAYEF: One would've thought that this would act as a check on the kinds of abuses that were the hallmark of Mubarak's police state.
FADEL: On the contrary, she says, prior to the balloting people campaigning for a no vote were thrown in jail. Liberal and youth activists were also thrown in jail, as were three Al Jazeera English journalists, accused of being members of a terrorist organization.
As polls closed, high-profile liberal and secular Egyptian politicians who had been critical of the military were slapped with travel bans. International observers said there are not concerns about rampant irregularities in the voting process, but they have other complaints. Eric Bjornlund is the head of Democracy International, the largest international observation mission in Egypt.
ERIC BJORNLUND: We're concerned about the closing of political space.
FADEL: The two voting days were festive, with the government encouraging adulation of military chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who many believe will make a run for the presidency. With the help of private and state-run media outlets, a yes vote to the constitution became synonymous with nationalism and support against terrorism.
The Brotherhood was officially designated a terrorist group in Egypt in December, and its supporters boycotted the vote as illegitimate. Mona el-Ghobashy is an Egypt expert at Barnard College. She says, in the eyes of the military, it now has constitutional legitimacy.
MONA EL-GHOBASHY: It has been seeking some way in which to convince both the domestic population but also crucially the international public that this is a program that is endorsed by the majority of Egyptians.
FADEL: Ghobashy says the cult-like love of Sisi was carefully engineered from the moment Morsi was ousted to garner public support for a crackdown on all dissent.
EL-GHOBASHY: A military coup doesn't distinguish between secularists and religious activists. A military coup means that the military has dominance over the national political space.
FADEL: For now, she says, the military is unaccountable. Leila Fadel, NPR News, Cairo.
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Embattled New Jersey Governor Chris Christie travels to Florida this weekend but the trip is hardly a vacation. Christie is the star attraction at a series of fundraising events across the state. It's Christie's first major trip as chairman of the Republican Governors Association. And as NPR's Joel Rose reports, it may be an important test of how the scandal over lane closures at the George Washington Bridge is affecting his national ambitions.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: It's been another tough week for Chris Christie. Late yesterday, 20 subpoenas were issued by the state assembly committee that's investing the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge, including one for Christie's former Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Kelly. She wrote the infamous email that unleashed four days of major traffic problems in Fort Lee apparently as political retribution. Here's Democrat John Wisniewski announcing the subpoenas.
ASSEMBLYMAN JOHN WISNIEWSKI: What we're really looking at is the why. We know who sent out the request to close those lanes. We know who received it. We don't know why it was sent. We don't know why gave that person authorization to send it. We don't know why she felt empowered to send it.
ROSE: Governor Christie denies knowing about the plot to close lanes or the effort to cover it up afterward. There are now at least five investigations in the works, which may be why Christie's office hired lawyer Randy Mastro, a political veteran who worked for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. That hire came after the state assembly retained Reid Schar, the lawyer who successfully prosecuted former Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich for corruption.
Christie tiptoed around the scandal at his appearances this week, though he did seem to acknowledge it yesterday at an event about the state's recovery from Hurricane Sandy.
GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE: There's all kinds of challenges, as you know, that come every day out of nowhere to test you. And whatever tests that put in front of me, I will meet those tests because I'm doing it on your behalf.
(APPLAUSE)
CHRISTIE: So thank you all very much for being here.
ROSE: Christie has another tough job to do. As chairman of the Republican Governor's Association, he's tasked with raising $100 million to help governors around the country who are running for election in 2014. And Christie is the star attraction this weekend at a series of fundraising events for big time Republican donors in Florida.
FORD O'CONNELL: A lot of donors are really sort of taking a wait-and-see approach.
ROSE: Ford O'Connell is a Republican strategist. Technically Christie's weekend events are for the RGA and Florida Governor Rick Scott. But O'Connell says they're also an opportunity for Christie to reassure supporters ahead of his possible presidential run in 2016.
O'CONNELL: He needs to reach out to donors and let them know that, you know, everything's OK on his end because donors are a pretty risk adverse crowd. And if you cannot get the donors on your side, you won't be able to raise the money to be a frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
ROSE: At least one major donor, Home Depot founder Ken Langone, is sticking by Christie. Langone is hosting an event Sunday night in West Palm Beach. These private fundraisers are a friendly audience for Christie, says Charlie Cooks, a political analyst for National Journal.
CHARLIE COOK: This isn't a heavy lift for him. I mean, go down, do a brief mea culpa and then talk about raising money for electing and reelecting Republican governors around the country. It's really not about him. He's just the attraction. He's the bait to get people in a room and writing checks.
ROSE: But outside of that room Democrats will be looking to capitalize on the scandal. Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, plans to shadow the governor and hold public press conferences outside of Christie's private fundraisers in Orlando and Fort Lauderdale. Joel Rose, NPR News.
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From NPR News, it's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring. That quote is attributed the Rogers Hornsby, an early 20th century baseball great. Well, we're deep in the January doldrums and staring out the window here at ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, but fortunately sportswriter Stefan Fatsis is here to talk about baseball matters. Hey there, Stefan.
STEFAN FATSIS, BYLINE: Hey, Audie.
CORNISH: So let's get to the news. The Los Angeles Dodgers made baseball history this week. They're the first team to sign a pitcher to a contract worth more than $200 million and that pitcher is Clayton Kershaw. He gets $250 million over seven years. Is that actually a good deal for the Dodgers?
FATSIS: Yeah, actually. Kershaw's dominance the last three seasons has been crazy. Lowest earned run average, most strikeouts, two Cy Young awards in the National League. The most important facts, though, are, one, he's just 25 years old, two, he's had no serious injuries, almost no injuries and that means that the Dodgers are committed to paying Kershaw through his prime years and no longer.
And it's not as if the team can't afford it. The Dodgers recently signed a 25-year cable television deal that's worth $8.5 billion, $340 million per season.
CORNISH: And then, Kershaw's was the second biggest contract of the off-season after second baseman Robinson Cano. He signed with the Seattle Mariners for $240 million. So any more of these big deals in the works?
FATSIS: Yeah. Teams have one more week to land a Japanese pitcher named Masahiro Tanaka. Tanaka had a perfect 24 and 0 record in Japan last year. He became available after a new agreement between baseball and the Japanese league. In the past, major league teams had to bid for the right to negotiate with a Japanese player. They had to pay what was called a posting fee to the Japanese team and twice that exceeded $50 million.
Now, it's a flat $20 million fee and the player can choose his team, a dozen or so big league teams from clubs like the Dodgers, Cubs, New York Yankees that have a lot of money, down to smaller revenue teams like Oakland and Houston are said to be among those expected to offer Tanaka more than $100 million.
CORNISH: And then, another issue people were talking about, instant replay. There's going to be more instant replays starting next season, but how's it going to work?
FATSIS: It's going to work a lot like in football. Managers will get to challenge one umpire decision per game and then a second one if the first one is upheld. Umps can check a call on their own only after the sixth inning, included will be safe-out calls at the bases, whether a ball landed fair or foul, whether or an outfielder caught or trapped the ball, whether a batter was hit by a pitch. Balls and strikes not challengeable. The so-called neighborhood play also won't be challengeable and that's where a fielder fails to touch second base while turning a double play. This is a limited system. It is designed to get the potentially game changing calls right, not every call.
CORNISH: And then, just to get back to the players for a second, the saga of Alex Rodriguez continues. The New York Yankees third baseman was suspended last week for the 2014 season for taking performance enhancing drugs. He isn't giving up the fight against baseball. What's going on there?
FATSIS: Well, on Monday, Rodriguez sued Major League Baseball and his own players union in an effort to overturn an arbitrator's decision in the case. The legal consensus on that is fat chance. Yesterday in Mexico City, Rodriguez seemed to accept the suspension. He said that taking a year off could be a big favor so he can rest and start a new chapter of my life. After the suspension, Rodriguez will have three years left on his contract. He'll be 39 years old. The Yankees will owe him $61 million.
CORNISH: You know, Stefan, this is such a complicated case. I mean, what are the key takeaways here for you?
FATSIS: Well, first drug testing is still a cipher. It's hard to believe that Rodriguez didn't take something, but there is no physical evidence presented that he did. It was all circumstantial: stolen notebooks, BlackBerry messages, the testimony of an anti-aging clinic charlatan. It took the lenient standards of arbitration and the unprecedented interpretation of baseball's drug penalties to throw the book at Rodriguez.
Second, baseball's scorched-Earth prosecution of Rodriguez culminating with a victory dance on "60 Minutes" last Sunday has enraged the players union. After 20 years of labor peace, I'd expect some blowback during the next round of labor negotiations.
CORNISH: Stefan, thanks so much for filling us in.
FATSIS: Sure Audie, thanks.
CORNISH: Stefan Fatsis, he joins us most Fridays to talk about sports and the business of sports. You can hear more of him on Slate's sports podcast "Hang Up and Listen."
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Seven months after NSA leaker Edward Snowden turned a spotlight on American surveillance tactics, President Obama called today for changes in the way the U.S. government keeps tabs on people. In a major speech, the president said the NSA should have access to Americans' phone records but that the agency should need permission to see them, and should not be in the business of storing those records. He also stopped short of endorsing some of the other recommendations made by his own surveillance review panel.
NPR's Scott Horsley begins our coverage.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: President Obama says there's a long and proud tradition of secret surveillance in this country, from Paul Revere's clandestine monitoring of British troops to Allied code-breakers in World War II.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Throughout American history, intelligence has helped secure our country and our freedoms.
HORSLEY: But in recent years, the president says, the nature of surveillance has changed. Terrorism suspects and other targets are now more distant and widely dispersed, while the tools of spy craft are more powerful than ever.
OBAMA: The same technological advances that allow U.S. intelligence agencies to pinpoint an al-Qaida cell in Yemen, or an email between two terrorists in the Sahel, also mean that many routine communications around the world are within our reach. And at a time when more and more of our lives are digital, that prospect is disquieting for all of us.
HORSLEY: Revelations about the vast reach of the government surveillance dragnet are one of the factors in the president's own slumping approval ratings. Since the first leaks by Edward Snowden last summer, polls have shown a growing number of Americans don't find Obama trustworthy.
As part of an effort to regain that trust, the president said today, the government should stop its warehousing of virtually all U.S. telephone records. He wants to preserve the capability to sift through those records for potential terror suspects, though, and he's asked his aides to suggest alternatives. Leaving the records with the phone companies or a private third party, as his review panel suggested, presents problems of its own. And the president did not say how he would resolve them. The president did say the government should have to get approval from a special surveillance court before combing through the phone records. And he set new limits on how far those searches can go.
OBAMA: Our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power. It depends on the law.
HORSLEY: The president stopped short of accepting several other recommendations from his review panel. One would have required a judge to sign off on national security letters, which the FBI uses like subpoenas to secretly gather information. Another would have created a full-time privacy advocate to argue against the government in surveillance court. Obama did call for an advisory panel to assist the court in some significant cases. And he says he's open to working with Congress on additional privacy protections.
OBAMA: I'm confident that we can shape an approach that meets our security needs while upholding the civil liberties of every American.
HORSLEY: The president was less specific about protecting the privacy of people outside America who are not covered by the U.S. Constitution. He's asked for new safeguards, though, to limit the kinds of information that can be collected abroad and how long it can be stored.
OBAMA: People around the world, regardless of their nationality, should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don't threaten our national security.
HORSLEY: Obama also promised no more eavesdropping on friendly heads of state. That follows protests from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
OBAMA: The leaders of our close friends and allies deserve to know that if I want to know what they think about an issue, I'll pick up the phone and call them rather than turning to surveillance.
HORSLEY: Obama was adamant that the United States will not abandon its surveillance efforts, or compromise national security. But in the long run, he says, surveillance will be more effective if it has the trust of people here at home and around the world.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, the White House.
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Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut has been an outspoken privacy advocate and critic of some of NSA surveillance programs. Of the government's privacy safeguards, he said, the process is broken largely because it depends on a secret court making secret decisions and secret law.
I spoke with Senator Blumenthal earlier today, and he said he was encouraged by the president's plan, which he called bold. I started by asking the senator what he thought of new recommendations to make the nation's surveillance court more transparent.
SENATOR RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: The president very directly responded to criticisms that I and others have made about the secrecy of the court and also its lack of sufficient adversarial process. First of all, he said that there should be more rulings and opinions made public. And, second, he adopted the proposal that I have made and urged that there be a privacy advocate, for lack of a better term, a public interest advocate. Now, he did not go as far as I would like, and I'm going to continue to advocate a more independent, full-time, robust privacy advocate. But he certainly is going in the right direction.
CORNISH: On the issue of an advocate on the court for the public, this would be a panel of outside advocates that the president says would provide an independent voice in significant cases before the court. What kind of details are important here in terms of when the panel can weigh in? Can they actually argue before the court? What would you like to see?
BLUMENTHAL: This advocate should be empowered to make arguments before the court when she thinks it's important. In other words, the court shouldn't be the one to solely determine that there's a need for adversarial give and take. Courts always do better when they hear both sides of an argument, and the advocate should be empowered to review the docket so that there's no delay in protecting against terrorist attack or providing for sufficient intelligence. But there should be a full-time advocate that is empowered to protect privacy and be a representative for people whose privacy may be imperiled.
CORNISH: Meanwhile, when it comes to the portion of the law that allows for bulk collection and retention of phone records, the president clearly defended it, saying he sees no indication that the database has been intentionally abused. But I'm curious to get your reaction to two changes he did prescribe. First, that the metadata collected, that it not be stored by the government but by some third party to be figured out at a later time. Is that a step forward?
BLUMENTHAL: To be figured out at a later time certainly leaves a lot of the key details up in the air. And this issue is intensely and urgently serious. Who collects, in effect stores or keeps the data, whether it could be vulnerable to improper use, Congress is going to have to resolve the question of whether this collection should continue and who is going to keep the data. And the bill that we have would greatly restrict and constrict the collection of this kind of data.
CORNISH: Now, the president also said that this metadata, that these phone records would not be searchable without court approval unless in case of an emergency. Is that enough for you?
BLUMENTHAL: That's a very, very powerful point. Remember that the criminal process operates in a way that protects individual rights and liberties because courts are involved, which is why I think the court process is so important. And requiring specific court approval by an independent judicial officer, I think, is a big step in the right direction. Whether it's sufficient, again, will depend on the details.
CORNISH: Now, the leaders of both the House and Senate intelligence committees, Republicans and Democrats, have also defended these programs as legal and valuable national security tools. And there really doesn't seem to be a support - any signs of support from leadership in the House and Senate to bring these reform bills to the floor. Is Congress a dead end for these changes?
BLUMENTHAL: Congress cannot be a dead end. Congress must be a source of enabling and empowering reform. The president...
CORNISH: But does it feel like it? I mean, there's a lot of advocates who tell us they want change. But then when I see the committee panels doing votes, we're not seeing those changes make it.
BLUMENTHAL: I think, having spoken to a number of my colleagues after the president's address, that there is an appetite to reach these fundamental issues, to strike a balance, protect privacy and at the same time prevent government overreach in collecting telephone data or other surveillance. And we recognize that we need to come forward and make the next step.
CORNISH: Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, thanks so much for speaking with us.
BLUMENTHAL: Thank you.
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In California, Governor Jerry Brown has signed an emergency drought declaration, saying his state is seeing the driest weather in about a century. This is California's third consecutive dry year with no appreciable rain in sight. As NPR's Richard Gonzales reports, cities and counties across the state are taking drastic measures.
RICHARD GONZALES, BYLINE: January is usually a wet month in California but there's hardly been a hint of rain. Throughout the state, from the coast to the inland valleys to the mountains, residents are beginning to see what those parched conditions really mean.
GOV. JERRY BROWN: Today, I'm declaring a drought emergency in the state of California because we're facing perhaps the worst drought that California has ever seen since records began being kept about a hundred years ago.
GONZALES: With that declaration, Brown urged state residents to voluntarily reduce their water consumption by 20 percent.
BROWN: This takes a coming together of all the people of California to deal with this serious and prolonged event of nature.
GONZALES: Brown has been under growing pressure to respond to reports of bone-dry reservoirs and an alarmingly low snow pack. Today's announcement stopped short of imposing any mandatory conservation measures. For now, mandatory water restrictions are being left to individual cities. The Sacramento City Council, this week, voted to require residents to reduce consumption by between 20 to 30 percent. The city plans to dispatch a team of monitors to enforce rules restricting outdoor irrigation and car washing. Repeat offenders could face fines of up to $1,000.
In the Central Valley, the state's ag industry praised the governor's declaration. Gayle Holman is a spokeswoman for the Westlands Water District, the largest agricultural water district in the country. She says, the declaration will ease some environmental rules governing water allocations.
GAYLE HOLMAN: With this drought declaration, it provides flexibility and easing of some of the regulations that prohibit water flowing south of the delta to ag districts like Westlands.
GONZALES: Environmentalists are also hailing the governor's action. Kate Poole is an attorney with the National Resource Defense Council's water program. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: The name of the organization is Natural Resources Defense Council.] She says today's declaration could be a boost for long-term conservation and water storage efforts.
KATE POOLE: The governor, for one, has a big bully pulpit. And so making sure that everybody in the state is aware that we're in tough situation in terms of our water supplies and does what they can to cut back on water use is very important.
GONZALES: California isn't the only state grappling with drought. Federal officials are designating portions of 11 western and central states as primary natural disaster areas due to the lack of rain. The move means that farmers in those areas can qualify for low-interest emergency loans.
Richard Gonzales, NPR News, San Francisco.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
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And I'm Melissa Block. In New Orleans, a court decision threatens to bankrupt the public school system. A state appeals court ruled that the school board for Orleans Parrish wrongly terminated some 7,000 teachers and other school employees after Hurricane Katrina. They're to be awarded two to three years back pay.
A school board attorney has warned that the ruling could cost the school system $1.5 billion. Joining us to talk about this is Sarah Carr. She's an education reporter in New Orleans for the education news service the Hechinger Report. Sarah, welcome.
SARAH CARR: I'm happy to be here.
BLOCK: And why don't you start by explaining just how the New Orleans school system was restructured after Hurricane Katrina.
CARR: Sure. There were two main actions in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The first was that the state swept most of the public schools out of the hands of the locally elected school board, and absorbed them into what's known as the state-run recovery school district. And the second was that they made this very controversial decision, which is the issue in this lawsuit - to fire the school district employees en masse, affecting about 7,500 employees.
BLOCK: And now, the Louisiana appeals court has ruled in the teachers' favor. How did it explain its ruling?
CARR: Well, it said that due process was not followed for these upwards of 7,000 employees, and that even though they weren't all guaranteed jobs by any stretch, that the school board should have created what's called a recall list of those who were available to come and return and resume work in the schools; and that the state, for its part, which absorbed most of the schools after Hurricane Katrina, should have also considered rehiring some of the teachers.
BLOCK: And the price tag for this, as we mentioned, is estimated at $1.5 billion dollars for backpay for these teachers who were fired. Does that sound about right to you?
CARR: You know, I don't think anybody knows exactly what it's going to pan out to be at this point, but I don't think 1 billion is a totally unreasonable estimate. The payroll for the school system employees before Hurricane Katrina was about a quarter-billion annually. And so if we're talking about two to three years, there's definitely a possibility it could approach 1 billion. And it sort of depends on who turns out to be eligible for the backpay and benefits.
BLOCK: Now, assuming this ruling stands, Sarah, who would actually pay that money? When we say this threatens to bankrupt the public school system, what's left of the public school system?
CARR: That's a good question. I don't really think anybody knows how the details would be ironed out because more than 90 percent of public school children in New Orleans today attend independently run charter schools. So it really is a big question whether or not these independent charters would be liable. And I think even the fired employees and their supporters wouldn't want this to be severely detrimental to the educations of today's schoolchildren in the city.
BLOCK: Talk a bit, Sarah, about how the teaching force in New Orleans has changed since Katrina and the firing of these 7,000 or so teachers.
CARR: Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans had one of the highest rates of African-American schoolteachers, which was at about 75 percent. And hundreds, if not thousands, of them have come back and continue to work in the public schools today. But the firing, and the decentralization, and the chartering of the schools really opened the door for pretty significant changes in the teaching force; and there's no question that the teaching force in New Orleans today is younger and whiter and less local than it was before Hurricane Katrina.
BLOCK: And hasn't the end result been that with this upheaval - the clean slate brought on by Katrina in these schools -0that the schools now are performing better than they used to?
CARR: The test scores have been going up, but I think it's just - it's a very complicated picture. And there are those who want to blame the pre-Katrina teachers for the failings of the public schools, and there are those who, on the other hand, want to say that all of the new young teachers are culturally incompetent and can't really relate to the students.
And I think both of those are very extreme and gross distortions, and that the truth is really much messier and in between.
BLOCK: Sarah Carr, thanks so much.
CARR: Thanks for having me.
BLOCK: Sarah Carr - her book about New Orleans schools is titled "Hope Against Hope: Three Schools, One City and the Struggle to Educate America's Children."
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Lawmakers are promising new efforts to restore jobless benefits for long-term unemployed, but it may take a while - 1.4 million people who've been out of work long term saw their benefits disappear three weeks ago. Congress failed to agree on funding to renew them. NPR's Tovia Smith visited with a few people who are without work in Boston.
TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: John Pratt(ph) has worked in the financial sector nearly 30 years. Starting at the bottom with no college education, he worked his way up to a well-paying operations job. As his company struggled since the recession, Pratt survived two rounds of layoffs but last spring lost his job.
JOHN PRATT: It's just very frustrating.
SMITH: Over the past eight months, Pratt says he's applied to more than 60 jobs, many paying a lot less.
PRATT: Your pride takes a hit because you want to be there for your family and you're doing everything you possibly can and now it's just really taking a toll.
SMITH: Pratt has already dipped into retirement savings and now with his unemployment check suddenly cut off, he worries he may have to do it again.
PRATT: I'm like, okay, how am I going to be a month from now? I have no idea. But every time I think about it, I get a knot in my stomach and it's not what I wanted.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Unintelligible)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: (Unintelligible)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Unintelligible)
SMITH: In downtown Boston, people are lined up an hour before opening at a state-run office for the unemployed. Counselors here offer help with benefit claims as well as resumes and interviewing skills.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: So what we're going to do is something called a 15-second pitch.
SMITH: After five minutes of prep, a room full of job seekers attempt their pitch.
SALLY: My name is Sally. I am looking for employment as an oral surgery assistant.
STEVE: My name is Steve. I'm a graphic designer.
JENNIFER TAUB: My name is Jennifer. I am a clinical psychologist with a background in children and family.
SMITH: Forty-four year old Jennifer Taub(ph), a single mom who was laid off in May, was a finalist for a few jobs, only to find the hire put on hold because of the company's finances. Taub's unemployment check was just a small fraction of what she used to make, but she says it helped her make her mortgage and keep her condo. With the support now gone, she, too, is thinking of dipping into her retirement.
TAUB: Now, I'm just worried about making ends meet and do I pull my child out of his afterschool program. I'm worried about my $1,400 Cobra payments.
SMITH: For a while, Taub says she was glued to the news as Congress debated extending benefits, but she stopped, she says, when it made her too anxious and angry. Out on the street in Boston, the sentiment is largely shared, but there's also concerns about the cost of extending unemployment.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I figure they should not because where is the money coming from? We owe billions of dollars. We're a debtor nation.
SMITH: Usman Secona(ph) who now works in IT for an engineering company says he himself was unemployed and got benefits for just six months.
USMAN SECONA: When my unemployment stopped, that pushes me to look harder for a job because when I was getting my benefit, I was looking for a job, but not as hard as I've been doing afterwards when benefit was stopped.
SMITH: The same argument has been made in Congress, but to those job hunting now, it only adds insult to injury.
BLAKE TAYLOR: You know, it's disgusting. It's disrespectful.
SMITH: Twenty-four year old Blake Taylor(ph) was working his way through school last spring when he lost his job. Unable to find a new one, he moved back in with his folks, transferred to a cheaper college and took out his first student loan. He says he already has more than enough motivation to find a job.
TAYLOR: I'm flat broke, you know. I don't want to ask my dad for money to get on a bus to go to school.
SMITH: Like Taylor, Pratt and Taub say losing benefits doesn't make them more motivated to find a job, just more distracted and stressed.
PRATT: I'm not trying to pull any quick ones on anybody. I just need something to come in to help with some of the bills, you know.
TAUB: And to keep you from sliding too much into debt.
PRATT: Exactly.
SMITH: Taub says she's now spending hours a day looking into other kinds of public assistance. As one career counselor here put it, cutting unemployment benefits isn't going to save any money. Taxpayers, she says, are just going to pay further down the line. Tovia Smith, NPR News, Boston.
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Last year, Venezuelans suffered from a shortage of toilet paper. Well, now thanks to government bureaucracy, another kind of paper is in low supply, newsprint. As John Otis reports, that's forced some Venezuelan newspapers to trim their size or, worse, stop printing all together.
JOHN OTIS, BYLINE: Venezuelan newspapers import nearly all their newsprint. But due to government currency controls, securing dollars to buy that paper can take months. Reserves of newsprint have fallen to an all-time low. Four newspapers have been forced to stop publishing and many others have reduced their size and circulation. Journalist Miguel Enrique Otero claims Venezuela's socialist government is provoking the shortage.
MIGUEL ENRIQUE OTERO: It's a way to stop newspapers, to make them afraid of government, to reduce their importance because the - most of the newspapers are independent and are critical. And they don't like that.
OTIS: Otero was editor of the Caracas' daily, El Nacional. To save paper, he says El Nacional has stopped printing special sections, while the widely read Sunday magazine is only published online. The affected newspapers include El Impulso, Venezuela's oldest daily, which was founded in the western city of Barquisimeto in 1904.
JUAN MANUEL CARMONA: (Foreign language spoken)
OTIS: Editor Juan Manuel Carmona says it is now borrowing newsprint from another newspaper and has reduced its size from 36 to 26 pages.
CARMONA: (Foreign language spoken)
OTIS: Carmona says printed newspapers are vital because many Venezuelans lack the money for iPads or Internet service to read news websites. Newspapers are some of the only watchdogs left in the media. Most TV and radio stations are either controlled by the government or no longer criticize it for fear of losing their transmission licenses.
In a communique, the Miami-based Inter-American Press Association accused President Nicolas Maduro's government of placing an economic stranglehold on newspapers. That includes pulling nearly all government ads from independent papers. But Maduro's allies make light of the newsprint shortage.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "ZURDA KONDUCTA")
OSWALDO RIVERO: (Foreign language spoken)
OTIS: In Zurda Konducta, a pro-government TV show, host Oswaldo Rivero said it was all a hoax. He said there's no shortage of newsprint and joked that if Venezuelans ran out of towels or toilet paper, they could use newspapers.
JULIO CHAVEZ: (Foreign language spoken)
OTIS: Julio Chavez, a ruling party legislator who heads the media commission in the national assembly, claims that Venezuela imported 30 percent more newsprint in 2013 than the year before. He accused newspapers and import companies of hoarding their stocks. But Otero says the crisis all too real.
OTERO: Right now, we are a month from a total shutdown because we don't have anymore newsprint.
OTIS: That's because El Nacional hasn't been able to import a single roll of newsprint since last May. For NPR News, I'm John Otis.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
NPR's justice correspondent, Carrie Johnson was in the great hall at the Justice Department as the president delivered his remarks and she joins us now for some analysis. Now, Carrie, lots of recommendations and action items in that speech, but to you, what was the most important change, I mean, the things that will happen right away?
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Audie, in terms of what the executive branch is going to be able to do on its own right away, the most important things are a couple of changes to the bulk metadata collection of U.S. phone records. The first, as the president says, he's going to order the NSA to only search with two degrees of separation from a terrorism suspect as opposed to three degrees of search or separation as is done now, that implicates potentially millions of records.
And second, the president said he's going to require the NSA and the Justice Department to ask judges on the secret surveillance court for permission before they search this big database, which will impose a new check and balance. But Audie, the information is still going to be collected by the NSA in bulk.
Beyond that, the president says, he wants the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to try to figure out in the next couple of months who should store this information. That's a huge open question that's going to be the subject of a lot of debate because, of course, the telecom companies don't want that responsibility and the NSA really doesn't want to give it up.
CORNISH: And Republican Congressman Peter King of New York, he says he's satisfied that the White House left these surveillance programs mostly intact. What did the president essentially leave the same?
JOHNSON: The biggest thing is something called national security letters. These are letters the FBI issues of its own accord, no outside oversight really outside the Justice Department, to get subscriber records, credit card information and the like. Last year, Audie, the FBI issued 20,000 of these letters and the president's own review group had recommended requiring judicial oversight for these letters, but the Justice Department and FBI said, that would take too long to get a response and it'll make it harder to investigate national security cases than it would an ordinary business crime.
The president nodded to that today in his speech and said he did not want that to happen. Instead, he says he's going to make some changes at the margins to these national security letters. He's going to let telecom companies issue annually or on some other basis some information about the number of requests they get for this information and he'll try to get rid of a gag order that recipients of these letters get that says, essentially, they're never able to talk about them at all.
That really is not far enough, Audie, for civil liberties groups who say if the FBI uses national security letters the way it's doing now in the future, it means the government is still going to be able to get lots and lots of information in bulk.
CORNISH: Now, foreign governments and companies have also been watching this whole process closely ever since it came out that a cell phone belonging to German leader Angela Merkel was monitored by the NSA. How did the president address their concerns?
JOHNSON: This is one of the most important parts of his speech, something he was able to do by executive fiat. The president said he's no longer going to spy on leaders of allied countries without a specific or essential national security purpose. He said he's also going to be appointing folks at the State Department to do more diplomacy in this regard. And the president also said he's going to extend, for the first time, some privacy protections not just to Americans, but to some foreign people who live overseas.
Some Republicans in Congress have said they don't want him to go that far, but the president pretty much went all the way there today.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Carrie Johnson. Carrie, thanks so much.
You're welcome.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
And if you're just joining us, you're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'VE BEEN SCORNED")
THE STAPLE SINGERS: (Singing) I've been buked, Lord, and I've been scorned. And I've been scorned.
RATH: The unmistakable voices of Roebuck "Pops" Staples and his four children - Cleotha, Mavis, Pervis and Yvonne. They were The Staple Singers, a group whose sound - mixing gospel, blues and soul - broke down musical walls and inspired civil rights leaders.
Greg Kot is the host of the public radio show "Sound Opinions," and he's written a new book about The Staples family and their music. It's called "I'll Take You There: Mavis Staples, The Staple Singers, and the March Up Freedom's Highway." He says the roots of The Staple Singers go back to Pops, born and raised amid the music of a Mississippi plantation.
GREG KOT: First of all, you take it back to Mississippi where Pops grew up. Pops Staples, Roebuck "Pops" Staples. So he had an apprenticeship, as it were, in blues and gospel music on Dockery Farm in Mississippi. You know, he carried on that tradition with his own children in Chicago.
And he had, like, a cheap guitar. It only had four strings on them. It was like a second-hand pawnshop guitar. But there was enough string so that he could play a note and give each child their particular harmony part. And those were the harmony parts that stayed with them for the rest of their lives.
RATH: It wasn't like we'd form a quartet, we want a tenor, you want a soprano. It's - these are the voices we have in the family, and that's the sound.
KOT: Yeah. There's something about being around people all your life - growing up with them, hearing them talk, hearing them just sing off-key, hearing them yell at you - you know instantaneously where the phrase is going to drop, where the syllable is going to be, where - how words - certain words are going to be pronounced. Being around each other, you cannot replace that. And those harmonies lasted with them a lifetime.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UNCLOUDY DAY")
SINGERS: (Singing) I got a home. I got a home beyond the sky. Well, well...
RATH: Let's talk about "Uncloudy Day," which is probably their - kind of their breakthrough, right?
KOT: Yeah. "Uncloudy Day" was the song that put them on the national map. They had already become sort of regional favorites at that point, but this was the one that made them a national phenomenon. And it was an old song. It was - it's a song that had been around since the 19th century. It was familiar to any African-American who had attended a church service by that point. I mean, it was so steeped in the vernacular, but nobody did it quite like The Staple Singers did it. It had sort of this almost ancient vibe about it, and it created a sort of wave of nostalgia: people feeling very nostalgic about where they had come from. And I think that was one of the reasons it became one of the biggest gospel songs ever.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UNCLOUDY DAY")
SINGERS: (Singing) Well, oh, they tell me of an unclouded day.
RATH: You write about how they ended up making that transition to really become an every man's group and have crossover with white audiences. And can you explain that, how they were embraced by this folk movement?
KOT: You have to understand, in this group, you had several generations going - blending. You know, Pops was a traditionalist, no doubt about it. He was a very staunch gospel man. But his sensibility, he was an open-minded guy. And part of it was his children were listening to everything.
You know, Pervis Staples was doing "Battle of the Bands" with Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls on Sunday afternoons, so there was a lot of influences sort of filtering in through the music. And I think Pervis, especially, was very much about, you know, pushing forward. He was an early friend of Bob Dylan, saying, you know, we've got to check this guy out. We should be singing some of this stuff.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HARD RAIN")
SINGERS: (Singing) And it's a hard, and it's a hard. And it's a hard, it's a hard. Gonna fall.
KOT: And Pops being open-minded enough to start incorporating them into the group's own music, because I think he saw it as a way of, you know, we are not discriminatory in who we sing for or who appreciates our music. We want to be heard by as many people as possible. And he wanted to send out an empowering message to those people.
RATH: And that empowering message became really wrapped up along with the civil rights movement.
KOT: Yes. They were close friends with Martin Luther King Junior. Pops and Martin Luther King were friends. They were mutual admirers. He would say, Stap, when are you going to play my song? Hope you're going to play my song tonight. You know, he loved "Why Am I Treated So Bad?," a Staple Singers' classic.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHY AM I TREATED SO BAD?")
SINGERS: (Singing) I'm going to walk out in the master's name. Things I do, they seem to be in vain.
KOT: And The Staple Singers were King's ambassadors in Chicago when he brought the movement north. He said, you know, you've got to come sing so that I can get this guy, Jesse Jackson, involved in the campaign for civil rights in Chicago. And, really, they were intimately tied with the civil rights movement throughout the '60s.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHY AM I TREATED SO BAD?")
SINGERS: (Singing) Woo. Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh. Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh. Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh...
RATH: And, you know, it was not too much longer after that - just later in the '60s - where it seemed for a brief time that time had kind of passed by The Staple Singers, like they had maybe kind of - that they had peaked. And then they have this - I don't know if it's a third act or a fourth act when a band has been around - the group has been around that long - but how did the Stax Records revitalization happen?
KOT: Al Bell, the president of Stax Records, had the group, instead of recording in Memphis with the Booker T. & the M.G.s rhythm section, had them try something in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Once The Staples hooked up with The Swampers in Muscles Shoals, something clicked.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'LL TAKE YOU THERE")
KOT: A great example would be, you know, "I'll Take You There."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'LL TAKE YOU THERE")
SINGERS: (Singing) I'll take you there. Ain't nobody crying. I'll take you there. No. Ain't nobody worrying. I'll take you there. Ain't no smiling faces. I'll take you there. Uh-huh.
KOT: It's almost a cliche. Everybody has heard that song countless of times, but they said - the guys in Muscle Shoals told me - that song basically had five lines of lyrics in it. And the rest was completely improvised on the floor of the studio.
RATH: Wow.
KOT: So that was Mavis Staples interacting in real-time with that rhythm section. That was the kind of bond these people had. And every one of them, they said to this day, the single greatest performance we have ever witnessed was Mavis Staples singing with us on that particular track. In gospel, you respond to the moment. You're in the moment. You have the Holy Ghost moment. The spirit walks into the room, and it changes you, everything. And that's what Mavis felt that day on the floor at Muscle Shoals, and it's really a transcendent piece of music.
RATH: It's so unique, it's so its own thing and its own sound the way you're talking about it. And you said that, you know, it's something that almost can't be duplicated. So how would you discuss the legacy, the influence of that sound?
KOT: Well, I think the key thing here to me is that Mavis Staples is one of the great performers of our time. Her investment in everything she sings is total. And that's apparent from the first note to the last. There's no phoning it in with Mavis Staples. You hear a song like "Uncloudy Day" or hear a song like "Respect Yourself," I mean, there is no doubt this person is in the moment. She believes, and that makes you believe.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RESPECT YOURSELF")
SINGERS: (Singing) If you're walking 'round thinking that the world owes you something 'cause you're here. You going out the world...
RATH: That's Greg Kot. He's the author of "I'll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March Up Freedom's Highway." He joined us from member station WBEZ in Chicago. Greg, thank you.
KOT: My pleasure, Arun. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RESPECT YOURSELF")
SINGERS: (Singing) Put your hand on your mouth when you cough...
RATH: And for Saturday, that's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. Tomorrow, we'll look at a group working to establish a human settlement on Mars. Believe it or not, there's no shortage of applicants for those one-way tickets. That's tomorrow. Until then, thanks for listening and have a great night.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
From NPR West, it's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Arun Rath.
It's time now for The New and The Next.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RATH: Carlos Watson is the co-founder of the online magazine "Ozy." Each week, he joins us to talk about what's new and what's next. Welcome back, Carlos.
CARLOS WATSON: Good to be with you.
RATH: First up, you have Will Packer, who is not a household name yet, but he's a film producer to watch this year.
WATSON: This young guy from Florida, who was always a movie lover, finally seems to be getting his big break. He's partnered up with the hot comedian of the day, Kevin Hart. They've got a series of films coming out. And just to hear the back story of this former electrical engineer who graduated magna cum laude from Florida A&M but who's turned his attention to the movies, it's exciting to see what he's building. And he now has a big deal with Universal Studios, which is bringing a series of films this year.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "RIDE ALONG")
KEVIN HART: (as Ben Barber) OK. I wanted your blessing in asking your sister to marry me.
ICE CUBE: (as James Peyton) You want to marry my sister? Show me that you're worthy of her.
HART: (as Ben Barker) How am I supposed to do that?
CUBE: (as James Peyton) I'm going to take you on a ride along.
RATH: And it's funny because I had noticed how it looks like - with his upcoming films, especially - that Kevin Hart is everywhere. And it turns out that, you know, Will Packer is the guy that seem like he's behind a lot of this.
WATSON: They've teamed up in the past and kind of nurtured each other's career. And now not only is Kevin Hart starring in a number of these, but Idris Elba. He's got a huge film coming out towards the end of the year called "No Good Deed." I think he's got two tremendous stars that he's get a chance to work regularly with.
RATH: You also have a fun thing here. This is films that are coming up in this next year. I love this - as a former kid who was forced to study Latin - involving some classic tales.
WATSON: Well, we knew that you needed a little Greco-Roman.
(LAUGHTER)
WATSON: And so it turns out, believe it or not, between now and the Christmas holidays this year, there will be seven big-budget Hollywood films kind of taking you back to kind of Greco-Roman, biblical sort of topics. So you've got one on "Pompeii," you've got a big one starring Russell Crowe called "Noah." You've got a big one coming this summer on "Hercules," starring the guy formerly known as The Rock and now referred to as Dwayne Johnson. So it's kind of a funny little quirk.
RATH: Swords and sandals are back. And I was noting in your piece that - I didn't realize that Pompeii has had something like 200 previous renderings and film.
WATSON: Pompeii weighs in at 200, Hercules, 83 previous versions, including one in January already. Hollywood is beating a theme in 2014.
RATH: Shifting to books now, e-books are growing more and more popular. But you have a piece about e-lit that's published specifically for women.
WATSON: Well, one of the most interesting things, Arun, that's happened is this hunger for something that's longer than a magazine article but shorter than a book. A couple of writers and executives - Peggy Northrop and Laura Fraser - looked up and saw some of the biggest services having 80 to 90 percent male writers and said this is kind of crazy, given that 70 percent of the readers are women.
And so they created something called shebooks.net with the idea of profiling and ultimately representing more and more female writers of these long short stories, if you will. I went online to look at some of the really interesting e-books they had and what a tantalizing variety of memoirs, of interesting cooking books, travel features, mysteries, a really healthy mix in their first wave. They just launched in December, by the way, so a lot here is new.
RATH: Carlos Watson is the co-founder of the online magazine "Ozy." You can explore all the stories we talked about at npr.org/newandnext. Carlos, thanks again.
WATSON: Really my pleasure. Look forward to seeing you next week.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RATH: Two conference championship games tomorrow will determine the teams that advance to the Super Bowl, and the matchups could not be more exciting. Denver and New England, Brady and Manning for Pete's sake. The other game, pitting San Francisco against Seattle, might just feature the two best teams in the league. I expect both games will be better than the Super Bowl. You can tell how much I love the game, and many Americans feel the way I do.
And America shows its love, giving back to the NFL with tax breaks and building stadiums with public money. But does the multibillion-dollar business really need the help, or is the NFL getting a free ride? That's our cover story today.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GREGG EASTERBROOK: NFL headquarters at 345 Park Avenue, New York, you walk into that facility, you think you're in the headquarters of Goldman Sachs.
RATH: That's Gregg Easterbrook, author of "King of Sports: Football's Impact on America."
EASTERBROOK: That facility is registered as a not-for-profit.
RATH: The National Football League is a tax-exempt organization, even with a commissioner that makes nearly $30 million a year. And from the tax code to big stadium deals, critics say they're getting millions of public dollars that would be better spent elsewhere.
Now, a lot of organizations in America are considered tax-exempt - charities, trade groups and NPR. The NFL league office is organized as a 501(c)(6), a part of the tax code that exempts things like business leagues and chambers of commerce and trade associations. But that's just the league office, not the individual franchises.
JEREMY SPECTOR: There is no tax break at the NFL for revenue earned from things like ticket sales, jersey sales or corporate sponsorships or television money.
RATH: Jeremy Spector is outside tax counsel for the NFL and a partner at Covington & Burling LLP. He says the NFL, including teams, brings in about $10 billion of annual taxable income.
SPECTOR: None of those revenues are escaping tax. It's the league office, that organizational or administrative arm, that's exempt.
RATH: That administrative arm handles things like writing the rulebook, hiring referees, running the college draft and negotiating stadium deals.
Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma says it's absurd to call the NFL a trade association. He's proposed changing the tax code to end the exemption and start collecting taxes from pro sports organizations like the NFL or the PGA.
SENATOR TOM COBURN: I'm saying in a time when we have a 640 billion deficit - and that's the best we've had in five years - shouldn't very wealthy to do sports leagues pay their share?
RATH: Jeremy Spector, lawyer for the NFL, says sports organizations are being unfairly singled out.
SPECTOR: I think it's very dangerous if Congress starts picking and choosing which industry or which industry trade associations are eligible for the tax exemption.
RATH: Critics say the tax exemption is just one way professional football gets a handout from taxpayers. Another way is big-time stadium deals. Take, for example, the Dallas Cowboys. Back in the late '90s, the Cowboys and their owner Jerry Jones began plans to expand their current stadium or build a new one.
He shopped in and around the city of Dallas for years asking for public assistance to fund the stadium. He found an audience in Arlington Texas, a city just outside of Dallas. And the price tag for the public, $325 million. Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck saw an opportunity for the city and a tough sell to voters.
MAYOR ROBERT CLUCK: It was difficult, it certainly was. We explained to them how it was going to work, where it was going to be located, the amenities that it would contain. After we explained it thoroughly, it really was not very difficult.
RATH: To pay for that, voters in Arlington agreed to raise taxes: a higher sales tax, plus hikes on rental cars and hotel rooms. Cowboys Stadium opened to the public in May 2009. Mayor Cluck says the economic benefits are tangible. He says groups use the stadium throughout the year, not just on game days. And he says building the stadium has increased property values in the surrounding area. All in all, he says, the stadium was worth it.
CLUCK: I'm sure you could find somebody who's against it. I have not seen that person since it was completed. I think people are very, very happy with it.
RATH: We decided to test out Mayor Cluck's assertion with some locals at Mavericks Sports Grill, just a mile away from the stadium. Dan O'Connell is the bar's manager.
DAN O'CONNELL: When the original votes were cast for the tax increase, I voted against it. But in retrospect, I think it was probably a good thing for the city. It seems to draw a lot of people in on the weekends and during games.
RATH: Jordan Fitzgerald doesn't agree and doesn't like the tax bill.
JORDAN FITZGERALD: It was not worth it, whatsoever. Why? Because my tax money went to a damn stadium instead of my own benefit?
RATH: Same goes for Alexia Whitehead.
ALEXIA WHITEHEAD: I guess it pisses me off that, you know, my taxes go to that. And I don't even care about football, so...
RATH: But some people, like Robert Henning, think the stadium put Arlington on the map.
ROBERT HENNING: I love it. It's a worldwide - just icon for football, which I think is the greatest sport on the planet, and it's bringing a lot of income to our city. And it's bringing more people here. They see the promise, and that's what we want.
RATH: Author Gregg Easterbrook says he's heard that argument before - that stadiums boost local economies. But he says it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
EASTERBROOK: Studies consistently show that the same amount of money spent on civic infrastructure, whether it's roads, bridges, subway, tunnels, if you spend on infrastructure, it has a multiplier effect every day of the year. If you spend on NFL stadia, it has a multiplier effect 10 or 12 days of the year.
RATH: In terms of civic investment, football makes no sense at all, not only its lack of multiplier effect on the local economy, but far more importantly, all the owners are billionaires. The league has $10 billion of annual revenue. It can pay for its own stadiums.
So can you give us a sense of scale in terms of the subsidies? How much is the NFL coming out ahead?
EASTERBROOK: Research shows that about 70 percent of the cost of building and operating the NFL stadiums has been paid for by the public. I estimate if you roll it all together - subsidies, tax favors, et cetera - it's roughly $1 billion a year. Most NFL stadia either don't pay any property taxes or pay drastically reduced property taxes compared to comparable businesses. MetLife stadium, where this year's Super Bowl will be held in New Jersey - and wish me luck, because I'll be freezing my keister off at that game - should pay about $20 million a year in local property taxes if it was tacked to the comparable rate per similar businesses in the same county.
It pays $6 million a year through a political agreement that exempted the billionaire ownership families of the Jets and Giants - who jointly own that stadium - from the kind of taxes that are paid by mere average people.
RATH: Leaving aside, though, if it's not - I mean, not to sound silly about it, but even if it's not sensible, you know more than anybody how much people love this game. And there's that threat hanging over cities of, you know, you don't want your beloved team to go away, go somewhere else that's better.
EASTERBROOK: The most recent example of that is Minnesota. A year ago, the billionaire ownership family of the Minnesota Vikings essentially blackmailed the state legislature into giving them half a billion dollars for a new facility. The key decision was made by the governor of Minnesota.
His choices were two: One, he can say: I'm the man who kept the Vikings in Minnesota, or, maybe if they left, I don't think they would've left. I think the odds were very small. But if they'd left, then he would have been blamed for losing the Vikings.
I mean, the former case where he boasts about, I'm the man who kept them here, he can claim ,and this will create thousands of jobs, even though that's transparently phony. If he does something that results in the Vikings leaving, then he's blamed. Meanwhile, the money that's been spent, it's all down the road. Some other politician will have to produce it.
RATH: Gregg Easterbrook, author of "King of Sports."
Even if the public loses money in the end, there's that powerful variable in the equation: the intense love fans have for their teams. Again, Jeremy Spector from the NFL.
SPECTOR: People like to have an NFL team at home. They like going to the stadium, and they don't want to lose that. And if the public at large or through their representatives decides that they want to spend some public dollars to keep the team there to help build a new stadium, you know, that's their decision to make. I don't deny that these are tough decisions for a community. There are limited dollars. And the communities have to decide where they want to spend them.
RATH: The people who want to roll back the favors for the NFL are having a hard time finding allies. After four months, Senator Coburn has only one co-sponsor for his bill, and he's not at liberty to say who it is. And this week, Senator Coburn, this one lone voice in Congress against public help for pro football, announced he's retiring at the end of this congressional session.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
Four hundred Catholic priests defrocked by the Vatican in just two years. That figure comes from a report published yesterday by the Associated Press. According to the AP, Pope Benedict XVI started that purge in 2011 in response to the worldwide child molestation scandal that brought an avalanche of charges and lawsuits.
Nicole Winfield was one of two AP reporters to break the story, and we asked her to put those numbers into context.
NICOLE WINFIELD: The years in question were 2011 and 2012. So these were the final two years of his pontificate. They also, though, coincided with the two years that came after the 2010 eruption - a second eruption of cases in Europe, beyond in Latin America, some more in the United States. And one of the things that they did in 2010 was extended the statute of limitations. People who claimed that they had been abused could now report the charge to the Vatican as late as in their late 30s. They doubled the statutes.
So one can think that perhaps the uptick in the number of cases being reported, that would also result in an increase in the number of priests who were then sanctioned.
RATH: Now, why wouldn't the Vatican share this information with the media at that time?
WINFIELD: Well, technically, this information was public. The Vatican reported these figures in their annual statistical yearbook of the activities of each of its offices. These are 1,000-page long reference books that few people outside of the Vatican or Rome really ever referenced. It's hard to find the information because it's not like they come out and say it. Much of it is in Latin. The sanction isn't, you know, defrocking. They tell you that it's a dismissal from the office or a dispensation from your clerical obligations.
So you kind of have to know what to look for. It was certainly not intended in a great act of transparency. If they wanted to let, you know, the world know, they would've put out a press release, I'm sure. And when I saw the numbers, I kind of said, wow, and did the math and put it together.
RATH: What actually happens when a priest is defrocked like this? Do the church authorities work with local authorities, or what actually happens?
WINFIELD: Well, the Vatican norms call for, if a Bishop receives a credible accusation against a priest, to report it both to the Vatican, and he must also inform police. But the current Vatican requirements just say where local laws require it. The Vatican comes back and tells the bishop how to proceed. If the case is completely overwhelming, if there is absolutely no doubt in the Vatican's mind that the priest was guilty, they can submit the paperwork directly to the pope for him to take action. Those are the cases that we are dealing with in this 400 number.
RATH: Does this reporting change our understanding of the Benedict papacy at all?
WINFIELD: I think it does. I was surprised by the high number because it shows that Benedict, who had been criticized for his role as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for a quarter century, which had dealt with this issue. This, to me, shows that he was acting decisively. Others, though, could look at it and say, holy cow, 400 priests in two years. This number isn't even the total. This is just the number of cases that were presented to the pope to deal with. This is an enormous number. This is an embarrassing number. We don't want this information out.
RATH: That's AP reporter Nicole Winfield from Rome. Nicole, thank you.
WINFIELD: Thank you.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
More than six months of revelations and debate about U.S. surveillance programs have put President Obama in a tight spot. In a highly anticipated speech yesterday, Mr. Obama outlined his plans for reforming the National Security Agency. He said the U.S. must protect itself while also maintaining the people's trust.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The bottom line is that people around the world, regardless of their nationality, should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don't threaten our national security. And we take their privacy concerns into account in our policies and procedures.
RATH: A lot of groups were scrutinizing the president's words, but none more closely than American technology companies, which have strongly criticized NSA surveillance practices.
NPR's Steve Henn joins us to talk about the reception to the speech in Silicon Valley. Steve, briefly, what did the president propose yesterday?
STEVE HENN, BYLINE: Well, I think the biggest news for most Americans will be the announcement that the administration is going to end the bulk collection of Americans' telephone records or end the system at least as we know it now. For the last few years, the NSA has been collecting information about every telephone call made in the United States, not the names of the people attached to the telephone numbers, but what numbers connect to what other numbers and how long those calls last.
They built a massive database that allows them to search through networks of connections very quickly. And while the president insisted that this was an important tool that was necessary to preserve for the NSA, the way the system works now will end. Exactly what will replace the system is now unclear.
The president also promised greater transparency in the legal process, greater limits on how foreign intelligence could be used in U.S. courts. And he suggested that Congress should pass a law to create a privacy advocate to represent the public's interest in classified national security cases that go before the FISA court.
RATH: Because of the nature of NSA surveillance, there's been a direct effect on American tech companies. What were executives from companies like Google and Microsoft hoping to hear from the president yesterday?
HENN: Well, they were actually hoping to hear a lot more. A lot of the reforms I just mentioned really spoke to Americans' concerns about surveillance of Americans. And tech executives have been much more focused on how the revelations about the NSA's spying have damaged their company's reputations abroad. They wanted the right to be completely frank with customers about what kinds of information the U.S. government is accessing from their data networks.
They also wanted an explicit promise that the NSA would stop breaking into data networks overseas. There have been stories of the NSA tapping the fiber networks that link major tech companies' servers to each other and also breaking encryption. And finally, I think they were hoping for a firm commitment that foreign nationals' digital privacy would be protected in a meaningful way.
RATH: And in terms of what the president actually did say, what was the reaction?
HENN: Well, I think, really, it was frustration. Mozilla, the nonprofit that makes the Firefox browser, released a statement immediately after the speech arguing that the NSA revelations were pushing countries around the globe to create their own rules and attempts to protect their citizens' data. And whether these rules are really well-meaning or purely opportunistic, the effect that they could have is to sort of balkanize the net.
For example, Brazil, which is considering a data protection system that would require all Brazilians' data to be held domestically, would force international companies like Microsoft or Google to start building servers in Brazil and holding all data affecting Brazilians there. For a startup with international ambitions, that's an impossible hurdle or nearly impossible hurdle to clear. So there are real business repercussions to the fallout for many entrepreneurs and executives in this part of the world.
RATH: And is there anything the president could've said that would've addressed those concerns?
HENN: I think the president tried. Unfortunately, the technology executives were looking for a couple things. First, I think they wanted a firm promise that the NSA would not try to break into the digital networks of American companies abroad. I think another really important thing that went unsaid would've been a commitment that the NSA and the intelligence community would never again try to undermine public encryption standards, that these companies and others all around the world use to protect consumer's data. Neither of those subjects came up, but I think there is a lot of disappointment about that.
RATH: That's NPR's tech correspondent Steve Henn. Steve, thank you.
HENN: My pleasure.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
NSA surveillance appears to have damaged America's reputation abroad, but the U.S. government is hoping that one person can turn it around. Rosanne Cash.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LAND OF DREAMS")
ROSANNE CASH: (Singing) I heard you calling from the start. A river...
RATH: You're listening to a song called "Land of Dreams," and it's the centerpiece of a unique campaign to revive foreign tourism to the U.S. The song appears in a TV ad being aired from Canada to Japan. In it, Rosanne Cash sings beneath the Brooklyn Bridge alongside an Indian sitar player, an African kora player, one big melting pot of a band that plays along. Add a few shots of marching through the French Quarter, frolicking in a field of daffodils, parasailing with bald eagles, and you've got one compelling case to come visit the old U.S. of A.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LAND OF DREAMS")
CASH: (Singing) Land of dreams, land of dreams. Come and find your land of dreams.
RATH: The ad was funded by a group called Brand USA, a public private partnership tasked with improving America's chances of attracting foreign tourists.
Journalist Michael Scaturro wrote about the campaign this past week in The Atlantic after spotting the ad on German television.
MICHAEL SCATURRO: We always joke that when you turn on CNN International, you see ads for Incredible India or Malaysia: Truly Asia. You always do see these things for other countries. But the U.S. hasn't really ever had that before.
RATH: And when comedian Stephen Colbert saw the ad, his reaction was swift and brutal.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE COLBERT REPORT")
STEPHEN COLBERT: It makes us seem desperate like Jamaica or the Democratic Republic of Sandals. And if you're going to make a tourism ad, it should look like this, America, come or don't, we don't give a (bleep).
RATH: The U.S. tourism industry has been spooked by what Scaturro calls America's lost decade.
SCATURRO: Between September 11th and basically 2006, there was a nosedive in the number of visits to the U.S. Those visits only really began to rebound in 2008. And they've rebounded, but the U.S. has a range of new competitors now.
RATH: Countries like Brazil, Turkey, even the United Arab Emirates have been cutting into what used to be a fairly reliable influx of foreign money. And then Edward Snowden hit the news.
SCATURRO: The NSA scandal has been very detrimental to the image of the U.S. The campaign, I think, tries to remind people of the nongovernmental, the nonpolitical sides of the U.S., the cultural experiences you can have there, nature, diversity, those sorts of things.
RATH: Scaturro says there's one major untapped market for American ads, the Arab World, which has produced the biggest number of new tourists, eager to spend money overseas. But Scaturro says, at least so far, Rosanne Cash hasn't made an appearance on Arab TV.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LAND OF DREAMS")
CASH: (Singing) Land of dreams, land of dreams. Come and find your land of dreams.
RATH: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
This was a bad week for advocates of net neutrality. A federal court struck down Federal Communications Commission rules intended to prevent broadband service providers from, for example, favoring one website over another.
NPR's Laura Sydell says consumer advocates are worried, the decision could ultimately mean higher prices for your Internet service.
LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: The regulations said that your Internet service provider or ISP can't favor some kinds of Web traffic over others. So, say, your ISP strikes a deal with Amazon Prime for its video streaming service, but you subscribe to Netflix. Your ISP could put Amazon on a high-speed lane on its network and relegate Netflix to a slower lane, making it less appealing. Now, Netflix might offer to pay Verizon more to get in the fast lane, and they may pass that cost onto you. So no more 7.99 a month for all you want to watch.
There's even some concern here among political groups. For example, the Christian Coalition has been a supporter of network neutrality rules because they worry that if, say, Verizon was interested in lobbying for a particular cause, it might slow traffic or block access to websites with alternative points of view.
RATH: Before the rules were made in 2010, was there any evidence that ISPs were blocking traffic?
SYDELL: As a matter of fact, there was. And it's actually why these rules were put on the books. Here's what happened. Back in around 2007, a fan of barbershop quartet music was using the software BitTorrent to uploading Cher's favorite songs. And the upload started to slow to a crawl, and he went public about it. It turns out Comcast was slowing BitTorrent traffic. Some of our listeners may know that BitTorrent software is often used by people who are sharing unauthorized music and movie files, though it's also used by college professors sharing large research papers.
But Comcast said BitTorrent traffic was hogging its pipes, so they slowed it. The FCC cited Comcast for slowing it, and Comcast took the FCC to court and it won. And that's when the FCC tried to write the open Internet rules that just go struck down.
RATH: So then why did the appeals court strike down those rules?
SYDELL: Even further back before Comcast - the Comcast case, the FCC made a decision that's been making it very hard for the commission to regulate traffic on the Internet. It split phone service and Internet service, so the FCC can regulate phones more heavily. But the FCC decided it didn't want to over regulate this new technology known as the Internet. So it put broadband in a different category, something called information services.
Verizon didn't like the way the FCC tried to use open Internet rules. It said it looked an awful lot like telephone regulations. Verizon sued, and the D.C. circuit court agreed and ruled that the FCC had to classify Internet differently if it was going to make these kind of regulations.
RATH: So where do we go from here? Are consumers going to see some changes to their service? Or is the FCC going to try another way to regulate?
SYDELL: Well, theoretically, your ISP can start to make changes right away. But the FCC may not be out of tricks. They could appeal, though the word on the street is that's unlikely. The FCC could try to reclassify broadband and make it more like phone service. But every time they talk about that, some members of Congress go nuts. This decision, however, was not a total loss for the FCC. The court did say the agency has the right to regulate some aspects of Internet service.
So it's possible and probably more likely that the agency is going to try and find a way to use the decision to rewrite the rules in a way that fits in with the language of the case. And we could end up going through all of this all over again.
RATH: That's NPR's digital culture correspondent Laura Sydell. Laura, thank you.
SYDELL: You're welcome.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Also this week, there was more tough news for Americans who rely on federal unemployment benefits.
At the end of last year, Congress failed to extend Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which helps the long-term unemployed. And on December 28th, about 1.3 million people lost benefits.
This week, members of Congress brought the program back up for debate, but they could not agree on how to pay for the benefits. And each week, the number of people losing their unemployment checks grows. They're watching Congress closely.
AMY ROBERTS: I can't afford a newspaper subscription right now, so I go to the library, which is close to my house, every morning to read the paper.
RATH: Take, for example, Amy Roberts from Columbus, Ohio. She's been out of work for nine months. She spends hours every day searching for jobs.
ROBERTS: I just want anything. I'll take anything right now. You know, I'll take retail, but I don't have a retail background.
RATH: Her background is in marketing and event planning, and she's taking classes to earn her master's. Since losing federal benefits three weeks ago, no money is coming in. She's resorted to dog sitting and organizing people's closets.
ROBERTS: I'm selling everything I can. My savings is almost gone, so anything that I had around the house that I didn't need that was valuable I've tried to sell. And I've been pretty successful, but I don't have much left to sell. So...
RATH: Plus, she has her 9-year-old daughter to take care of. Roberts says the anxiety eats her up.
ROBERTS: You know, I wish I could stress about being late to work or not being able to buy the shoes that I really want. But this kind of stress is - it goes so much deeper. You know, how am I going to pay my phone bill? What if I can't pay for my car? What if my car breaks down? It's every single day and it's constant.
SALLY LINDA EDLUND: It was horrible.
RATH: In Minneapolis, Minnesota, Sally Linda Edlund has been in a similar situation. She was laid off last February. Her husband was let go two years ago.
EDLUND: Just that stress of looming over your day-to-day activities and knowing that you have to plan with virtually nothing to plan with, it was really stressful.
RATH: Edlund says the unemployment benefits had been a lifeline for her family. She and her husband have three young children.
EDLUND: We would use that to buy groceries that my car payment came directly out of that, any time we would have to pay medical expenses, yeah, I mean, as soon as that went into our account, it was gone. We relied on that basically for day-to-day living expenses and food and everything. Yeah.
RATH: But she is one of the luckier ones. A week after the family lost those benefits, Edlund was hired by a medical device company. But it's only temporary.
EDLUND: It's worrisome to know that it's eventually going to run out. And so every day that I go in, I'm wondering, gosh, how much longer am I going to be here?
RATH: Back in Columbus, Amy Roberts says she's not giving up.
ROBERTS: I'm just being optimistic. I'm just taking it one day at a time. I'm hoping that when I read the paper tomorrow, there's going to be good news.
RATH: Lawmakers are expected to resume debate on the legislation in the next two weeks.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Now to something quite a bit older - the paper on which Abraham Lincoln wrote the early plans to end slavery in the United States. While many important documents from American history find a home at the National Archives, behind protective cases and security, this Lincoln document is displayed at a church in Washington, D.C. Heather Taylor brings us the story.
HEATHER TAYLOR, BYLINE: Five days before Christmas in 1951, the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., received a major gift: a document written by Abraham Lincoln. It came from Barney Balaban, president of Paramount of Pictures and a son of Russian-Jewish immigrants. He told the congregation that there was no more perfect place to express his gratitude to America, a country he loved.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARNEY BALABAN: This evening, Goldie and Israel Balaban's son is privileged to present Abraham Lincoln's first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, one of the great documents of our American heritage, to the church in which Lincoln worshipped.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHURCH BELLS)
TAYLOR: Sixty-two years later, visitors still flock to Lincoln's church to see the two-page ink and paper document. It's an early draft proposal about how to end slavery. For this 700-member congregation, the Lincoln document reflects its mission of inclusion and social justice.
But although the Lincoln manuscript remains intact, Dan Stokes says the church is worried about how to preserve the document over the long term. Stokes is the church archivist and a staff member at the National Archives.
DAN STOKES, NATIONAL ARCHIVES: When it was donated, it was sealed away in a case that was, I'm sure, appropriate for the time. But the wonderful efforts that were made to preserve it in the '50s are no longer wonderful. We've had people from Smithsonian come in - preservation experts - and say, here's what you need to do and here's how it should be housed.
TAYLOR: At the Archives, documents are displayed very differently. Church historian Wilson Golden says that's because the Archives adheres to modern preservation standards.
WILSON GOLDEN: If you go to the Archives and you see the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, those documents are almost flat. They're just slightly elevated at the top but very, very slightly. Number two, they are in a gaseous environment that is, you know, the science is always improving. And thirdly, it's the dimmest of lights.
TAYLOR: And the Lincoln document?
GOLDEN: It's just one of the most interesting things you'll see, if you're interested in just historical documents. But the lighting is wrong, the slope is wrong, the gas is wrong.
TAYLOR: The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church would like to update the display. But that could cost thousands of dollars - dollars that are needed to help with basic upkeep, like replacing 62-year-old wiring and crumbling brickwork and bolstering church programs. But Dan Stokes says without actually opening up the display case, it's hard to know the real cost.
ARCHIVES: Because it's in this glass frame and then behind it is a second glass wall, we don't know what condition it's in. If we took that apart, is it all going to be one nice sheet of paper or is it going to come into pieces.
TAYLOR: But while there are still preservation concerns, security is less of an issue. Wilson Golden says there's a good reason.
GOLDEN: This is mounted in a ton of concrete. Plus, it's kind of inside the building. So you couldn't pull a truck up here and haul it off.
TAYLOR: Church docent Paul Dornan is more philosophical.
PAUL DORNAN: It's intentional that this place so close to the White House be open to the public and to anyone who would be seeking social justice and spiritual nourishment. And in that notion of hospitality, how else would we be able to make visible a document that we treasure and that we think everyone else should?
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
TAYLOR: But to continue offering that hospitality may depend on finding another generous donor. For NPR News, I'm Heather Taylor.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
This year, Ford is marking the 50th anniversary of the Mustang. To celebrate, engineers came up with a major redesign featured this week at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. But before it revealed the new model, Ford tried to preserve the element of surprise. That's no easy task when you're up against paparazzi from car magazines and websites.
NPR's Daniel Hajek reports on one way automakers keep away prying eyes: car camouflage.
DANIEL HAJEK, BYLINE: For months, the new Mustang was cloaked in secrecy. But an upcoming car can't stay in the garage forever. It has to undergo rigorous testing, and that means taking it out in traffic to monitor its handling on roads across the U.S. So to keep the redesign out of the public eye, Mustang chief engineer Dave Pericak says it was completely covered in camouflage.
DAVE PERICAK: Underneath that material is a whole science and art, all-in-one. They're creating a new exterior over the exterior.
HAJEK: It's like hiding in plain sight.
AL WILKINSON: We try to use lightweight vinyl and different types of foam, which don't absorb water.
HAJEK: That's Al Wilkinson, the Mustang's master of disguise. He's Ford's camouflage coordinator. Wilkinson says he carefully designed the thick exterior so it wouldn't affect the weight or aerodynamics of the car.
WILKINSON: The materials we use have to be flexible and also be able to hold up to all different weather climates.
HAJEK: The result: a nondescript, black, boxy vehicle that looks a little like the Batmobile. Just as soon as it hit the road, the car paparazzi were waiting.
BRENDA PRIDDY: Heavily camouflaged, but I have photos of the Mustang.
HAJEK: That's photographer Brenda Priddy. She caught it outside a shopping mall in Colorado. You can't tell what the design looks like. But even photos of masked cars are sought after by auto magazines and blogs.
PRIDDY: Everybody loves to see the next Corvette, the next Mustang, the next Ferrari. They'd like to see what's going on.
HAJEK: Priddy says each auto company has a distinct style of camouflage. BMW and Mini mount psychedelic black and yellow patterns on exteriors to distort the contours and lines.
PRIDDY: We've seen lots of Nissans and, in the past, a couple Subarus that look like they're wrapped in garbage bags with black electrical tape or duct tape wrapped around it. So that's pretty distinctive as well.
HAJEK: She says one of the best spots to snap spy photos is at a gas station.
PRIDDY: We usually wait until they get the nozzle in the gas pump, and then they're kind of stuck there for a few minutes. Just kind of blend in, and we belong where they belong.
HAJEK: Priddy takes her pictures in public places, but not everyone plays by those rules. During the Mustang's high-speed tests, Dave Pericak says one photographer snuck past security onto Ford's private track.
PERICAK: He went to the track the night before and slept in the weeds. And then in the morning, he was ready to go, and he had his telephoto lens and everything. And he literally just woke up in the weeds. And as we rolled the car off of our transportation truck and we took the camo off, his camera started snapping photos. Even though we had hired security and closed the track down and did everything that we did, he still got his way in there.
HAJEK: Images of the Mustang's front end were leaked. But that didn't compromise the car's much-anticipated unveiling.
MARK FIELDS: Everybody has a great story about the Mustang.
HAJEK: Ford's Chief Operating Officer Mark Fields addresses a crowd in Dearborn, Michigan, in December. He stands in front of a Mustang hidden under a white sheet.
FIELDS: So with no further ado, ladies and gentleman, the all-new 2015 Mustang.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HAJEK: The sheet flies off the car, finally revealing the glossy red fully redesigned body. Pericak says the camouflage did its job.
PERICAK: It's a big game of cat and mouse. And at the end of the day, as long as we don't get caught by the cat, we're good.
HAJEK: With bulky and sometimes vibrant camouflage, it's hard to miss these future cars out on the road. The car paparazzi will always have lenses pointed towards the latest redesign. But as long as there are camouflage coordinators, the car industry's newest design secrets can stay safely hidden until the next big reveal. Daniel Hajek, NPR News.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
If you're just joining us, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Arun Rath.
If you've been missing Bobby Bottleservice, the gals from Publizity or Too Much Tuna, you can rejoice that comedian Nick Kroll is back with a new season of his sketch show on Comedy Central, "Kroll Show.' If what I just said makes absolutely no sense to you, don't worry. I asked Nick Kroll to start us off by explaining the background of one of those signature creations - the seedy, goateed, wanna-be lady's man named Bobby Bottleservice.
NICK KROLL: Arun, I'm shocked to think that anyone listening to NPR on a Sunday might not know where Bobby Bottleservice came from.
RATH: Just a couple of people.
KROLL: But Bobby Bottleservice started as a character that I did as a way to talk to girls because he was - he really loves to hit on women. And a lot of women have experienced getting hit on by a guy like Bobby Bottleservice.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "KROLL SHOW")
RATH: You're ahead of the time though, 'cause I'd always assumed that Bobby Bottleservice came after "Jersey Shore."
KROLL: Yeah. No. He came before it. And out of that, we started doing with my friend John Daly, the Ed Hardy Boys, which was Bobby and Peter Paparazzo, and they were solving crimes like the Hardy Boys but always in Ed Hardy clothing.
The fun thing with Bobby is that he changes formats. So in one sketch, it's Ghost Bouncers, like a parody of the "Ghost Hunters" show. Because we watch "Ghost Hunters," and we're like, oh, my God. These guys are real-life Bobby Bottleservice.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "KROLL SHOW")
RATH: Great cameo from him.
KROLL: A great cameo from Peter Gallagher. And then they meet Jason Mantzoukas who's a rival gigolo, and he invites them to live in his gigolo house.
RATH: After diffusing a tense showdown with a breath mint.
KROLL: Exactly. Breath mints bring everybody together in the gigolo community.
RATH: I want to talk about my favorite recurring segment, which is Wheels Ontario. There's a new installment - great new installment that'll be airing this week. For those who haven't seen it, can you describe Wheels Ontario?
KROLL: Yeah. Wheels Ontario came out of - as a sort of parody of "Degrassi High." And for those of you who don't know, "Degrassi" is a Canadian teen soap that has been on for, I think, like 25 years.
RATH: And that's something that I think the NPR audience - there's probably a significant crossover with "Degrassi."
KROLL: I think so.
RATH: Yeah.
KROLL: I think, you know, you listen to WAIT, WAIT...DON'T TELL ME, "Little Prairie Home Companion," switch on "Degrassi" for an episode, then come back for a little ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, go back for another episode of "Degrassi," and then finish off the day with "This American Life."
RATH: Yeah, pretty much.
KROLL: And you've got yourself quite a Sunday. But yeah, so "Degrassi" is this Canadian teen soap, and so we created the show called Wheels Ontario. And the idea is that I am new at a school and everyone at the school is in a wheelchair except for me.
RATH: You get picked on for that reason, for being...
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "KROLL SHOW")
KROLL: Part of that is based on the fact that Drake - the recording artist Drake - got his start as a kid in a wheelchair on "Degrassi." I don't know - it's hard to explain. It's like the drama on "Degrassi" and translated into Wheels Ontario is super high, super high stakes. But the acting and performances, like Canada, are pretty bland.
RATH: It's - and the tone doesn't waiver even when they're going through awful, you know, whatever awful thing they're going through. It's that same kind of...
KROLL: Yeah, pregnancy, drug abuse, attempted murder, statutory rape - all these things that are hugely important are played with very low-end emotion.
RATH: So - this is great, but I just want to keep talking, but we have to stop at one point. I'll ask you one more. What might be considered your real breakout role was - is on the FX show "The League." I wonder, though - and you've been able to play a lot of different characters - was it hard after such a kind of pungent role as that not to get typecast as a jerk?
KROLL: The character I play in "The League," Ruxin, I thought, was going to be one of the most unlikeable guys ever to be on television. And he is, to an extent, but people seem to enjoy him because he's kind of funny. Like, he's supposed to be funny. So he can be a jerk, but he's also making jokes. And I've always wanted to do my own show and play a bunch of different characters.
And so being able to play a bunch of different characters has given me a break from just playing this one kind of guy. And I'm very lucky that I get to do that. It's incredibly gratifying to be able to play a wide spectrum of characters but ones that you can always come back to and learn more about.
And like your friends, you have some friends who you hate. And then you're like, oh, but they have a terrible mother. And you're like, OK, I accept them for who they are because I met their mother and I see that they never got complimented. And I feel that same way about all my characters that, you know, you try to find the humanity even in the most mean-spirited people.
RATH: That's Nick Kroll. He's the creator and star of the "Kroll Show." Its second season just premiered this past week. Nick, thank you.
KROLL: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RATH: And for Sunday, that's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Arun Rath. Check out our weekly podcast. Look for WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED on iTunes or on the NPR app. And you can follow me on Twitter @arunrath. That's A-R-U-N R-A-T-H. We're back next weekend. Until then, thanks for listening and have a great week.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
We are collecting stories of triumph, big and small, the moments when people make those great leaps forward in their careers. We're calling it My Big Break. And we're kicking off our series with a break that happened 24 years ago today, thanks to one lucky photograph.
BILL O'LEARY: My name is Bill O'Leary. I'm a staff photographer with The Washington Post. My big break came the night Washington Mayor Marion Barry got arrested for smoking crack in a hotel room during an FBI sting.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
O'LEARY: Leading up to that point, I had been administrative staff at The Post. It's pretty much clerical background work. And I was anxious to get out on the street with a camera, you know, make a real contribution. So I got a new boss who gave me an internship. So a month into this internship, an editor comes running in and says, there's a rumor that the mayor has been arrested. For this to be happening was a monstrous local story.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
O'LEARY: It's true, the mayor has been arrested. He's being held at the FBI Buzzard Point center, and we are going to flood the zone. We're going to have people at every intersection and every corner of the building, and we're going to get the mayor when he comes out of that building. So they dispatch all the heavy hitters off to their assignments, and there's two or three people left - just me and one of the older photographers who had been going through a divorce and had asked for light duty.
So my boss looks at us, and he says, and you two guys, why don't you go out to his house just in case we miss him. It's now close to midnight. It's January. It's very cold and dark and quiet. My colleague takes the front of the house, and I take the back. The back of the house is off of an ally. And sure enough, vehicle pulls up, SUV with smoked windows. And the door opens and four men get out. And damn, there he is. There's Marion Barry.
So I raise my camera, but before I can take a picture, this big, beefy FBI agent blocks me, puts his hand on my lens and starts pushing me back. At that moment, I hear a commotion. And at the end of the ally, a competitor, Joe Johns of Channel 4 News, he has arrived at the end of the ally. He's seeing that he's missing it, so he's taken off on foot, and he's yelling at the top of his lungs, Mr. Mayor, what were you doing in that hotel room, something like that.
Well, this alarms the FBI agent, who stops worrying about me and turns to intercept this new threat. At that instant, I get off this one picture, bam, with a punch flash direct strobe hideous in the middle of the night. So I get in the car, and I go rushing back, running into our darkroom, close the door and lock it, begin the process. When I finally start to unwheel it from the spool, hold it up to a light box, and there it is. It's clear, sharp, it's properly exposed, and it's the mayor.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
O'LEARY: It was our lead picture, an incredible scoop. Everyone wanted it. We got picked up by all the wires, all the magazines. It was magic, is the only way to describe it, I think. And that's what happened. That's - that was my big break.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RATH: That was Bill O'Leary. He's a staff photographer for The Washington Post. We want to hear the story of your big break. Send us an email at My Big Break at npr.org.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath. Did you notice a theme running through the Oscar nominees for Best Picture?
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "12 YEARS A SLAVE")
CHIWETEL EJIOFOR: (As Solomon Northup) I was born a free man, lived with my family in New York...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: (As character) Good for you, man.
EJIOFOR: (As Solomon Northup) ...until the day I was deceived...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: This is Solomon.
EJIOFOR: (As Solomon Northup) ...kidnapped, sold into slavery.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "PHILOMENA")
ANNA MAXWELL MARTIN: (As Jane) I know this woman. She had a baby when she was a teenager. She's kept it secret for 50 years.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "THE WOLF OF WALL STREET")
LEONARDO DICAPRIO: (As Jordan Belfort) My name is Jordan Belfort. The year I turned 26, I made $49 million, which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week.
RATH: "12 Years a Slave," "Philomena," "Wolf of Wall Street," along with "American Hustle," "Captain Phillips" and "Dallas Buyers Club," they're all based on true stories, real life, racial injustice, slavery, the Holocaust. They all seem like pretty reliable picks for Oscar nods. In February, the American Sociological Review will publish a paper about these kinds of movies, the so-called Oscar bait.
Gabriel Rossman is a professor at UCLA, and he's the lead author of the study. He says they were interested in the Oscar bait formula because it was key to a high-stakes bet.
GABRIEL ROSSMAN: Making that movie with high Oscar appeal, a movie that's targeted towards the Oscars, you really have to get the Oscars or it doesn't work, because people don't necessarily like the kinds of movies that are seeking Oscars unless they get the Oscars, in which case they actually do like them quite a bit.
RATH: Because, you know, some of these subjects, whether it's, you know, racial injustice or, you know, slavery, the Holocaust, they're not things that people necessarily want to think about or spend a lot of time with.
ROSSMAN: That's right. The kind of things that tend to get you Oscars tend to be unpleasant. And so we found that what tends to get you Oscars is biopics or historical films, to a slightly lesser extent drama or war. Sci-fi, horror and action are pretty bad for getting Oscars. Next most important thing was the plot themes. Stereotypically, it's themes having to do with disabilities or war crimes such as the Holocaust. Those are actually pretty good for getting Oscars but not quite as good as things having to do with aristocrats or political scandal.
RATH: I see.
ROSSMAN: So things having to do with Watergate or something like that are - they bury the needle. And then the other things that count a lot are a late release date. Obviously, these films all come out in award season close to Christmas. And also very often, they're released by specialty divisions of major studios that really specialize in these types of films.
RATH: But even when a film hits all of those points, it's not really a guarantee. Your paper says the movie that actually had the most Oscar appeal from 1985 to 2009 was this 1990 film about a couple split apart by the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "COME SEE THE PARADISE")
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: At a time when the world was at war, they were stripped of their possessions...
TAMLYN TOMITA: (As Lily Yuriko Kawamura) What are you burning?
SHIZUKO HOSHI: (As Mrs. Kawamura) I don't want people going through our things.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: (As character) Do you think they'll send us back to Japan?
TOMITA: (As Lily Yuriko Kawamura) I don't know.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: (As character) I've never been to Japan.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: ...and their freedom.
DENNIS QUAID: (As Jack McGurn) My wife is an American citizen, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: (As character) You think the camps are wrong?
QUAID: (As Jack McGurn) Yes, sir, I do.
RATH: Yeah. So we got family tragedy, racial injustice, historical setting. It feels like "Come See the Paradise" is - they're just piling it on.
ROSSMAN: Coming up with movies like this was actually the whole point of the study, because if every movie that's trying to get an Oscar actually gets an Oscar, then we wouldn't have bothered to try and figure out which movies are trying. We could've just looked at which ones succeeded. So it was actually in order to identify films like "Come See the Paradise" that tried but failed to achieve Oscars. That's why we went through all this trouble writing thousands of lines of computer code.
Of course, the irony is that once you've - the computer's flagged such a film for you, nobody's heard of it. People don't like these kinds of movies unless they get the Oscar nomination. And I think it's worth noting that "Come See the Paradise" lost a lot of money.
RATH: And we can go to the other end of the scale now with a film - another film I'd not heard of before that scored one of your lowest rankings on the scale.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "HOTEL FOR DOGS")
RATH: That is, of course, the 2009 classic "Hotel for Dogs," which finished second to last in your rankings. So you're telling me that's not Oscar material, huh?
ROSSMAN: Well, it might very well be a fine film, but it's not the kind of thing that the people were - had to return a deposit on their tuxedos. This is a good example the kind of film that's not remotely targeted towards the Oscars. First of all, the genres are comedy and family. Comedy is not that bad, but family films almost never get Oscar nominations. Also, it came out in January. And it has key words like dog that tend not to be especially highly ranked as Oscar-friendly keywords.
RATH: Have you been able to do any calculations about this year's movies?
ROSSMAN: No, I'm afraid not. It takes a few weeks of work. But just eyeballing it, it looks like these films would all score very highly on the metric.
RATH: Gabriel Rossman is a sociologist at UCLA. Dr. Rossman, thank you.
ROSSMAN: Thank you.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.
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RATH: A few months before astrophysicist Carl Sagan died in 1996, he recorded a message to the future human inhabitants of Mars.
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RATH: Some of the earliest science fiction, back in the 19th century, imagined voyages to the Red Planet. We have spacefaring technology today. And getting to Mars actually seems within reach. But it would involve massive resources and a lot of danger. There are a lot of people, though, willing to risk it all for that chance.
LIEUTENANT HEIDI BEEMER: Everything I have done academically and professionally has been for one reason: to leave this Earth and represent humanity on Mars.
RATH: Army Lieutenant Heidi Beemer. To get to Mars sooner, she's willing to forgo the return trip. That's right, a one-way ticket to the Red Planet. We'll hear more from her later.
A private organization wants to start a permanent human colony with volunteers like Beemer by 2025. That's our cover story for today: Humans on Mars. The risks and the reward.
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RATH: A few years ago, President Barack Obama set out a more conventional goal for the mid-2030s.
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RATH: Earthlings have actually been visiting Mars since the 1960s, or at least our machines have. First, there were flyby missions, then orbiters. Early primitive landers in the 1970s sent back the first pictures from the surface. But the real excitement began with the robotic rovers that started exploring the surface of Mars in the 1990s. NASA took a big leap forward when it landed the rovers Spirit and Opportunity on opposite sides of the planet.
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RATH: John Grant is a planetary geologist at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and part of NASA's rover mission team.
DR. JOHN GRANT: I don't want to admit that I pretend that I'm a robot on Mars, but clearly, the science team kind of places themselves in the eyes and body of the rover when we look around, almost like we're there.
RATH: So we've learned so much about Mars in recent decades, you know, from the rovers and also from the orbiters that have been mapping the surface of the planet. But I imagine there's probably still a ton that we don't know.
GRANT: So think if you had all the continents on the Earth to explore and you've only been to a handful of places, would you say that you really kind of understand the Earth? And, of course, the answer would be no. And that's the situation on Mars. The surface area on Mars is about the same as the land area on the Earth. We feel like in some cases, we've been to a couple of national parks, but there's a bunch more we need to get under our belt.
RATH: You must be familiar with the old unsettled debate that, is it worth sending humans into deep space beyond Earth orbit when robots can do so much - and we've seen them do so much. Am I wrong to assume that you're with the robots?
GRANT: No. Actually, I'm, you know, I'm in both camps. I think that the robots are critical to setting the stage to understanding what's there and to doing the sort of precursor. But let's consider that Opportunity in 10 years has gone about a little over 38 kilometers, you know, a bit more than running a marathon on the Earth. You know, I'm no Olympic athlete, but over 10 years, I could certainly walk even very slowly many, many times that many marathons.
With the rovers, it's much more sort of dragged-out process simply because we have to tell them every day what to do. It just takes longer.
RATH: Even John Grant, a member of NASA's robotic rover team, thinks a manned missions is necessary. But there are a ton of concerns about sending people to Mars, not the type of stuff you can sort out after launch. And once you're off, it's a long trip. The shortest Mars trip would take more than a year roundtrip.
So here on Earth, scientists are conducting experiments at sites built to simulate these long-duration missions. Kim Binsted is the principal investigator at one of these sites, located on one of Hawaii's volcanoes.
KIM BINSTED: It's not the Hawaii you're used to thinking of and seeing ads for tourism.
RATH: Binsted, a professor at the University of Hawaii, says there's no plant life around, no human activity visible. For the studies, crews live inside of a geodesic dome for months at a time.
BINSTED: It's very small. It's about 1,000 square feet for six people, and that includes their workspace, their sleeping space, kitchen, laboratory and so on. And the crew can only go outside in spacesuits, mock-up spacesuits. So they really are in those tight quarters without a lot of relief for quite a long time.
RATH: And for a long duration missions such as that, one of the first things you think about is how do people eat. So how do they manage the food situation?
BINSTED: Right. Well, our first mission, which finished in August, was all about the food. We had both the completely pre-prepared food, which is similar to what NASA uses now, and we allowed the crew to do some basic cooking using shelf-stable foods.
RATH: I know another one of the big concerns when talking about a mission like this is the psychological concerns about having people being stuck in the same environment with the same people for a very extended period of time.
BINSTED: Right. And that's what our next three missions are looking at. We've got funding from NASA to do three more missions. And those missions are all going to be about psychology, crew cohesion, crew performance, basically how do you support a crew and pick a crew so that they don't end up wanting to kill each other.
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RATH: And getting to Mars is only half the problem. Getting back is another thing entirely. Just think about all it takes to get a simple satellite into Earth orbit. Now, imagine launching a trip home from Mars. How do you pack your own launchpad, rocket, and the ridiculous quantity of fuel it takes to get home?
One group of Mars enthusiasts is getting around all of that by saying forget going home. Mars One is a Netherlands-based nonprofit. They have the goal of establishing a permanent, sustainable human settlement on Mars by 2025. First, they'd send a series of robots to build a habitat and stockpile water. But their plan still faces a ton of serious problems, like potentially lethal levels of radiation on the Martian surface and the extreme Martian weather. There's still a lot of money to be raised, and the company is looking to crowd-funding for some of it.
John Logsdon is the former director the Space Policy Institute, and he says the idea is more fantasy that fact in his mind.
JOHN LOGSDON: It's not clear what they would do once they get there except be there. You know, it's not impossible, but I think it's very highly implausible.
RATH: But that has not deterred more than 200,000 people from around the world from applying. Just over 1,000 made it to the second round. Twenty-five-year-old Heidi Beemer is one of them.
BEEMER: I actually decided and told my parents when I was 8 years old that I was going to be an astronaut and I was going to go to Mars.
RATH: Heidi Beemer is in the Army. She's a lieutenant and chemical defense officer with Fort Campbell's 63rd Chemical Company in Kentucky. To most, the concept of a one-way trip to another planet seems daunting and disturbing, even crazy. Beemer's mind is made up.
BEEMER: The thought of being afraid or having the fear of the fact that I'm going to die on a different planet, it doesn't really bother me because this is something that will help out humanity for years and years and years to come. So if I'm going to die anywhere on Earth or anywhere, I might as well die doing something that's going to help out future generations.
RATH: Her passion for the Red Planet goes back to an article she read in 1997 about the landing of NASA's Sojourner rover.
BEEMER: From this newspaper article on the top was this giant panorama that was taken of just the Mars surface. And as a little 8-year-old kid, I'm looking at this going, wow. Like, this is awesome. We need to continue to explore this. And this little rover can only do so much. We need to send people.
RATH: Mars One still has a lot of details to work out. But here's the plan for now: The final round of astronauts will be selected in 2015. Forty to 50 astronauts will be selected. They'll spend the next decade training at stations just like the one in Hawaii. Starting in 2024, the first set of four astronauts will set off on the one-way journey. Beemer says she's already connected with some of the other applicants.
BEEMER: So there's a Facebook group called the Aspiring Martians Group. And this is a community of over 3,000, 4,000 people that all have aspirations of one day going to Mars. We've been talking, we've been communicating, we've been discussing what-if situations. We've been kind of being really supportive of each other.
RATH: And these people seem a lot like the type of people that you would literally like to spend the rest of your life with. What do you think about the social aspect of this about, you know, having a life and a family eventually?
BEEMER: I think moving forward, I'm OK with it. Creating a new family that I am ultimately going to bond with for the rest of my life is kind of a good consolation to just settling down with one person and having a family of my own. I'm really looking forward to it kind of growing into a giant extended family.
RATH: How does your family feel about the prospect of you going to Mars and never coming back?
BEEMER: They're super supportive. They, of course, are nervous, and they're a little afraid. But my senior of high school, I told my family, hey, I've decided that I'm going to go to a military school. And then after my senior year, I came home and said, mom and dad, I've decided that I'm going to serve my country and I'm going to be joining the Army.
So once I finally sat down and said, mom and dad, I've applied to go to Mars on a one-way trip, I think this is kind of the point where they realize, OK, this kid's going to continue to surprise us and continue to do great things. So they're coming to realization with that.
RATH: So even though you've got through to this cut, it's still pretty long odds at this stage. If Mars One doesn't work out, do you have a plan B?
BEEMER: If this doesn't work out, it's just a matter of time before more opportunities come across. Regardless, my goal is to continue getting people excited about space. For me, just spreading the word about it and getting the younger generations excited about the project is something that I'm going to continue doing for the rest of my life, whether I'm on Earth or on Mars.
RATH: Heidi Beemer is one of 158 applicants still in the running for a one-way trip to Mars. And by the way, Kim Binsted, the scientist from the Mars simulation habitat in Hawaii, is also a finalist for Mars One. As she put it, how could she not apply?
With all of the unknowns, engineering and funding challenges, and safety risks, there's still a hope pulsing through the scientific community that humans will soon walk on Mars.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Arun Rath.
Iran's nuclear program will grind to a halt beginning tomorrow. It's part of an agreement between Iran and Western powers, which rolled back some sanctions in exchange for a six-month moratorium on most nuclear activities. But this is just an early step. Negotiations toward a long-term agreement are supposed to resume in the next few weeks. The U.S. is seeking total nuclear disarmament while Iran is pushing for a complete end to sanctions.
For more on the deal, we called Karim Sadjadpour. He studies Iran as a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, and he explained exactly what Iran will have to do starting tomorrow.
KARIM SADJADPOUR: Arun, under the agreement, Iran will have to cap its enrichment of uranium at a low level, about 3.5 percent. It will have to allow for much more transparency into its nuclear program, including not just its nuclear facilities but also centrifuge workshops, things like that. And Iran will also have to take some of the low-enriched uranium, which it stockpiled, and convert them to fuel rods, which are less of a proliferation concern.
RATH: So this agreement was actually reached back in November, but it's taken all this time to iron out the technical details of what Iran would do, how the inspectors would get access. Why did it take so long?
SADJADPOUR: Well, the agreement, which was reached in November, was political in nature. They agreed to kind of the broad contours of the deal. But then when you go to really the technical nitty-gritty, it gets quite complicated. Obviously, Iran wants to do as little as possible for as much as possible in return. And there was also some questions here in the United States about whether Congress was going to hold off on passing sanctions legislation. But really, it was the technical nitty-gritty that needed to be resolved.
RATH: Now, this agreement is only temporary. It just lasts six months. And it's supposed to buy time for more negotiations. You've written very interestingly about one sticking point - is how Iranian leaders feel that they're defending their country against unfair policies. Could you talk about that?
SADJADPOUR: You know, I've argued before, Arun, that the real source of tension between America and Iran is actually not the nuclear issue. It's Iran's policy toward Israel. Iran rejects Israel's existence. It supports groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic jihad. And I think especially for U.S. members of Congress, it's very difficult to allow Iran to have advanced nuclear capability while they continue to be so belligerent toward Israel.
RATH: Mm-hmm. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry both acknowledge that there's a long road ahead. You also write, though, and you expect there's going to be a strong desire on both sides to cooperate. And why do you feel that way?
SADJADPOUR: Well, on one hand, I would say that there is a mismatch of expectations between America and Iran in terms of what a comprehensive deal should look like. I think the United States expects Iran to drive its nuclear program further in reverse. And Iran expects America to lift all of the sanctions. And I think neither of these prospects is realistic.
But if you look at the Middle East from President Obama's eyes, Iran provides one of the very few opportunities to leave a positive diplomatic legacy. Egypt is falling apart. Syria is in a state of utter carnage. Iraq is deteriorating to 2008-level violence. So there are very few positive opportunities for President Obama. And I think this is why you see both the president and Secretary Kerry investing a whole lot in Iran diplomacy.
And likewise, the new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has made history in talking to President Obama via telephone. And I think likewise, these kind of more moderate figures in Iran, if they want to continue to be empowered, they'll have to deliver on a deal.
RATH: Karim Sadjadpour studies Iran as a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment. Karim, thank you.
SADJADPOUR: Any time, Arun. Thank you.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Rhinoceros horns have long been a target for poachers. And recently, demand has increased and pushed up the prices on the black market.
ADAM HIGGINBOTHAM: Rhino horns have gone from being what was - has been a staple of Chinese traditional medicine for hundreds of years to being something that is a talisman of conspicuous consumption by high rollers and members of the new wealthy elite.
RATH: That's Adam Higginbotham. He's a contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek, and he says that the horns, by weight, are now more valuable than cocaine or heroine. And one group of poachers, far away from the rhinos' native habitat, have tried to profit.
HIGGINBOTHAM: They decided that it was much easier to go after rhinos that were long dead and therefore easier to get hold of and less angry about the prospect of being hunted.
RATH: We're talking about stuffed rhinos, museum pieces. Here's how this played out. A few years back, museums across Europe began to get suspicious visits.
HIGGINBOTHAM: So they would go into the museums during the day and have a look round, ask to see any rhino exhibits that the museum curators recommended or anything unusual that they had in the museums. And they wander around, find out where they were, takes some pictures of them with their phones. And then they'd leave.
And then frequently what would happen is a few days or a few hours later, somebody else would come in. And on one occasion, a couple of men distracted the museum guards or the curators by having a chat with them about something they thought was interesting while their accomplices ran upstairs. One got onto the shoulders of another, and using a hammer, smashed the horn off the nose of a stuffed rhino trophy that was mounted on the wall. And then they just ran out again with it.
RATH: Not exactly cat burglar, jewel thief types.
HIGGINBOTHAM: No. There's no kind of Cary Grant or "Ocean's Eleven"-style sophistication to any of these robberies.
RATH: Since 2011, 15 European countries reported 67 similar robberies. Authorities and museum curators were at a loss. Until investigators discovered the thieves all came from one area.
HIGGINBOTHAM: It turned out after several years of investigation that this series of apparently baffling robberies was being organized by a single network who were part of the Irish traveling community, and they originate in this small town two hours drive out of Dublin.
RATH: Higginbotham describes Irish Travellers as a group of merchants who spend much of the year trading antiques around Europe and the rest of the world.
EAMON DILLON: They're just experts at it. They do it every day nonstop, and they've been doing it since the age of 10 or 11 or 12. So I mean, you know, they're up there with any Harvard graduate when it comes to like figuring out how to close a deal.
RATH: That's Eamon Dillon. He's an editor and crime reporter for the Sunday World in Dublin. He says suspicion fell on one group of traders known as the Rathkeale Rovers, named for their small town in central Ireland. Dillon says the group brought their knowledge of rare commodities and Europe's complicated jurisdictions to the world of rhino horn smuggling.
DILLON: And obviously, Europe, you know, there wouldn't necessarily be a lot of cooperation between different police forces, so, you know, it's quite easy for someone to organize a theft in the Czech Republic while, you know, waiting in a van 50 miles away in Germany or Austria or wherever.
RATH: In 2010, Europol organized a joint task force of 33 European nations to bring down the Rovers. Last September, they staged several raids and arrested a handful of the gang's leaders. The punishments varied. Some men were fined, others had their charges dropped, and a few still await sentencing. Perhaps as a consequence, rhino horn thefts have declined over the past few months. But Adam Higginbotham has another explanation for why that may be.
HIGGINBOTHAM: Aside from the arrests and the Europol operation, one Irish policeman told me that the reason that the number of robberies has declined is simply because the Rathkeale Rovers had stolen them all.
RATH: That's Adam Higginbotham. He's a contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek. His article in the January issue is called "The Rhino Racket."
ARUN RATH, HOST:
"Captain Phillips" is one of those films, a true life story of war and drama. It's based on the story of the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama. Five years ago, pirates attacked the freighter ship off the coast of Somalia. The film star is Tom Hanks as the title character, Captain Richard Phillips, and Barkhad Abdi as the man who leads the charge to capture the ship and crew.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "CAPTAIN PHILLIPS")
RATH: But here's where the formula gets upended. Hank's was ignored in the Best Actor category and first-time actor Barkhad Abdi was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. It's not just his lack of movie experience that makes Abdi an unlikely Oscar nominee. Abdi was born in Somalia. His family moved to Yemen when he was 7, and he didn't get to the U.S. until he was 14. When I spoke with him last October, he told me that he learned about the "Captain Phillips" role from a TV ad.
: Casting call, Tom Hanks film, Somali actors. And I went there to give it a chance.
RATH: So just a wide-open casting call and had to have been a lot of people showed up for that, right?
: Yeah. It was about - close to 800 people was there auditioning. You have to wait in line. And after a long day of waiting, I was given the script. I was assigned to a character, Muse.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "CAPTAIN PHILLIPS")
RATH: Have you done any acting before?
: You know, I have not done any acting before. I shot some music videos, but I was never in front of camera then. This was my first time acting or even thinking about acting.
RATH: You knew the story that the film was portraying. Did you have any concerns about auditioning for a role like this, worried about maybe the way that Somalis were going to be portrayed?
: Well, people around me did, you know? But to me, it was just an opportunity. I knew the true story, so it was just a chance that I can take.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "CAPTAIN PHILLIPS")
RATH: I'm thinking about some of the scenes in the film where this tiny little skiff is attacking this giant shipping vessel.
: Right.
RATH: What was it like, you know, learning how to go through that during the staging of it?
: You know, I went through about a month and a half of training on the basics of the film, you know? My character, you know, he's a pirate.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "CAPTAIN PHILLIPS")
: He is someone that is used to the waters, someone that's used to weapons, fighting, skiffs. So I had to learn all that.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "CAPTAIN PHILLIPS")
: Most importantly, I had to learn how to swim.
RATH: Hmm. You didn't know how to swim.
: No.
RATH: Obviously, you're not a pirate. So how was it, you know, not being an actor to relate to this character? I mean, what did you find in him to relate with?
: It was difficult at first. But, you know, when I really thought of the actual character, he's a very desperate guy that had his only chance to be something. I relate to him simply because I was born in Somalia. I lived there till I was 7 years old. And I witnessed a whole year of the war - killings, rape, you name it. I was really blessed to have parents that got me out.
Certainly, he did not have that. I look at him as someone that had nothing to lose. A man that have nothing to lose is very dangerous. So that's how I became his character.
RATH: Can I ask you, what was it like working with Tom Hanks?
: It was an honor. You know, it was an honor. I did not expect him to be that nice, honestly. He's a very humble guy, and he's a hardworking man.
RATH: You came to America when you were 14. What was it like for you when you first came to America?
: You know, it was exciting. But at the same time, it was life-changing. I had to start high school at a country that I don't speak the language. And it was hard. At the same time, it was easy because of the large Somali community in Minneapolis. I fit right in, honestly. It was just a whole new life for me.
RATH: You're off to a pretty amazing start as an actor. Your performance has been praised by a lot of critics. I'm wondering, are you going to keep on with this now as a career?
: You know, that's what I want to do. I want to give it a chance, and I want to see if this was the only character I can act or I can act.
RATH: Are there other sorts of roles you'd like to play? Would you like to play a hero?
: I don't think of myself as the hero, honestly, but I'm an open person, you know? I don't know. That'd be a better look for my family, I guess.
RATH: Right. With this incident that's dramatized in the film "Captain Phillips," a lot of Americans, you know, all they know about it was what they heard in the news. And there's - I think it's safe to say in the film, there's a lot more context to the experience of the Somalis. What are you hoping that people will take away from the film in America?
: I hope people will understand the culture clash between these very, very different characters, Captain Phillips and Muse. You know, one had just the normal life, you know? He went to school, college, graduated, family and now he have a job. And the other one is just someone that grew up in a war-torn country that have, you know, no hope, no school, no job, no government, nothing. And they meet in something that's - in forces outside of their control.
And, you know, that shows a lot about life. You live life, and you know you have to survive somehow someway. And, you know, you just live it, you know? And you never give up, and you just keep going.
RATH: That's Actor Barkhad Abdi from a conversation that first aired back in October. Abdi was just nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in the film "Captain Phillips."
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Among those up for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Academy Awards is "The Hunt." It's the latest from Danish director Thomas Vinterberg who made his reputation with "The Celebration" in 1998, a dark story about accusations of sexual abuse. It won international acclaim and the Jury Prize at Cannes. It's a subject Vinterberg picks up again in "The Hunt."
The film stars Mads Mikkelsen, best known for villainous roles in "Casino Royale" and the NBC series, "Hannibal." Pat Dowell has more.
PAT DOWELL, BYLINE: Director Thomas Vinterberg was a co-founder of the brief but influential Danish movement called Dogme 95, which mandated that films be made with more humility and less Hollywood artificiality.
THOMAS VINTERBERG: Dogme taught me that there has to be a reason to put up a lamp and put on makeup and add music. You're not just making movies.
DOWELL: He made the movement's first film "The Celebration" which brought him worldwide acclaim and, he says, led to a strange encounter and eventually to "The Hunt."
VINTERBERG: Someone knocked on my door on a winter night all the way back in, I think, year 2000, a very famous children's psychiatrist. And he said, you did a film some years ago called "Festen," or "The Celebration," I think he called over there. And I said, Yes? And he said, well, then there's another film you have to do as well.
DOWELL: The doctor gave him some papers, but Vinterberg didn't get around to reading them until several years later. When he did, he discovered frightening stories of false accusations of child molestation. He knows there are plenty of real cases. "The Celebration" was a story in which a man accuses his father of rape and fights to be believed.
"The Hunt" details the opposite problem. The film paints a portrait of a tight knit Danish hunting community...
(SOUNDBITE FROM FILM "THE HUNT")
DOWELL: ...where lifelong friendships shatter over a misunderstood comment repeated by a kindergartner. The focus is on the people, not the police investigation, says Vinterberg.
VINTERBERG: Our goal was to make a film about very strong bonds between people, about love, about camaraderie in its best sense and about how vulnerable that can be, a film about the thought as a virus, so to speak. With one click or one wrong statement on Facebook, then your life can be changed or ruined. I thought that needed further exploration and I was curious about all that.
Having said that, I really find it important to say that, for me, it's also a story of love. It's about how much conflict people can actually survive.
DOWELL: The teacher who is the focus of the conflict is played by Mads Mikkelsen, Denmark's biggest international star and winner of the Best Actor Award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival for his performance. He says he was drawn to the script for the way it expresses all points of view.
MADS MIKKELSEN: One of the most beautiful things about this script is that it's hard to point a finger at anyone. When I see it, and when I read it, I understand my friend, and I understand the woman who works in the kindergarten. I understand the little girl, I understand my friend's wife. So for that reason alone, it's very difficult to put your anger anywhere.
And that is obviously the dilemma of the story. There are no bad guys. There's just an enormous love that's being turned into enormous fear and eventually into hate. And I think that is the real power and the real story of the film.
DOWELL: Mikkelsen's ostracized character defiantly goes to Christmas Eve church services and breaks down.
(SOUNDBITE FROM FILM "THE HUNT")
MIKKELSEN: He's going to church because he has a right to do it. It is also his city, it's his town. So he's standing up for himself there. And then I think that the character is getting slightly more surprised with what happens to himself in the church. And so he's taken aback with his own reaction, I guess. He's getting quite emotional. And then he steps up and makes a situation out of it.
(SOUNDBITE FROM FILM "THE HUNT")
DOWELL: "The Hunt" is part of a distinguished history of filmmaking in Denmark, one that's more than a century long. Vinterberg says it's also part of a literary tradition of what he calls "dark tales of the north. The director says "The Hunt" takes inspiration from one of the most celebrated Danish storytellers.
VINTERBERG: I see this tale a little bit like a Hans Christian Andersen tale. There's a group of very innocent, naive even, people jumping into a lake, naked, pure. And then this glass splinter comes into the society and darkness spreads.
DOWELL: But splinters can be removed, and "The Hunt" seems to have done that for Thomas Vinterberg. He's made films steadily since 1998 and "The Celebration," but none as admired or popular as his latest. For NPR News, this is Pat Dowell.
BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
The Mississippi-born novelist and storywriter Elizabeth Spencer turned 92 last summer. Best known for her novella turned musical drama "The Light in the Piazza," Spencer has just published her 15th work of fiction. It's a collection of stories set in the South called "Starting Over." And we have a review from Alan Cheuse.
ALAN CHEUSE, BYLINE: Now in her 10th decade, Elizabeth Spencer breaks all the old rules if she has to about how to tell a story, shifting points of view, inserting flashbacks in the middle of a fragile tale about the present in order to get at a necessary and beautifully revealed truth about the past. It's relation to the present. And as she puts it, the whole flawed fabric of human relations.
Old flirtations rise to the surface disrupting and otherwise placid summer vacation in the story, "Return Trip." A wedding guest in the story called "The Wedding Visitor" acts swiftly to prevent a deeply romantic, if flawed, new marriage from dying at the starting line. In this society of intricately braided lives of husbands, wives, children, aunts, uncles, cousins, the past is present, hibernating and then emerging again like nature itself, something like an old pecan tree in winter, as Spencer describes it, just outside and old woman's kitchen window showing off a network of gray branches, the ones near the trunk as large as a man's wrist, the smaller ones reaching out, lacing and dividing, all going toward cold outer air.
BLOCK: The collection of short stories "Starting Over," was written by Elizabeth Spencer and reviewed for us by Alan Cheuse. Alan teaches writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
At the end of December, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius said that more than two million people had signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, but she didn't reveal information about their ethnicity. Supporters of the law say that Latino enrollment is vital to its success. Latinos are the most uninsured racial or ethnic group in the country and the obstacles to their enrollment remain high.
As NPR's Cheryl Corley reports from Chicago, the battle to get Latinos on board is heating up.
CHERYL CORLEY, BYLINE: Early in the morning there is a steady stream of people coming into the Erie Family Health Center on Chicago's West side.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: (Foreign language spoken) Obamacare?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: (Foreign language spoken)
CORLEY: Two Saturdays a month, the health center runs an Obamacare health fair at one of its 12 community-based clinics in the Chicago region.
ILIANA MORA: At the very beginning, people were just trying to wrap their brains around and understand everything around the health coverage.
CORLEY: Iliana Mora is Erie's chief operating officer.
MORA: Now we have really been very busy enrolling folks in the marketplace or Medicaid expansion.
CORLEY: More than 10 million uninsured Latinos, citizens and legal residents, are eligible for health coverage. Myra Alvarez, who heads the federal government's Office of Minority Health, says some may be reluctant to sign up for Obamacare if they are related to someone who is undocumented.
MYRA ALVAREZ: Immigration and Customs Enforcement put out an official statement on this, that people who put forth their information on Healthcare.gov that that information will not be used for immigration enforcement purposes.
CORLEY: For those who speak little or no English, language is one of the biggest barriers. And states like Illinois have released ads in Spanish urging people to enroll.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: (Foreign language spoken)
CORLEY: All Illinois residents, the ad says, now have equal access to health care.
The biggest push however comes at outreach events promoting Obamacare. Dr. Lee Francis, the CEO of Erie Health Center, says it's important for organizations that people trust to provide information in languages they understand. Francis says that's why navigators - the people trained to help individuals walk through the enrollment process - are so critical.
DR. LEE FRANCIS: This is not go online, buy a pair of shoes and it comes to your house. It's personal information. It's complicated and it requires a personal touch.
CORLEY: At the health fair, workers quickly prescreen applicants so they can meet with a navigator.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #4: (Foreign language spoken)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken) No.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #4: No?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: No.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #4: OK.
CORLEY: Many here say they came to the health fair because they knew they'd get information in Spanish. And even fluent English speakers, like Alexandra Gonzalez, say the navigators are key.
ALEXANDRA GONZALEZ: The marketplace is just so mind-boggling that, honestly I'd rather have like Miguel, right now, do the work for me. At least I feel he knows what he's doing.
CORLEY: Gonzalez said she did try to go on the healthcare website herself.
GONZALEZ: I did. What a joke.
CORLEY: She says the technical problems that affected everyone left her frustrated, too. The Spanish-language version of the website launched last month after a delay and critics say it's full of glitches, too. They cite clunky translations and grammatical errors. However, Myra Alvarez says the website is working and people are using it.
ALVAREZ: But I will admit that sometimes, as with any website or any product, there are - there may be typos, there may be errors. And when we become aware of them, and we make sure that they are errors, we work as quickly as possible to get them corrected.
CORLEY: Muddying the water in the effort to recruit Latinos are advocacy groups. Conservatives who want the Affordable Care Act to fail are targeting it with ads like this one in Florida that features a Latino physician.
(SOUNDBITE OF AN AD)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #5: This law does not put patients first. My patients ask if I will continue to provide care for them. And it pains me to say I don't have an answer...
CORLEY: The ad also asks Democratic Florida Congressman Joe Garcia why he supports Obamacare. It's a product of the LIBRE Initiative. Executive Director Daniel Garza says the ad is a way to drive a conversation in the Hispanic community, about what he says is the negative impacts of the law. And...
DANIEL GARZA: Basically holding elected leaders who are still in support of this law accountable and say, you know, when you're propping up here is a bad system that gives bureaucrats more power; that it actually lessens the quality of care.
CORLEY: Luis Torres, with the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, says his organization is aggressively working to enroll people. Torres says lots of misinformation about the coverage makes it difficult to engage people and to get them signed up.
LUIS TORRES: And I want to just frame the conversation in terms of the actual problem, which is that we have 10.2 million Latinos who are not covered, who do not have any type of health insurance, who are one medical emergency away from being bankrupt.
CORLEY: That's an argument LULAC and other supporters will continue to push until March 31st, the deadline to obtain health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
Cheryl Corley, NPR News, Chicago.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Fifty years ago, this country saw a major change in treatment of the mentally ill. States shut down insane asylums in favor of community mental health centers. Patients were released to live independently. Over the past decade, though, states have cut billions from their mental health budgets; clinics across the country have shut down. The result is thousands of mentally ill people funneling in and out of the nation's jails, locked behind bars and institutions ill-equipped to help them.
As NPR's Laura Sullivan reports, nowhere is this more apparent than in the nation's largest jail - the Cook County Jail, outside Chicago.
LAURA SULLIVAN, BYLINE: The Cook County Jail is a sprawling complex of dismal, gray buildings. With 10,000 inmates, it's a small city. Except here, at least a third of the people are mentally ill.
This jail has been on the forefront of this issue with its programs and efforts to handle mentally ill inmates. But if you ask anyone here, even this jail is barely managing.
UNIDENTIFIED INMATE #1: Hey. Hey, you...
SULLIVAN: Sheriff Tom Dart runs the place.
SHERIFF TOM DART: I can't conceive of anything more ridiculously stupid by government than to do what we're doing right now.
SULLIVAN: You can see the problem every morning, in the intake center, where 250 new inmates arrested overnight are stuffed into bull pens.
(SOUNDBITE OF AN ALARM)
UNIDENTIFIED JAIL WORKER: Give me 50. Number 50, where you at?
ELLI MONTGOMERY: I'm going to be worried about everyone on the ground right here, because the majority of them are going to have psych histories.
SULLIVAN: Elli Montgomery is standing in front of the cages. She's the deputy director of mental health policy for the sheriff's office. She and her staff screen all the inmates. Forget the hostile, angry men at the front, bickering with jail staff. It's the men in the corners that interest her - men who come to jail and fall asleep.
MONTGOMERY: You know, I'm kind of curious about this guy in the blue. Now, is he dazed because he's on drugs, or is he dazed because the voices in his head are louder than what's happening around him?
SULLIVAN: One inmate after another. One man tells her he's going to kill himself because he thinks he's already dead. Another guy explains that the voices tell him to hurt people.
MONTGOMERY: To walk in and feel like every other person I'm interviewing be mentally ill on any given day, to me is - I can't wrap my brain around it. It is staggering, what we're really dealing with.
SULLIVAN: Most of these men are here on minor offenses. They're picked up by police for acting out, sleeping in abandoned buildings, possessing drugs. They're people with nowhere to go, and nowhere to get medication. Some will stay for a few days; some, for a few weeks. But statistically, almost all of them will be back.
While they're here, the jail's responsibility is to keep other inmates from hurting them, and them from hurting themselves. But jail staff say what really happens deep inside this jail is a far cry from actual treatment.
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)
DR. NNEKA JONES TAPIA: Two West is the female. We'll go in this way...
SULLIVAN: Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia is head of mental health for the jail. She pulls open a door inside a large, gray building. This is the women's psych ward, a place rarely seen by the public.
TAPIA: Good morning.
SULLIVAN: Inside, there's a long, sterile hallway of green doors with little, square windows. At the end is a community area, where 20 women are sitting in chairs. Some are rocking; some are pulling out their hair. Many are staring into space.
TAPIA: You see people who are so profoundly ill that you understand that this is not the place for them.
SULLIVAN: But here and throughout much of the country, there's nowhere else for them to go. City and state governments have cut funding for mental health services nationwide. Here in Chicago, facing budget shortfalls, city officials closed six of the area's 12 mental health clinics in the last three years. State officials closed three of the area's state hospitals, and private clinics are struggling for funding. Without medication or counseling, these inmates wind up in front of police. They're brought here. And here can look an awful lot like the past.
KENYA KEY: It's a very basic room, just four walls. The walls are padded.
SULLIVAN: The jail's chief psychologist, Kenya Key, steps inside a small, dark room behind the community area. It has a drain and a light - nothing else.
KEY: It's never used as punishment. The purpose of it is to decrease stimulation.
SULLIVAN: There's nothing to write with in this room, but the walls are covered in writing; slurs written with blood from fingertips, or scratched into the walls with fingernails.
It's hard to imagine spending time in here. The things that people have scratched into the walls ...
KEY: Yes.
SULLIVAN: ...is what's the most disturbing. And the fact that they're all mostly scratched into the door, as if they're trying to get out.
KEY: It is. And again...
SULLIVAN: It's a little overwhelming.
KEY: ..again, it's - certainly, the majority of the patients that are put here are in a state of very high agitation and escalation. It is a forced intervention to help the patient de-escalate.
(SOUNDBITE OF BACKGROUND CHATTER)
SULLIVAN: In the men's psych ward down the hall, the scene is similar. Some men are locked into rooms, where they pace back and forth for hours in smocks. One man is wearing just a blanket. One was tied down in an empty room during the night with leather straps. They're just now taking them off.
What are the leather restraints?
KEY: Full, leather restraints are used when a patient does not respond to any other intervention, which means they are literally, restrained to the bed.
SULLIVAN: Officials acknowledge what's happening here is reminiscent of mental asylums of the last century. But they say the only other option is to lock the mentally ill in solitary confinement for weeks on end - this is, after all, a jail. And this is one of the only in the country with doctors and nurses, psychologists and correctional officers trained in how to handle psychotic episodes.
And there are rules. Inmates can only be forcibly medicated with a doctor's orders. Leather restraints and padded rooms have time limits. Still, Sheriff Dart says he's confused by the compliments he hears from other jail administrators.
DART: On the one hand, they're speaking so highly about what you're doing. But it's depressing as hell when they're telling you, you're the leader. And I was like, wow, I feel as if I'm doing the bare minimum - and we're the leaders? No. This is not good.
SULLIVAN: The confusion about what is supposed to be happening in this jail is apparent. Correctional officers often switch between calling the men inmates and patients in the same sentence. Once inmates are willing to eat, shower, dress and sit calmly, they can move to Division 2, just across the road. In one room of that facility, three inmates are standing by the television while 40 or so others mill about a row of bunks.
Hi, nice to meet you.
JOSEPH DIRIGGI: Hi, Laura. Nice to meet you.
SULLIVAN: Jail inmates Joe Edwards, Joseph DiRiggi, and Augustus - whose last name we can't use because his case is pending - used to go to a local mental health clinic for counseling and medication, before it closed.
DIRIGGI: What I had to do was basically come to county, get my meds. And sometimes, you know, I would even commit a crime just to make sure I got my meds.
SULLIVAN: When you say come to county, you mean to county jail.
DIRIGGI: Yeah, to the county jail. A lot of us feel that way because our meds are so hard to get. We can't just go say hey, I need Trazodone; I need Valium; I need Klonopin. Wait a minute, we can't give you that. What do you mean? I've been on it for 30 years. Well, what program were you at? Well, now it's closed. Here, it's more a little understanding because they know us.
JOE EDWARDS: Yeah, that's the reality of it. Because if you are a frequent flier and they know you, your medications are given to you right then and there.
SULLIVAN: But jail is an expensive place to get medication. It costs almost $200 a night to house a mentally ill person here. Health clinics cost a fraction of that. Plus, their cases clog the courts with largely minor offenses. That lengthens jail time for everyone. The average stay is now eight days longer than it was a few years ago, and that is costing county taxpayers $10 million more every year.
DART: Hey. Long time no see, man.
UNIDENTIFIED JAIL WORKER: Yeah, how you doing?
DART: I'm doing good.
SULLIVAN: As Sheriff Tom Dart makes his way through Division 2, he sees many inmates he recognizes. They cycle in and out. He stops at the bunks. His frustration is palpable.
DART: Here, you have a population clearly identified as mentally ill, and you're releasing them to the street with nothing. This isn't left or right, conservative or liberal talking. What do you think is going to happen?
SULLIVAN: Dart is a former prosecutor. He wants criminals punished. But he says he had no idea, when he took the job of sheriff, he would also become the state's mental health provider. While he's talking, a man in the back of the room starts walking in circles.
UNIDENTIFIED INMATE #2: ...what this is. Tell everybody disappear. When I say ...
SULLIVAN: He's saying he's God; says he's going to make everyone disappear. Now, the other mentally ill inmates around him are getting agitated.
UNIDENTIFIED INMATE #2: I'm God. I'm Jesus Christ. I'm Jesus. You want to see me in Puerto Rico? You see I'm Puerto Rican? You see I'm Jesus?
SULLIVAN: Three officers with mental health training slowly surround him. They don't say anything. They just nod their heads, agreeing with him. On cue, the officers start walking, and the inmate instinctively starts walking with them. He doesn't know it, but he's headed back to the psych ward. Sheriff Dart barely pauses. He sees it every day. Dart says he understands money for community health centers is tight, but he says doing it this way is costing more.
DART: Clearly, our society had determined that the state-run mental health hospitals of the '40s and '50s were abhorrent; that my God, our society cannot tolerate this, we're much more advanced than that. And I just find the irony just so thick that that same society now finds it OK to put the same people in jails and prisons.
SULLIVAN: But then he shakes his head, and changes his mind.
DART: I know people care. I don't think they know.
SULLIVAN: This morning, 250 or so more people sat in the bullpens at the Cook County Jail. At least a third of them were mentally ill.
Laura Sullivan, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block. In Kabul, the Afghan capital, car theft is a relatively rare occurrence, but fears remain that militants could use stolen vehicles as car bombs so police have turned to a rather controversial tactic to deter thieves. From Kabul, NPR's Sean Carberry reports.
SEAN CARBERRY, BYLINE: On a recent evening, a guest left our office only to discover two of his car tires had been punctured. Moments later, my producer discovered two of his tires had been punctured. Both cars were parked on the side of the street in front of our office. And it didn't take long to find out that the police were responsible.
NESAR AHMAD ABDULRAHIMZAI: (Speaking foreign language)
CARBERRY: Nesar Ahmad Abdulrahimzai, the police chief for our district, refused to meet in person, but gave an explanation over the phone.
ABDULRAHIMZAI: (Speaking foreign language)
CARBERRY: The police puncture tires as precautionary measures, he says. The police are poorly equipped and may simply have no other option to prevent car theft, he says. So, Abdulrahimzai has instructed his officers to puncture tires of cars parked on the street after dark. It seems rather extreme considering he says only two cars have been stolen in the district in the last six months.
To our surprise, we've heard that many city residents support the policy, though they probably have off-street parking. But there are plenty of complaints as well.
ZOHEB STANIKZAI: (Speaking foreign language)
CARBERRY: Nineteen-year-old student Zoheb Stanikzai says he has nowhere to park his car except on the street.
STANIKZAI: (Speaking foreign language)
CARBERRY: I've complained and given the police a letter saying I'm responsible for my car, he says. But to no avail. He's already spent more than $500 on new tires, and the police won't reimburse him. Mechanics like Musafir Nabizadah are quite happy with the policy.
MUSAFIR NABIZADAH: (Speaking foreign language)
CARBERRY: When tires are punctured more than once, which the police do, he says, the owner has to change the tire, which costs a lot for him. Nabizadah says it's a good policy because it keeps he city safer and it gave him a rush of business when the policy went into effect a few weeks ago.
HAMIDULLAH ATAEE: Actually, this is very stupid.
CARBERRY: Hamidullah Ataee is a former prosecutor who has had four tires punctured. He says this practice is illegal under Afghan law and the victims are legally parked when their cars are effectively vandalized. Police officers counter that by saying they have gone door to door warning people their tires would be punctured.
ATAEE: They don't do their job, but instead they puncture the tires and misuse their authority.
ZAHER ZAHER: (Speaking foreign language)
CARBERRY: Zaher Zaher, Kabul City police chief, says he opposes the policy. He says it's part of a pattern of officers abusing their power.
ZAHER: (Through interpreter) I apologize to those who have suffered from this problem.
CARBERRY: He says he will stop it, though his spokesman later said puncturing tires is reasonable. In the meantime, some police officers appear to be moderating their tactics. The other night while driving home, I saw an officer next to a parked car letting the air out of the tire's valve. Sean Carberry, NPR News, Kabul.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Here in Washington, D.C., there's a thriving restaurant scene with a wide range of cuisine serving its multi-cultural residents. But there is one barbeque eatery with more than food on its menu.
NPR's Allison Keyes tells us Inspire BBQ aims to reclaim troubled young people, teach them a trade and give them a chance at success.
FURARD TATE: Hey, how you doing?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: How you doing today?
TATE: Good to see you, brother.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Alright. Alright.
TATE: All is good?
ALLISON KEYES, BYLINE: Chef Furard Tate is the kind of man who never sits still.
TATE: OK. Good, Trey. Well, thank you so much for coming in.
KEYES: He flits from the order desk at Inspire BBQ back to the busy kitchen where young men are seasoning sauce, cooking macaroni and cheese and, of course, finishing off some dry-rubbed rib smoked on a grill.
TATE: We grill on a real grill. None of this electric stuff.
KEYES: But as important as the food is, Tate says it's also important that it's made by young hands who must learn a slow, consistent process.
TATE: When an adult realize that a young person took that process, is actually learning how to make everything, it actually means even more because it reminds us that my education started at home.
KEYES: Tate spent 11 years providing food for charter schools in Washington, D.C., but then realized that training young people was important to him, especially in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. It was damaged in the chaos after the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
TATE: H Street was one of the major streets that was damaged on the riots - the transformation, the pain and the hardship that was in this corridor. I just always believed that there was something that I had to do to bring love back to the community.
DANIEL GASKINS: I want to open my own restaurant.
KEYES: 22-year-old Daniel Gaskins says Tate's example made him want more.
GASKINS: It wasn't what he said. It was the energy that he gave off.
KEYES: Gaskins came to Inspire BBQ through a summer jobs program where he ended up after dropping out of Saint Paul's College in Virginia, where he finished just a single semester.
GASKINS: I was real lazy. I did just enough to get by. And then it was just like, I got - I can't always get by.
WILLIAM WEAVER: I had a very, very, very bad attitude.
KEYES: Inspire employee William Weaver is a Washington, D.C. native who worked with young people while he was in high school but ended up being incarcerated for 18 months. Now he's here, thanks to an employment program called Project Empowerment. Weaver is also in a training program for first-time businessmen at the nonprofit Opportunities Industrialization Center, which helps the poor and unemployed with job skills.
WEAVER: I'm going to open my own food truck. I'm naming it after my brother, who was murdered here in D.C.
KEYES: Sam Moultrie has only worked here for three months, but Inspire is helping him get back into cooking. He says he was lucky to get a scholarship that took him from Anacostia High School to the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont.
SAM MOULTRIE: I was basically in the street, so if I wouldn't have got a scholarship, I probably would be either selling drugs or locked up or dead.
KEYES: Moultrie worked consistently around town after his scholarship. But then...
MOULTRIE: I got myself back into trouble. And after I got out of trouble, I started trying to get back into the cooking field but it was really hard for me to get back in with the stuff that I had on my records.
KEYES: Moultrie was in jail for six months and was later offered a job at Inspire BBQ.
MOULTRIE: I'm getting used to working with my own people and bettering the community.
KEYES: Chef Tate says there's a simple reason it's important to him to help empower young people.
TATE: Work is the only way to get out of poverty. And to be working effectively, you have to be trained.
KEYES: Tate says that means those he is trying to help will be able to take care of themselves. Allison Keyes, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Last fall, at the New York State Museum in Albany, curators and interns were digging through their audio archives. It was all part of the process of organizing and digitizing their collection. Tedious work, as you can imagine. But on this particular day last November, they unearthed a treasure. As they sifted through box after box of material, the director of the museum Mark Schaming recalls...
MARK SCHAMING: They pull up a little reel-to-reel tape and a piece of masking tape on it is labeled: Martin Luther King, Jr., Emancipation Proclamation Speech, 1962.
BLOCK: Audio no one knew existed. That year, 1962, fell in the midst of the Civil War Centennial. At one commemorative event, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller proposed a focus on the Emancipation Proclamation. The speaker at that event in New York City was Dr. King. No one had heard his speech since, until last fall at the New York State Museum.
SCHAMING: So they load it into a reel-to-reel machine and up comes the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. It's clear as a bell.
DR. MARTIN LUTHER, JR: There is but one way to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation, and that is to make its declarations of freedom real; to reach back to the origins of our nation when our message of the quality electrified and free world, and reaffirmed democracy by deeds as bold and daring as the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.
BLOCK: For museum director Mark Schaming, King's message still resonates today.
SCHAMING: You know, remembering in 1962 it's 100 years after the, you know, the Emancipation Proclamation is released and this promise is still unfulfilled, in very much as it is still today and in many ways. So when I hear those kinds of moments, I relate them to things in the world and the country going on now. It's just an enlightening moment.
JR: And so I close by quoting the words of an old Negro slave preacher, who didn't quite have his grammar right, but uttered words of great symbolic profundity. They were uttered in the form of a prayer: Lord, we ain't what we ought to be, we ain't what we want to be, we ain't what we going to be, but thank God we ain't what we were.
(APPLAUSE)
BLOCK: We've been listening to newly found audio of Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking about the Emancipation Proclamation in 1962. You can hear his full speech at our website, NPR.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BLOCK: This is NPR.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block. In less than 24 hours, the UN invited Iran an international peace conference on Syria and then withdrew the invitation after a day of furious negotiations. Iran is a key ally of the Syrian regime. The objections to Iran's participation came from many quarters, including the U.S. and Britain, also Saudi Arabia. Syria's political opposition, the Syrian National Coalition, threatened to boycott the talks in Switzerland if Iran were to attend.
I'm joined now by NPR's Deborah Amos, who is in the Swiss city of Montreux, the site of the opening of the conference. And Deb, walk us through this u-turn. Ban Ki-moon was so adamant yesterday that Iran would be joining in the talks, and then one day later he says well, actually, no they're not.
DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE: You know, the UN chief has been very outspoken about the need for Iran to participate. They are key players in this crisis. The Russians agree and they've pushed Ban Ki-moon to extend that invitation. He may have felt that he got assurances from Iran's foreign minister - he is part of the moderate wing in Iran - that his country was willing to abide by the ground rules for these negotiations. It's possible the Ban Ki-moon was waiting for a public endorsement from Tehran, but what happened instead is officials contradicted the foreign minister, including Iran's UN ambassador. No preconditions, they said. And so you heard Ban Ki-moon late in the day saying that he was disappointed. He was urgently considering his options, and finally dropped that invitation.
BLOCK: Yeah, saying that through his spokesman. So, reaction from the Syrian political opposition, which, as we say, had threatened to boycott the talks if Iran were at the table. What have they said now that that invitation has been withdrawn?
AMOS: A surprisingly quick response. They released a statement. They welcome the decision to rescind the invitation. They'd threatened to boycott. So this now opens the way for these talks to get underway here on Wednesday.
BLOCK: Deborah, the basis of these talks in Switzerland has to do with something called the Geneva communique. The U.S. ambassador at the UN, Samantha Power, referred to that today. Explain what that communique lays out and whether all the participants in Switzerland are going to be accepting that as a basis for the talks.
AMOS: This language was hammered out last year in a meeting in Geneva by a UN-backed group, and it outlines the agenda for negotiations. The reason there's been such a long delay is because the idea was to get everybody to sign on. You have to sign on to get an invitation. Even the Russians have signed on, although Moscow has asserted some ambiguity by saying they support their reading of the Geneva communique. Now, the Iranians didn't go that far. They had been demanding an invitation without preconditions. And the other party who has not bought on to this precondition is the Assad regime.
The president was very clear today that he wants to stand for elections when his term runs out this year. He repeated also that he has no intention of negotiating any kind of power-sharing agreement with the opposition. And so you can see why the opposition is wary about coming to these talks. He's been very strident about that. The Russians back him. Their position is that he really cannot leave office. He is a partner in these talks. He certainly has been a partner in taking apart his own chemical arsenal, so the Iranians have not signed on to this Geneva communique and neither has the Assad regime, but they will be at the table this week.
BLOCK: Talk about the U.S. role in all of this in trying to broker these talks and Secretary of State John Kerry, because it seems that if the two sides are this far apart over some very fundamental questions, it's hard to know where these talks might end up.
AMOS: Well there is not a lot of hope for any kind of breakthrough this week. It's more like a meet-and-greet. We are now three years into a conflict and to get the two sides just to sit for an hour face to face is an achievement. I think that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry believe that they dynamic of this face-to-face meeting could kick start a process, although the agenda following that meeting is really unclear on will they come back from meetings, will they meet somewhere else? Does this begin a long negotiations?
BLOCK: NPR's Deborah Amos is in the Swiss city of Montreux. That's where the Syria peace talks will be held this week. Deborah, thanks so much.
AMOS: Thank you.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And from Iran's role in talks on Syria now to its nuclear program. This week, international inspectors are stepping up surveillance of Iran's nuclear capabilities. The inspections are at the heart of a landmark deal to freeze Iran's uranium enrichment program. In exchange, Iran will benefit from billions of dollars in relief from sanctions. But as NPR's Geoff Brumfiel reports, the inspections are just the first step.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: When you hear nuclear inspection maybe you imagine convoys of white SUVs with the UN logo stamped on the side, dozens of inspectors bursting into secret facilities. But that's not how it works. Olli Heinonen is a former inspector. He says that most of the time there's only two of them. And they arrive in a rental car.
OLLI HEINONEN: In Iran you probably don't want to rent a car; you rent a driver with a care and then you pop up at the gate, 9 o'clock in the morning and they are supposed to let you in.
BRUMFIEL: And do they?
HEINONEN: Yes, they do.
BRUMFIEL: Once you're past the gate, you go to a little office where government officials are waiting.
HEINONEN: They have prepared a cup of coffee or tea and then you would have a short meeting of what shall we do now, what's the program of today? And then off you go.
BRUMFIEL: Inside the nuclear facility, inspectors might take samples. Or a lot of the time, Heinonen says, they just go over hours and hours of footage from security cameras they've installed. The whole time, everyone is very polite.
HEINONEN: Basically you to try do it in a friendly way. It's easier that way, rather than try to push yourself through.
BRUMFIEL: But beneath the pleasantries, there are tensions because Iran's track record with inspectors is spotty.
DAVID ALBRIGHT: Iran's been caught in several cases cheating or building secret nuclear sites.
BRUMFIEL: David Albright is president of the Institute for Science and International Security, which tracks Iran's program. Under this initial deal Iran would receive $7 billion in sanctions relief. In exchange, it will agree not to enrich uranium beyond a low level for six months.
Enriching uranium could lead to a bomb, and Albright says it will be up to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to make sure Iran isn't cheating. He says the IAEA will push for the most access possible.
ALBRIGHT: I think you're going to have a give and take of the IAEA trying to do more than the letter of the law would dictate and Iran may try to do less.
BRUMFIEL: Iran is increasing access, but former inspector Olli Heinonen says that there are still plenty of places they can't go. Take, for example, Iran's biggest enrichment facility at a place called Natanz. Inspectors are allowed daily access to the main enrichment plant, but that doesn't guarantee they'll see everything.
HEINONEN: Natanz is a big complex so you don't know what happens in these other places which are kind of supporting structure to the main plant.
BRUMFIEL: Inspectors should be able to tell whether there's cheating at the Natanz plant. But hanging over these negotiations is a much bigger question of trust. Iran has always said its nuclear program is peaceful, but many countries, including the U.S., believe it is pursuing a nuclear weapon. International inspectors see evidence that Iran has studied how to build a bomb. But to get proof, they need access to military facilities. And like those other buildings in Natanz, Iran won't let them in. For this new agreement to stick, David Albright thinks Iran will have to disclose if it's done work to develop a nuclear bomb.
ALBRIGHT: I would hope they would openly admit to such activities and allow the IAEA to inspect the facilities where these things happened and come to some level of closure that they understand what Iran did on nuclear weapons.
BRUMFIEL: If Iran doesn't come clean, Albright says, the inspectors will be left with too many questions. And any hope for a lasting deal will fade. Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And now to Ukraine where the crisis is intensifying. Today, there were more clashes between protesters and police in the capital city, Kiev. This after a massive protest turned violent yesterday, when more than 100,000 people turned out to denounce a new law that limits public protests. The protests have shaken Ukraine for two months, as the opposition claims President Viktor Yanukovych is turning increasingly autocratic and aligning his country with Russia.
NPR's Corey Flintoff joins me from Moscow to talk about the latest developments. And, Corey, let's go back to November when these protests began. President Yanukovych had rejected a deal that would have brought Ukraine closer to the European Union. Now though it seems to have grown far beyond that. What's at stake here?
COREY FLINTOFF, BYLINE: Well, that deal that Yanukovych rejected would have opened up greater trade and investment from the EU. But it would have also required Yanukovych to fight corruption and make democratic reforms. And instead, he made a deal with Russia's President Putin that, as far as we know at least, didn't require any reforms. Russia is lending Ukraine $15 billion. It's giving a big discount on the price of natural gas that the country relies on for most of its energy. And the opposition accuses Yanukovych of making the country so deeply indebted to Russia that it will never get out of Moscow's orbit.
BLOCK: OK, so that was the origin of these protests which then seemed to be flagging and then there was this new law that I mentioned, this anti-protest law that was passed on Friday. According to the opposition, that law is designed to ban nearly all kinds of democratic expression. What exactly does it do?
FLINTOFF: Well, it bans virtually everything that the opposition has been doing for the last two months. And it would really destroy the protest if it were enforced. For instance, the law bans protesters from setting up tents or stages or sound systems without permission. It bans protesters from wearing masks or helmets. At yesterday's demonstration, some people lampooned that provision by wearing kitchen colanders and cooking pots on their heads.
BLOCK: Well, let's talk about what happened yesterday and again today in Kiev. Corey, there are images of buses burning, of protesters throwing rocks and fireworks and flares at police. Are you hearing from people that they expect this to turn even more violent?
FLINTOFF: Yes, that's what a lot of people are afraid of. Yesterday, the opposition leaders pleaded with people not to use violence. They're saying that a lot of this fighting is started by provocateurs. That is, thugs who are linked to the government. When the clashes broke out yesterday, one of the leaders, Vitaly Klitschko actually went to the site, he got between the police and the fighters and he tried to break it up. He was sprayed in the face with a fire extinguisher by one of the fighters who'd been using it to spray the police.
Klitschko then called for a meeting with Yanukovych and the two met last night and agreed to negotiate. So that started today, but there's so little trust between the two sides that it's not clear whether they can accomplish anything.
BLOCK: Now, Vitali Klitschko, who you mentioned, is a world heavyweight boxing champion. He's emerged as one of the leader of this opposition movement. Do you think he can pull the movement together?
FLINTOFF: Well, no one seems to know at this point. Leadership is a really serious problem for the opposition. It came out at that big protest yesterday. Klitschko is one of several leaders of different opposition groups and they all seem to be positioning themselves as presidential candidates to oppose Yanukovych. And that has caused a lot of dissatisfaction among the rank-and-file protesters. They want a unified leadership and they want to hear a decisive plan for dealing with the government.
BLOCK: OK. NPR's Corey Flintoff in Moscow, we were talking about the ongoing protests in Ukraine. Corey, thanks so much.
FLINTOFF: My pleasure, Melissa.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BLOCK: You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
We begin this hour with our weekly look at technology, All Tech Considered. And we'll start with how President Obama's speech on Friday about NSA surveillance is playing in Silicon Valley. Among other things, the president called for new limits on the program under which the NSA sweeps up stored Internet communications.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Specifically, I'm asking the attorney general and DNI to institute reforms that place additional restrictions on government's ability to retain, search and use in criminal cases communications between Americans and foreign citizens incidentally collected under Section 702.
BLOCK: Well, to many of the big tech firms, the president's speech fell short. One representative for the industry called the measures thoughtful but insufficient. President Obama spoke of protecting the privacy of individuals, but he did little to guarantee the same for tech companies. In fact, he pointed out that people shouldn't only be worried about the government snooping on them.
OBAMA: Corporations of all shapes and sizes track what you buy, store and analyze our data, and use it for commercial purposes. That's how those targeted ads pop up on your computer and your smartphone periodically.
BLOCK: Back in December, eight tech giants - AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo - sent an open letter to Washington. The companies urged reform of government surveillance practices worldwide, asking the president and Congress for more transparency and oversight. In response to Friday's speech, those tech companies released a statement approving of the idea of more accountability but, they said, much more still needs to be done.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And now, we're going to hear more reaction to the proposed NSA reforms from another tech company, Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox Web browser. Firefox is built with open-source code, which means that outsiders and users can audit privacy and security. And the company prides itself on its efforts to protect people's data when they browse the Internet.
Alex Fowler is Mozilla's chief privacy officer, and he joins me now from San Francisco. Mr. Fowler, welcome to the program.
ALEX FOWLER: Thank you. Pleasure to be here.
BLOCK: I was looking at your blog post from Friday, and you sounded pretty skeptical after the president's speech. You said the president didn't address the most glaring reform needs. So what, in your view, would be the most glaring reform need?
FOWLER: Well, so right now, we have a policy approach in Washington which is focused on not closing security holes but actually un-hoarding information about security backdoors and holes in our public security standards and using those then to exploit them for intelligence needs. In our perspective, and I think certainly those of your listeners - as you think about the news related to Target data breaches and breaches with Snapchat and other common tools that we use every day - that what we really need is to actually focus on securing those communications platforms so that we can rely on them. And that we know that they are essentially protecting the communications that we're engaged with.
BLOCK: Let me try to break this down just a little bit. Is one of the things that you're worried about the government subversion of encryption systems? In other words, the government might inject surveillance code into browsers. This is what's called the backdoor.
FOWLER: Exactly. Those are exactly the type of issues where, you know, it's not just by leaving those types of exploits in place, it's not just our intelligence agencies that may be using them to protect national security, but it also leaves them there for hackers and other criminals engaged in trying to break into those particular systems.
BLOCK: One of the things that you wrote about in your blog post on Friday was a concern about what you called a world of balkanization of the Internet. Why don't you explain what you mean by that.
FOWLER: Yes. So one of the really critical values of the Internet is that it is global, it is distributed, it is very easy for people to gain access to it. And so one of the things that we're always concerned about is any kind of governmental action whereby those countries would be isolating themselves, creating their own versions of the Net and closing off that broader access to information and the ability to contribute back to the broader Internet community. So balkanization is really a notion where you would essentially have a separate Internet for, say, citizens in Brazil than what the same users outside of Brazil would see when they visit those sites.
BLOCK: And do you think that's a realistic scenario at this point?
FOWLER: Absolutely. A year ago, we were talking about balkanization in the context of Russia and China. And now, we're talking about that in the context of Brazil and Germany, in democratic countries, seeing that as a viable approach to protecting the privacy and security of their citizens.
BLOCK: I want to get back to your blog post from Friday, Mr. Fowler. You wrote, Internet users around the world would be well served if the next director of the NSA makes transparency and human rights a true priority. Do you think that's a fair expectation for the head of a spy agency?
FOWLER: We do, actually. I mean, we think that any agency, even a spy agency, has to operate in the context that they find themselves. And right now, we are seeing a changing set of public values and concerns as it relates to those particular activities. And so I think it's important to remind ourselves that even an intelligence agency isn't above and beyond the law.
BLOCK: I wonder if you - you say there might be just a fundamental contradiction here, given that so much of our daily lives is now digitally recorded and preserved and transmitted, that there's going to be a huge temptation for both tech companies and the government to want to access that data.
FOWLER: I'm not sure I would describe it as a contradiction and more as what the responsibilities are for any organization in the business of collecting and using information from users. And I think that that's an important set of concerns that are still evolving. We're still relatively new at this. And so, you know, I would say that, while some best practices exists and industry has been very proactive in thinking about the types of protections and safeguards that they can put in place but, you know, we still look at data breaches, so we know we need to do a lot better. And I think that's a critical area for us as a society in the 21st century to get very effective at.
BLOCK: Alex Fowler is chief privacy officer with Mozilla. Mr. Fowler, thank you.
FOWLER: My pleasure. Thank you.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And it's been a big year for T-Mobile. The telecom company finally landed the iPhone. It started trading as a public company and has kicked off a price war with its competitors. In the process, it's become the fastest-growing mobile phone company in the country, recruiting 4.4 million new customers. But as NPR's Steve Henn reports, T-Mobile's combative and profane CEO, John Legere, is grabbing all the headlines.
STEVE HENN, BYLINE: It's pretty rare for a corporate executive to try to ingratiate himself with the FCC by swearing like a sailor. But that seems to be exactly what T-Mobile's CEO John Legere is trying to do.
JOHN LEGERE: We are either going to take over this whole industry, or these (bleep) are going to change.
HENN: In his own foul-mouthed way, he's kicked off a price war in the mobile phone business by offering to buy consumers out of their existing contacts, paying up to $650 dollars apiece.
LEGERE: The whole industry is going to shift, and we will still be highly successful. And I don't give a (bleep) either one of those things because we're going to win and that's a lot of fun.
HENN: A few days earlier at the Consumer Electronics Show, AT&T had managed to give Legere and T-Mobile millions in free publicity by kicking him out of a party where the rapper Macklemore was hired to play.
LEGERE: And I just looked at these people and I said, listen, it's not why I came here. But do you have any idea how much material you're going to give me if you do this?
HENN: They tossed him anyway. It was a John Legere classic of jujitsu marketing. And in D.C., regulators and consumer advocates like Michael Weinberg at Public Knowledge are eating it up.
MICHAEL WEINBERG: It did seem like CES was something of a coming-out party for him, where he got a lot of attention very quickly.
HENN: But it's not John Legere's antics that endear him to consumer advocates. Instead, the CEO of the fourth largest mobile phone company has injected something almost unheard of into the wireless industry: real competition.
WEINBERG: T-Mobile is important because when they do something, it forces the other carriers to react. And when the other carriers react, often they're reacting in a way that is very pro-consumer and that is giving people more choices.
HENN: Two years ago, after failing to merge with AT&T, industry analyst Jeff Kagan says the company looked like it was dying.
JEFF KAGAN: T-Mobile was stuck with a slower network and they were losing customers.
HENN: But in the past year, T-Mobile took the $7 billion fee AT&T paid the company when its proposed merger was blocked by regulators and invested it in its network. Then it started aggressively going after other companies' customers. Today, T-Mobile is targeting 20-somethings. It uses Legere's tweets for free publicity and it competes aggressively on price. It's simplified contracts made upgrading your phones easier, ended roaming charges for international data, and just a few weeks ago, offered to pay consumers up to $650 just to switch carriers.
LEGERE: Contrary to public belief, I'm not crazy. I know exactly what I'm doing and, yeah, I think this company needs to be on the edge.
HENN: Legere says he's trying to drive a revolution in this industry and force mobile phone carriers to compete for customers on price and quality instead of locking them in with long-term contracts. But at the same time, T-Mobile's majority owner, Deutsche Telekom, has been trying to sell this company. The most likely buyer is Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, who also happens to own T-Mobile's weakest rival, Sprint. And the merger rumors have advocates of vigorous competition in the wireless industry nervous.
Why should I, or anyone else, believe that if there is a merger between T-Mobile and Sprint that this kind of really aggressive, competitive behavior is going to continue? I mean, it would be debt-financed.
LEGERE: Great question. No, great question. You know, just asked - the question you're just asking. What's important for the U.S. industry is the change that the maverick is creating. That's T-Mobile.
HENN: Legere argues allowing Sprint and T-Mobile to merge would just make that maverick stronger, at least as long as he was left in charge. And before John Legere was the CEO of T-Mobile, he ran another company, Global Crossing. Masayoshi Son was one of its owners. So while Legere is impressing 20-somethings with his taste in rap and his tweets and trying to convince regulators that a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile wouldn't actually hurt consumers, he also seems to be auditioning for a new job from his old boss, running a combined Sprint and T-Mobile.
LEGERE: I just know that what I've got - myself, my leadership team, my company, my brand, the growth - is one of the biggest missing things in the industry. So if I was Masayoshi Son and I was interested in T-Mobile, I would say, you know, I got to - I like what they do.
HENN: John Legere may swear for effect but as he's quick to point out, he thinks he knows exactly what he's doing. Steve Henn, NPR News, Silicon Valley.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is facing new allegations, this time coming from the mayor of Hoboken, Dawn Zimmer. Mayor Zimmer says Christie's lieutenant governor threatened to withhold Hoboken's federal recovery money after Superstorm Sandy unless she backed a redevelopment project that Governor Christie supported. Matt Katz of member station WNYC reports.
MATT KATZ, BYLINE: Chris Christie was in Florida on Saturday, reassuring Republican donors that he was still a viable party leader and possible presidential candidate after revelations that his aides orchestrated a traffic jam for political revenge. But that's when new allegations broke. Hoboken mayor, Dawn Zimmer, says Christie's lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, threatened to deny storm recovery money to her city if she failed to approve an unrelated project.
MAYOR DAWN ZIMMER: The fact is that the lieutenant governor came to Hoboken, she pulled me aside in the parking lot and she said, I know it's not right. I know this thing should not be connected, but they are. And if you tell anyone, I'll deny it.
KATZ: The news was especially explosive because thousands in New Jersey are still struggling to recover from Superstorm Sandy and because it smacks of the kind of strong-arm tactics alleged in the so-called Bridgegate scandal. Christie has been dealing with that scandal for nearly two weeks now. Democrats subpoenaed documents showing that a top Christie aide ordered lane closures that created epic traffic jams on the George Washington Bridge. The governor apologized and four aides have left his administration. But David Samson, who heads the agency that runs the bridge and is a key adviser to Christie, still has his job. Samson is also a paid lobbyist in the redevelopment deal that Mayor Zimmer claims she was threatened over.
As the bridge scandal unfolded this month, Christie associates said they were waiting for their Democratic opponents to overplay their hand, allowing them the opportunity to frame all of this as nothing more than petty partisanship. With these new revelations from Mayor Zimmer, Christie's team apparently saw an opening.
HALEY BARBOUR: The news media is willing to leap at any farfetched story with the basis in fact unbelievable.
KATZ: That's Christie ally Haley Barbour, former governor of Mississippi, on CNN responding to the latest allegation. The idea that Christie withheld Sandy funds could be far more damaging than the charge that his aides caused a traffic jam. But unlike in Bridgegate, there is no smoking gun. Mayor Zimmer's evidence, which she has turned over to federal investigators, is her own diary entries. So, newly aggressive Christie loyalists are blasting Zimmer's accusations as libelous. And today, Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno also denied Zimmer's allegations.
LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR KIM GUADAGNO: Mayor Zimmer's version of our conversation in May of 2013 is not only false but is illogical and does not withstand scrutiny when all of the facts are examined.
KATZ: Governor Christie's next chance to push back on what has become a mounting narrative against him comes tomorrow morning. That's when he's sworn in for his second term as governor. For NPR News, I'm Matt Katz.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
For more than 40 years, Ray Benson has been the front man for the Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHOO CHOO CH'BOOGIE")
SLEEP AT THE WHEEL: (Singing) Choo, choo, choo choo, ch' boogie. Woo, woo, woo, woo, ch' boogie. Choo, choo, choo, choo, ch' boogie. Take me right back to the track, Jack...
BLOCK: A few more numbers for you. Those decades have brought nine Grammys, more than 20 studio albums, and numerous lineup changes. So with all that going on, it's no wonder that Benson has only released one solo album. Well, this week, he releases his second. It's called "A Little Piece." Reviewer Meredith Ochs says it was worth the wait.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A LITTLE PIECE")
MEREDITH OCHS, BYLINE: With a boisterous, outsized ensemble like Asleep at the Wheel, sometimes it's easy to overlook just how good a singer Ray Benson is. He makes up for this on his new solo album. From the very first track, his emotive baritone proclaims the introspective and personal nature of the songs here, and of the journey you're about to take with him.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A LITTLE PIECE")
RAY BENSON: (Singing) Beware of stormy nights, neon lights, dogs that bite. Be good to those you love, God above, don't push and shove. You wait around. Every time you do, you lose a little piece, a little piece of you...
OCHS: At 62 years old, Ray Benson has reached that point in life that many do in middle age. A desire to simplify things sets in, to be neither seeker nor sage. And he eloquently expresses that on his new album. Yet somehow, the approach opens up a world of possibilities for Benson. Working outside the confines of the Western swing music that he spent a lifetime mastering also frees him up to experiment, which you can hear in the shifting time signatures and new grass soloists on this song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I AIN'T LOOKING FOR NO TROUBLE")
BENSON: (Singing) I'm not trying to find the answer to the questions that we all face every day. I'm not trying to solve the puzzle of an old love that got away. I'm just looking for a feeling that I lost somewhere along the way. I've had some hard times, but you beat all I've ever seen. Pay no attention to the man there behind the screen...
OCHS: Though Ray Benson wrote most of the material on his new CD, he found an obscure, previously unrecorded gem co-written by the late outlaw country legend Waylon Jennings, that fits in seamlessly with the album's theme. In a nod to his lengthy tenure in Texas music, Benson enlists the man who first lured him to Austin in the 1970s - his longtime friend and cohort Willie Nelson - to help bring the song to life.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IT AIN'T YOU")
BENSON: (Singing) The years fly by. We're surrendered to age. We're like a wild bird that has chosen the cage...
WILLIE NELSON: But it ain't you. It ain't you. But it's the only ride you've got to get you through. Keep on trying to remember the reflection in the mirror. But it ain't you. No, it ain't you...
OCHS: Ray Benson's career with Asleep at the Wheel has been widely acknowledged and well-rewarded. But this solo work cements his legacy, revealing great depth and range from a guy who has already done folks a service by keeping them dancing for more than four decades.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "KILLED BY A .45")
BENSON: (Singing) It was a country song about a love gone wrong. Brought a sigh and a tear in his eye...
BLOCK: We've been listening to the new album from Ray Benson. It's called "A Little Piece." Our reviewer Meredith Ochs is a talk show host and DJ at SiriusXM Radio.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
Hospitals in rural America are adjusting to many new requirements under the Affordable Care Act. For those in states that are not extending their Medicaid roles, that task is even more challenging. Rural lobbies are pushing states for the expansion, saying without it, their hospitals could close.
Susanna Capelouto reports.
SUSANNA CAPELOUTO, BYLINE: Meet Dr. Jameelah Gater. She trained in the big city but settled for a life of working the emergency room in the small town of Eatonton, Georgia, about 80 miles east of Atlanta.
DR. JAMEELAH GATER: You know, it's great to be in the grocery store and you see someone. And they say, oh, you don't remember but you took care of me. I mean that's always rewarding. So yeah, I may not have, you know, to crack a chest open and massage the heart - I don't get to do anything fun like that, but the day-to-day care is great.
CAPELOUTO: But Gater does get her share of trauma; mostly car accidents, house fires and the occasional fall. Her hospital has 25 beds and, on average, 6-to-10 have patients in them. She takes care of anyone who needs her help in this rural farming community of about 21,000 - even those who can't pay.
GATER: We have a young gentleman who's got some significant health problems that I actually admitted last week. And he doesn't have a job or a source of income, but right now doesn't qualify for Medicaid or any other government form of insurance. We still take care of him.
CAPELOUTO: In America, no one gets refused services at an emergency room. And to help rural hospitals cope with taking care of the uninsured, they get what's called Disproportional Share, or DISH payments, from the federal government.
The Affordable Care Act was supposed to reduce that payment under the idea that everyone would have insurance or be on Medicaid. But Georgia is one of 20 or so states that decided to opt out of Medicaid expansion once the Supreme court gave them permission to do so. It's a major worry for the Rural Health Association, which lobbies for the 20 percent of Americans who live in rural areas.
Maggie Elehwany is one of their lobbyists.
MAGGIE ELEHWANY: The poorest areas in this country in the Deep South, in Appalachia, in certain pockets in the west, boy, a lot of those - really a tremendous amount of those - are the states that are opting not to expand Medicaid.
CAPELOUTO: Georgia decided against Medicaid expansion, even though the federal government pays 100 percent of the cost for three years and 90 percent thereafter. Governor Nathan Deal argues that it's foolish to believe the feds will keep paying that 90 percent and worries that states will be left to carry the burden in the long run.
Republican State Senator Dean Burke agrees.
STATE SENATOR DEAN BURKE: Increasing Medicaid doesn't necessarily make things better. You know, we need to increase jobs so that we get more people with regular insurance. And that will be where we can make a difference.
CAPELOUTO: But Burke is also a doctor in rural south Georgia, where he works at a hospital. He's not in the appeal Obamacare camp of the Republican Party. Rather he says the genie is out of the bottle, and he'd like to find a way to make it work for Georgia without stressing future budgets.
Looming large for rural Republicans like him is the potential closure of hospitals, once those federal DISH payments stop coming and the poor are still uninsured. Last month, he and his colleagues got some good news: Congress decided to keep the DISH payments in place for two more years.
BURKE: Decreases the amount of pressure they're under to make a quick decision. And I do think it's given them a little breathing room.
CAPELOUTO: Breathing room that comes in handy during an election year when political ideology trumps any federal dollars left on the table by not expanding Medicaid, says Jonathan Oberlander. He teaches social medicine and political science at the University of North Carolina.
JONATHAN OBERLANDER: It's one thing to be opposed to Obamacare ideologically. But when that opposition means that the state is not extending Medicaid and is threatening the finances of your local hospital, you're going to see the Medicaid expansion in a very different light.
CAPELOUTO: Oberlander expects more states to choose Medicaid expansion once they realize just how much money is at stake.
For NPR News, I'm Susanna Capelouto in Atlanta.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Over the past six months, Chicago has been emptying out dozens of school buildings. The city voted to close 50 schools last spring. The district said it needed to concentrate students in fewer buildings so resources wouldn't be spread so thin.
Reporter Linda Lutton, from member station WBEZ, has been tracking what's happened to the things that used to fill those schools.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLE AND HORN)
LINDA LUTTON, BYLINE: All through the fall and into the winter, Chicago Public Schools has been packing, sorting and moving literally tons of stuff from the closed schools.
(SOUNDBITE OF BANGING)
LUTTON: What sort of stuff? Desks, chairs, books, yes. But also...
TOM TYRRELL: Puzzles, globes of the world.
LUTTON: Rubber dinosaurs.
TYRRELL: Yeah, dinosaurs.
LUTTON: That's Tom Tyrrell, a former Marine Corps colonel, who's overseeing the school closings for Chicago Public Schools. We're at one of the closed schools, Von Humboldt Elementary, a 130-year-old, four-story building that takes up half a city block. It is now filled with stuff from the rest of the closed schools. The gymnasium looks like a flea market, everything laid out on long tables, boxes stacked nearly to the basketball nets.
TYRRELL: There's scales, goggles, there are science kits - we have them somewhere.
LUTTON: When you move a house, you pack it up room-by-room. To move 50 schools, the logistics company the school district hired is packing by category. It's treating a handful of the closed schools like warehouses, sending furniture to one, library books to another, and all the instructional materials are here at Von Humboldt.
Wow, look at this hallway.
In the school's auditorium, boxes of reference books sit like obedient children on the theater chairs. On the stage, towers of encyclopedias form a little skyline. Tyrrell says the goal is to get all of this into an online catalog and let the schools place orders.
There's kind of a book smell to everything. A hundred and thirty-nine dollar price tag in this dictionary.
TYRRELL: And that's where we get to the number of millions and millions of dollars in value that we now don't have to spend with, you know, our normal booksellers 'cause we've got them and these will be distributed for free to the schools.
LUTTON: Tyrell estimates there are some 700,000 books here. I'm going to go look at the encyclopedias over here. The New Book of Knowledge Encyclopedias. I think I used these as a kid. Copyright 1988. Yep, Ronald Reagan is president. There's still a Soviet Union. Tyrrell admits this book may not be headed back to a Chicago school. He says what can't be used in the district will be sold or given away.
Teachers have had their own window into this process. Some, like Vince Manobianco, describe being allowed to go back into their closed schools at the end of summer to get supplies and furniture. Manobianco was the math and gym teacher at Lafayette Elementary before the 120-year-old school was shut down.
VINCE MANOBIANCO: They let us go in and kind of do this mad dash, grab what you can. There were people in there already with big moving vans and trucks.
LUTTON: Manobianco says it was difficult seeing his school torn apart. Teachers were walking on books, students' old desks and chairs were tossed into a giant heap.
MANOBIANCO: Teachers were crying 'cause it was - we were going back into this building. And the last time we had been in it, the rooms were set up. It was a very well-functioning school. And then the next time you walk in, you were evicted - is basically what it looked like.
(LAUGHTER)
LUTTON: Tyrrell, the district official, says nothing of value is being thrown away. Even a chair leg will be sold for scrap, he says.
The cost to move everything, $31 million, three times what an initial contract spelled out. Tyrrell says the district just underestimated how much stuff there was in the schools. Movers even found a pickup truck in one; assembled in a shop class, probably. It's still there. No one can figure out how to get it out.
Chicago has now cleaned out some 40 schools. I visited one. Teachers' last instructions were still written on blackboards but there wasn't a piece of chalk or an eraser left.
For NPR News, I'm Linda Lutton.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
In the spring of 1971, two global antagonists found a diplomatic opening through an unlikely source, the game of ping-pong.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NEWSCASTS)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Good evening. The bamboo curtain has been cracked by a ping-pong ball.
MIKE WALLACE: China lifted the bamboo curtain today, long enough to let in 15 American ping-pong players.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: The first time a group of Americans has been invited to visit China in more than 21 years, since the communists took over.
BLOCK: It became known as ping-pong diplomacy, that visit paving the way for President Nixon's trip to Beijing the next year. But leading up to that moment were decades in which table tennis was carefully manipulated to political ends. That story is laid out by Nicholas Griffin in his new book, "Ping-Pong Diplomacy: The Secret History Behind the Game that Changed the World." Nicholas Griffin, thanks for coming in.
NICHOLAS GRIFFIN: Thanks for having me.
BLOCK: And you start back in the 1920s and you introduce us to this intriguing character, a man you call the forgotten architect of ping-pong diplomacy. He's a British aristocrat and his name is Ivor Montagu. Tell us about Ivor Montagu.
GRIFFIN: Ivor Montagu was born into this extremely wealthy family at the turn of the century in England. And it was a very well-connected family. They were friends with the king and queen of England. Prime Ministers would come to visit, home secretaries. You couldn't have got a more establishment family. But Ivor decided to do things a little differently.
BLOCK: A little.
(LAUGHTER)
GRIFFIN: Just a little. Just a little. He sort of veered toward socialism as - when we has 13, 14. And by the time he was 18, he got a little bit more serious and decided to take the step towards communism.
BLOCK: He's a fascinating character. He goes fishing with Trotsky. He lunches with FDR. He produces films with Hitchcock. He's a spy for Stalin. And somehow in here, ping-pong becomes part of what he's all about.
GRIFFIN: That's right. Before he becomes a sort of super-spy with the Soviet military intelligence unit, he's actually working for - secretly for the Comintern, which is the Communist International. And their mandate is to look at all forms of culture and use them to sort of pregnate Western societies with communist ideas. And there were many ways Montagu got involved - his literature, his filmmaking, and then, of course, sport was part of culture.
BLOCK: What was it about ping-pong that made Ivor Montagu feel this could be a pathway for communism, that this was a channel for him to use?
GRIFFIN: First of all, he thought it would sort of move just under the radar. He didn't really think there was a way to commercialize the sport. But he did think there was a way to organize the working class through the sport. And then his other idea was that once you had an international table tennis federation, it meant that he could pass between countries that didn't have diplomatic relations, a very useful thing to do if you're a spy.
BLOCK: In your book, you write that Ivor Montagu is the only reason that 300 million Chinese people play table tennis every week. Is it really that direct a connection?
GRIFFIN: Yes, it really is. There was something that surprised Ivor Montagu, which was when he got in touch with the Chinese just weeks after the People's Republic was founded in 1949, he didn't know that Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai not only loved table tennis, they actually both played at a pretty high standard. They would play in their caves in Yunnan when they were being bombed by Chiang Kai-shek.
So when Montagu arrived, they were very relieved to meet him as well because here in the International Table Tennis Federation, this was an international sporting body run by a communist spy.
BLOCK: How was ping-pong played in China? Who was playing ping-pong in China in those early days of the People's Republic, in the late '40s into the '50s?
GRIFFIN: At the beginning of the '50s, ping-pong really wasn't a big deal in China. But that didn't matter because China, as we know, is a top-down society. So it didn't matter what the people at the bottom wanted to do. It was what the people in the top wanted them to do. And they chose ping-pong. And so you start getting this push through the 1950s. And a lot of money gets put into ping-pong.
They go and recruit the top players out of Hong Kong, and they start building up the system that is world class by the very end of the decade, which, of course, coincides with the Great Leap Forward.
BLOCK: And you have some startling descriptions in here. During the Great Leap Forward, of course, millions - tens of millions of people in China were dying of starvation. There was widespread famine. The economy was in tatters. But the ping-pong players were sheltered from that. They were coddled. They were living a pretty luxurious life.
GRIFFIN: And imagine the pressure, especially when they knew - all these players figured out what was going on in the rest of China. And, of course, it really all builds towards that first world championship being held in Beijing in 1961.
BLOCK: And what happened in that championship?
GRIFFIN: Well, that championship is a gift to China from Ivor Montagu. It was a gift given at the beginning of the Great Leap Forward. And it was supposed to just be sort of a little show-off thing that would be tacked onto the end of the Great Leap Forward. Unfortunately, once we know that there are millions of people dying across the country, they realized that this actually may be the only opportunity to show China at its best and hide what's happening across the Chinese countryside.
And they go and build the largest ping-pong stadium in the world that can sit 18,000 people. It's totally state of the art. They win all the gold medals for China. It gets a decent amount of press coverage. And no one understands that this famine has wiped out maybe 40 million people. But once they do it, these young men and women become, overnight, the biggest celebrities in China. The only people more famous are the revolutionary leaders themselves, who now they become friends with.
They go on holiday with them during the summer. The team gets invited to Premier Zhou Enlai's house, and he's there rolling dumplings with his own hands for them. But then things go sort of horribly wrong during the Cultural Revolution.
BLOCK: And as you describe it, they, along with so many other people, were reviled, were castigated, in many cases killed or committed suicide.
GRIFFIN: That's right. Everything gets flipped on its head in the Cultural Revolution, and anyone who is associated with those revolutionary leaders such as Premier Zhou Enlai were paraded on stage, as the ping-pong team was, in front of thousands of people. Many of them were tortured. Many of them were beaten. Many had their heads shaved. And three of them were driven to their deaths.
BLOCK: Let's jump to 1971, the year of this ping-pong diplomacy when the U.S. team, which is in Japan for the world championships, gets an invitation seemingly out of the blue from the Chinese team. Come visit us. Come to China. And, of course, it was anything but spontaneous. It had been very, very carefully orchestrated.
GRIFFIN: That's right. I mean, it was a much easier story to understand if it were spontaneous. I mean, it's such a lovely story. An American hippie wanders on to a bus, looks around himself, the door is closed and it's the Chinese communists. And suddenly these two men are talking just as a couple of sportsmen and they strike up this friendship and they change the world. It's a lovely story, but it's just not true.
Glen Cowan, the American hippie, was actually waved on to that bus. That bus had waited for him. And this was all coordinated to the nth degree by the Chinese. The only people who didn't know about this coordination were the American team.
BLOCK: You know, I was struck by a quote that you include, reported to be from the wife of Zhou Enlai, who said, the ping-pong ball is very important. You know, it can shake up the whole Earth. Sounds like hyperbole, but I wonder if you've come to believe that at the end.
GRIFFIN: Well, I think there's something key here in why ping-pong works as diplomacy. It couldn't have worked alone. It needed the political framework behind it. Nixon was looking for a way to reach out to Mao Tse-tsung. Mao was looking for a way to reach out to Nixon exactly the same time. But that had fallen quiet because of miscommunication. And the last miscommunication was the Chinese had launched what they considered a very obvious signal and the Americans had missed it.
So now they needed something so obvious that we couldn't miss it. And that's why they picked ping-pong as a form of diplomacy. And guess what, it works. It's on every front page of every newspaper in the world.
BLOCK: Nicholas Griffin, his book is "Ping-Pong Diplomacy: The Secret History Behind the Game that Changed the World." Nicholas, thanks so much.
GRIFFIN: Thank you so much.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block. Today's snowstorm blanketing much of the East, from Tennessee up to Maine, prompted us to go back into our archives to a conversation I had a few years ago with the celebrated dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones about an icy winter memory. We had asked him to a pick a winter song that evokes the season and he chose a song from "Winterreise," winter journey by Franz Schubert.
It's his song cycle about a solitary traveler in a savage winter whose heart is frozen in grief. Bill T. Jones chose the last song in that song cycle, "Der Leiermann" or "The Hurdy-Gurdy Man."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "DER LEIERMANN")
BILL T. JONES: For me, it's the musical arrangement underneath that speaks about a bleak landscape. And this bleak landscape takes me back to a day when I was in fourth grade, out on the edge of town looking out on a snow-covered highway many, many yards away from my window. I should have been paying attention, but I was dreaming.
And then I saw a lone figure walking across that on a very, very cold day. And you know how it is when the wind blows and you have to turn your back against the wind?
BLOCK: Oh, yeah.
JONES: And I felt so sorry for that person, and then I realized that person was my father.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "DER LEIERMANN")
JONES: That my father, who was completely out of work - he had been the director of his own business, as a contractor in the heyday of the migrant stream back in the late '50s. But now, that business had died. He was up in the chilly North with his family, broke and sick, and he had to get to this very insignificant job in a factory miles and miles away - a black man with no car, trying to hitchhike and no one picking him up, and he has to walk that 10 miles to get to the factory.
And I'm sitting in this warm classroom getting educated, not paying attention to the teacher, and suddenly feeling torn between two worlds. And this music, when I hear it, I feel for my father. And there's something about art that can be, yes, depressing, but helps us bear the pain through just sheer beauty and intensity.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "DER LEIERMANN")
BLOCK: I'm imagining that your impulse would have been to run out of that classroom and get your dad inside, warm him up somehow?
JONES: No. It was more complicated than that because that was my job, to be in school. One of the reasons I was in school was so that I did not have to be out there with him. And that was the painful thing about this sort of class-climbing that we all, in this country, are subjected to. We're supposed to do better than our parents.
And did I want the whole class to say look, look out there, there's my father, impoverished, freezing, walking in the road? It was a very strange moment, Melissa, very strange. I was, in a way, paralyzed, doing what I should do, and not knowing what I wanted to do.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "DER LEIERMANN")
BLOCK: Bill, did you ever tell your father that you had seen him that day?
JONES: Oh, wow. No. I never did. I thought it would have embarrassed him. Should I have? I wonder. I never did.
BLOCK: That must be such a painful memory to turn to when you hear this song.
JONES: Well, and that's what I say. I love this song because this is very much in the romantic spirit. This whole "Winterreise" is in the feverish, depressed mind of a young man who has come unhinged because he's lost the one he loves. And he wanders ever deeper into this bleak wilderness with these thoughts of revenge and memories of happiness, and finally ends up listening - almost in madness - to this organ grinder. And, of course, the organ grinder is life itself and the passage of time.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "DER LEIERMANN")
BLOCK: The narrator of this song is listening to this hurdy-gurdy player. The player is barefoot, standing on the ice barefoot, staggering. And here's the killer part: No one is listening to him, not even the dogs.
JONES: However, the narrator is listening, but has he so much disappeared that he is no one? Ah, yes. The young man is doomed, but it's sweet, it's haunting, it's delicious - almost like freezing to death. When we freeze to death, we go to sleep. And that's just at the end of that cycle and I imagine that's what Schubert was trying to suggest. It's beautiful and painful, which is what I want from art.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "DER LEIERMANN")
BLOCK: Listening to this again after all those years, you're taken right back to that classroom and that image on the freezing snow?
JONES: That has been - it's taken on a greater weight over the years because now, more and more, my body speaks to the body that I saw from a child's distance from a parent. I understand him inside and even outside now. I'm not afraid of aging, but the idea of what is success in life; what is a life well spent? His dreams were behind him at that point. Where are my dreams now?
I loved him so much for getting out there that day with no car, and really not talking to us about it, not complaining, just facing it alone. I love him so much, but did I ever tell him I loved him? Probably not.
BLOCK: I bet you showed him.
JONES: Ah.
BLOCK: I bet you did.
JONES: He liked me. He liked me. Yes, he did. And that's so important, so important.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "DER LEIERMANN")
BLOCK: Well, Bill T. Jones, thank you so much.
JONES: Oh, thank you very much, Melissa.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "DER LEIERMANN")
BLOCK: That's a 1955 recording of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau performing "Der Leiermann" from Schubert's "Winterreise," an encore presentation of a winter song memory from Bill T. Jones. He's cofounder of the Bill T. Jones Arnie Zane Dance Company, and executive artistic director of New York Live Arts.
Now, along with that powerful memory from childhood, Mr. Jones also had another thought for a second winter song suggestion that just might be the perfect pick me up for a blustery snowy day.
JONES: You know, I did consider - I don't know if you remember an old K-star hit, (singing) the sun is shining, da dee da dum, but I can weather the storm. It's a little campy, a little offhanded.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "I'VE GOT MY LOVE TO KEEP ME WARM")
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
By 2040, Hispanics, or Latinos - at NPR we use the terms interchangeably - will be the largest ethnic minority in the United States. But it is at best imprecise to reduce such a diverse group to just one name. To better understand the views and experiences of Latino Americans, NPR conducted a poll with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. All this week, we'll be sharing stories we found in the results.
Now, here's NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates with the Hispanic versus Latino debate and that old question: What's in a name?
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES, BYLINE: Born in Honduras and raised in East Los Angeles, comedian Carlos Mencia's work is filtered through the prisms of race and ethnicity. But in an interview with TV's Katie Couric, Mencia said the issue of what to call the mostly Latino audiences he drew early in his career got him in trouble.
CARLOS MENCIA: I said Latinos and they said: We're not Latin. And then I said Chicano and they said: Well, we're not of Mexican descent. And I said I don't know what to say. Hispanic? And they're: There's no such country as Hispania.
(LAUGHTER)
MENCIA: And I was like, well, how am I supposed to describe us?
BATES: He's not alone in that frustration. In the 1980s, the Census Bureau decided to switch from asking people who identified as Spanish-speaking to describe themselves as Hispanic or Latino. Since then, some public figures have gotten in the habit of using both terms, sometimes in the same sentence, like this guy.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: That determination has made the Latino community a driving force behind our national recovery. It's led Hispanic Americans to start small businesses at three times the national average.
BATES: Yep, that was President Barack Obama in 2012, urging a specific demographic to vote for cambio, or change. Many Spanish-language journalists use both terms, too. Here's Univision news anchor Maria Elena Salinas.
MARIA ELENA SALINAS: Hispanics were here before the Mayflower. Hispanics were here before Jamestown. You know, Latinos have roots, very deep roots in this country and they have had for a long time.
BATES: NPR's poll says of the almost 1,500 people surveyed, there was a very slight preference for Hispanic over Latino but not by much. And says Mark Hugo Lopez, of the Pew Research Center, there's a reason for that.
MARK HUGO LOPEZ: We are the country that's created this notion of a Pan-Hispanic or a Pan-Latino identity. That's really something that in many respects is unique to the United States.
BATES: Lopez coordinates Pew's annual Hispanic Trends Project's survey of Latino Communities. Pew also uses Hispanic and Latino interchangeably. Like the NPR poll, Lopez says the latest Pew Latino survey shows Latinos identify more readily by country of origin - or their parents' or grandparents' - than they do the terms used by the U.S. government.
LOPEZ: And if you travel in other parts of Latin America, you'll find, for example, people aren't necessarily calling themselves s Hispanic first. They're saying that they are Salvadoran or that they are Peruvian when you go to those countries.
BATES: But it's important to point out that not everybody prefers to identify by nationality.
MANDO RAYO: I'm part Mexican, part American, 100 percent Tejano.
BATES: In Austin, Texas, Mando Rayo helps nonprofits, businesses and politicians connect to Latino communities. He says if forced to choose, he prefers to use Latino. He believes it connects him more to his Latin American roots. But, Rayo warns clients, it's not the same for everyone.
RAYO: When you're thinking about, you know, you're trying to sell something to the Latino community, and whoa, I always say well, which one?
BATES: Good question. A lot of variables like age, whether one is U.S.-born or born elsewhere, level of education, mean a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy can easily flop. Then Rayo says there are regional differences. Mexican-Americans in Texas might respond far differently to a pitch designed for Mexican-Americans in California.
RAYO: Once you start going more into that localization of understanding communities, understanding Latinos, then you kind of have to dig deeper into those layers.
BATES: Confusing, right?
ANGELO FALCON: Welcome to multicultural America. Reality is a very complex thing for everybody, including Hispanics.
BATES: Angelo Falcon is executive director of the National Institute for Latino Policy. Falcon, who has Puerto Rican roots, says in the '90s, black leaders like Jesse Jackson had an easier job convincing many black Americans to begin to identify as African-American.
FALCON: They thought African-American was a more culturally based, ethnic term and would also identify more with the American experience.
BATES: The critical difference between using African-American and Latino-Hispanic, Falcon says, is that African-American was a term chosen by that community; where Hispanic-Latino was the government's choice. Demographers and sociologists say that as time goes on, the designation of Hispanic-Latino will begin to matter less and less. Younger generations will acknowledge their roots while proclaiming themselves American, just as most other ethnic groups have done before them. And that's very much in keeping with the evolution of American identity.
Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Italy may be moving out of recession, but it still has some belt-tightening to do. And when it comes to the country's rich artistic heritage, officials face some impossible choices: Which treasures to rescue when they can't afford to save them all. Well, now thanks to an online vote, Italian citizens get a stake in those decisions. For some works of art, that will mean a new lease on life. But as Christopher Livesay reports, many treasures of Western civilization remain in serious danger.
CHRISTOPHER LIVESAY, BYLINE: On a recent night inside the National Museum of Rome, musicians and conceptual artists perform a piece of avant-garde theatre as sculptures of Apollo and Dionysus look on.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LIVESAY: The after-hours event is one of dozens taking place at state museums and monuments nationwide in a program called Art Helping Art. The idea is to raise awareness and money for those artistic treasures that need restoration, something the culture ministry says has become a Sisyphean task amid the euro crisis. Anna Maria Buzzi is in charge of protecting and promoting Italy's artistic heritage.
ANNA MARIA BUZZI: (Though Translator) Italy needs help restoring its art and monuments. Ticket sales alone are not enough to completely fund their upkeep. We don't even have a full understanding of how much art exists in the country. We have to start somewhere, so we came up with Art Helping Art.
LIVESAY: Here's how it works: The government selected eight pieces of art from across Italy deemed to be in need of repair, ranging from an ancient Roman marble horse to a painting by Renaissance master Perugino. Then, it posted pictures of them on Facebook and asked people to vote for the work they felt was most deserving of a fix-up. The work that draws the most clicks wins the money raised at these late-night events.
BUZZI: (Through Translator) The strength of a democratic institution is listening to its citizens. Giving people the right to choose makes them more invested in their own heritage. It makes them care more. If you give the people more responsibility, they're more likely to take an interest in their own culture.
LIVESAY: Sounds reasonable.
GABRIELE CIFANI: It's very, extremely demagogic.
LIVESAY: Gabriele Cifani is a Rome archeologist. Just outside the Colosseum, which is being restored by a private investor right now, he takes me on a short walk to show me what he calls one of Italy's many scandals. He tells me to keep an eye on my recording equipment.
CIFANI: Don't show too much, all right, of that.
LIVESAY: Don't show too much, what?
CIFANI: Your stuff.
LIVESAY: Oh. Why do you say that?
CIFANI: You will discover.
LIVESAY: We enter the ruins of Domus Aurea, the once opulent golden house built by Emperor Nero in the first century AD. Broken wine bottles litter the ground in what's become an unauthorized camp for scores of the city's homeless.
CIFANI: We are inside an area for homeless, definitely. It's just completely abandoned. You can't bring here people because it's a dangerous area above all when it's dark.
LIVESAY: So does it make you angry? Would you use the word angry?
CIFANI: Yes, yes, yes, yes. I would say angry. Yes.
LIVESAY: Critics point out that countries like France and Germany spend billions more than Italy maintaining their cultural heritage. Out of the entire European Union, only Greece devotes a smaller percentage of its national budget to the arts. Luca Carra is with Italia Nostra, Italy's oldest non-government historic preservation group.
LUCA CARRA: Italy is committing cultural suicide. We have to - we have no much time. We have some years to stop the degradation because every time it rains, for instance, some roof or walls or some part of these monuments fall down, fall apart. And so I think it's a sort of a national emergency. It's a cultural emergency, but it's more than a cultural emergency.
LIVESAY: Even Pompeii - the country's prize pony of archeology - suffers routine collapses, as do countless other lesser-known sites. But the government is optimistic. The late-night fundraisers have been a big hit.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LIVESAY: And so was the online vote, which closed at the end of the year. The winner is Perugino's painting of a Madonna and child. As for the seven other objects, the government says it will fix them soon. But Italy's revolving door of politicians have made similar promises in the past. And there are no firm plans to take another roster of candidates for restoration to Italian voters. For NPR News, I'm Christopher Livesay in Rome.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
The Winter Olympic sport of aerials is unforgettable once you see it. Skiers flying up into the air off jumps, twisting and flipping. It takes tremendous skill and lots of training, strong stomach muscles and it takes strategy. NPR's Robert Smith from our Planet Money Team looks at the game theory behind the aerial tricks.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ROBERT SMITH, BYLINE: The skier takes off downhill, facing a jump so big he can't see the bottom of the hill.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: On course, kicker five.
SMITH: He is in the air for a mere three seconds. But in that time he does so many aerial maneuvers that he's landed before you could even say them all out loud.
(APPLAUSE)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: All right phone home. That was massive.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERINH)
SMITH: The skiers and coaches themselves use a short-hand lingo to describe what just happened there. It sounds like a made up children's language.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Double full-full. Double full.
SMITH: Which, as you know is different from a...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Full-full, double full.
SMITH: Ask an aerialist like Dylan Ferguson what that all means, and you can see why they use the shorthand.
DYLAN FERGUSON: I do three flips, five twists so back flips with two-two twists, a back flip with one twist and a back flip with two flips - twists, and hopefully land on my feet - can't even say it.
(LAUGHTER)
SMITH: Think of it like gymnastics in the air on skis. And like gymnastics, you get points for doing a harder routine and for sticking the landing, but there is a crucial difference between gymnastics and aerials. In aerials, in the final few rounds, you can't use the same trick twice. Every time you face that jump you have to come up with something different.
EMILY COOK: It's been a little different this year and the strategizing has come into play big time.
SMITH: This is Emily Cook, 34 years old, been to two Winter Olympics.
COOK: Right now, I'm performing two variations of a triple twisting double back flip.
SMITH: But the question is which of those two tricks do you do? You can't repeat a trick. You can't just do your best one all the time. You have to plan exactly when to do your best. Now you might think: Oh, well, you just save the hardest one for last. Right? After all, that's when you are literally going for the gold against the very best skiers. But the other skiers know this too and sometimes they'll try and get ahead of you, squeeze you out of the finals.
Todd Schirman is the program director of the U.S. freestyle team.
TODD SCHIRMAN: What happens is one person will do a harder jump. They have a bigger score and then everyone is like, OK, we have to change our jump too. Because if I do the jump I planned on, I just saw two really good jumps, so I'm not going to make finals. So they step it up and do the correct jumps to get themselves in the finals.
SMITH: At the last world cup event of the season, last weekend in Lake Placid, Australian Laura Peel swapped tricks at the very last minute.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: And that is an interesting strategy because she originally was going to do the full-full, and then decided to add a little more degree of difficulty - the full double full - so the double full...
SMITH: Now, this is when it gets tricky for the other competitors. When Emily Cook is standing at the top of a hill, she hasn't seen what tricks the other skiers just did. It gets relayed up the hill by a series of coaches. And then moments before she's about to jump, the coach at the top might say, yeah, do the harder trick.
COOK: You know, on the hill at the last second that'll be their call.
SMITH: Imagine a gymnast changing her Olympic routine five seconds before it starts. Cook says they train over and over again to swap tricks at the very last minute.
COOK: I've done all these jumps so many times in my career that that switch is fairly automatic at this point. For sure, the first couple of times that it happened, it needed some work.
SMITH: In Lake Placid, Emily Cook and her coaches decided to do her hardest trick in the second to last round. She desperately wanted to get into the finals.
(APPLAUSE)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: Nailed it. Take out the Makita and put the screws to it, baby.
SMITH: And it was a great jump but not great enough. She took fifth in the round. The top four people moved on. At the bottom of the hill, Cook said sometimes strategy is not enough.
COOK: We were going for the podium. We were going for the win tonight. And if I had stepped down and not done quite as well, I think that I would have looked at as a poor choice. You know?
SMITH: On this night, the Chinese team dominated. They did the hardest jumps and they nailed them every single time. And that kind of perfection is hard to outthink.
Robert Smith, NPR News.
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And I'm Melissa Block. The Syrian peace conference begins tomorrow following a tumultuous 24 hours. Yesterday, at the last minute, the U.N. withdrew Iran's invitation after the Syrian opposition threatened to boycott the meeting. The aim of the talks: to end a three-year war that has claimed the lives of over 100,000 people.
But the war is no longer just about Syria. It's become a regional conflict, which makes finding a solution all the more complicated. NPR's Deborah Amos reports now from the Swiss city of Montreux.
DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE: The U.S., Russia and the U.N. spend enormous political capital just getting the warring sides to the table, but no one is expecting quick results, says Salman Shaikh at the Brookings Center in Doha.
SALMAN SHAIKH: They expect some sort of a process to start, or at least they're hoping for that. I think that fair amounts of gloom, though, that they will be able to achieve really anything.
AMOS: The Syrian government and regime opponents haven't achieved much either. President Bashar al-Assad's aim was to crush a revolt that began as a peaceful uprising. Armed rebels vowed to oust him by force. Now, both sides must recalculate. At least that's the hope, says Shashank Joshi, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
SHASHANK JOSHI: In some ways, maybe we should think of it as a kind of getting to know you, as a kind of sounding out to decide, you know, what are the parameters of the possible here? What can be accomplished in terms of limited humanitarian access, for example?
AMOS: The Syrian regime offered limited humanitarian access in the days leading up to these talks in rebel neighborhoods besieged by regime troops for months. The state TV showed government cleanup crews and food delivery in areas where civilians have died from lack of food and medicine. Syria's foreign minister proposed a wider cease fire for the contested city of Aleppo. All part of a negotiating strategy, says Joshi.
JOSHI: It's a question of projecting their bargaining position, of showing they have a good hand, of showing that they have facts on the ground that cannot be reversed by a squabbling infighting rebellion.
AMOS: And it demonstrates the regime's bottom line, he says. President Assad holds the key to the most urgent issues.
JOSHI: If you want political change in Syria and you want to be able to enforce a peace, it's the regime that you have to talk to and agree with.
AMOS: The international agenda for the talks negotiate a caretaker government appointed by mutual consent, a tall order for parties so far apart and the Syrian president says he has no intention of stepping down. Salman Shaikh says it's likely the regime and the Russians will try to press an alternative agenda.
SHAIKH: For the Russians and for the Assad regime, this conference is now very much more about fighting terrorism. This is very much more about dispelling the notion that Assad has to leave. It provides an arena for his rehabilitation.
AMOS: A year ago, many Western officials were predicting Assad's impending fall and an end to the fighting, almost no one thinks that way now. The U.S. and Russia need the Syrian president's cooperation for the talks here to succeed. Publically, Western officials say he must step aside, but privately, it seems, they're more interested in constraining Assad than removing him at least for now.
Syrian opposition leaders only reluctantly agreed to these talks. They fear their weak position will undermine what little legitimacy they have left with Syrians who believed in the revolution and lost everything in a war, says Amir Azam, a Syrian-born U.S. academic with close ties to the opposition.
AMIR AZAM: It's going to be a photo-op. It's just going to be a get-together for the international community to come and say, OK, we're doing something for the Syrian crisis, when really nothing is going to be done - this first meeting, at least.
AMOS: With the opposition divided, the regime convinced it has won, there's no guarantee that talks will continue past the first meeting. Meanwhile, inside Syria, there is no let up in the fighting and the humanitarian crisis only deepens.
Deborah Amos, NPR News, Montreux.
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To Thailand now, where the government has declared a 60-day state of emergency ahead of next month's snap elections. The move comes after weeks of anti-government protests and it gives authorities the power to impose curfews, detain suspects without charge and ban public gatherings of more than five people.
Still, the government insists it will not use the declaration to remove protesters from the sites they have occupied in the capital city, Bangkok. Reporter Michael Sullivan joins us from his base in Chiang Rai, Thailand. And Michael, these protests are aimed at forcing the current and democratically elected prime minister to step down. But the demonstrators, apparently, don't want the new elections - they were called in very short notice, snap elections, on February 2. Why not? Why are they against elections?
MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Because they know that they would lose those elections to the government currently in power. The people who are on the streets, basically, in Bangkok now represent a minority of the Thai population. They represent the royalists, the traditional elite here, the middle class, the upper middle class and the majority of the people in Thailand actually live somewhere else and they live either outside in the rural areas of Thailand or the urban poor who work for the people that are the ones who are demonstrating or who are demanding that the current government resign.
So that's why the main opposition party, the Democrats, are boycotting the election because they know they have no chance of winning. They haven't won a majority in 20 years.
SIEGEL: Well, the protests had been largely peaceful until now, but over the weekend, there was violence that left one person dead and several dozen wounded. Was that violence what prompted the state of emergency being declared?
SULLIVAN: It's a little unclear to me at this point what prompted the state of emergency. I mean, you could argue that these protests that have been going on for the past week have been, you know, diminishing in their popularity so that the government appear to be winning, actually, in their policy of restraint, of not intervening in these protests and not trying to put them down with force.
So I thought that strategy was working. So why they would declare a state emergency now, I can't really imagine, unless they actually got the army on board to say that, right, OK, this has to stop and they decided that this is the only way that they can actually try to push forward with the elections on February 2.
SIEGEL: Thailand has a history of the army taking power whenever the political system stumbles. Is there speculation that that might happen again?
SULLIVAN: Every day, every minute, every hour, yes, yes, yes. They've done it 18 times in the last 82 years since Thailand became a constitutional monarchy. They last time was in 2006 when they deposed Yingluck Shinawatra's brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, and when the army did that, they did everything that they could to try to prevent a Thaksin or Thaksin-related party from taking party again.
And sure enough, in 2008, it happened. A Thaksin proxy party won. So the army is a little reluctant to intervene at this point and there are many competing factions, even within the army that makes the army not the monolithic structure that we knew it as before in 2006 when Thaksin was deposed. So that's one of the reasons that the army doesn't want to intervene because they're a little factionalized. And the other was they realized what a hash they made of it the last time.
SIEGEL: That's reporter Michael Sullivan speaking to us from Bangkok. Thank you, Michael.
SULLIVAN: You're welcome, Robert.
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President Obama has now been in the White House for five years and the fifth year has been a rough ride: The Snowden leaks about NSA surveillance, the dysfunctional debut of Healthcare.gov, Syria's crossing of the president's own declared red line leading him to the brink of air strikes that his own party rebelled at. How Barack Obama processes these events is a theme of David Remnick's story in the current issue of The New Yorker, "Going the Distance."
Remnick, who is the magazine's editor, also wrote the 2011 biography, "The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama." And he joins us now from New York. Welcome to the program once again.
DAVID REMNICK: Good to talk to you.
SIEGEL: First, does President Obama acknowledge that this has been a terrible year for him, one that has witnessed his approval ratings going down?
REMNICK: I think it's so undeniable that even he has to admit it. And he certainly has to travel the country and enact his fury at the rollout of Obamacare, which was really self-inflicted.
SIEGEL: Self-inflicted meaning when he says: I take responsibility for this, does he seem to feel that responsibility?
REMNICK: I think so and you can't blame the Republican Congress or only up to a degree. That rollout was a classic botch. And the best they can do is say look, Social Security when it rolled out was also a bit of a botch and then it got fixed very quickly, and nobody remembers anything other than the fact that it's an incredibly popular program.
SIEGEL: There's an accusation against Barack Obama that you always hear in Washington: He lacks the necessary gregariousness for the job. Senior members of Congress, even Democrats, seldom see him socially. And the argument goes his daily dinner with his wife and daughters is personally admirable, but presidentially it's a waste of time. What does he say about that?
REMNICK: Well, he makes no excuses for the fact that he likes to have dinner with his family. And I know he feels that personal relationships are important only on the margins. And his difficulties with Congress don't have anything to do with schmoozing. They have to do with the fact that there is a transformed, radicalized Republican Party. It's deeply, deeply conservative and deeply devoted to blocking the Democratic Party agenda at every move. And this was not always the case historically, whether you had a president who knew how to break arms and cajole people or not.
SIEGEL: So his view is he could play golf with John Boehner every weekend and it would make no difference whatever?
REMNICK: I think only at the margins, that he could play golf with Boehner or have a drink with Mitch McConnell, and do that night after night. And it would not change the fact that somebody like Lindsey Graham at home faces a challenge from where? The Democratic Party, no. He's facing challenges from four different candidates from the Tea Party, so that Lindsey Graham begins to seem like a moderate or centrist in our political geography.
And that's not what our political geography look like it in the days of Lyndon Johnson, when you had actual liberals in the Republican Party and centrists. And you also had a different kind of party discipline where the president could get a committee chairman on board - or threaten a committee chairman or make a deal - and you would have discipline throughout the party. Everybody is his own or her own political actor now in Congress.
SIEGEL: But apart from that political reading of the Congress and the Republican Party, you watched President Obama travel. How long were you with him actually?
REMNICK: I was on a three-day trip where he was raising funds in one preposterous mansion after another in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles. And I've gone down to the White House any number of times but had hours of on the record interviews and other contact that was really useful.
SIEGEL: One of the first things that happens in your story, in your time with him, was the deal with Iran emerging - the nuclear deal emerging. And I gather he was very surprised by the criticism he got for that. Fair?
REMNICK: I think that's fair. I think he is especially more than surprised. I think he's pretty outraged by the fact that there were so many Democrats that seem more interested in the point of view of Bibi Netanyahu and the Saudi leadership, than in their party leader and president.
So that the morning after the Iran deal was signed, Chuck Schumer went on the Sunday shows. And without any fear of punishment from the president or the party leadership, simply pronounced that he was going to possibly favor increased sanctions against Iran, which would really be counterproductive for the deal as it is at this point. And he's not the only one: Cory Booker, Gillibrand.
I mean there are a lot of Democrats that talk in this vein, forcing Obama to say if such a bill came to his desk he'd have to veto it. That's the kind of fluidity and lack of party discipline and the atmosphere of Washington that Obama faces. That's just the fact of how Washington is these days.
SIEGEL: But you don't see that as an example of the lack of fear that Barack Obama has inspired in members of his own party; that you will not get what you want from this administration if you don't show some discipline.
REMNICK: Well, look. If you're a senator from Alaska and you're a Democrat, you already feel endangered, you already feel on the brink of extinction. So a Democratic senator from Alaska goes to the administration and wants a big favor, a road deal, and he gets it. And then it comes time for a crucial vote on gun control, there's no way that senator is going to vote for gun control, because that'll be the last vote he ever makes.
By the way, I'm not saying this is necessarily a terrible thing. The old days of strict party discipline and smoke-filled rooms and deals done over dinner had real demerits too.
SIEGEL: In his first term, I mean this is a president who was given the Nobel Peace Prize essentially for being Barack Obama and getting elected. He hadn't been in office...
REMNICK: And not being George W. Bush.
SIEGEL: And not being George W. Bush.
(LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: Now you find a president who has to spend time defending second-rate IT work on the Healthcare.gov website. Any sense there of where did the magic to my presidency go?
REMNICK: You know, at one point I said to him: Don't you find that there is a certain sector of your base that has gravitated now away from you and toward people like Elizabeth Warren or even Bill de Blasio? And he said: Look, this is the most natural thing in the world. You know, we live in this media-saturated country and the magic can't last forever, and in some ways the caravan marches on.
William Daley, his former chief of staff, told my colleague Ryan Lizza that after 2014 - politically speaking - no one cares what Barack Obama does. Now a lot can happen between 2014 and 2016 in any number of areas where the president is essential. But what he means is that the air goes out of the room, our political attention starts turning and lame-duckness sets in. And, of course, he's faced with the Congress that he's faced with.
So the notion of enacting big programs, big legislation, ambitious work on climate change or income inequality - all these things that he held so dearly in the second inaugural, it already looks quite bleak.
SIEGEL: David Remnick, thank you for talking with us once again.
REMNICK: Always a pleasure.
SIEGEL: That's David Remnick whose article in The New Yorker, based on recent interviews with Barack Obama, is called "Going the Distance."
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In Nairobi, four men are on trial for helping the terrorists who stormed Westgate Mall in September. More than 70 people were killed in that attack. Today, the judge and lawyers on both sides left the confines of their courtroom and took a field trip to the mall.
As NPR's Gregory Warner reports, they went looking for the truth of what happened that day. But they also went looking for closure.
GREGORY WARNER, BYLINE: Here's something I did not expect walking into Westgate Mall for the first time since the attack in late September. The columns are here, the banister, the floor's great. Remember, the massacre that took place here four months ago was only the beginning of a four day shootout inside the mall. Culminating in an explosion, still unexplained, that destroyed half the building, setting off a fire that smoldered for weeks, and then a flood.
People would describe the wreckage as a soupy mass with an unbearable stench of decay. Today, it just looks like a mall under construction. There's bits of insulation on the floor, and air ducts that look like they're about to be installed. Only the acrid smell and the bullet holes suggests, in this part of the tour anyway, that this mall is not just closed for renovation.
Today's visit was the idea of the state prosecutor, James Warui. He told me last week outside the courtroom that, in this case, blueprints and photographs weren't enough to set the scene.
JAMES WARUI: When you are conducting a case of this nature, you need the court to really appreciate the various areas you're mentioning in the evidence. That's why it is necessary for the court to go there.
WARNER: To go there, cough through the dust, and listen to witnesses like Ali Niraj, an off-duty cop who had come to the mall to ferry money from one of the stores. Niraj showed us the exact place he stood.
ALI NIRAJ: Yeah, I was shooting from this pillar and my colleague was at the other pillar, when we were exchanging fire.
WARNER: He pointed down at the ground floor where he saw the terrorists walked into the front entrance of the mall shooting. And capturing the pure strangeness of that day, he said he didn't know at first if they were the attackers or the special police come to rescue them. So while he hid behind the pillar, he held up his security guard jacket like a flag or a kind of test, like: Look at me.
NIRAJ: So if they could see my jacket, they are bad people - I know. And if they are good people, I also identify. So when they saw me they just started shooting at me.
WARNER: What made this re-enactment so strange was the four men in handcuffs standing to one side. None of those men accused in this case were the gunmen, none of them were even inside the mall. They're accused of assisting the terrorists somehow, but it hasn't yet come out in the case what role they actually played.
I asked the prosecutor, James Warui, why the accused had even come along with us on the trip.
WARUI: According to Kenyan law, they have to be here. They have to be present.
WARNER: Why?
WARUI: It's a requirement of the law they have to be present.
(LAUGHTER)
WARUI: No reason.
WARNER: Those four men present for no apparent reason might have served as a stand-in for four other men - the four gunmen who the Kenyan government insists were killed in the shootout, but whose remains have not yet been definitively found.
We come to the part of the mall that collapsed in the firefight. It's now a large crater where workers are carefully shoveling through rubble, collecting mangled steel. Forensics experts from the FBI and Scotland Yard have long since combed through this wreckage for clues. And still, the open question of what exactly happened to the men responsible for this massacre is so sensitive that no one here would talk about it, only the court translator who gave only his first name as Abdi.
ABDI: It's not true that they escaped. That's what they are saying.
WARNER: Abdi points up at part of the destroyed building to a room where the closed circuit footage from the mall shows four terrorists calmly praying and eating before one of them reaches up - this is at about 12 hours after the attack began - and turns the closed circuit camera away. That's the last image of the terrorists that is known to have been seen.
ABDI: So is that useful is that hole, what it is. That is where they were praying and they came they died there. They were burned there.
WARNER: Behind Abdi, a Kenyan security official shook his head no and shrugs. And when I asked his name, he refused to answer. There were so many questions.
Whatever happens to the four accused men in this trial, the full story of what happened that day at Westgate remains a mystery.
Gregory Warner, NPR News, Nairobi.
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The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission is back in business. For the past 31 months, the spacecraft has effectively been asleep. Most of its instruments were shut off to save energy, including the radio for communicating with Earth. Mission managers can now start preparing Rosetta for a rendezvous with a comet later this year. NPR's Joe Palca has more.
JOE PALCA, BYLINE: Rosetta went into hibernation in June 2011. There was an automated timer on board that had specific instructions to wake the spacecraft up two and a half years later, and send a radio signal back to Earth. There was no reason to think Rosetta wouldn't wake back up - it was operating just fine when it went to sleep. But still you can imagine the relief at mission control in Darmstadt, Germany when the signal came in.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING, APPLAUSE AT MISSION CONTROL)
PALCA: Paolo Ferri was one of the people cheering. He's head of mission operations for the European Space Agency.
PAOLO FERRI: Two and a half years were tough enough, but the last 45 minutes were very, very, very tough. I think I don't want to repeat that again.
PALCA: So why did Rosetta have to hibernate? Well, the spacecraft gets its power from solar rays that convert light from the sun into electrical energy. But in order to catch up with the comet it's chasing, Rosetta had to go out nearly half a million miles from the sun. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: It was nearly half a billion miles from the sun.] And Ferri says that far away, the sun isn't very bright.
FERRI: Although we have larger rays, we didn't have enough energy, electrical energy to keep all systems active.
PALCA: So they left on the automated timer, of course, but they also left on some heaters.
FERRI: Because you can imagine at those distances from the sun, we had to keep the unit from freezing. And so the little energy that remained on the solar rays, which was of the order of a few hundred watts, was used to operate the thermostatic heaters to keep the spacecraft as warm as possible.
PALCA: Rosetta's main scientific mission starts this August, when it catches up with the comet it's been chasing since 2004, a comet with a name that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue - or at least, not my tongue.
FERRI: Well, we pronounce it, Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
PALCA: Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
FERRI: Right.
PALCA: Anyway, if everything goes according to plan, once Rosetta catches Churyumov-Gerasimenko, it will fly alongside for two years as the comet swings around the sun. It will also release a probe that is intended to land gently on the comet's surface. But before any of that can happen, Ferri says, in May Rosetta will have to make some crucial maneuvers.
FERRI: At the moment, we are still flying very, very fast compared to the comet. We have to brake.
PALCA: So that means Rosetta will have to fire its rocket engine, and it needs to change course slightly. Right now, Rosetta is not pointed in exactly the right direction, and that means a second rocket firing.
FERRI: If something goes wrong with those and we can't, for whatever reason, deform them, then we don't have a mission.
PALCA: Not that there's any reason to think the rocket engine won't work properly. It has in the past. But until it does, Ferri and his Rosetta colleagues will have to suffer through a few more tense moments.
Joe Palca, NPR News.
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The rest of Washington may have shut down for the snow, but not the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead, the justices heard arguments today in a case that could devastate public employee unions. At issue is whether non-union members can be forced to pay fees toward negotiating a union contract that will benefit them. NPR's Nina Totenberg reports.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: In Illinois, 10 years ago, 28,000 home health workers who care for adults with disabilities approved a union. Since then, hourly wages have nearly doubled. The workers now receive regular training and have health insurance. The state says as a result, the workforce has been stabilized, professionalized and the government has saved money by keeping adults with disabilities in their homes instead of institutions.
Some workers, however, object to paying what is known as fair share fees. That is, even though they haven't joined the union, they are required to pay their fair share of the cost of negotiating the contract they benefit from. The Supreme Court has long allowed such fees to prevent non-members from free-riding on union members' dues.
But in recent years, some of the court's conservatives have suggested that they may be prepared to reverse this long-established principle, and today's case presents that opportunity. On the steps of the court today, one of those objecting to fair share fees was Susan Watts, whose 27-year-old daughter cannot walk or talk.
SUSAN WATTS: We entered this program and it was already unionized. So I really didn't have a vote, you know, or a voice. You know, it's mandated for us to pay this fair share. And the money is being taken from my daughter.
TOTENBERG: Watts believes that if there were no union contract, there might be more money for her daughter's medical care. But that is not how the state, most of the workers or most of the clients see it. The state says it actually has saved $632 million by creating a stable workforce to care for adults with disabilities in their homes instead of nursing homes. And the workers and their patients say the union has transformed a program that previously had been hobbled by rapid turnover. Home care worker Flora Johnson.
FLORA JOHNSON: I have a son that have cerebral palsy. They tried to get me to institutionalize him years ago. But by the union coming in, he got a chance to stay home with his family.
TOTENBERG: Many of the care recipients were also on hand at court today, among them Rahnee Patrick(ph), who sat calmly in a wheelchair as the snow pelted her hat and coat.
RAHNEE PATRICK: I had a personal assistant come to me at 5:00 in the morning in my house. She rode an hour in the snow from the north side of Chicago. Why is she so dedicated? Not because I'm lovely, but because she gets a really good wage. And the wage came from the unions being able to collectively bargain. And I can actually go to work and it's because of her being able to pay her own bills than I'm able to pay my bills.
TOTENBERG: Inside the Supreme Court, the debate was equally passionate. Lawyer William Messenger of the Right to Work Foundation contended that the fair share fee violates Susan Watts' First Amendment rights because it compels her to endorse a policy that is a matter of public concern. Justice Ginsburg: Are you saying that bargaining over wages and benefits in the public sector converts the process into something more? Answer: Yes.
Justice Scalia: Under that reasoning, everything is always a matter of public concern. Supposed you have a policeman who's dissatisfied with his wages and so he makes an appointment to see the commissioner. And he does that 10 times until the commissioner is fed up and tells his secretary, I don't want to see this man again. Isn't he prevented from petitioning for redress of a grievance in violation of the First Amendment? Answer: He isn't but once you have a collective, it would start to become a matter of public concern.
Justice Sotomayor: So could the state instead of forcing fair share fees pay more to union members? Answer: Yes. Justice Ginsburg: Are you taking the position that there cannot be an exclusive bargaining agent if there are any dissenters who don't want to be represented by a union? Lawyer Messenger demurred, saying that that issue is not presented in this case. Justice Kagan interrupted, characterizing Messenger's argument as radical.
Not only is it a radical argument, she said, it would radically restructure the way workplaces across the country are run. Kagan noted that for the last 65 years, every state in the nation has debated whether to be a right-to-work state with no mandatory fair share fees or a state that requires such fees. Your argument, she told Messenger, is that that debate should never have taken place because, in fact, a right-to-work law is constitutionally compelled.
Justice Breyer: You're asking the courts of the United States to fashion a new special labor law for government employees using the First Amendment as a weapon. If Messenger's attempt to reverse more than a half century of labor law met resistance in some quarters, when the other side rose to make its arguments, many of the court's conservatives made equally clear their antipathy for labor unions.
Justice Alito: What I don't understand is why the union's participation is essential. Why do they need to have the union intervene here? Justice Kennedy: In an era when government is getting bigger and bigger, suppose the younger person thinks that the state is squandering his heritage on unnecessary or excessive payments or benefits. Can the union take money from an employee who disagrees with the union on such a fundamental question?
The key point, said Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, representing the federal government, is to look at the court's consistent precedents. Under those rulings, when the government is acting as an employer, its interest in effective and efficient carrying out of its own operations is entitled to very substantial weight, more weight than it is entitled to when it's regulating the citizenry in general. A decision in the case is expected by summer. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
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President Obama plans to meet this spring with Pope Francis. Today, a White House spokesman announced the president will visit the Vatican as part of a European trip in March. Mr. Obama is said to be looking forward to talking with the pope about their shared commitment to fighting poverty and income inequality. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: The March meeting will be the two men's first face-to-face encounter, but President Obama has carefully followed the pope's progress since Francis took charge of the Catholic Church 10 months ago. As Obama told MSNBC in an interview last month, he likes what he's seen.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I think Pope Francis is showing himself to be just an extraordinarily thoughtful and soulful messenger of peace and justice.
HORSLEY: The president is particularly taken with the way this pope has stressed economic fairness, passing up many of the luxurious trappings of his own office while reaching out to the poor. Obama quoted the pope during a speech last month on income inequality.
OBAMA: How could it be, he wrote, that it's not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure but it is news when the stock market loses two points?
JOHN GREEN: This president and this pope seem to be very much on the same page when it comes to elevating that issue to the top of the agenda.
HORSLEY: John Green is an expert on politics and religion at the University of Akron. He says Obama is likely to be more simpatico with Francis than he was with Pope Benedict, whom Obama met with in 2009.
The Catholic Church still has serious differences with Obama over issues such as abortion and the administration's controversial requirement that most health insurance policies include free birth control. Green says while those doctrinal differences haven't gone away under Pope Francis, they have taken a back seat.
GREEN: This pope has chosen to de-emphasize, at least here early in his papacy, the emphasis on the social issues, if you will, and to focus more on economic issues.
HORSLEY: Obama has also promised to make shared economic growth his number one focus during his last three years in office. Of course, it's possible Pope Francis will use their March meeting to confront the president on issues where they disagree, much as Pope John Paul did with President Bush over the Iraq war.
Whatever the two men discuss, Green says, it's unlikely to sway many voters back home, where American Catholics rarely take political marching orders from the pope. Still, for a president trying to add some symbolic shine to his own tarnished agenda, Green says visiting a popular pope is a pretty good place to start.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, the White House.
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Three new dog breeds will be bounding or scurrying before the judges at the Westminster Dog Show next month. They are the Chinook, the rat terrier and the Portuguese podengo pequeno.
It'll be up to David Frei to describe these dogs to viewers. He is co-host of the telecast, and he's going to describe them for us now in a preview. David, welcome to the program.
DAVID FREI: Hi, Melissa. Thank you. Always nice to be on with you.
BLOCK: Well, great. Let's tart with the Chinook. It's a powerful-looking dog. I read it's the official state dog of New Hampshire. What else can you tell us about the Chinook?
FREI: Well, they were bred to be a sled dog and they were developed by a gentleman in New Hampshire, and that's what led to them being the state dog of New Hampshire. But, you know, pulling a sled in the snow, it kind of makes sense. I can see that picture for a dog in New Hampshire.
BLOCK: And they're in the working group, right?
FREI: They're a strong, powerful dog, which makes sense for them to be in that group.
BLOCK: OK. Well, let's move on to the second one. This is the rat terrier, and that name kind of gives it all away, doesn't it?
FREI: We call them the rat terrier not because of their appearance but because of their job. They're a ratter on the farm. They're a sturdy, athletic little dog, and they look great.
BLOCK: And what more can you tell us about what the rat terrier is like?
FREI: Well, it's a farm dog. It's a little taller in leg than some of the other terriers, and beautiful coat, looks great, alert, loves their family. But very typical terrier in that it's their world and we're just living it.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: All right. Well, the last one, the last new breed for Westminster this year - it's the smallest dog of the three we're talking about, but it has the longest name, the Portuguese podengo pequeno, not pequeno, pequeno, right?
FREI: The Portuguese Podengo Club of America has made it very clear to me that it is pequeno, not pequeno. So a lovely dog, a hunting hound from Portugal. They are the smallest of the three varieties of the podengos. There's also a medio and a grande, which is relating size. It's sort of like tall, grande and venti.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: Just like Starbucks.
FREI: That's right. And fun little dog, great personality, and wonderful family dog.
BLOCK: But what has to happen for a breed to be accepted into Westminster for the first time?
FREI: First of all, they have to have a sufficient population of them to show that there's interest in this country, and that population has to have some geographic distribution. They can't all be living on a farm with somebody in Texas. And then the third thing is they need to have a parent club that's watching out for them, that's advocating for them. And then making sure that they're breeding true to type, that the stud register, if you will, is keeping track of the litters that are born, and making sure that the puppies that come out really do look like the puppies they're supposed to be.
BLOCK: Would there be any case of a breed introduced one year at Westminster winning best in show that same year?
FREI: Pretty unlikely. As a judge, you might not have the greatest confidence in your knowledge of a breed to understand every nuance and subtlety of that dog being a great specimen for its breed. The Bichon Frise, I think it was about a 20-year wait from the time that they were first eligible at Westminster until the time they won their first best in show. You know, you always have to remember that we're judging these dogs not only on how good a specimen they are of their breed, but how good they are in comparison to the other breeds amongst them as show dogs, as athletes, and being able to show us in the ring that they can do what they were bred to do.
BLOCK: David Frei, co-hosts the telecast for the Westminster Dog Show. It's coming up in just a few weeks. David, thanks so much.
FREI: Thank you. And we'll hope everybody gets to sit at home and root for your favorite.
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There are some fresh developments on the recent Target and Neiman Marcus security breaches. The theft of Target customer data was among the largest ever to hit the retail industry. And now, privacy experts are warning about so-called phishing scams that appear to offer help to those whose information was stolen. NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: Last week, Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel sent an email to more than 70 million people who had either their credit card or personal information stolen from Target's databases over the holiday season. In it, he warned customers to guard against possible scams by not responding to any text messages or to any emails requesting personal information. But around the same time, there were look-alike emails going out to some consumers posing as a warning from Target. Some of those emails asked consumers to protect themselves by clicking on a link.
WILLIAM PELGRIN: They look legitimate. They're very realistic. Everyone I could see falling prey to a particular phishing attack if it was well drafted.
NOGUCHI: William Pelgrin is the president and CEO for the Center for Internet Security, a nonprofit that advocates for greater public/private cyber security.
PELGRIN: When you get something like that, again, you're going to react very quickly. And all we suggest is take a breath, think it through. Always contact that organization directly.
NOGUCHI: Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder declined to comment for the record. But she confirmed the retailer has identified and, working with social media companies, taken down a dozen related online phishing scams. Meanwhile, over the weekend, two Mexican citizens were arrested in Texas near the U.S.-Mexico border. They were caught with cloned credit card information which local authorities are saying is related to the Target breach. But federal law enforcement officials say the connection is still unclear. The Secret Service declined comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
Steven Boyer is co-founder of BitSight, a cyber security firm that tracks the kind of malware used to infiltrate Target systems. He says he expects scams resulting from the recent breaches to be especially well-crafted.
STEVEN BOYER: What is particularly interesting about this attack is that because these adversaries were able to gain home address, email, name, they could do something very targeted.
NOGUCHI: A security company called IntelCrawler says it believes it has traced the origin of the malware to a couple of young Russians who put it up for sale in online market places. Dan Clements is IntelCrawler's president.
DAN CLEMENTS: When you have hundreds of IP addresses all pointing to a particular computer or person, it raises the probability of who they are and where they are.
NOGUCHI: One of the young men named by IntelCrawler disputes the charges that he was involved. Clements says his company has passed the information along to law enforcement. Now, based on the latest phishing attacks he's seeing, Clements says attackers are setting their sights on a new and very specific target: Executives at banks. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, Washington.
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Readers of the ESPN-owned website Grantland yesterday encountered an extraordinary apology from its editor and creative force, Bill Simmons. The apology centered on a story about a putter - a golf club whose makers called it the last putter you will ever need or want - and the deceptions of its inventor, Essay Anne Vanderbilt. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik reports that the story initially garnered a lot of praise and has since triggered a furious backlash. And David joins us from our studios in New York City. Hi, David.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Hey, Robert.
SIEGEL: And first off, what did the story report?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, the story reported on the Oracle putter. It was, as you say, promised as a miracle and champion by the longtime golf announcer Gary McCord on CBS. The inventor, Vanderbilt, went by the name Dr. V. She claimed to be an MIT-trained physicist who worked on the stealth bomber, the B-2. She claimed to be part of the Vanderbilt family, and she had demanded to the reporter on the piece, Caleb Hannan, that she'd cooperate only if he report on the science, not the scientist.
Well, it turned out Vanderbilt was hiding some things. There were no records at MIT or at Penn, where she said she had earned an MBA at Wharton, that she'd ever attended or completed programs there. Her professional life appeared to be based on fraud. And then Hannan discovered something else - that Essay Anne Vanderbilt was, in fact, born a man.
And she desperately lashed out at the reporter - at Caleb Hannan - for that and killed herself last fall before the publication of this piece.
SIEGEL: The story won wide acclaim online. Among those impressed with it was New York Times media columnist, David Carr. Why the critical reversal?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, Hannan - you know, if you think about Grantland, it's a site that has incredible long-spun narratives and criticism. And it's a different kind of journalism than you might typically think to find online from ESPN. Hannan told the story as kind of an odyssey. It was his quest to learn the truth. He called it, in talking about the piece, kind of odd and strange. And he talked about his process of reporting. He talked to one of Vanderbilt's investors and revealed to that man that Vanderbilt was, in fact, transsexual. Grantland, in Hannan's story, revealed that again in the story.
They seemed to think, as Hannan wrote the piece, that quote, "The biggest question remained unanswered: had Dr. V created a great golf club or merely a great story?" Well, starting around last Friday, critics said, wait a second. The piece has treated Vanderbilt's gender identity as those - yet another deception rather than a part of who she felt herself to be. You know, bloggers started to attack the piece and saying, look, Vanderbilt was treated merely as grist for a story, not really as a full human being and, certainly, not worthy of privacy.
SIEGEL: But isn't it at least arguable that her privacy would have remained intact had she not been party to a fraud, claiming to have an education and a professional background that she didn't have?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, like - look, there is the reporting, there is the writing and then there's the publishing process, right? So a good reporter does unmask the fraud. Vanderbilt had fraudulently represented herself as an MIT-trained physicist and talked about the physics being so important to the putter, rejecting all conventional wisdom on that. The question is, is her transsexuality relevant here? That is to say, is it really part of that pattern of deception? Is it merely intriguing to a reporter once he's on the hunt? And who gets to control that fact's disclosure? Is it the journalist or the subject, especially given, you know, the marginal acceptance that, you know, transgender people currently have in broader society.
SIEGEL: But the journalist wouldn't have been able to explain who she wasn't without explaining who she was, right?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, look, I spoke to Christina Kahrl. She's an editor on ESPN.com's baseball desk, who herself is an openly transgender. And she said, you know, there are ways to talk about the deceptions without going that far. And I had this give and take with her where I said, you know, could you have gone and say, look, this - you know, she was born with a different name in Pennsylvania. There's no proof she was a physicist, no proof she went on MIT, no proof she worked for the Pentagon and the B2. And she said, you know, anything that stops short of leading a trail of bread crumbs to the identity is OK.
I got to say, as journalists, you know, we bridle at rule saying that we can't determine for ourselves what we can or cannot publish. But, you know, we've had earlier arguments also over should rape victims be identified? Should people be outed for homosexuality or if they're lesbians? I think this is sort of a later wave of that kind of tension.
SIEGEL: A pretty long apology today from Grantland.
FOLKENFLIK: Yeah. I'd say long and heartfelt from Bill Simmons. He said that people should blame him and a team of senior editors all of whom vetted this. ESPN filed its own apology, saying they'd looked hard these issues and there seems to be a recognition here that the subject got beyond the grasp of its own reporters and editors.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's David Folkenflik and this is NPR News.
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A prominent team of war crimes prosecutors has released a harrowing report, saying it's reviewed what it calls clear evidence of systematic torture and killing by the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The report is based on tens of thousands of carefully catalogued government photographs that show the bodies of some 11,000 Syrian detainees.
And we should warn listeners that some of the descriptions that follow are graphic and may be distressing. Most of the victims are young men. The corpses show signs of starvation, brutal beatings, strangulation, some had no eyes.
David Crane is one of the report's authors. He's former founding chief prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone. And he joins me now. Professor Crane, welcome to the program.
DAVID CRANE: Thank you.
BLOCK: As you reviewed these photographs, tens of thousands of photographs, can you describe just a bit more of the injuries that you were seeing and your reaction?
CRANE: Well, as we reviewed the photographs, we saw clear evidence of pain and suffering almost beyond description. These 11,000 human beings were starved, beaten, tortured in ways that, frankly, are really not describable on this program. And then they were killed. And this was photograph after photograph after photograph, really indicating a systematic governmental approach to the destruction of all of these human beings in these three detention facilities that they came from.
BLOCK: And the starvation that you're describing, the images that I've seen - and there were just a few of them - the bodies were skeletal.
CRANE: Well, you know, if you look at them it's almost like you're looking at the scenes from the end of World War II in Auschwitz and Dachau and other of those concentration camps. And then throughout their starvation period, it appeared that they had been beaten and tortured in very, very sadistic ways before they were finally executed on orders of the authorities.
BLOCK: Let's talk about the source of many of these photographs. It's a confidential source who told you he was a military police photographer in Syria, working for the Assad regime - he said for 13 years before he defected. And these pictures were smuggled out of the country. What did he tell you about why he was photographing these bodies?
CRANE: Well, it was his job. He was doing that routinely. His job was to forensically take pictures of dead bodies. When the civil war began, that increased to almost 50 per day. He and his team continue to take photographs. But he also signaled he began to see the significance of this and in the way the bodies were coming in, far different than just deceased individuals. And he signaled to the resistance that I have a possibility of sending these photographs out.
They contacted him. He was assigned essentially a case officer. He was in some ways an asset. And he agreed to make duplicate copies through a memory stick all the photographs for a period of almost two years.
BLOCK: And why was the Syrian regime photographing these victims?
CRANE: Well, that's an excellent question. You know, you always scratch your head, you know, why did the Nazis record the deaths and names of all of the people that they did? Well, it's very bureaucratic. It's very industrialized. Not only were they marked forensically with a number but also the intelligence service had a number and there was also a processing number.
But they wanted to show death, certificates of death, and let the family know that their family member had been deceased. Usually the cause and manner of death was either a heart attack or a respiratory distress.
BLOCK: You had forensic scientists look at these images. And you had experts look to make sure that they weren't digitally altered. It was up to you to make sure that this source, this defector, was credible. Is there any question in your mind about what he was presenting to you?
CRANE: None whatsoever. You know, he was initially assessed and then we went through and then did the final assessment over a period of days. And he and his handler came across as extremely credible. You have to understand that the members of the team had decades of experience of international prosecution and the forensic team equally experienced.
BLOCK: As a former war crimes prosecutor, were you looking at these photographs as possible evidence that could be introduced at a war crimes trial, if there were to be one, for President Bashar al-Assad?
CRANE: Oh, absolutely. You know, it's a rare thing. It's been since Nuremberg that we've had this quantified, specific, systematic documentation of the deaths of human beings. This is incredible, important, specific evidence that I could get a conviction on beyond a reasonable doubt in a fair and open trial, this particular charge of starvation and torture of these detainees.
BLOCK: Professor Crane, the report that you did was commissioned, as I understand it, by a London firm acting for the government of Qatar. Qatar supports and arms the Syrian rebels, is trying to bring down the Assad regime. Is that problematic for the credibility of your findings?
CRANE: Well, it's a fair question and no, it's not. Because, at the end of the day, you have to look at the caliber of team, the questions that were asked. We had no association with the government. Our agreement was very, very specific as to the credibility of the source and the evidence that he brought up. We did that without any kind of agenda, without any kind of specific understated conclusion. In fact, we would not have stood for it. Our reputations are intact on this report and that we found - had no real association with the government of Qatar.
We handed our report into the London solicitors (unintelligible) and what they chose to do with it was their decision. But we are confident in the forensic science, as well as the legal conclusions that have been made related to this horror story.
BLOCK: David Crane, thank you for talking with us today.
CRANE: My pleasure.
BLOCK: Former war crimes prosecutor David Crane, part of the team that investigated photographs showing the deaths of thousands of detainees in Syria. Professor Crane teaches at the Syracuse University College of Law.
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Just 10 days after leaving office, former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell was indicted today by federal prosecutors for corruption. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, are charged with accepting gifts from a wealthy Virginia businessman.
NPR's Brian Naylor reports.
BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: The cloud of a possible indictment hung over McDonnell's final months in office, ever since it became clear that the U.S. Attorney in Richmond was investigating the McDonnells for taking gifts and loans from Richmond businessman Jonnie Williams. Williams was CEO of Star Scientific, which manufactures dietary supplements.
Today, it became clear just how dark that cloud was. The 14-count indictment outlines how both Maureen and Bob McDonnell approached Williams for money, to pay for everything from Oscar de la Renta gowns to credit card bills, to catering expenses for their daughter's wedding. Williams paid for a golf outing, and gave the governor a $50,000 loan to help pay the mortgage on some vacation property. And at Maureen's request, he bought a Rolex for the governor.
In return, Williams sought help in getting the state to pay for studies into the scientific properties of a supplement he was trying to market. The McDonnell's hosted a reception at the governor's mansion, aimed at impressing healthcare providers, and Maureen McDonnell spoke at a company gathering.
In a statement, McDonnell apologized for accepting what he said were legal gifts and loans. And for what he called his poor judgment. But he said he had done nothing illegal.
McDonnell was seen as a rising star in the Republican Party following his election in 2009. He gave the GOP response to the president's State of the Union Address four years ago and was thought to be a possible running mate for Mitt Romney in 2012.
But as word of the investigation leaked out, McDonnell's star fell to Earth and he was even thought to have hurt Republican Ken Cuccinelli's bid to succeed him. Cuccinelli lost to Democrat Terry McAuliffe.
Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.
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We have new revelations today detailing decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Chicago. Thousands of pages of documents, released by victims' attorneys, show how the church hierarchy mishandled accusations of abuse.
NPR's David Schaper reports.
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: The documents tell one heartbreaking story after another - 6,000 pages detailing not just how children and adult victims were abused by trusted priests, but also how church officials often bungled their responses, failing to turn sexual predators over to criminal authorities and often shuttling the offending priests from parish to parish, where they abused again.
JEFF ANDERSON: The documents tell a tale that has been long-standing.
SCHAPER: Jeff Anderson is an attorney for many of the victims of the 30 abusive priests who were included in the document released today.
ANDERSON: As we reviewed and summarized these, we continued to ask what a tangled web has been woven here because their first practice was to deceive.
SCHAPER: That deception, says Anderson, came from the cardinal on down. And he says not only were the victims and their families deceived, but so too were parishioners where offending priests were transferred, as well as the police and the public at large. In one case in 1979, a priest raped a 13-year old boy and later warned him at gunpoint not to tell anyone. The documents show the boy's parents were assured that the priest would get treatment and would be kept away from minors, but he wasn't. Within a year, that priest was returned to ministry in another parish where he abused again.
In another case, the late Cardinal John Cody tells a priest accused of sexually abusing a girl that the allegations, quote, "should just be forgotten," adding that no good can come of trying to prove or disprove it. That priest later abused again. Attorney Marc Pearlman.
MARC PEARLMAN: The documents will speak for themselves and those documents will show that leadership did engage in a systemic cover-up of these matters.
SCHAPER: Officials with the Chicago Archdiocese insist there was no intentional effort to cover-up allegations. They say standard psychiatric practices at the time many of these incidents, most of which occurred before 1988, called for offenders to receive counseling, treatment and rehabilitation. The archdiocese acknowledges that its leaders made mistakes. But officials insist they didn't know any better. But sexual abuse survivor Joe Iacono isn't buying that argument in his case.
JOE IACONO: There was a massive cover-up.
SCHAPER: Iacono fought back tears as he told reporters his story.
IACONO: The priest that abused me moved seven times and abused others.
SCHAPER: The documents released in Chicago today are similar to those released in other diocese, says Dennis Cody of the National Catholic Reporter. And he says they underscore how the highest levels of the church haven't been held responsible.
DENNIS CODY: You know, there hasn't been any real accounting at the level of the hierarchy - the archdiocese, the bishops and their staff. Nobody at that level has ever been reprimanded or brought to account in a court of law or even a church court of law.
SCHAPER: Abuse survivors say as painful as it is, they hope the disclosure of these documents, which they've been fighting eight years for, will help the push for accountability and lead to changes in the Catholic Church hierarchy. David Schaper, NPR News, Chicago.
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A fast-moving winter storm is barreling across the mid-Atlantic and up the East Coast today. Some places are expecting up to a foot of snow. The blizzard conditions from Virginia to Massachusetts will be followed by bitterly cold temperatures. NPR's Allison Keyes reports.
ALLISON KEYES, BYLINE: At a Giant store in northeast Washington, D.C., people were lining up to stock up as gobs of powdery snow fell in this notoriously precipitation-phobic city.
KEVIN RUSH: Trying to beat the last-minute rush.
KEYES: Kevin Rush is a District of Columbia native and he knows the drill. Worried people filled the aisles with baskets full of gallons of milk and toilet paper and scrambled over cans of soup and loaves of bread.
RUSH: People panicking right now, and I just wanted to get some things to hold me over.
DAVID PRESTWOOD: People still seem to stock up on groceries like it's the apocalypse.
KEYES: David Prestwood lives in D.C., but he's from Minneapolis and thinks the concern over snow in this area is overkill.
PRESTWOOD: We've had so many cancellations of school and closures of the government for slush days. I'm hoping that we have some real snow on the ground.
KEYES: The federal government is shut down in Washington today, as are many local governments and schools in the area. Schools in several states, including Connecticut and New Jersey, are sending students home early. Chris Vaccaro at the National Weather Service says this storm is affecting a densely populated area.
CHRIS VACCARO: We're looking at a swath of heavy snow from West Virginia and Virginia, basically from the Central Appalachians through the mid-Atlantic, and then up into southern New England.
KEYES: Vaccaro says the snowfall will continue to intensify as the evening wears on, with widespread snowfalls of at least six inches and much more in some areas. He says it's not going to be much better tomorrow, even though it's expected to stop snowing, thanks to high winds and low temperatures.
VACCARO: Very cold air is moving in its wake.
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO: This is going to be a particularly frigid night.
KEYES: In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio is asking people to take care of their neighbors and themselves by staying inside as much as possible.
BLASIO: Just be careful about any prolonged exposure in this kind of weather.
KEYES: Thousands of flights have been cancelled from the mid-Atlantic to New England. Power companies such as Atlantic City Electric are bracing for outages caused by heavy snow on trees, which may then knock down power lines. Officials from Delaware and Maryland to Virginia are urging people not to drive if possible. But people like Victor Acevedo have no choice.
VICTOR ACEVEDO: It's been kind of tough. Just got to be patient.
KEYES: Acevedo is a trucker who drove from Wisconsin to the Flying J Truck Stop, just east of Gary, Indiana. Traffic on westbound Interstate 80/94 into Illinois was stalled thanks to thick lake-effect snow falling. He says his route today could have been worse.
ACEVEDO: We drive all over, so you go into Michigan, the state of Michigan, it's always bad up there, you know?
KEYES: Back in Washington, D.C., Steven Nyman was shopping at Giant and taking advantage of being the boss of his small business, despite all the closures in the area.
STEVEN NYMAN: I'm the owner so I made everybody come into work.
KEYES: But he says he's planning to be part of a really good snowball fight a little later.
NYMAN: Down on H Street with my 2-year-old son and me.
KEYES: Isn't he a little young for a snow battle?
NYMAN: I think we'll just be tossing snow up in the air though.
KEYES: And look on the bright side, only two more months of winter. Allison Keyes, NPR News, Washington.
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Here in the U.S., nearly half of Latinos speak Spanish at home. But for Puerto Ricans living on the mainland, that number is only 20 percent. This, according to a new poll done by NPR, along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. NPR's Shereen Marisol Meraji looked into those numbers.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Foreign language spoken)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken)
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI, BYLINE: New York City is home to the largest Puerto Rican population in the U.S. So here we are at Sofritos, a Puerto Rican restaurant in Manhattan, about to dig into some fried green plantains and roast pork with Javier Fossas and kick off this conversation about Spanish in English.
JAVIER FOSSAS: Yes. I mean, I started learning English since I was like 3 or 4 years old. In preschool, we, you know, we were taught English. Also on my school, we had English as well. And in my house, like, we watch English television.
MERAJI: Fossas grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico. But now, he works in private equity in Manhattan. And like he said, English is everywhere back home. Both English and Spanish are the official languages in Puerto Rico because it's a U.S. territory. But Spanish still reigns supreme on the island and that's something Fossas is proud of.
FOSSAS: Spanish is a great language, a beautiful language and something that should be taught. Do you speak Spanish?
MERAJI: Ah, there it is, the dreaded question that so many Puerto Ricans raised on the mainland hate to answer - do you speak Spanish? I'll let Marissa Irizarry take that one.
MARISSA IRIZZARY: OK, so I don't speak Spanish, but I understand it fully.
MERAJI: I met Irizarry in a Puerto Rican music and folklore class at Brooklyn College, a long train ride away from that restaurant in Manhattan. She sat in the front row raising her hand often with the right answer to questions about Puerto Rican music and history. Irizarry grew up in Brooklyn.
IRIZZARY: I was raised in a home with a father who was back and forth between Puerto Rico and New York City. So he was able to find ways to hold on to the culture and I kind of did, too.
MERAJI: With one big exception, Spanish.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LA DESPEDIDA")
ANTONIO NADAL: (Singing in foreign language)
MERAJI: Marissa's professor, Antonio Nadal, serenades her class in Spanish with an old Puerto Rican bolero called "La Despedida."
NADAL: "La Despedida," translation?
MERAJI: The farewell. Puerto Ricans en masse said farewell to the island in the '50s, escaping poverty. Nadal, who teaches bilingual studies at Brooklyn College, says that's also why so many Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. speak English at home.
NADAL: We've been here a long time. The length of residence does count.
MERAJI: And he says the New York public schools were totally unprepared for the wave of Puerto Rican youth like him who came in the late '40s and '50s. Kids were just dumped in remedial classes.
NADAL: In the dingiest places of the building, right? And the kids picked up that they were inferior to the regular English-speaking kids.
MERAJI: And that feeling of inferiority was a slap in the face to Puerto Ricans, says Nadal, because Puerto Ricans are American.
NADAL: Wait a minute. We're citizens of the United States. But we're second-class citizens.
MERAJI: So to be treated like any other American, he theorizes, Puerto Ricans focused on English at the expense of Spanish. 27-year-old Gisely Colon Lopez is another one of Nadal's students. Her family came to the Bronx from Puerto Rico when she was around four, and that's when they stopped speaking Spanish at home.
GISELY COLON LOPEZ: Mainly because my mother was trying to learn English on her own, so I couldn't - I remember, you know, she just wanted to hear English. Just speak to me in English so I can learn it while you're learning it. The mentality is if you speak English, oh, you're, you know, better.
MERAJI: But times have changed. As the Latino population continues to grow here in the U.S., being bilingual is now seen as a career asset, almost a must. And Nuyoricans like Colon Lopez and Irizarry are struggling to catch up. Gisely Colon Lopez told her parents, that's it, my turn. Spanish only from now on.
LOPEZ: The other night, we were driving in the car with my dad. And I was asking them - talking to them in Spanish and let them know, you know, please correct me as often as possible. And it was like every other sentence they were correcting things for me.
IRIZZARY: I'm 20 years into it and I have a low self-esteem about it that I'm ever going to learn it.
MERAJI: Marissa Irizarry is disappointed her parents didn't enforce Spanish when she was young and could soak it up. She says her mom reminds her it's never too late to learn.
IRIZZARY: And then she'll joke and go, let's start now. I'm only going to talk to you in Spanish, and then start. And I'm like, too late.
(LAUGHTER)
MERAJI: It's probably not too late for Irizarry. And now, there's another record wave of Puerto Ricans coming to the U.S. looking for work. But this time, they're coming to a mainland more aware of the economic and political power of the growing Latino demographic. Hey, maybe their children will no longer dread answering that question: do you speak Spanish? Shereen Marisol Meraji, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
The Affordable Care Act was intended to provide healthcare coverage to the poorest and most vulnerable Americans. But in states that decided not to expand their Medicaid programs under the law, many are being left behind. The name of the game is the workaround - inventive ways that people can still qualify for a subsidy on the exchange, even if they think they earn too little. Jenny Gold sent this report.
JENNY GOLD, BYLINE: In the mountains of western North Carolina, navigator Julia Buckner spends hours driving on the winding roads of what she calls God's Country, reaching out to the rural residents of some of the poorest counties in the state.
JULIA BUCKNER: So, we're in far western North Carolina, the seven furthest counties. We are, as we like to say, about two hours from anywhere.
GOLD: Buckner grew up here then moved to Atlanta to study theology. She came back to Appalachia to try to help her community and landed a job signing people up for health insurance.
BUCKNER: It's helpful that I'm from here and I speak like I'm from here. I can, you know, talk with a mountain accent. And so folks sort of tend to trust that.
GOLD: But she says the hardest thing is that for about nine out of 10 people she talks with, there's nothing she can do for them. That's because North Carolina is not expanding Medicaid.
BUCKNER: I take someone who's working poor, I ask them to come see me, and then I find out not only are they poor, but they're too poor for me to help. It's almost as if I wished I hadn't have even seen them.
GOLD: But she keeps trying. Recently, she visited Carolina Kitchen, one of the three restaurants in Graham County, where she speaks with the hostess.
BUCKNER: Hey there. I'm Julia.
KITTY WILLIAMS: I'm Kitty Williams.
BUCKNER: Nice to meet you. So, I'm the health care navigator for Graham and Swain Counties, and these are some of my flyers. And I was just going to see if I could leave them here in case folks had questions when they come in to eat. And also I wanted to see if you had health insurance yourself.
WILLIAMS: No, I do not. I need it.
BUCKNER: You need it? So, you need to come talk to me.
WILLIAMS: OK.
GOLD: She asks Williams how much she expects to earn this year. If she makes more than $11,500, she might qualify for a tax subsidy to help her purchase private coverage on the exchange. If she earns less, she'll fall into what's called the coverage gap - people who don't earn enough to get a subsidy under the health law and can't get Medicaid in North Carolina.
BUCKNER: Do you think you would make around...
WILLIAMS: Yeah, probably. Probably around that. Maybe not quite that much.
GOLD: Buckner says that's a pretty common response. But she isn't one to give up easily. Instead, she's getting creative and looking for workarounds that may sound counterintuitive. But if Buckner can help Williams and others think of different ways to boost their income, they may be able to earn enough to get a subsidy.
BUCKNER: Folks are trying to use every source of income, whether it's selling tomatoes from their garden, or perhaps they've never actually sold the hay off of their field. They've just always let their nephew cut it for free.
GOLD: Or they might be able to get coverage under another part of the law. About 40 minutes away, Buckner has an office in Swain County - well, sort of. The local courthouse lets her set up shop in their small claims court when it's not in session. Wandering around town, she spots a young man with a thick red beard and a flannel shirt, playing banjo in front of the bank.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BUCKNER: Do you have health insurance?
JOHN MARTIN: I do not.
BUCKNER: All right. Who do you work for?
MARTIN: Right now - I used to work for the railroad. Currently, they laid me off for the down season.
BUCKNER: All right.
GOLD: Martin used to have coverage through his mom's plan, but he lost it when he turned 21. And like Kitty Williams, he earns less than the federal poverty level. But it turns out, he's only 24 - bingo. The law allows people under 26 to stay on their parent's plan.
BUCKNER: Your mom and you and the banjo should come in and see me.
GOLD: Martin was able to get coverage through his mom. And even for those a little older, there might still be an option.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELLS RINGING)
GOLD: At a church in nearby Franklin, Chuck Cantley stopped by a presentation about the health law.
CHUCK CANTLEY: Well, I got something from Blue Cross-Blue Shield saying that my new plan would cost $1,100 a month. That's a equivalent to my plan I pay $240 a month for now. Well, I can't do that. So, I've got to find another option. Either that or...
GOLD: Sixty-two-year-old Cantley is retired but was waiting to collect Social Security until he was 66, but he needs coverage now. So, he applied for Social Security early to help push him and his wife up to the poverty level. It worked - he qualified and signed up for coverage. Julia Buckner says using these sorts of strategies, she's been able to help nearly a hundred people get coverage. And that gives her hope.
BUCKNER: The folks that have been able to sign up, they are ecstatic. And as long as we keep hearing success stories, then that energy and excitement is just going to grow.
GOLD: For NPR News, I'm Jenny Gold.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Finally this hour, we'd like to introduce you to an artist whose enchanting voice and masterful cello playing have captured audiences well beyond her native Sweden.
LINNEA MATILDA OLSSON: My name is Linnea Matilda Olsson, and I'm born on the west coast of Sweden, in a small city called Halmstad.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
OLSSON: I had collected a lot of inspiration during, I don't know, maybe years. I just felt I had a lot of music inside me that I just had to get out of me. And so then I just - I sat down with a cello and I - a lot of songs are based on improvisation, at least the instrumental. I didn't struggle with writing these songs. They just already had written themselves inside of me.
But, yes, there is a bit of heartbreak in these songs and also a big amount of restlessness, I would say. I'm a restless person and I think that's also one reason why I actually wrote these songs.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AH")
OLSSON: The song "Ah" that we're hearing right now is - it starts off with this effect delay or echo. I just like the way that the delay just make everything sound bigger and fatter.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AH")
OLSSON: (Singing) The tears that I cry are for no reason. Empty hearts are so last season.
The tears I cry are for no reason. Empty hearts are so last season. It's just, stop feeling sorry for yourself. Go and take a dip and you will feel better.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AH")
OLSSON: (Singing) I want to dance. I want to twirl because I have been alone for so many days.
My parents are musicians and when I grew up, I had music all around all the time. For them, it's one of the purposes of life. And it just made me feel the same way.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIDDY UP!")
OLSSON: (Singing) Honeybee, what do you want to tell me? Whisper secret words in my ear. Do you, like me, wonder what the moon would say if it could talk to you, darling? (Unintelligible) Where will you take me?
This song, "Giddy Up!" it's - this is the most fairytale-like lyrics of the album. It's about me. I always saw myself doing all the things that I sing about in the song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIDDY UP!")
OLSSON: (Singing) Giddy up, giddy up over the fields. Giddy up, giddy up over the fields.
Yeah, I literally picture myself riding a horse across a big field.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIDDY UP!")
OLSSON: (Singing) Of love, of love, of love.
Field of love. I don't know what that looks like but that's what I'm doing.
(LAUGHTER)
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GIDDY UP!")
OLSSON: (Singing) Behind golden, a curtain of clouds, closed our lips with tears all over our cheeks. She hopes a hundred magic things.
For me, music is the absolute source of joy in my life and it's got to be something that I want to do for the rest of my life, as long as I can.
SIEGEL: Linnea Olsson's debut album, "Ah," is out this week. Her U.S. tour begins in February.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
It's not just our cars that are following us. Now, farm technology. And this year, Midwestern farmers can sign up to let big agricultural businesses look over their shoulder minute by minute as they plant and as they harvest their crops. In return, those companies promise to help farmers earn more money. But a leading farm organization says this can give too much power to big corporations, as NPR's Dan Charles reports.
DAN CHARLES, BYLINE: Looking out across a field of corn, it may all look the same. But usually, it's not. The soil varies. So does moisture. Some sections of a field often produce twice as much as others. Jonathan Quinn, a big grower of corn, soybeans, and wheat in northeast Maryland pulls out a big binder, opens it up on his kitchen table and shows me a map of one field. It's covered with multicolored curved shapes like a weather map showing areas of different temperatures.
JONATHAN QUINN: The dark green is a better yield, and this grey area, that's just zero yield.
CHARLES: And Quinn shows me the machine that collected the data for this map.
QUINN: This would, like, this one here is - this one is...
CHARLES: A super-accurate GPS receiver, a kind of oversized version of the kind you'd have in your car. At harvest time, it goes along in the combine, recording how much grain comes from every spot. Then at planting time it controls the planter, putting seeds closer together where the soil is more fertile, or switching from one seed variety to a different one to match the moisture conditions. Quinn calls it a prescription. It's all pre-programmed into that GPS device.
QUINN: It's all done on software. It's loaded onto a thumb drive. You stick the thumb drive into this. And when you drive across the field, it automatically knows where you're at because of GPS.
CHARLES: Until now, this data stayed right on Quinn's farm. But this year he's taking the next technological step. As part of a research project set up by the seed and chemical company Monsanto, it will go straight from his tractor or combine via wireless magic into what computer people call the cloud. It'll land on Monsanto's computer servers.
QUINN: They're going to be able to see everything this monitor does. So, they're going to be able to look at my field all the time. They're going to look at my information, and they're going to just watch that field.
CHARLES: Monsanto thinks it can help farmers come up with the perfect prescription, the perfect mix of seeds for their soil. It's betting that farmers will pay for this service because the company will have data than any one farmer, a more detailed soil map, information from other farmers dealing with similar soil conditions, eventually weather predictions from a high-tech venture called the Climate Corporation, which Monsanto bought last year for a billion dollars.
QUINN: You know, I've had people ask me why should Monsanto have all your information? My theory on it is if they have my information and they're out there working with me, I'm hoping they're going to bring me a better product. And them having my information doesn't bother me.
CHARLES: In the Midwest, Monsanto's been doing this already. It's launching a commercial version service this year across several states. John Deere, the big farm machinery company, is offering something similar in collaboration with other big seed companies. They're selling it as a better version of what farmers do already. But an association of farmers, the American Farm Bureau Federation, is telling its members be careful. Mary Kay Thatcher from the Farm Bureau says farmers should understand when data moves into the cloud, it can go anywhere. For instance: Your local seed salesman might get it; and maybe he's also a farmer, a competitor, bidding against you for land that you both want to rent.
MARY KAY THATCHER: He's all of a sudden got a whole lot of information about your capabilities.
CHARLES: Or consider this: up in that data cloud, you might be able to see how much grain farmers are harvesting minute by minute from tens of thousands of fields. That's valuable information.
THATCHER: They could actually manipulate the market with it. You know, they only have to know the information about what's actually happening with harvest minutes before somebody else knows it. Not saying they will. Just a concern.
CHARLES: Both Monsanto and John Deere say they'll share an individual farmer's data only with people whom that farmer wants to see it. Here's Chris Batdorf, a manager with John Deere's Intelligent Solutions Group.
CHRIS BATDORF: In our mind, that data is just as important as a person's banking information.
CHARLES: And he says his company will not use the big picture data, for instance, about the size of the harvest to play in commodity markets.
BATDORF: We don't want to do anything with markets or forecasting with this data.
CHARLES: A Monsanto spokesperson said the same. But many of the rules for who will get this data and how it can be used haven't been written yet. The data collection programs are just now getting off the ground, and they're still evolving. Dan Charles, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Bacardi, Jack Daniels, and Johnnie Walker have some new competition. The number of craft distilleries has surged in the U.S. over the past few years. Mom-and-pop entrepreneurs are making liquor in small batches for local customers. And as NPR's Chris Arnold reports, they are thriving, despite tax breaks that favor some of their larger rivals.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Wherever you live, you're probably not too far from a local microbrewery making beer. Well, the latest trend is the spread of what you might call micro-boozeries. Craft liquor distilleries are now springing up around the country like little well-heads spouting gin, whisky and rum.
At the Turkey Shore Distilleries in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Evan Parker is opening the round, brass door on the top of a 400-gallon copper kettle. Parker boils molasses in this giant kettle to distill what he calls Old Ipswich Rum. So, you're opening up kind of this porthole kind of...
EVAN PARKER: Yup, the manway.
ARNOLD: It's called the manway because in between batches Parker has to climb down through this little hole and into the kettle and clean it.
PARKER: I actually had to measure my hips to make sure they'd fit through there. I'm a 36 waist so...
ARNOLD: You might have to lose a few pounds there. Parker's here with his business partner and friend Mat Perry. The two grew up going to school and playing hockey together. A few years ago, after a clam farm venture that Parker was launching didn't work out so well, his friend called him up and said that he had another business idea.
MAT PERRY: I was a high school history teacher, teaching locally here. And I knew this history of rum in this area and became, sort of, enamored with that story.
ARNOLD: Perry says in the 18th century there were more than a hundred rum distilleries all along the coast of New England, making rum with molasses that was shipped up from the Caribbean. Perry saw the local food movement all around him and he thought why not start a local distillery to make rum? So he called up Evan and they met at a local pub.
PERRY: The theme in our lives tends to be after about two beers we make wonderful decisions and after four they really start to go downhill. So, we only have about a two-beer...
PARKER: Forty-five minutes of power thinking.
(LAUGHTER)
ARNOLD: But the two friends did research. They managed to raise about $300,000 from local investors and friends and family. And they quit their jobs and started the distillery. Around the country, there's a lot of other people making local rum or whiskey or gin. Federal permit data shows that just between 2008 and 2012 the number of craft distilleries more than doubled to 471 of these little micro-boozeries.
KELLY RAILEAN: Well, micro-distillery. I like micro-boozery though. I like that a lot too. I might have to use that. Thanks.
ARNOLD: Kelly Railean is the founder and president of the American Rum Association, which is for small craft distillers.
RAILEAN: We have 14 members.
ARNOLD: Railean also runs her own distillery in San Leon, Texas. And she's got bus tours of people coming by all the time. She's meeting with more and more restaurants and bars who want to sell her rum.
RAILEAN: I think a lot of it is people looking for something different, you know. When they find these smaller and being local and being able to actually come here and meet the owners, all that kind of stuff. And it's something, a lot of times these are higher quality products.
ARNOLD: Still, Railean says when your small it's hard to get distribution into bars and liquor stores. Then, with rum in particular, it turns out that there's a 100-year-old tax break that favors rums from the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Those would be rums like Bacardi and Captain Morgan. Railean says that makes it much cheaper for those companies to produce rum. And she says most of her customers don't, of course, know about that.
RAILEAN: They just think Puerto Rican rum is great and, hey, it's cheaper than everybody else. And a lot of that is because of that subsidy that they get.
ARNOLD: But, despite the challenges, craft distillers are still popping up all over.
PERRY: Well, actually, let's start with the white because that's always a good idea. So, as a rule...
ARNOLD: Back up on the Massachusetts coast in Ipswich, Mat Perry and Evan Parker have lined up a few bottles of their different styles of rum: a basic white rum, a tavern-style and a special reserve that's been aged in an oak barrel for a couple of years.
PARKER: Got some darker tones to it. Pulled a little more out of that barrel. It's almost more Bourbon-like I would say.
PERRY: Yeah.
ARNOLD: And it's actually just the thing to have around when a snowstorm and the polar vortex descends on New England. Chris Arnold, NPR News, Boston.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block. It's one thing to discover the government is collecting data on us, but now our cars may be keeping track of our every move. Many vehicles can record where we go, how fast we drive, even whether we're buckled up. As NPR's Brian Naylor reports, some senators and at least one automaker say it's time for rules to protect driver privacy.
BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: At the Detroit Auto Show right now, carmakers are happy to demonstrate the technology in their vehicles. A spokeswoman for Buick pointed out some of the safety features in the new Regal.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Automatic crash preparation. This is now - we're actually able to help stop the vehicle in the event of sensing a potential crash or at least reduce the speed.
NAYLOR: And many new Chevys have a dashboard app that some of us in public radio are kind of fond of.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: And you can actually run any NPR station in the nation thru this app. So, we're running Detroit because that's where we are. If you log in Detroit...
NAYLOR: But as technology goes this is just the beginning. Google has deals with several automakers to include its Android operating system in their cars by the end of the year. It will offer drivers apps and open the possibility that Google may be able to target ads to drivers, or alert them to nearby shops and restaurants. It also means Google will be able to track drivers. But that's already happening with anyone who has an onboard navigation system such as GM's OnStar or Ford's Sync. Our cars already leave quite a data trail, says John Nielsen, an engineer with AAA.
JOHN NIELSEN: When you think of the services we get like mapping and routing around traffic jams or notification that we're going too fast, you start to think about our car can tell where we are, when we're there, if we're exceeding the speed limit. Boy, cars just have a lot of data. They really look at everything you're doing.
NAYLOR: A recent report by the Government Accountability Office found that many companies collect the data and provide it to third parties for traffic instructions or research. But the GAO report also found the companies' privacy practices were unclear, making it difficult for consumers to understand privacy risks. Nielsen says most drivers have no idea what information they're giving out about their driving habits.
NIELSEN: Right now, there's not a lot of transparency around what data is being collected and stored. I think that's the first thing we need to look at is a benchmark - what's being done, what's being captured.
NAYLOR: He says consumers should also be given a choice in what happens to their data. Newer cars also have onboard data recorders, like the so-called black boxes on airplanes. Our speed, direction, whether we're wearing a seat belt, all of that is fed into the recorder and continuously updated. It's useful information to have in case of an accident, but it's not clear who can access that data or what they might do with it, says Republican Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota.
SENATOR JOHN HOEVEN: Right now, the event data recorder records the information on a continuous loop and drops it on a regular basis but retains it in the event of an accident. And there's no restriction in terms of what it can record or how long or who has access to that data.
NAYLOR: Fourteen states have passed laws giving drivers ownership of this kind of auto info. Hoeven, along with Democrat Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, has introduced legislation to give drivers in every state the same protection.
HOEVEN: What our legislation does is it provides that that is your information as the owner of the vehicle and it cannot be released without your consent other than under very limited conditions.
NAYLOR: Other legislation has been proposed to protect the privacy of a driver's location. And at least one automaker thinks that this is a good idea. Ford chairman Alan Mulally told auto writers at the Detroit show he supports government efforts to set privacy rules, saying automakers need to know where the boundaries are and have guidelines within which to operate. Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
The Syrian peace conference got off to a bitter start today with sharply opposing visions over a future role for Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad. More than 40 countries sent delegations, and many of their speeches struck similar themes decrying the vast human suffering in Syria and calling for a political solution to the crisis.
But as the conference opened, combative remarks by Syria's foreign minister, Walid al-Muallem, threatened to dash hopes for the negotiations. NPR's Deborah Amos joins us now from the Swiss city of Montreux. And Deb, this was a long-awaited conference. As we say, it got off to a dramatic start. Tell us about these remarks from Syria's foreign minister.
DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE: Well, let me begin with saying that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry kicked off the conference. He was demanding the removal of Assad from power. So when Syria's foreign minister had his turn, he lashed out. It was a scorching speech full of accusations against the U.S., against Turkey, Saudi Arabia.
He accused these countries of funding and arming terrorists inside Syria. It's a line that I've heard since June of 2011. In the opening statements here, it just shows how high the hurdles are. Muallem's speech was supposed to be 10 minutes. As he got to the 20-minute mark, Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. chief, a consummate diplomat, tried to get him to wrap it up. They ended up sparring, and here's the exchange.
WALID AL-MUALLEM: I have the right to give the Syrian version here, in this forum.
SECRETARY BAN KI-MOON: Yes, of course. You know, I cannot object to that.
AL-MUALLEM: After three years of suffering, this my right.
KI-MOON: This, you know, we have to have some constructive and harmonious dialogue.
AL-MUALLEM: I have con - you've spoken 25 minutes...
KI-MOON: Please refrain from any inflammatory remarks ...
AL-MUALLEM: ...at least I need to speak 30 minutes...
KI-MOON: ...and accusing some member states participating here so - which will not be constructive, at this time.
AL-MUALLEM: It is constructive.
AMOS: That is not how the U.N. chief saw it. But foreign minister Muallem went on for another 20 minutes. And his bottom line? President Bashar al-Assad's departure is not negotiable.
BLOCK: Well, let's talk about that because this whole conference was based on the idea of negotiating a transitional government by mutual consent. Judging by the Syrian foreign minister's remarks, that's not their idea of what they're doing there at all. So does this mean the Syrian government has rejected the entire purpose of these talks?
AMOS: It's the most important question of the day. Now, what the opposition says is, why are we going to sit down? What are we going to talk about? They are demanding an explicit acceptance and a six-month timetable, and they say they will walk if they don't get it. Now, by the end of the day, foreign minister Muallem said some more conciliatory remarks. He said this meeting chartered the first steps to dialogue. So in fact, there may be these meetings on Friday.
BLOCK: Overall, Deb, how would you describe the mood, or the tone, of this conference after the first day?
AMOS: What was striking to me - for the first time, you had opposing media here; Syrian state media, and reporters for the opposition. They went to the same press conferences. They were in the media center at the same time. This is completely unprecedented for Syrians. Their behavior also shows how hard this is all going to be.
Here's one example. Ahmad Fakhouri - he was superstar in Syria. He was an anchorman, but he defected. He now works for an opposition TV station. He saw his old colleagues here and he said, those were painful meetings. Here's what he said.
AHMAD FAKHOURI: I was surprised. I tried to connect them because we are Syrian. I see them, that they are kidnapped. I could escape. They couldn't say hi to me because they are afraid from each other.
BLOCK: Hmm.
AMOS: That's Ahmad Fakhouri, a defected TV news anchor. And it's a sign of how large the hole is in Syria's social fabric. Syrians are the most gracious people in the Middle East, but the war has changed them.
BLOCK: That's NPR's Deborah Amos, covering the Syrian peace talks in the Swiss city of Montreux. Deb, thanks so much.
AMOS: Thank you.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
For some people, the juxtaposition of a sectarian civil war unimpeded by intense diplomatic effort has a familiar ring and that ring recalls the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s. Yugoslavia had come undone. The patchwork of Serb, Croat and Muslim populations descended into a bloodletting.
Lord David Owen, the former British foreign secretary, was the European Union's negotiator for the Balkans and he joins us now from London. Welcome to the program once again.
LORD DAVID OWEN: Nice to be here.
SIEGEL: And when you've written recently about Syria, you've invoked the experience of Bosnia Herzegovina. Do you feel a resonance of Bosnia in the current diplomacy over Syria?
OWEN: Yeah, I think it's very like it was in September/October 1992, a complete mess. And it doesn't surprise me these negotiations have been very difficult to establish and will take time.
SIEGEL: In those days, some faulted you for advancing a peace plan which accepted the facts on the ground and it was said, by doing so, rewarded Serb aggression. How did diplomats solve this problem? How do you reconcile the desire to, say, keep the Syrian regime at the table, even though it's a regime that, we heard yesterday, tortured and murdered detainees by the thousands?
OWEN: It is very difficult. I mean, if you stay in judgment with them, if you start taking sides, of course, you'll be no use at all. So the main thing is to be extremely polite. But, I mean, we had to, as you say, withstand a great deal of criticisms from people who seemed to believe that you could a perfect solution from an wholly imperfect solution.
There will not be a resolution in Syria without some very messy compromises. Keeping the country together will, itself, be a triumph.
SIEGEL: Back in the early 1990s, you faulted Washington for encouraging the Bosnian Muslims with false hopes that lead them to fight on. You said they were dreaming. Are the Saudis, the Turks, the Qataris, are they now falsely encouraging Syrian rebels to fight beyond a point that makes any sense?
OWEN: I don't think you can pack up fighting unfortunately at this stage. You have to stand your ground. What I think you should try to do is get local cease fires and if you like, some form of humanitarian relief coming through. All this time, you're trying to form structures which can give people a measure of security and, to some extent, decentralized power. And then on top of it, you're trying to construct an overarching organization for the whole country.
SIEGEL: In 1994 and 1995, NATO used air power against the Bosnian Serbs and by the end of '95, the Dayton Accords ended the Bosnian war. One reading of that is that all of the steps achieved by incremental diplomacy that you've described really didn't end the fighting. What ended it was a concerted use of force that told the Bosnian Serbs their days were numbered.
Do you accept, ultimately, that in the case of Bosnia, what ended the war was the use of military force from outside?
OWEN: Oh, absolutely. I argued for force. I wanted to enforce the Vance-Owen Peace Plan, as it was called in May 1993. And had we done so, we'd have brought the war to an end two years earlier with far less ethnic cleansing and incidentally with more territory given to the Muslims than eventually came to them through Dayton.
SIEGEL: I want you to score what happened today as - in Montreux, as you experience it. On the one hand, a conference has lead to an agreement by the Syrian regime and at least the Syrian rebels' political leadership to engage in talks for several days. On the other hand, each side has made demands of the other that are absolute nonstarters. Is that a great success to get them in the room or do we simply now institutionalize the war and give legitimacy to each side?
OWEN: I don't think it's a great success, but I think it's a success. And I think it's a sign that when Russia and America start to work together, then there starts to be a possibility of progress in Syria. The problem we had is for nearly three years, the Security Council failed to work. There was no dialogue at all. And China and Russia felt, with some justice, that we had stolen the march on them over Libya. They acquiesced by abstaining on the Libyan resolution. And then they felt that we used the no-fly zone for regime change. I don't think that the Americans, French and British handled this badly. I do think they handled the aftermath of not trying to have a dialogue with Russia about their concerns and, to some extent, China.
SIEGEL: David Owen, Lord Owen, thank you very much for talking with us today.
OWEN: Thank you.
SIEGEL: David Lord Owen was the European Union's negotiator for Bosnia back in the 1990s. Before that, he was British foreign secretary.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
At the Supreme Court today, the justices weighed how to compensate victims of child pornography and who should be liable when thousands of people may have possessed the images. NPR's Carrie Johnson reports.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: The case revolves around a woman named Amy. She was raped by her uncle when she was eight years old. Images and videos from that abuse have turned up more than 3,000 times since the late '90s, sending her into therapy and making it hard for her to work. Amy's uncle was sentenced to prison and ordered to turn over about $6,000 in restitution. The question for the court today is how much money other child porn defendants should be forced to pay. In other words, is possessing a few pictures enough to put someone on the hook for millions?
The defendant here, Doyle Randall Paroline, pleaded guilty to downloading hundreds of images, including two photos of Amy. Overall, Amy estimates she's owed more than $3 million. But Justice Antonin Scalia said to sock Paroline for all those costs just because he downloaded two pictures of Amy didn't sound right. The justices struggled with how to assign a dollar figure to the harm, especially when thousands of people might download child porn but only two or three might be caught and prosecuted. The lawyer for Doyle Paroline says prosecutors need to prove a link between Amy's losses and his conduct.
The Justice Department argued for a middle ground - that Amy deserves some money from Paroline, but not $3 million. Where to draw that line is something the justices must decide before the end of the term this June. Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.
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One in five women: that's the number of women who have been sexually assaulted in college, according to a new White House report. As NPR's Tamara Keith tells us, today, President Obama formally set up a task force that's charged with protecting students.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: President Obama made it clear that preventing sexual assault is personal for him.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This is a priority for me not only as president and commander in chief but as a husband and a father of two extraordinary girls.
KEITH: This is far from the first time this administration has tried to address the problem, from pushing for the renewal of the Violence against Women Act to calling on military leaders to address the issue in the Armed Forces. This time, the focus is on high school and college campuses, and the report highlights not just the individual anguish but also the negative economic and health effects an assault can have over the long term.
OBAMA: It tears apart the fabric of our communities. And that's why we're here today, because we have the power to do something about it.
KEITH: Valerie Jarret is one of the president's closest advisors and the head of the White House Council on Women and Girls.
VALERIE JARRET: What we want to do is to lift up the best practices to show what is working. And we also want to put pressure on those who haven't stepped up to do so. I think young people, as they're applying for college, they should know, well, am I going to be safe on campus? And if not, well then maybe that's not the place I want to go.
KEITH: The president has asked the task force to report back in 90 days. Tamara Keith, NPR News, the White House.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
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And I'm Melissa Block. Political pressure is mounting against Pebble Mine. That's a big gold and copper mine proposed for an unspoiled part of southwest Alaska. Developers haven't yet applied for a permit. And NPR's Martin Kaste reports one prominent politician from the state has just come out against the mine.
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: This mining plan has been in the works for about a decade now, and a partnership of international mining companies has spent about $600 million researching the Pebble site, and fending off criticism from environmental groups. Now, it seems the developers may also have to fend off the EPA.
MIKE HEATWOLE: We have a biased political report that's intended to harm our project, and that's unfortunate.
KASTE: That's Mike Heatwole. He's the mine developers' spokesman. He's talking about a scientific study that the EPA released last week. Three years in the making, the study has been eagerly awaited as a signal of whether the federal government might try to stop the mine. Now the study is out and it says mining poses a significant risk to the unspoiled salmon fisheries of Bristol Bay. The developers call the study rushed and flawed. While the study is not a policy decision, it has spurred Alaska Senator Mark Begich to announce that he is now against the mine.
SENATOR MARK BEGICH: Swapping off a non-renewable resource for a renewable resource, which is our fisheries, I think is not the right kind of swap.
KASTE: Begich is a Democrat in a Republican state, and he's facing a tough election this year. The mine is so controversial nationally, he was likely to face constant questions about it, especially from political donors in the Lower 48. Now that he's picked sides, he risks being painted as anti-development back home. But Begich says the voters likely agree with him.
BEGICH: Well, I can tell you that it's 10 to one coming into my office against the mine, there's no question about that. I mean, Alaskans, at least the people who contacted me, they're not excited about the mine, that's for sure.
KASTE: But polling is notoriously tricky in Alaska, and public opinion on the mine is hard to nail down. The Republican senator and Republican governor are reserving judgment until the developers submit formal permit applications. And they say the state should make the call, not the feds. The project's spokesman, meanwhile, talks up the economic potential.
HEATWOLE: In the ground is a tremendous copper, gold and molybdenum resource. It's the largest undeveloped copper discovery in North America, and clearly could support decades of economic activity and jobs.
KASTE: It's a powerful argument in Alaska, where people worry about declining income from oil. But at the moment, the environmental concerns seem to be winning the day. Last fall, one of the companies in the Pebble Partnership backed out. Some of the people doing prep work have been laid off, and there's still no sign of a formal application to start digging. Martin Kaste, NPR News.
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In Mexico, thousands of federal troops remain in dozens of towns in the western state of Michoacan. That's where civilian vigilante groups have emerged in recent months to fight off the Knights Templar cartel. Authorities say they've arrested 38 cartel members, but won't move to disarm the so-called self-defense groups. Heroes to some, gang members to others, these vigilantes are now on the offensive, even taking to social media to spread their message. NPR's Carrie Kahn has the story.
CARRIE KAHN, BYLINE: At an impromptu checkpoint at the entrance to Nueve Italia, about two dozen men stand behind piles of sandbags. They stop cars and check IDs of all coming in and out of their small town in this western edge of Michoacan state. This week, they stand guard without their weapons.
JOEL GUTIERREZ: (Speaking foreign language)
KAHN: Nineteen-year-old Joel Gutierrez(ph) says he and the others in their so-called self defense group took of their masks and stored their arms out of respect for the thousands of federal troops now patrolling the region. The vigilantes may have laid down their arms, but they've been anything but silent. They're all over Mexico's social networks.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Speaking foreign language)
KAHN: On the group's Facebook page and Twitter account, this video starts off with the message to Mexico and the world. The brave people of Michoacan have awoken and are taking back their land and dignity from ruthless drug traffickers and inept governments. The grainy video appears in response to growing criticism that the self defense groups are not authentic, but financed by rival cartels.
To deflect the accusations, the group is also posting images of the Knights Templar and their extravagant lifestyles, including dozens of pictures of the inside of homes abandoned by alleged cartel members who fled as federal troops moved in. The photos show elaborate houses with closets full of Chanel and Christian Dior clothes and racks of Louis Vuitton and Gucci shoes.
And they've exposed the long suspected link between two Mexican (foreign language spoken) singers and one of the Knights Templar leaders, Enrique Plancarte Solis, also known as el-Kikin.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KAHN: The singers are Melissa and Kiki, reportedly the cartel leaders' two adult children. This music video making the social network rounds features Melissa, a bleach-blonde in short shorts and tight bustiers posing in several scenes shot in the abandoned luxury homes.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MELISSA: (Singing in foreign language)
KAHN: Despite being surrounded by extravagant trappings, Melissa sings about disavowing the material lifestyle. Today, she responded to the rising criticism of her alleged narco-links by posting on her Instagram account a popular song with a crude message loosely translated: I could care less. For their part, federal authorities are staying out of the social media wars.
In his first interview with international journalists, the newly appointed federal commissioner for Michoacan, Alfredo Castillo Cervantes, says the government's priority is neither to disarm the self defense groups, nor arrest top leaders of the Knights Templar, but, he says, to restore order in Michoacan.
ALFREDO CASTILLO CERVANTES: (Speaking foreign language)
KAHN: We are talking about neutralizing the Knights Templar, says Castillo. Dismantling their financial networks and removing their corrupt political and police accomplices. Castillo insists this is the most efficient and least violent way to take down the drug cartel. He admits that approach will take a long time and says federal forces will stay in the region as long as necessary.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Speaking foreign language)
KAHN: And according to the self defense group's propaganda postings, they aren't leaving any time soon either. Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Mexico City.
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From NPR News, it's ALL THING CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
And I'm Robert Siegel. What would you pay a pitcher who went 24 and 0 last year? Well, Masahiro Tanaka was undefeated last season pitching in the Japan Pacific League and when the 25-year-old right-hander decided he wanted to pitch in the U.S., he sparked a bidding war among Major League Baseball's richest teams and the New York Yankees have won that war with a seven-year $155 million contract.
Why pay that much to a man who's never pitched in the big leagues and what does that mean to the Yankees and the rest of the league? Well, for answers to those questions, we turn to Jonah Keri of Grantland.com. Welcome back to the program.
JONAH KERI: Thanks for having me.
SIEGEL: And first, is Masahiro Tanaka worth the money?
KERI: It's a good question. You can never predict with any certainty, obviously. Certainly pitchers are unpredictable. This guy does have a good track record, though. He's pitched very well in Japan. That bodes well. And the big thing here is that compared to other free agents who usually come out in their 30s, this guy's 25 years old. So it does tend to bode well for some potential longevity. That, combined with his talent, at least makes you somewhat optimistic.
SIEGEL: Now, the Yankees have signed a lot of big name, high priced free agents over the years. How important is this one to the team?
KERI: It's quite important because they've got some tough competition in the American League East if you look at the Boston Red Sox, they obviously just won the World Series and they're going to be good again this year. And the Tampa Bay Rays, who get by with the equivalent of dryer lint compared to the Yankees payroll and revenue stream, are good every year. And, in fact, they might even be the best team in the division this season. So that's a lot of competition.
The Yankees lost Robinson Cano earlier in the off season and they had to make some moves. They signed some other players earlier and I think the Tanaka move should help them as well.
SIEGEL: Now, we have to acknowledge the conspiracy theory that's at work here that some people see in the signing of Tanaka. They link it to the suspension of Alex Rodriguez and perhaps the Yankees', they would say, enthusiasm to see Rodriguez suspended, the money he would otherwise make freed up to sign Tanaka. What do you make of that?
KERI: Well, whether or not the Yankees were enthusiastic did not influence the decision of the arbitrator. I think that's the bottom line. Certainly, they were optimistic. I mean, Alex Rodriguez, even if he was healthy and even if he wasn't accused of PEDs and ultimately suspended, you know, he's almost 40 years old. He's not going to be that effective a player at this stage of his career. And so, of course, you know, they overpaid the guy. To get out of that contract is great even if he was as clean as the driven snow. But the bottom line here is the decision was made independently and, yes, it happened to work out very well for the Yankees.
SIEGEL: I want you to talk about the record of Japanese pitchers in the major leagues and what one can infer from a brilliant season over there in Japan. Yu Darvish was fantastic last year. He's a Japanese pitcher now with the Texas Rangers. But there are lots of pitchers who haven't been so great when they've been signed in the U.S.
KERI: No doubt. And, you know, I would start first by saying that as somebody who's statistically inclined that, you know, there's something called small sample size at work here. There just aren't that many Japanese pitchers that came over. What we can infer from the ones who did is that, of course, it's a mixed bag. Going back, we've got Hideo Nomo who was phenomenal when he came into the big leagues. I mean, he was a sensation in his rookie year with the Dodgers and pitched very well, eventually did peter out.
Then you had Daisuke Matsuzaka a little bit later, not so good. The Red Sox paid him a lot of money. Ultimately, he got hurt and he became ineffective and that didn't work out so well. Darvish has been fantastic and the Rangers did have to pay a high posting fee. They had to pay the Japanese team to get him. But in the end, he's going to be very overpaid. He's making $56 million over six years, about one-third of what Tanaka's getting overall and Darvish is a phenomenal pitcher.
I would say the one warning sign to watch for is that a lot of pitchers who come over from Japan have been worked very hard, sometimes from a very young age, even high school, putting up a lot of pitch counts, a lot of innings so there is a little bit of a concern there. If I was looking at Tanaka and I had to say what is the downside, it's that maybe that workload would start to catch up to him.
SIEGEL: Jonah Keri of Grantland.com, thanks for talking with us.
KERI: Thank you, sir.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And now, a musical antidote to the winter blahs, a cabin fever playlist preview.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
That's right. It's time for everyone to get dancin' and singin' and movin' to the groovin'...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "PLAY THAT FUNKY MUSIC")
WILD CHERRY: (Singing) And just when it hit me, somebody turned around and shouted, play that funky music, white boy. Play that funky music right.
BLOCK: Last week we asked you to tell us about the songs that get your blood pumping and body moving despite the cold weather. We wanted these songs for the ALL THINGS CONSIDERED Cabin Fever playlist and we've collected more than 600 suggestions.
SIEGEL: We are now tallying the results and whittling down our playlist to a more manageable number, but we realize since the east is digging out of a big snow...
BLOCK: With the Plain states laughing at us...
SIEGEL: We should share some of the cabin fever songs that were mentioned the most. They'll help with the shoveling.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "LET'S GROOVE")
EARTH, WIND AND FIRE: (Singing) Let's groove tonight. Share the spice of life. Baby slice it right.
BLOCK: Michelle Turtle(ph) was one of the many listeners suggesting anything by Earth, Wind and Fire. She writes, I live in Pennsylvania and was in a convenience store during the polar vortex when the temperature reached a high of minus 25 degrees. "Let's Groove" came on over the speakers of the store. I watched as one by one, everyone waiting around started to dance, all unconsciously at first. People looked around and realized what was happening, sort of like a spontaneous flash mob. It was awesome.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "LET'S GROOVE")
FIRE: (Singing) All right.
SIEGEL: Deanna Noise(ph) writes this: I live in Vermont. We know all about cabin fever. Her suggestion for the playlist is this hit by Talking Heads.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE")
TALKING HEADS: (Singing) Hold tight, we're in for nasty weather. There has got to be a way. Burning down the house.
BLOCK: And speaking of heat...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "HEATWAVE")
MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS: (Singing) ...got a hold on me, I said this ain't the way love's supposed to be. It's like a heatwave burning in my heart. I can't keep from crying. Tearing me apart.
BLOCK: Robert, of course, that's "Heatwave" by Martha and the Vandellas, another favorite for out ATC Cabin Fever playlist.
SIEGEL: Now, pants optional, but shirts, socks and hardwood floor required for this next one.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "OLD TIME ROCK AND ROLL")
BOB SEGER: (Singing) Just take those old records off the shelf. I sit and listen to them by myself. Today's music ain't got the same soul. I like that old time rock and roll.
BLOCK: Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll." We can all channel our inner Tom Cruise.
SIEGEL: Or your inner Pharrell Williams.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "BECAUSE I'M HAPPY")
PHARRELL WILLIAMS: (Singing) Because I'm happy. Come along if you feel like a home without a roof. Because I'm happy. Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth. Because I'm happy. Clap along if you know what happiness is to you. Because I'm happy.
BLOCK: But this next song, we were told over and over and over, is essential to any winter survival kit.
SIEGEL: "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "WALKING ON SUNSHINE")
KATRINA AND THE WAVES: (Singing) I used to think maybe you loved me, now baby I'm sure.
SIEGEL: Pure happiness in a single song, says Dawn Boon(ph) of Riverview, Florida.
BLOCK: And Julie Gritten(ph) of Orem, Utah, says makes me believe that maybe the sun will come back one day.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "WALKING ON SUNSHINE")
WAVES: (Singing) I feel the love, I feel the love, I feel the love that's really real. I feel alive, I feel the love, I feel the love that's really real. Come on, sunshine, baby...
SIEGEL: That's a roundup of a few of the hundreds of songs suggested for our ATC Cabin Fever playlist.
BLOCK: It's a playlist that is now under construction. And look, there's more of it throughout the rest of the winter.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block.
The White House is debating, again, troop levels for Afghanistan. This time around, the question is, what happens after this year when the combat mission ends? The Pentagon wants to keep 10,000 troops there. That number would be enough to train Afghan forces and conduct counterterrorism raids, the Pentagon says. Whether the Pentagon gets what it wants is far from certain.
NPR's Tom Bowman has been reporting on this and he joins us now. And, Tom, for context, there are about 37,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan now. The Pentagon has come up with this number of 10,000. Why that number, a dozen years after the war started?
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Well, because, Melissa, there are two missions here. The main one is training Afghan forces at everything from how to fly helicopters, how to support themselves in the field, planning an operation. And then the other mission involves having U.S. special operations forces teaming up with Afghan forces to go after Taliban leadership and remnants of al-Qaida. There are hidden numbers here because all the soldiers needed to make that work, the support troops, will be at multiple bases around the country.
So you're looking at security at the bases, intelligence analysts, medevac, helicopter pilots. The numbers start to add up. Now, both the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that 10,000 figure. We've confirmed it. And it's roughly the same number we've been hearing now for months.
BLOCK: But there are also reports, Tom, that the Pentagon has framed this as an all-or-nothing option, right, either 10,000 troops in Afghanistan or no troops. Is that right?
BOWMAN: Right. We've not confirmed that. And the - what they're saying is the idea of anything less than 10,000 just isn't sustainable. You can't do those two missions with less than 10,000. And what I have been hearing in my reporting, both in Afghanistan and Washington, is the military is basically saying to the White House and the Congress, listen, if you want us to do these two missions, we need that number of soldiers.
And people have told me that, listen, if you come up with several thousand U.S. troops in Afghanistan, they're really not going to be able to get out and do their job, do any mission. They'll be holed up in their bases just trying to be safe. But the White House says, listen, it's all being discussed. The president hasn't reached any decision yet.
BLOCK: And assuming U.S. troops do remain in Afghanistan, how long would the longer term mission last?
BOWMAN: Well, there have been some reports it would be a couple of years. By the end of President Obama's second term, all troops would be out. But the security agreement signed between - well, agreed between Afghanistan...
BLOCK: Not signed is the problem, right?
BOWMAN: ...and the U.S. - and not signed yet by President Hamid Karzai says the timeline is 2024. Nobody thinks that U.S. troops will be on the ground in Afghanistan that long. But that's what we're talking about here. And again, it's still being debated here. And also, this sounds a lot like the debate now, what Robert Gates, the former defense secretary, talked about in his book. On the one hand, you have the Pentagon saying we need X number of troops, and then you have people in the White House, particularly Vice President Biden saying, that's too many. Let's negotiate. And I think that's what's going on now.
BLOCK: Tom, we talked about a training mission and, of course, the U.S. has been training Afghan forces for years. The question over many years now has been why aren't the Afghan forces ready to handle their own country's security?
BOWMAN: Well, they are taking the brunt of the fight. Their casualty rates are vey high at a time when the U.S. casualty rates have dropped dramatically. And they haven't lost much ground to the Taliban. But they still need training and assistance. That could take some time, U.S. officials are saying. But, you know, political people in Washington are saying, listen, President Hamid Karzai is not a good partner. There's still rampant corruption. Nothing's really changed, so why have that many troops there in the end?
BLOCK: One last thing to bring up here, Tom. There are some members of Congress, notably Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who are pointing to Iraq and the resurgent to Iraq and the resurgence of al-Qaida there and saying, look, this is what happens when U.S. troops withdraw. Are they making that same case about Afghanistan?
BOWMAN: Well, in both countries, the U.S. has spent years and billions of dollars in building up local forces. But in Iraq, it's a different problem. It's largely a political problem that the Iraqi government hasn't dealt with. That spurred the fighting there. In Afghanistan, it's different. You don't have troops that are as well-trained as they were in Iraq. You have safe havens in Pakistan. So the sense is if you don't have troops, that place could fall much faster than we're seeing in Iraq.
BLOCK: OK. NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Tom, thanks so much.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
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Over the next 17 months, Turkey will see three elections: local and presidential elections this year, followed by parliamentary voting next year. With Turkey's political landscape unsettled by scandals and growing voter discontent, even the local elections are drawing intense interest and that is especially true in Istanbul. As NPR's Peter Kenyon reports, the secular opposition sees the mayor's race there as its best chance in a decade of scoring a win over the dominant ruling party.
PETER KENYON, BYLINE: The Istanbul mayor's job is considered a path to higher office. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan used to be mayor here. Some say he still is in all but name. Certainly, the current mayor, Kadir Topbas, gets only modest attention. Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials AKP, is the first party with roots in political Islam to truly control the levers of power in Turkey, from the national to the local level.
But after a corruption scandal erupted in December, forcing cabinet ministers to resign and prompting a purge of police and prosecutors by an embattled government, Turkey's long dormant secular opposition thinks it may be time for a comeback.
The CHP, or Republican People's Party, is as old as Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's modern Turkish Republic. But seniority not being a big selling point in political campaigns these days, the CHP is focusing less on its 65-year-old leader and more on the somewhat younger and more charismatic candidate for mayor of Istanbul, Mustafa Sarigul. Sarigul thrilled a sports arena full of supporters recently with the only message they want to hear. This time, they have a real shot at winning.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
MUSTAFA SARIGUL: (Through Translator) Don't worry, my friends. Stay calm. They are the setting sun and we are the rising sun.
KENYON: At a nearby coffee stand, 18-year-old Burcu Atakan(ph) says Sarigul won over voters off all stripes in his current job - running the city's bustling Sisli district - and his popularity combined with dismay over the city's harsh crackdown on protesters this summer in Gezi Park will help the opposition break through at last.
BURCU ATAKAN: (Through Translator) After the Gezi protests, everyone realized that the AKP stands for a polarized society. And more people have joined the opposition, so there's real excitement about the chances of winning.
SIEGEL: But the fundamentals of Turkish politics still favor the ruling party. Political scientist Ersin Kalaycioglu at Sabanci University says there's been a consistent rightward shift in Turkey's electorate ever since the end of the Cold War. He recalls a 2011 survey asking voters to place themselves on the political spectrum.
ERSIN KALAYCIOGLU: Approximately 35 percent of the people place themselves almost right where AKP happen to be, whereas about 8 percent of the people place themselves where CHP are. So CHP has a very shallow support.
KENYON: On the other hand, last summer's Gezi Park protests have some analysts speaking about a new political group: a minority but a vocal one, focusing on free speech, civil liberties and the environment. That movement, coupled with welling resentment at the government's increasingly autocratic style, might shift enough votes to make the Istanbul mayor's race very tight.
One wild card is the feud within the religious community, between Erdogan's supporters and the followers of moderate imam Fethullah Gulen. Mustafa Yesil, head of the Gulen-linked Journalist and Writers Foundation, says Gulen never tells his followers how to vote. He adds, however, that their recent disappointment with the ruling party might show up in the voting booth.
MUSTAFA YESIL: (Through Translator) If AKP does not restore back to democratic settings, they might lose more votes.
KENYON: That's why these local elections on March 30th will give Turks an important update on the political health of the AKP after more than a decade in power. Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Istanbul.
PEYTON MANNING: Omaha. Omaha. Omaha. Omaha.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
We have no idea why Denver Broncos' quarterback Peyton Manning has chosen the word Omaha dozens of times to signal plays at the line of scrimmage in the run-up to the Super Bowl, and he's not giving it away.
MANNING: It's a run play, but it could be a pass play...
(LAUGHTER)
MANNING: ...or a play-action pass, depending on a couple of things: the wind, which way we're going, the quarter and the jerseys that we're wearing. So...
BLOCK: We do know that Omaha is thrilled. City businesses have agreed to donate $800 to Peyton Manning's charity every time the word passes his lips. That's added up to about $25,000 so far. And the city's Chamber of Commerce has folded Manning's calls into the soundtrack of a promotional video.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROMOTIONAL VIDEO)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: We know Omaha works for Peyton.
MANNING: Omaha. Omaha.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: It works for us, too.
MANNING: Omaha.
BLOCK: And the president of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, David Brown, joins me now. Mr. Brown, welcome to the program.
DAVID BROWN: Hi. It's nice to be with you. Thanks for having me.
BLOCK: And safe to say, you were counting the Omahas in the championship game?
BROWN: It's safe to say, there were hundreds of people counting the Omahas in the championship game this past weekend. Absolutely.
BLOCK: Well, whatever he means by it, I guess Peyton Manning's choice of your city has been pretty good for business. You figure any publicity, especially in a big game like that, got to be good for Omaha, right?
BROWN: You know, it really has been. We're always trying to promote the fact that we're a great city with great quality of life and cost of living and great jobs and those kind of good things. So when an opportunity like this presents itself, it just adds to our ability to kind of build our brand out there for people and companies that might be looking for a place that they could invest or have a career.
BLOCK: Do you think there's any way you can measure the effect? You know, can you point to any way that you'll say, you know, Omaha is really benefiting from Peyton Manning's choice of Omaha?
BROWN: We've done some measurement of the media impact, of course. (unintelligible).
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: Like this interview, for example.
BROWN: Yeah, absolutely. We know how many times we've been interviewed. We know how many times there have been articles written. But, you know, what I've been able to see so far from people I haven't talked to in 20 years making contact and colleagues that I haven't worked with in a long time, (unintelligible), I mean, this has been highly pervasive across the country and probably in ways that no matter how much we want to spend on a marketing budget, we probably couldn't have reached people in this particular way.
BLOCK: Well, here's another little bit of fun that I guess Omaha is having with this, is this true, the Omaha zoo has named a penguin chick Peyton?
BROWN: Yeah, we had, I think, five chicks born last weekend, and they named one of them Peyton, which is kind of fun. You know, there have been breweries that have named their beers Omaha beers this past weekend. There have been cupcake companies that have made special Go Broncos cupcakes here in town. I mean, it has just really kind of captured the imagination of all those really, really creative people out there that are trying to make their businesses successful.
BLOCK: You know, it seems to me, Mr. Brown, that time is really of the essence here, right? You got to milk this now because who knows in the Super Bowl, he might have moved on from Omaha. It could be Natchitoches. It could be Pascagoula. You don't know what's going to come out of his mouth.
BROWN: I would be very surprised, to tell you the truth. I think he'll just continue on doing what he's doing, not for any other reason than that. It's comfortable for him. It's a habit for him. And being an old athlete, you don't change those things that you've been using because it might just change your luck. So we're hoping that he believes in that, too.
BLOCK: Well, Mr. Brown, it's good to talk to you. Thanks for telling us about this.
BROWN: Thanks for having me. It'll be interesting, so keep your eyes peeled to see what we do next. But go Broncos and go Omaha.
BLOCK: David Brown is president of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce. And as for this Peyton Manning call...
MANNING: Bags Montana fat man.
BLOCK: ...bags Montana fat man, we say, Montana, take it away.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing) Montana, Montana...
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Just six months to go until Brazil hosts soccer's biggest tournament, the World Cup, and for Brazil, it is crunch time. Just yesterday, soccer's governing body, FIFA, issued a stark warning. One of the host cities is now in jeopardy of being dropped because its stadium is hugely delayed. NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reports from Sao Paulo on Brazil's mad scramble to get everything done on time.
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, BYLINE: There's a joke going around here. Two men sit at a bar discussing the World Cup. One asks the other, who do you think Brazil's biggest enemy will be during the tournament? The other replies, you mean the stadiums or the airports? But it's no laughing matter. FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke said after visiting the stadium in Curitiba yesterday, we cannot organize a match without a stadium. This has reached a critical point.
The city has missed every deadline FIFA has set so far. Six out of the 12 stadiums are delayed in total, and this after Brazil has spent billion of dollars in public money on the venues. But as the joke implies, it's not only the stadiums that are in disarray. Ahead of the World Cup, Brazil promised a massive and badly needed infrastructure upgrade. Roads, transportation and airports were all set to have work done on them. But everything started too late and/or has gone too slow. At least five of the host cities have said they won't have finished work on new transportation lines.
This month, the head of World Cup projects for Mato Grosso state acknowledged a light railway system in the city of Cuiaba won't be functional by June 12th when the World Cup starts. Fifty percent of airports haven't even finished half of the capacity upgrades needed to handle all the increased traffic. It was announced this week that World Cup visitors to the city of Fortaleza may be greeted by a makeshift passenger terminal housed in a tent because only a quarter of airport improvements there are done.
Brazil has notoriously uneven infrastructure. The roads here are few and badly maintained, meaning air travel is the way most people will get around during the World Cup. Many city bus lines are already over-stretched and overcrowded, so it's not clear how they will tackle the influx of tourists.
Talita Gonsales works as a researcher for the Popular Committee of the World Cup, a watchdog group monitoring public spending.
TALITA GONSALES: (Foreign language spoken)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is one of the greatest problems in Brazil, she says, the lack of planning, and the bad habit the Brazilian government has of announcing a project just so they can present it to the public but later they are unable to execute it. She says many of the World Cup infrastructure projects are incomplete or never even started. And she predicts that when the bill comes in after the games, there will be a lot of anger about where the money went and what Brazilians got for it. Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR News, Sao Paulo.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. Remember the scenes of those endless voting lines in the 2012 presidential election? Some voters waited for six hours or more to cast their ballots. Well, now a presidential commission has come up with some ways to fix the problem. The panel, appointed by President Obama himself, suggests that more early voting and better voting technology would help. But, as NPR's Pam Fessler reports, they're just recommendations.
PAM FESSLER, BYLINE: Perhaps the most memorable symbol of the long lines of 2012 was Desiline Victor, a 102-year-old woman who waited for more than three hours to vote in North Miami, Florida. President Obama invited her to his State of the Union Address last year, when he said he would appoint a bipartisan commission to make sure it didn't happen again.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We can fix this and we will. The American people demand it and so does our democracy.
FESSLER: Today, the president met with that ten-member commission at the White House and said its recommendations were, for the most part, common sense.
OBAMA: With an important goal, which is that no American should have to wait more than half an hour to vote.
FESSLER: To do that, the panel suggested several things. It said state and local officials can reduce long lines by allowing more early voting and voting by mail. It also recommended online voter registration and it encouraged states to compare voter lists to eliminate duplicate registrations. David Becker, director of election initiatives for the Pew Charitable Trusts, says errors on voter lists can cause many Election Day problems.
DAVID BECKER: It can lead to lead to long lines at the polls. It can lead to casting provisional ballots. It can lead to voters not receiving information on the election at all and going to the wrong polling place.
FESSLER: Becker applauded the recommendations, but also noted that implementing them won't be free.
BECKER: I think the single biggest challenge is going to be money.
FESSLER: And there's nothing in the report that tells cash-strapped states how to get it. The commission admits this could be a big problem in the not-too-distant future. Local officials told the panel repeatedly that they're worried that much of the voting equipment they now own is on its last legs. Still, the panel, which included election officials and business representatives, suggested some cheaper ways to control lines, like they do in the private sector. Things such as handing out numbers so people don't have to stand for hours or using line walkers, like they do at airports, to address potential problems before people get up front.
RICK HASEN: There are really so many great, commonsense solutions in this report. It's really very heartening.
FESSLER: Rick Hasen is an election expert at the University of California Irvine.
HASEN: The problem is that the commission has no power to do any of it, it's just the power of persuasion.
FESSLER: He notes that the bipartisan commission did not deal with any of the more controversial election issues, like voter ID requirements. Still, he says, the fact that the panel was co-chaired by two top election lawyers - Democrat Bob Bauer and Republican Ben Ginsberg - gives the recommendations a lot of weight in the often deeply divided world of voting. One of those frequently caught in those partisan fights over how elections are run is Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted.
JON HUSTED: I think the report's main recommendations are very solid and constructive.
FESSLER: Husted says Ohio's already done a lot to reduce lines, like allowing no-fault absentee voting. And he hopes the report gives his plan to allow Ohio voters to register online, a boost in the state legislature.
HUSTED: States who have problems with lines have a responsibility to enact any of the variety of options that are in this report to minimize that problem.
FESSLER: As for Desiline Victor, the elderly voter? A spokesman says she celebrated her 103rd birthday last month at the North Miami Public Library, where there's now a Desiline Victor Voting Wing. Pam Fessler, NPR News, Washington.
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Actors, directors, studio executives and autograph hounds have converged this past week on Park City, Utah, which means just one thing: the Sundance Film Festival is underway. Dozens of independent movies and documentaries are being showcased over the 10-day event. Steven Zeitchik of the Los Angeles Times is there and he's been binge watching films. He's taken a brief intermission to tell us about some of his picks. And, Steven, welcome back. How are you holding up?
STEVEN ZEITCHIK: Holding up all right. You know, the combination of late nights and early mornings take their toll but someone's got to do it.
BLOCK: Yeah. It sounds pretty fun. And I want to start by talking about one of the standout movies for you. It's the film titled "Boyhood" from director Richard Linklater. And it sounds like a fascinating idea, if it works. He filmed characters a little bit over the course of 12 years.
ZEITCHIK: That's exactly right. You know, most times when you see a Hollywood movie with, you know, someone playing a young personality and an older one, there's makeup used or there's different actors swapped in and out.
BLOCK: Yeah.
ZEITCHIK: This, he went for a totally natural feel and he basically has a young - he follows this 7-year-old boy over the course of 12 years, as well as other actors. And so the result is you're actually seeing someone age in real time, and the results are really quite spectacular. This has been one of the breakout films of the festival - gotten great reviews, I think, in part because it feels so natural and so unlike anything we've seen before.
BLOCK: Steven, other highlights of the festival so far? Movies you've seen that you think are really great?
ZEITCHIK: Well, one movie that's really stood out to me is "Wish I Was Here." This is Zach Braff's film that he raised money for on Kickstarter, causing a bit of a backlash last year when he did so because he is, of course, a well-known Hollywood personality. Braff's came back with his first film since "Garden State" 10 years ago. Very divisive film, very sentimental, very affecting. I was at a screening where people were crying all around me, they were laughing, total crowd pleaser. Critics really didn't like it, I think, in part, because Braff can be a sentimental director, but also because he raised money on Kickstarter and some people question that. So I think it's a good film, I think it's going to get a big release, but certainly one that was divisive.
BLOCK: OK. So crowds liked it, critics did not.
ZEITCHIK: Exactly.
BLOCK: Steven, I gather you've been seeing some themes and trends jumping out at you from the crop at this year's movies at Sundance. What are they?
ZEITCHIK: Well, one thing that's really been interesting to me is how many kind of genre films you have or genre influences that you've not had before. And I think that's somewhat directly the result of things like "Twilight" and "Harry Potter" and some of these, you know, "The Hunger Games," some of these big hits we've had. And it's starting to seep in in some ways into the indie world, which has usually been more dramatic.
There's a movie from the "Flight of the Conchords" guys that's actually a midnight vampire film you would never have expected. Another movie called "Life After Beth," which is kind of a zombie tale that is playing in competition, which is usually more dramatic. So some of these genre influences are now kind of making their way into what's typically a kind of more Sundancey/prestigey(ph) kind of air.
BLOCK: OK. So that's the feature film side. What about documentaries? What are you seeing?
ZEITCHIK: Well, you know, Sundance is always known for its documentaries. This year, there have been a couple of really good ones focused on personalities and on sort of environments that these personalities live in. And the one that really jumps out to me is a movie called "Happy Valley," about Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno and the whole Penn State controversy of the last few years.
This is the guy who made the Tillman story, another very charged, kind of football-tinged story, and it's really a look at how this town is very much affected by and has a kind of very complicated reaction to everything that happened in the wake of that scandal. And not so much what happened with the controversy itself, but the fall out from it. And I think it's one of the standouts.
BLOCK: Steven Zeitchik covers the film industry for the Los Angeles Times. He joined us from the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Steven, thanks.
ZEITCHIK: Thank you for having me.
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Now, a story about protecting the brains of premature babies. These days, even infants weighing two pounds or less usually survive. But many of these preemies suffer brain damage that leads to disabilities later in life. NPR's Jon Hamilton reports on research that suggests it may be possible to repair that damage.
JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: Joseph Scafidi is a neurologist who knows a lot about what premature birth can do to the brain.
DR. JOSEPH SCAFIDI: Many of the children that I have in my clinic have either cerebral palsy or they have issues with motor skills.
HAMILTON: Or learning disabilities. Scafidi, who works at Children's National Medical System in Washington, D.C., says these problems can be severe or quite subtle.
SCAFIDI: Just watching the way they hold a pen or the way they reach for something or transfer from one hand to another is slightly delayed or different than a child that would have been born full-term.
HAMILTON: Scafidi says these delays and differences are often the result of brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen in the days and weeks after birth. He says this is most common in babies born at least eight weeks early.
SCAFIDI: Children that are born very premature have immature lungs, as well as fetal hemoglobin, which basically affects the way the oxygen is taken in and delivered to the rest of the body, specifically the brain.
HAMILTON: So Scafidi and a team of researchers have been studying how this lack of oxygen harms a developing brain. Vittorio Gallo, another member of the team, says they noticed damage in the brain's so-called white matter, in particular, the death of cells called oligodendrocytes.
DR. VITTORIO GALLO: These cells are fundamentally important because they form myelin. Myelin is the insulation that is wrapped around nerve fibers that allows proper propagation of nerve impulses. Without myelin, nerve cells do not communicate properly.
HAMILTON: Gallo says experiments in mice showed that a damaged newborn brain actually tries to replace the cells that make myelin.
GALLO: The problem is that this happens too late. It happens during development at a time where there is some recovery that is possible, but recovery is not completely normal.
HAMILTON: So the team began looking for a way to start the cell recovery sooner. They thought it might be possible using a substance the body already makes called epidermal growth factor or EGF. Gallo says they gave EGF to baby mice with brain injuries like those seen in very premature infants.
GALLO: It was really amazing to see how these mice not only looked identical to the mice that were not exposed to the injury, but also functional recovery was complete.
HAMILTON: Gallo says the treatment worked in mice only if it was given soon after the injury occurred. So he says premature human infants would probably have to be treated within a few weeks of birth. The EGF was given through the nose, which means it would be easy to administer to an infant. But Gallo says use in babies is probably still a long way off.
In the meantime, scientists are considering a similar treatment for adults with multiple sclerosis. Regina Armstrong at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda says that's not surprising because both preemies and people with MS have brains without enough myelin insulation around nerve cells.
REGINA ARMSTRONG: What's very similar is that when the cells that normally make the myelin are damaged, you need to effect repair. And to do that, you try to increase the cells that are available for the repair.
HAMILTON: Armstrong says it's possible that scientists will find a growth factor that can repair myelin damage in both people with MS and very premature infants. But there could be a downside to the approach. Armstrong says growth factors able to produce new brain cells also may cause tumors. A report on the research on EGF appears in the journal Nature. Jon Hamilton, NPR News.
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Some writers start their books with a plan. They outline their stories or they begin already knowing the last scene. We're going to hear about a book that evolved from a very different approach. Novelist Jenny Offill told Publishers Weekly that she wrote pieces of her latest book on index cards, then she shuffled them until they were in an order that she liked. The result was Offill's first novel since 1999. Author Meg Wolitzer has been reading it and she brings us this review.
MEG WOLITZER, BYLINE: Jenny Offill's novel "Dept. of Speculation" weighs in at 192 pages soaking wet and has a fair amount of white space, too. That's about as short as it gets without being a pamphlet. But we've come to expect certain things from a novel. Like, you probably wouldn't take this one on an airplane because you know it wouldn't last. So you need to feel that even though you're not going to be in the world of this book for very long, it's worth it to be in it at all.
It's an unusual book in terms of form. It's written as a collection of vignettes, oddities, and quirky details. The young couple in the story are only referred to as the husband and the wife. There are no names. But if all of that stuff sounds scary, be brave. It's an absorbing and highly readable book. It's also beautifully written, sly, and often profound. Still, you have to have the patience for the piecemeal rollout of the story.
We follow this couple as they navigate the world and their own little terrain, including the most painful moments. At one point the wife tells us, when we signed the lease, we were happy about the jungle gym because I'd just learned that I was pregnant. But by the time we moved in, the baby's heart had stopped, and now it just made us sad to look out the window at it.
It's kind of amazing that a nameless narrator could evoke this kind of sorrowful feeling. Maybe our minds just crave stories so badly that we'll fill in the details out of whatever raw material is put in front of us. Of course, the danger of writing a book like this is that all the little sections will inevitably be competing with one another other, and some do work better than others. A questionnaire about sparrows just after the wife loses her baby had me thinking, give me back my couple.
But there were other times that I was more willing to be taken far afield, like a story about the scientist Carl Sagan's infidelity because, in fact, infidelity does come into play here. The husband strays and the ensuing drama has a held-breath suspense to it.
And the novel is often really funny. Offill refers to the Internet meme of the cat saying, I can has cheezburger? And the payoff comes later, after men are flirting with the wife, who muses to herself, I can has boyfriend? Offill seems to have set up a challenge for herself - write only what needs to be written, and nothing more. No excess, no flab. And through these often disparate and disconnected means, tell the story of the fragile nature of anyone's domestic life.
SIEGEL: The book is "Dept. of Speculation" by Jenny Offill. It was reviewed by Meg Wolitzer.
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This week, we're bringing you a series of stories about Latinos in America. Our reporting is inspired by a poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. One of the findings that stood out was a striking difference in openness about sexual orientation. The poll indicates that Latinos born in the U.S. approach the issue quite differently than immigrants do.
NPR's Jasmine Garsd explores how some Latin American immigrant parents have responded to their gay children.
JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: Oscar Martinez was nine when his family immigrated to the U.S., but he still remembers life in Honduras.
OSCAR MARTINEZ: When I was growing up in the '90s in Honduras, LGBT people were invisible. They would only come out at night and they were sort of like urban myths. (Foreign language spoken) Willie Colon, no?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EL GRAN VARÓN")
GARSD: Martinez is referring to "El Gran Varon," a famous salsa song about a young man, Simon, who emigrated to the U.S. to become trans, only to die of AIDS at age 30. Oscar says he used to hear his family talk about the song and he felt sad. Oscar was angry as a teenager. He thinks it was because he didn't understand that he was gay up until college. One night, while visiting on vacation, he came out to his father. He was in college when he told his parents he was gay. Even though they are now completely accepting, his father told him he was giving up the chance of having children. And his mother was scared
MARTINEZ: What I said was, you know, Dad, you know I'm never going to marry a woman. He was really quiet and sort of pale...
(LAUGHTER)
MARTINEZ: ...even though my father is very dark skinned.
GARSD: Even though they're now completely accepting, his father told him he was giving up the chance of having children. His mother was scared.
MARTINEZ: She starts crying and then she told me: You know, we love you no matter what, and we'll be as supportive as possible. But do you realize that you're already a Latino, brown man? How are you going to handle another label?
GARSD: The Martinez family is emblematic of a finding in our survey: 15 percent of the immigrants we surveyed declined to reveal their sexual orientation - gay or straight - while nearly all Latinos born in the U.S. were much more open, 99 percent gave us that information.
Life for people in the LGBT communities of Latin America can be rough - very rough. And those memories can be hard to forget.
CAMILA FIERRO: My mom is from Talca. Dad is from Santiago.
GARSD: Camila Fierro was born to Chilean immigrants who fleeing the brutal Pinochet dictatorship. She came out to her parents in college.
FIERRO: Life would be harder, she just said that. She says it's so much harder. It's already so hard as a woman and it's already so hard as a Latina woman. And my point was, like, I am already brown. I am already a woman, like, why not.
GARSD: She says her mother still struggles with the memory of life in Chile.
FIERRO: It was so closed and shuttered and people where ostracized, and terrible things did happen that they think it's still the same way.
GARSD: Their fears are not unfounded. Days before I meet Fierro for the first time, four Chilean youths are handed life sentences for torturing and killing a gay man. In the days around the sentencing, another gay man was beaten into a coma.
Professor Lourdes Torres teaches Latin American and Latino Studies at DePaul University. She points out that in the last decade, gay marriage has been legalized in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and parts of Mexico.
LOURDES TORRES: There's this idea that while white middle-class are progressing, everybody else is still stuck in this static, old-fashioned, kind of primitive ideology.
GARSD: A recent survey conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, points out that a majority of Latinos favor same-sex marriage, a major shift in a short amount of time.
Gladys Rodriguez, a nanny from Peru living in Chicago, remembers when her son told her he's gay.
GLADYS RODRIQUEZ: (Foreign language spoken)
GARSD: She says she was afraid that his schoolmates would bully or reject him. And some parents did forbid their children to hang out with him. But many others came forward to support him.
RODRIQUEZ: (Foreign language spoken)
GARSD: Parents, she says, also have to come out of the closet and be openly supportive of their gay children.
Jasmine Garsd, NPR News.
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Today's Found Recipe is perfect for a cold winter day. It's spicy. It's meaty. It's a real belly warmer. But we start with a scene from a real heart warmer, the romantic comedy "When Harry Met Sally.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "WHEN HARRY MET SALLY")
SIEGEL: No, not that scene. No.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "WHEN HARRY MET SALLY")
MERELYN CHALMERS: A paprikash is essentially a casserole, a Hungarian casserole.
SIEGEL: That's Merelyn Chalmers. There's never too much pepper in her paprikash - only about a fourth a teaspoon, in fact. Chalmers is one of the women behind Australia's Monday Morning Cooking Club, a group dedicated to collecting recipes from the best home cooks in Sydney's Jewish community. Their cookbook includes a recipe for Mum's Rice Paprikash. Mum being Merelyn Chalmer's late mother, a woman who survived Auschwitz.
CHALMERS: My mum was Hungarian and we ate paprikash probably five nights a week. This was something that she just threw together when I wasn't feeling well or my brother. And I moved to Sydney many years later thinking that this was a nothing dish that my mother threw together in a pressure cooker. And I realized that there were all these daughters of Hungarian women in Sydney. We have quite a large Hungarian-Jewish population, and they had all grown up on the same dish.
I make it a couple of times a winter. You can do it with veal or beef or chicken. You fry off onions till they're very, very dark golden brown. You sear the meat till it's a very dark golden. Then you add in a little bit of fresh capsicum, as we call it in Australia - that's pepper, red pepper in America. And then you put in some beautiful, good quality Hungarian paprika spice.
My mother would then put in a touch of garlic and a little bit of carrot to get some extra sweetness, only a little bit. You cook it slowly like a casserole.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CHALMERS: For me personally, it's like mother's milk. It is tenderness emotionally, as well as tenderness in the bite of the meat. And it really minds me of my mum.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIEGEL: That's Merelyn Chalmers of the Monday Morning Cooking Club. And you can get the recipe for Mum's Rice Paprikash on our Found Recipes page at NPR.org.
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When a retailer's computers are hacked and consumer information is stolen, how fast should a company let its customers know? Well, hacking at Target and Neiman Marcus has thrown a spotlight on that question. Millions of credit card numbers were stolen from both companies. In the case of Neiman Marcus, the breach went back as far as July. The company says it didn't detect any trouble until mid-December, and it didn't tell customers until January 10th.
NPR's Laura Sydell reports that the law on this is murky.
LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: You'd think that if your credit card info and all that other information you shared with a retailer got stolen, the business would let you know ASAP.
PETER GUFFIN: This is much more complex than what you might think.
SYDELL: Peter Guffin, an attorney who specializes in privacy and data security, says there's a patchwork quilt of laws.
GUFFIN: You've got 46 states - I believe, at last count - who actually have their own notions of data breach notification.
SYDELL: Guffin says the states vary about how much the retailer has to let you know about the breach, exactly when they have to tell you. Some states say companies don't have to alert consumers unless there is a real risk of harm. Guffin says the only place they tend to agree.
GUFFIN: Most states want you to be notifying affected individuals as expeditiously as reasonably possible.
SYDELL: But - and there is a but - consumer advocates point to a big exception to this rule that gives companies a lot of room. Jamie Court is with the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog.
JAMIE COURT: If there's a law enforcement investigation going on or if a disclosure about a data breach could impede a law enforcement investigation, then companies don't have to inform consumers of the breach immediately.
SYDELL: Court says companies can use an ongoing investigation as a reason to delay when they fear it will have a negative impact on their bottom-line. He's been suspicious that Target and Neiman Marcus may have delayed notifying customers about recent security breaches.
COURT: It happened during the Christmas buying season. And we just can't be sure until law enforcement tells us when the companies knew about the breach and whether they delayed the information getting to the American people.
SYDELL: In emails, spokespeople for Neiman Marcus and Target say they are confident that they are meeting all legal notification requirements.
Privacy and data security attorney Guffin says there are some good reasons companies don't send out notifications the minute they see signs of a security breach.
GUFFIN: You might discover today a so-called breach. But it's going to usually take a fair amount of time to do a proper investigation to figure out what happened.
SYDELL: However, Guffin admits there are powerful economic incentives to keep the breach quiet for as long as possible. A report by the Ponemon Institute, which does research on security issues, looked at the cost to companies that alerted customers quickly and those that didn't.
GUFFIN: Quick responders paid significantly more than companies that moved a little bit more deliberatively, in terms of their responding.
SYDELL: Guffin says factors like sending out more notifications than necessary, false alarms and harm to reputation raised the cost. Consumer advocates, like Jamie Court, are aiming to make the price of withholding information higher. He thinks it's too hard for consumers to sue companies for damages.
COURT: Your privacy doesn't have a monetary value and under almost every law that I know of there's no way to sue to make the company pay a price for not being forthcoming enough in a timely way.
SYDELL: Both Court and Guffin think the federal government should make one law governing notification to consumers of security breaches. Court and Guffin say the current patchwork just raises the cost and the aggravation for everyone.
Laura Sydell, NPR News.
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2014 marks the first time Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, has had to run for office since the emergence of the Tea Party. Graham faces a primary with four Republican challengers, who all say he's just not conservative enough.
NPR's Ailsa Chang traveled to South Carolina to check in on what many voters consider a fight for the heart and soul of the state's Republican Party.
AILSA CHANG, BYLINE: Lindsey Graham will point out there's a lot about him that's cookie-cutter South Carolina. He's pro-life, pro-military and pro-guns. He's the proud owner of an AR-15, and says he's been hunting since he was 9 years old.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: OK. Now, I'm going to shoot five, and you shoot four. OK?
CHANG: This morning, Graham's treating an audience to a display of his marksmanship. We're at an event in Columbia, S.C., promoting safety locks on guns. Graham has an AR-15 and a handgun. He aims and...
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNFIRE)
CHANG: ...and he nails the paper target's head.
GRAHAM: Not too bad. Yeah, he's pretty well gone.
(LAUGHTER)
CHANG: For some voters in this state, knowing Graham is a gun lover is all they need to know to vote for him again. But for many Republicans, Graham's race for re-election comes down to a broader question: Is he a true South Carolina conservative? When you ask Graham that question, he immediately compares himself to Ronald Reagan.
GRAHAM: I think I represent the traditional way of being a conservative. You know, Ronald Reagan was a pretty conservative guy. Tip O'Neill was a pretty liberal guy. They were able to find common ground to save Social Security from bankruptcy for about 40 years. Somebody's got to take it to the next level. I'd like to be in that mix.
CHANG: Graham says being a conservative doesn't mean you can't work with the other side to get things done. And, he notes, Democrats need Republicans to do the big things. That's why he says he helped broker a bipartisan immigration deal last June that offered illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.
But at a Tea Party convention in Myrtle Beach earlier this week, there were hordes of people who say a true conservative doesn't make deals like that. Here's Keith Tripp, Carol Williamson and Pat Dansbury.
KEITH TRIPP: He is the Democrats' favorite Republican, which should tell you something about him.
CAROL WILLIAMSON: He starts talking the conservative talk, but he doesn't walk the conservative walk.
PAT DANSBURY: He's like the cow that gives you a can of milk, and then kicks it back over again. He does really good things, and then he does really horrific things.
CHANG: Horrific things, they say, beyond that immigration dea - like when he criticized his Republican colleagues when they refused to fund the government unless Congress defunded Obamacare, and when he voted for the big bank bailout bill. And another convention-goer, Steve Hoffman, says he can't get over how Graham voted to confirm Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
STEVE HOFFMAN: How could a conservative vote for two progressive, socialist-type Supreme Court nominees? Unheard of.
CHANG: Tea partiers are hoping to force Graham into a run-off this June. In South Carolina, a candidate needs a majority of votes to win the primary, so the goal is to finish second and go head-to-head with Graham two weeks later. Leading the pack of four Republican challengers is Lee Bright, a state senator who's pushed legislation to ban abortion-funding for victims of rape and incest. He also wants to make enforcement of the Affordable Care Act punishable by one year in jail.
STATE SEN. LEE BRIGHT: I would put my conservative record against any legislator in the country. I don't think there's anybody more conservative than I am.
CHANG: And then there's Nancy Mace, who's best known as the first woman to graduate from the Citadel. She also likes to point out she's a small-business owner, and a mother of two.
NANCY MACE SOUTH CAROLINA SENATE CANDIDATE: I'm the only candidate in this race who's never run for office before and I'm proud of it.
CHANG: In this state, it's a foregone conclusion that the Republican nominee will win in November. And right now, polls show Graham is leading his Republican challengers by a wide margin. Longtime political operatives in South Carolina say the two-term senator doesn't really need to sweat this race.
DON FOWLER: The whole thing about the Tea Party being such a grandiose threat to him, I think is misleading.
CHANG: That's Don Fowler, of the University of South Carolina. He was head of the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton administration.
FOWLER: When you just look at the total array of public opinion ideology, Lindsey Graham falls very comfortably within the midpoint of what Republicans think and feel, and that will be reflected in the primary.
CHANG: That is a theory Graham is banking on.
GRAHAM: We've been a state that looks for the entire package. We want people well-grounded in conservative philosophy and ideology, but we seldom elect ideologues.
CHANG: He says he's glad his state is having a conversation about what it means to be a true conservative. It's healthy, but...
GRAHAM: I think I'm going to win, and I'm going to win being me.
CHANG: And he predicts he's going to come out of this election stronger than ever.
Ailsa Chang, NPR News.
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A hockey player, a bobsledder and a curler competing at the Olympics next month have more in common than years of rigorous training. They're all also mothers. NPR's Neda Ulaby has been talking with them to find out how elite athletes bounce back after a pregnancy.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Let's be clear. Olympians handle the physical challenges of childbirth differently than most of the rest of us. Aretha Thurmond is a discus thrower who'd already competed in two Olympics when she went to the hospital in labor.
ARETHA THURMOND: So I get there and they're like, yeah, whatever, you're four centimeters dilated. Go walk around the hospital and come back. And I was like, walk around the hospital? I'm a track athlete.
ULABY: Thurmond's hospital was part of a university. So she headed straight for its track, where she power-walked for the next two hours. Then the school's own discus throwers came out, her people.
THURMOND: They're starting to have practice and I'm out there and I'm helping coach, and all of a sudden I have one of these contractions that just took my breath away. And I was like, I think it's time to go back to the hospital.
ULABY: Two hours later, her son was born. Two weeks later, Thurmond was back on the field, competing in the U.S. championships. She threw the discus in the next Olympics and captained her team for the one after that, in 2012. And moms like Thurmond are not uncommon in this super-athletic world.
THURMOND: You give the little head nod, you know, when you see them at a meet. It's like, girl, I know what you're going through.
(LAUGHTER)
ULABY: Amy Acuff is a high jumper. She competed in four Olympics, one after having her daughter. She never knew of any moms who were also elite athletes until she competed against one in the 1996 games. The woman was Russian, she'd just had a baby, and she was rail thin, except for the giant flap of loose skin where her pregnant belly had been.
AMY ACUFF: She would pull up the skin and tuck it into the top of her jog bra. And then sometimes she would pull it down and tuck it in to the bottom like the briefs. It was that much that she would grab it and tuck it in.
ULABY: Acuff says as recently as the 1990s, female elite athletes often thought they had to retire if they wanted to have kids. Now, they time them around the Olympics, or they try to. Dr. James Pivarnik says monitoring fertility is one of the few complicating factors that comes when you're incredibly fit.
DR. JAMES PIVARNIK: Many women who are very athletic have very irregular, if any, menstrual periods, so they might not even know that they're pregnant.
ULABY: Pivarnik studies exercise and pregnancy. He says back in the 1980s, doctors routinely told pregnant women never to get their heart rates above 140. Now, he says, most doctors know when it comes to pregnant athletes, the only real issues are overheating and balance. Pregnant athletes can even have an edge.
PIVARNIK: During pregnancy, a woman's blood volume expands about 60 percent.
ULABY: That gives your body more oxygen. Pivarnik, though, emphasizes that each pregnancy is different. Plenty of athletes need to rest through their pregnancies. Some train right through them. During the last Olympics in London, a markswoman from Malaysia competed when she was eight months pregnant. Nur Suryani told the network ITV babies kick. That's distracting. She had to coach her unborn child.
NUR SURYANI: Please behave yourself. Please be calm. Support mommy.
ULABY: Now here's the thing - shooting and high jumping are individual sports. Team players' pregnancies affect everyone. Keli Smith Puzo is a field hockey champion who competed in the 2008 Olympics. She found out she was pregnant right before her team was about play a major tournament.
KELI SMITH PUZO: I just didn't want to tell them because I was afraid that it would impact the important tour we were about to go on. I didn't want their focus to be on me.
ULABY: Smith Puzo had two children before she qualified for her next Olympics in 2012. To train with her team, she had to stop breastfeeding and bring her baby and toddler across the country.
PUZO: The first week was very, very challenging. I thought a lot about quitting that first week.
ULABY: So did Amy Acuff, the high jumper. After the birth of her daughter, she'd get up at dawn, park her car by the track and turn on the headlights for illumination while she practiced in the dark and the cold.
ACUFF: I remember thinking, what am I doing out here? Like, I'd just have horrible high jump session after horrible session and it looked awful.
ULABY: But Olympians are queens of positive thinking. Acuff would put her baby in a stroller and sprint her up and down a hill until her legs were wobbly and weak. Bodies change after pregnancy and not always in the ways elite athletes expect. For example, there's the urinary incontinence many women experience after childbirth.
ACUFF: You know, anytime you really increase that intra-abdominal pressure, there's issues. And, you know, definitely the explosive jumping.
ULABY: Another problem was not physical but financial. Olympic marathoner Deena Kastor found out about a certain clause in many sports sponsorship deals.
DEENA KASTOR: They don't have a name for it but obviously it's some sort of pregnancy clause - if you're not competing for nine months, that your contract would be reduced by third of its value.
ULABY: Still, savvy companies are beginning to see how elite athlete moms can be brand assets. Noelle Pikus-Pace is competing in Sochi this year. She's a skeleton slider and a mother of two. One of her biggest sponsors is Pampers. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block.
A study released this week is shedding new light on economic mobility in the United States. Those two words have been in the news a lot lately, as President Obama has tried to focus attention on the issue. The new study, prepared by a group of economists, came to a surprising conclusion. It is no harder to climb the ladder now than it was 20 years ago.
But, as NPR's Jim Zarroli reports, moving up is still a lot harder in the U.S. than it is in other developed countries.
JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: Economists have been looking into the issue of U.S. economic mobility for a long time. But Gary Solon, professor of economics at Michigan State, says they've often been hampered by the lack of adequate data. Solon say the study released this week is much more comprehensive than anything that's come before.
GARY SOLON: The unusual thing is that this research team has gotten cooperation from the Internal Revenue Service to access tax return data, which of course are not, you know, generally available to researchers.
ZARROLI: The researchers were led by Raj Chetty of Harvard. They looked at low-income people born in the early 1970s, and how likely they were to advance to top income brackets. And then they compared them to people born later.
Nathaniel Hendren of Harvard is a co-author of the study.
NATHANIEL HENDREN: What we found is that mobility has remained remarkably stable. The chance in which kids can climb up or down the income ladder has remained pretty stable over the last 20 to 25 years.
ZARROLI: The report comes at a time of growing concern about economic mobility and deep political divisions about how to address it. There is a widespread belief that the United States has become a much more class-bound society, a place where rising above your station has become a lot harder.
David Autor is a professor economics at MIT.
DAVID AUTOR: It addresses a very burning question about whether the recent rise in equality has substantially changed mobility. And at least in the short time window in which they're able to look, the answer is no. So that's good news.
ZARROLI: The bad news, Autor says, is that growing income inequality has made the gap between income levels much wider than in the past. A person who's born at the bottom and stays there is further behind than ever before.
AUTOR: The costs of immobility have risen because the lifetime difference in earnings now between someone born at the bottom quartile, versus top quartile, is much, much greater than it used to be.
ZARROLI: The study also contained some other disturbing findings. It said economic mobility in the United States remains behind that of other wealthy countries. An American born at the bottom has about an eight percent chance of rising to the top; the odds are twice that in Denmark.
Again, Nathaniel Hendren.
HENDREN: The political rhetoric has gone down a path of saying, oh, maybe it's getting harder to move up in the income distribution. But the sad fact is that it's always been very hard in the United States relative to other countries, and it hasn't gotten any better, it hasn't gotten any worse.
ZARROLI: But the study also says economic mobility varies a lot from place to place in the United States. Rates of advancement in the Seattle, Washington, and San Francisco metro areas compared favorably with European countries. But many parts of the Southeast and the Rust Belt look more like the developing world.
HENDREN: In areas, say, like Charlotte, North Carolina, kids born in the bottom portion of the income distribution have about a four to five percent chance of reaching the top. But kids born in, say, Salt Lake City, have about an 11 percent chance of reaching the top if they're born to a poor family.
ZARROLI: The study doesn't try to find out why economic mobility varies so much. But it does note that there's a strong correlation between advancement and certain kinds of social factors: the quality of schools, the degree of racial segregation, and whether you grew up in a two-parent household.
Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
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In Massachusetts, state officials are weighing whether to keep fighting a court order to provide sex change surgery for a transgender prisoner. A federal appeals court in Boston has upheld a lower court decision that the inmate is entitled to the surgery she's been fighting for, for 20 years.
As NPR's Tovia Smith reports, it would be the first time a prisoner in the U.S. would get the procedure by court order.
TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: Michelle Kosilek has known, ever since she was convicted in 1992 of a brutal murder, that she'd be stuck in prison for the rest of her life. That she can live with. The harder part, says her attorney Joe Sulman, is feeling she was stuck for life in the wrong body.
JOSEPH SULMAN: It's horrible. I don't like to use the word torture, but it's, you know, emotional claustrophobia and emotional - constant anxiety.
SMITH: The only thing keeping Kosilek going, Sulman says, was hope for gender reassignment surgery. Born Robert, Kosilek began taking hormones and transitioning to a woman decades ago, but has been waiting to take the last step.
SULMAN: You know, she signs all of her letters to me still smiling and, you know, it's smiling based on the hope that one day she'll get the surgery she needs.
SMITH: Sulman says it was a huge relief to Kosilek when the appeals court ruled in her favor last week, backing a lower court decision that a prisoner's constitutional right to medical treatment applies, quote, "even if that treatment strikes some as odd or unorthodox." The appeals court also chided the state for having, quote, "dallied and disregarded" doctors' orders. Sulman is now asking the court to force officials to schedule the surgery.
SULMAN: The court, from my understanding, expects them to take all actions necessary, to do this as if they want to do this, whether or not they want to or not.
SMITH: Prison officials have argued they had safety concerns and couldn't protect Kosilek after surgery. They also argued that by offering hormone treatment, they had met their obligation for adequate care. Advocates say transgender inmates frequently come up against arguments that their treatment is not medically necessary, but four federal appeals courts have now ruled the other way. And advocate Jennifer Levi says it's becoming harder for prisons or private insurers to deny coverage for gender dysphoria.
JENNIFER LEVI: The courts have said that the underlying condition is real and serious, and you can't simply deny medical care because of bias, stigma, public opinion.
SMITH: The original ruling mandating the surgery just before the 2012 election drew fire from both Republicans and Democrats in Massachusetts. But advocates are hoping Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick may opt now to just drop the legal fight. Opponents are urging the administration not to throw in the towel, as one put it, and to press the case up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
PETER SPRIGG: We think it's frankly outrageous.
SMITH: Peter Sprigg is with the Family Research Council.
SPRIGG: Frankly, I don't care how many doctors testify. This is not medical treatment. This is satisfying a social and political agenda. And I certainly hope that it would cause people to say, this has gone too far. Let's call a halt to this.
SMITH: But advocates counter it's the court battle that's gone too far and wasted taxpayers' money. Sex change surgery can cost from 10 to $50,000, but the state is spending much more than that to make its case. And since Kosilek won, the state also has to pay her legal fees, estimated at some $700,000. Kosilek's lawyers have been offering to waive that fee if the state would just drop the appeal and provide the surgery. Tovia Smith, NPR News, Boston.
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And I'm Melissa Block. Virginia's newly elected attorney general announced today that he will not defend the state's ban on same-sex marriage. Democrat Mark Herring revealed his decision this morning on NPR's MORNING EDITION. He says he wants to ensure that Virginia is, as he puts it, on the right side of history and the law. NPR's Brian Naylor reports.
BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: Mark Herring took office less than two weeks ago, but he's wasted no time in making his mark on Virginia politics and on the anti-gay marriage law, coming down solidly on the side of its opponents.
MARK HERRING: I believe Virginia's ban on marriage between same-sex couples violates the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. And as attorney general, I cannot and will not defend laws that violate Virginians' rights.
NAYLOR: Herring had little choice but to move quickly on same-sex marriage. A challenge to the ban by two Virginia couples is scheduled to be heard by a federal judge in Norfolk a week from today. The ban was approved by the voters in a 2006 referendum; a ballot test that Herring, then a state senator, supported having, at the time. Since then, he says, his views have changed.
HERRING: I had voted against marriage equality eight years ago - back in 2006 - even though at the time, I was speaking out against discrimination and ways to end discrimination. And I was wrong for not applying it to marriage. I saw very soon after that how that hurt a lot of people.
NAYLOR: Democratic state Sen. Adam Ebbin is the first openly gay member in the more than 400-year history of the Virginia General Assembly. He says it's a good day to be a Virginian.
STATE SEN. ADAM EBBIN: I've seen too many gay and lesbian couples leave Virginia because of this amendment. And it's time that all of Virginia's citizens become equal in the eyes of the law.
NAYLOR: Herring's decision follows recent rulings by federal courts to overturn similar same-sex marriage bans in Utah and Oklahoma, and the attorney general of Pennsylvania last year refused to defend that state's similar ban. In all, there are suits in more than a dozen states challenging the prohibition of same-sex marriage, and the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide the issue in the end.
Supporters of Virginia's law lashed out at Herring. Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia, says the state's law was approved by 57 percent of the voters.
VICTORIA COBB: It's disappointing that, you know, he would leave over a million Virginia citizens defenseless after legally voting for an amendment that he himself supported when he was in the legislature.
NAYLOR: And the chairman of the state Republican Party, Pat Mullins, accused Herring of doing the president's bidding.
PAT MULLINS: We have a constitutional amendment that he has personally chosen to ignore. He doesn't like the amendment, so he's going to ignore it, and he's going to challenge it. If he gets away with this one, how many other things do we have within our Constitution, within our laws, he's going to decide he personally doesn't like; or Barack Obama calls him and says, get rid of that one; and he's going to do it.
NAYLOR: Herring won in November by a razor-slim margin, completing a sweep of Virginia's top offices by Democrats and continuing the trend that has seen the state turn increasingly blue, including two victories there by President Obama. That trend can be seen in support for same-sex marriage as well. While a majority of voters did approve the ban some eight years ago, a recent poll indicated most Virginians now support same-sex marriage. And those supporters hope the current ban will be overturned, just as the state's ban on interracial marriage was a generation ago.
Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.
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Robert, it's now time for me to eat some crow.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Oh, no.
BLOCK: Yeah. You remember yesterday, I was talking about how the Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning has been calling out the name of a certain U.S. city dozens of times to signal a play at the line of scrimmage.
SIEGEL: Absolutely, he calls out Omaha.
BLOCK: Exactly, and the city of Omaha is really excited about that. But here is where I got in trouble. I suggested to somebody from Omaha that maybe during the Super Bowl, Peyton Manning might choose another city name. And here's what I threw out there as some possibilities.
It might be Natchitoches. It could Pascagoula. You don't know what's going to come out of his mouth.
All right, Robert, you heard that? I said Natchitoches.
SIEGEL: Right.
BLOCK: Yeah. No, that's not right. It's wrong and a bunch of our listeners ran to their keyboards to let me know that. It is spelled that way, in my defense: N-A-T-C-H-I-T-O-C-H-E-S, Louisiana. But I should have known that especially in Louisiana the pronunciation of place names is a really tricky business. So today, I called up Barbara Bailey. She's a local tour guide there and she set me straight.
BARBARA BAILEY: The name of our city is pronounced nak-a-dish(ph).
BLOCK: Nak-a-dish.
BAILEY: Yes. So many people get it a little bit off. When you look at it, it looks like natch-i-toe-chus(ph).
BLOCK: Right and that's what I said. That's what where I got in trouble. But it's nak-a-dish.
BAILEY: It's nak-a-dish. Yes, what I tell people is that if don't look at it, you can say it.
(LAUGHTER)
BAILEY: So if you say naka(ph), N-A-K-A, then you can put most anything on the end of it and get by. You can say nakadish(ph), nakatish(ph), nakadush(ph) - whatever you want to say at the very end, but you got to get that naka at the beginning. And the emphasis on it is on that first syllable on the N-A.
BLOCK: Got you. Now, what's the origin of the name?
BAILEY: The name, it comes from a Native American tribe - people who lived here when the first Europeans came in the 1600s. The name, as far as we can tell, means land of the chinquapin eaters. That's a plant that produces something like a nut.
BLOCK: So, here's where things do get confusing, Ms. Bailey, because you there in Natchitoches, Louisiana, are only about a hundred miles away from Nacogdoches, Texas. I think this is maybe where I got hung up a little bit.
BAILEY: Yeah. Well, now I can tell you that the reason that people get confused about it is because the spellings are similar, not the same, but similar.
BLOCK: They're close.
BAILEY: Yes.
BLOCK: I think the take-away here is really just that I need to spend more time in Louisiana. And that's a great thing, as far as I'm concerned.
BAILEY: That's it. That's exactly right.
BLOCK: Well, Barbara Bailey, thanks for setting me straight about just how to say the name of Natchitoches, Louisiana.
BAILEY: That is correct. You did well.
BLOCK: So, Robert, there you have it: Natchitoches, Louisiana...
SIEGEL: Natchitoches.
BLOCK: Nacogdoches, Texas.
SIEGEL: An important distinction.
BLOCK: Yes.
SIEGEL: And while we're on the subject of pronunciations...
BLOCK: OK.
SIEGEL: ...and mispronunciations, we know it's Montreux, sorry about all the montrose(ph) this week.
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BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Most of China's Internet users experienced an outage this week. For up to eight hours, some 500 million people could not get Web pages to load. And the leading theory about what happened is that the Chinese government mistakenly rerouted Internet traffic. Headlines about this on some news sites have been a little misleading: How the Chinese Internet Ended Up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, blared one site. And there were lots of variations on that.
The truth though is equally intriguing and joining us to explain is Nicole Perlroth. She covers cyber security for The New York Times. Nicole, welcome.
NICOLE PERLROTH: Hi, thanks for having me.
BLOCK: And let's talk first, Nicole, about the extent of what happened. You had one Internet analyst tell you half the world's Internet users trying to access the Internet couldn't?
PERLROTH: That's right. About 500 million Internet users in China trying to access the Internet couldn't reach various websites. This is something that didn't just affect Chinese Internet users, it affected major Chinese companies, like Baidu and Saina. So this was - we're calling it now the biggest Internet outage ever.
BLOCK: And as you've been reporting, the suspicion is that all of this has to do with what's known as the Great Firewall in China. So what's the explanation for how this happened?
PERLROTH: That's right. So the Great Firewall actually means Chinese Internet censors that decide which websites can be accessed and which cannot. But it appears that instead of blocking several websites, China's firewall actually inadvertently fired all of Chinese Internet traffic to those websites.
BLOCK: So instead of blocking certain sites, what you're saying is that China actually reversed the flow in a huge way.
PERLROTH: Sure, that's the working theory. Basically anyone trying to access these sites was being redirected to this one IP address. It was registered to a company called Sophidea Inc. that was registered to a physical address in Cheyenne, Wyoming. That does not mean that all this Internet traffic was flooding to this one physical address in Wyoming. It means that it was flooding to all the servers that support this one IP address that had a mailing address in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
BLOCK: The New York Times had a headline for while, your own paper: Chinese Internet Traffic Redirected To Small Wyoming House. Turns out not quite the case, right?
PERLROTH: Right, not quite the case. So when I looked at the address listed in Internet records it was the name of an address in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Wyoming Corporate Services acts as a physical address for thousands of businesses, and so Sophidea Inc. was just one of them.
BLOCK: Tell us more about this company, Sophidea. Who is it? What do they do?
PERLROTH: Sophidea, we don't know much about it. But it does look like the company appears to offer services that help people mask their Internet addresses. If someone wanted to send someone spam but not be traceable, for example, or if someone wanted to evade a firewall, like China's Great Firewall. So Sophidea's site would have been a target for a China's Internet censors.
BLOCK: And this was the case for another company that had the same thing happen, too, right? Dynamic Internet Technology had the same thing happen, all of this traffic started flooding in.
PERLROTH: That's right. A huge wave of traffic started flooding servers for DIT, as well. And DIT is operated by a Falung Gong supporter who supports various sites that have been critical of the Chinese government. And again, these are sites that the Great Firewall would take great pains to block.
BLOCK: Is it clear, Nicole, that this was not deliberate, that this actually was accidental?
PERLROTH: It does appear that it was accidental. We can't say for certain what happened. But the only entity that really has this capability would've been the Great Firewall itself. So the working theory is that in attempting to block some of these sites, the technology sort of backfired and may have accidentally redirected this huge flood of traffic from inside China at these sites.
BLOCK: Nicole Perlroth covers cyber security for The New York Times. Nicole, thanks so much.
PERLROTH: Thanks so much for having me.
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Tomorrow, a Texas court will hear the lawsuit of Erick Munoz who wants a Fort Worth Hospital to take his wife, Marlise, off life support. Ms. Munoz suffered what's believed to have been a pulmonary embolism in November. She's been unresponsive ever since. The hospital, John Peter Smith Hospital, will not release a diagnosis to the public. But her husband says she is brain dead and he says the Munozes, both paramedics, had discussed such a possibility in the past and he says that she did not want to be kept alive by machines.
Well, the hospital says it cannot take her off life support because Marlise Munoz is pregnant and the fetus still has a heartbeat. The fetus is in its 22nd week of development and, according to a statement issued by Munoz's lawyer, the fetus has deformed lower extremities and swelling of the brain.
Joining us to talk about this case is Tom Mayo, associate professor of law at Southern Methodist University. Welcome to the program.
TOM MAYO: Thank you.
SIEGEL: And first, the hospital says to take Mrs. Munoz off life support would violate Texas law, a law that you helped write as an advisor to the legislature, I gather. Are they correct?
MAYO: Well, I don't think so. The law that they say compels them to continue ICU-level support for Ms. Munoz is the so-called Pregnancy Exclusion Provision in our Advanced Directives Act. And I think the Pregnancy Exclusion Provision doesn't apply because I don't think the act applies to someone who is dead. And this is all assuming now that the husband has it right and that we'll see confirmation of her brain death as a result of the hearing.
SIEGEL: But isn't it the point of that exclusion to protect the fetus, that is it's not in there to protect the pregnant woman, is it, the mother?
MAYO: Well, yes, that's the purpose. But technically, I would say the statute does not compel this. If you're relying on the statute, you're just relying on the wrong thing.
SIEGEL: What kind of liability might they face if they took Marlise Munoz off life support and her fetus died?
MAYO: Well, I'm not sure how the hospital has analyzed their liability situation. In theory, at least, there's civil liability, there's criminal liability and there's discipline from a licensing board. I'm not at all convinced that those are serious concerns or realistic concerns in this case if they were to do what Mr. Munoz has asked.
SIEGEL: Has Marlise Munoz slipped into a zone that isn't quite covered by the law? That is, she is someone who is no longer alive by standards we would recognize, but she is alive enough to sustain a fetus?
MAYO: Well, yes. There's enough of her body that is still functioning that even though she is dead, as she would be recognized as dead in every state in the Union, there is a kind of no man's land that's created here, and it's really created by the pregnancy. I think the law just really doesn't have an explicit answer for this question.
SIEGEL: Professor Mayo, one other question. She is - that is to say Marlise Munoz is said to be - or her husband says she is brain dead. How does that condition differ from being in a persistent vegetative state or being in a coma?
MAYO: Those later two conditions are states of unconsciousness in a living patient. Brain dead is when there is a complete cessation of all brain activity, including the brain stem.
SIEGEL: If, in fact, she were in a persistent vegetative state and not brain dead, would that alter the entire legal equation for the hospital, given that, as you said, the argument is based on the definition of a patient?
MAYO: If she were in a persistent vegetative or permanent vegetative state, that would qualify as an irreversible condition, and she, of course, wouldn't be able to speak for herself. At that point, the subchapter we're talking about would apply. And the pregnancy exclusion language would apply as well. I still believe that if the statute applied in that circumstance, the hospital always has a choice to either act in a way that preserves its legal immunities or act in a way that respects the wishes of the patient and/or her surrogate decision maker. So there's still a choice.
SIEGEL: Professor Mayo, thank you for talking with us today.
MAYO: My pleasure.
SIEGEL: That's Tom Mayo, associate professor of law at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, talking with us about the case of Marlise Munoz.
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And I'm Melissa Block. Central African Republic's new caretaker president was sworn in today. She is the first woman to hold the post and assumes control at a low point for this chronically unstable country. A coup last year led to an unprecedented explosion of violence and killings despite the presence of African and French peacekeepers.
CAR is predominantly Christian and these deadly clashes pit the forces of the former Muslim-led government against Christian militia groups. NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton has this profile of the country's new leader.
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON, BYLINE: Bangui, the capital of Central African Republic, erupted in cheers and applause after Catherine Samba-Panza was declared the new caretaker president this week. The 59-year-old French-trained-lawyer-turned-businesswoman and mayor of Bangui was a popular choice.
She pledged to end sectarian violence and tackle the humanitarian crisis in CAR. As its new transitional leader, governing this country prone to turmoil and rebellion is a tall order for Madam Samba-Panza. She says she is up to the task.
INTERIM PRESIDENT CATHERINE SAMBA-PANZA: (Speaking foreign language)
QUIST-ARCTON: Samba-Panza told the BBC, I'm a moderate and I have the knack of bringing people together. She has a record of mediating in a tricky political crisis back in 2003 when she reconciled a former CAR president and the then serving president after a long political feud. She will need those skills as a peace broker for the task she's taking on, which is infinitely more complicated and sensitive.
SAMBA-PANZA: (Speaking foreign language)
QUIST-ARCTON: Samba-Panza says people have been manipulated and it's an uphill job to curb the sectarian hatred that has ripped apart Central African Republic where Christians and Muslims lived side by side in peace for decades. But, she adds, we can't call it genocide or civil war. Both parties to the deadly conflict form a mainly Muslim Seleka rebels and Christian militia fighters, known as anti-balaka, i.e., anti-machete, appear ready to accept Samba-Panza's leadership.
So do Central African Republic's beleaguered civilians, including residents of Bangui who have borne the brunt of the violence that has engulfed their nation of 4 million.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Speaking foreign language)
QUIST-ARCTON: This woman says of Samba-Panza, she's neutral. She will restore peace. She's a mother. She will calm us all down, including the anti-balaka and the Seleka fighters. All we want is peace.
JOHN GING: It's a mega crisis across the whole spectrum, first and foremost in terms of the protection of the population.
QUIST-ARCTON: John Ging heads the operations of the UN's Office for Humanitarian Affairs. He says a million people and more have been uprooted by the crisis.
GING: And with that displacement, of course, you have all the humanitarian needs, shelter, food, medical care and so on. And the situation for a million people, it's already out of control. But first and foremost, it's about providing security.
SAMBA-PANZA: (Speaking foreign language)
QUIST-ARCTON: The new president agrees that Central African Republic needs urgent help, including more peacekeepers from the African Union, the former colonial power France, and other foreign friends to restore order after the chaos. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News, Accra.
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To see a musical, you might travel to New York or even to London, but Paris? Aside from the language barrier, musicals have always been considered silly by French standards and not widely embraced, but that is changing. As NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports, Parisians have been enjoying a string of musical theater performances at one of the city's venerable theaters.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: "My Fair Lady" played to sold-out audiences in Paris this Christmas. Jean Claude and Marie Claude Lefebvre(ph) came to the ornate 19th century Chatelet Theatre and were bowled over by what they saw so much so that they saw it twice.
MARIE CLAUD LEFEBVRE: (Through interpreter) We love it. We come see every musical here at the Chatelet. It's wonderful. So American and active. The performance gets you moving and there's no dead time. The actors are fantastic, too.
BEARDSLEY: Never mind that probably half the audience can't understand what's being said. As subtitles are flashed upon the walls, the Parisians laugh at all the right times and appear to eat it up, Cockney accents and all. That's music to the ears of Jean Luc Choplin, director of the Chatelet Theatre. Choplin took a chance bringing the genre to Paris seven years ago.
JEAN LUC CHOPLIN: I was surprised when I came to Chatelet as director that major musicals hadn't been done in France. I was told it will never work. People are not really in a sense of this kind of American culture, but I decided today I have to do it.
BEARDSLEY: Choplin says in the past, Broadway musicals have been considered by the elite as a sort of subcategory of culture, as lowbrow operetta. Even the name for a musical in French, (foreign language spoken) , sounds less serious. But after the success of "The Sound of Music," "Showboat," "West Side Story," and other productions, that's beginning to change, says Choplin.
CHOPLIN: Now, since they are discovering that it's a very sophisticated score of, for example, Stephan Sondheim or Bernstein, that it is very well-produced and performed with great singers or actors or music directors, you know, people are now starting to consider that sound like opera, the same thing.
BEARDSLEY: Choplin says he always produces a show in its original language, a translation betrays it, he says. Even though that counts out French performers for some of the leading roles, still 90 percent of the cast and crew is French. Backstage at the Chatelet, British opera singer Katherine Manley(ph) is being made up to play Eliza Doolittle.
Manley also played Maria in Choplin's production of "The Sound of Music" two years ago.
KATHERINE MANLEY: I find the Parisian audience to be absolutely delightful to play for.
BEARDSLEY: In the middle of our dressing room interview, Manley is brought a bouquet of flowers from some of her adoring fans. They love you, says the stage hand who delivers them.
MANLEY: We've had this consistent clapping going on afterwards and people want encore after encore and the curtain comes down and the orchestra continues to play for the audience to exit to and actually they stay put in their seats and ask for more. So it's just joyful.
BEARDSLEY: Laurence Beurdains(ph) brought her three children to "My Fair Lady." She says the quality of the show is extraordinary and it's so different from French theater, which she describes as small and intellectual. This is a big show for everyone, she says.
LAURENCE BEURDAINS: Even if you don't understand the - all the words or the songs, it doesn't matter. I think you can just appreciate the very nice costumes, very nice songs.
BEARDSLEY: In June, the Chatelet production team will present "The King and I" and next Christmas, they'll create an entirely new musical based on the film "An American in Paris." After opening in Paris, they'll take it to Broadway. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.
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This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
A new report recommends ending the NSA program that collects the phone records of Americans. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board advises the president. The bipartisan agency found that the phone surveillance program falls short on several counts. For one thing, they say, there is no legal basis for it. And for another, it doesn't work. Today's report comes less than a week after President Obama called for keeping the program with some major changes.
We'll talk with the head of the privacy board after a report on the board's public meeting. NPR Justice Department Carrie Johnson was there today. And she joins us now. Hi.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Hi, Robert.
SIEGEL: And what were the problems the board found with the NSA phone records program?
JOHNSON: In short, Robert, the board found the program violated both the letter and the spirit of the USA Patriot Act, that law passed by Congress shortly after the 9/11 attacks. The law, the board says, was designed to apply to specific, targeted FBI investigations, and the request for information needed to be relevant, not the kind of broad, bulk collection of billions of American phone records that the U.S. has been doing for seven years.
Finally, the board said that forcing telecommunications companies to turn over records they've not yet generated over a period of 90 days is nothing that was contemplated in the law. And when the board went back and looked at the legislative history, there was no sense from the legislative history that Congress or the public could have known that billions of American phone metadata records had been compiled.
SIEGEL: Carrie, the board's main finding about the phone program was not unanimous. What were the dissents and why did they disagree?
JOHNSON: There were two dissents, by Beth Cook and Rachel Brand, both of whom had worked in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush. They pointed out that President Bush and now President Obama both had defended the law and the program and found it legal. They also said that 17 judges on the Foreign Surveillance Court had also cleared the law over a period of years.
They said that the intelligence community and the NSA had been acting in good faith and, essentially, it was a value judgment. If this program could help investigators figure out quickly whether somebody up to no good was operating inside the U.S., it should be kept.
SIEGEL: So what happens next with this?
JOHNSON: President Obama says he wants ideas by the end of March from the attorney general and the head of - the director of national intelligence about how to fix this program, who should store this data. But you know what, Robert, this is one way station in what Jim Dempsey, the board member of the privacy board, called a long journey. There's not going to be any clear way to restructure this program easily.
And the real deadline, Robert, might be June 2015 when Congress has to figure out whether it wants to re-authorize this part of the Patriot Act or to throw it out altogether.
SIEGEL: OK. Thank you, Carrie.
JOHNSON: You're welcome.
SIEGEL: That's NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm joined now by the head of that watchdog group, David Medine. He's chairman of the five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Mr. Medine, welcome to the program.
DAVID MEDINE: Thanks. Good afternoon, Melissa.
BLOCK: And let's drill down a little bit more on your most far-reaching conclusion, and that is that you say the government should end its Section 215 bulk telephone records program. End it entirely, you say. But you do point out in your report that you've seen no evidence of bad faith or government misconduct. So if the program hasn't been misused, why end it?
MEDINE: For three reasons. One is that it doesn't meet the requirements of Section 215, the statute that purportedly authorizes it. Second, the program raises significant constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendment. And third, in balancing the privacy interests involved with national security, the board concluded that the program has significant privacy impact, chilling association, chilling reporters talking to sources, chilling dissidents, which are protected under the First Amendment, talking to their followers.
It has a very strong privacy impact. And then when we looked at the efficacy of the program, we found it lacking. It didn't thwart plots. It didn't - it had only marginal benefits that could be achieved through other legal means.
BLOCK: Well, let me follow up on those privacy concerns that you mentioned because you say in your report there's been no evidence of harassment, blackmail or intimidation arising from the data. And you write this: Given the historical abuse of personal information by the government during the 20th century, the risk is more than merely theoretical. So first of all, what are you alluding to? And second, why would that theoretical risk be enough to justify wiping out the program entirely?
MEDINE: Well, we know from the Watergate era there were misuse of data. The Church Committee that was created by Congress looked into abuses. There were abuses of data by the government in the 20th century. And while we didn't find any abuses, we found, in fact, just the opposite, that there are very hardworking men and women in the intelligence community, trying to keep us safe and protecting our civil liberties. But we do it for creating a database like this, it's almost like a time bomb, and maybe it won't go off right now, but it could go off in the future with a different administration that was less well-intentioned.
And, again, given its limited efficacy and significant privacy impact, we recommended that the program be discontinued and that queries either be made to the providers or some other method is figured out to more - to better target the information that they need.
BLOCK: On that question of efficacy, one of the dissenters on your panel, Rachel Brand, wrote that your conclusion that the government has been operating this phone records program unlawfully for years will undermine national security, have a detrimental effect on the NSA, and you can't really judge, she says, you know, the potential benefit in thwarting terrorist attacks.
MEDINE: Well, we took a close look at every single incident where the government said the program was effective and successful and found that in most of those, again, plots were not thwarted. Other methods could've been used to get the information. And, again, we're not saying that there shouldn't be any method of tracking telephone numbers that are potentially involved with terrorists. We're just saying it shouldn't be done by the government gathering every single American citizen's phone call records and hold them for five years at a time.
BLOCK: What about that dissenter, Rachel Brand's argument that the number of records that have ever been viewed is infinitesimal? That's her word. Her conclusion is that the small intrusion on privacy is far outweighed by the potential benefit in thwarting terrorist attacks.
MEDINE: It is true that there are limited use of the information, but it's the mere collection of the information that raises privacy concerns. There are data breaches. There is a history at the NSA of some minor infractions. But obviously, there is a potential for much greater misuse once the data is sitting there. So again, it's really a balance between how useful is the data, versus the potential. Already people feel shrill by making certain calls, knowing that the government is keeping track of them and someday could look at them.
BLOCK: President Obama does seem to have beaten you to the punch on this question. He gave his major speech on NSA reforms last week, before your report came out. And he concluded that the 215 phone records program should stay, with some changes. Did he undercut your work here?
MEDINE: Not at all. In fact, we decided to provide the significant copies of our report, portions of our report, to the president as he was considering his decision-making. And the entire board met with the president, vice president and senior staff at the White House to share our concerns and our recommendations. And I think his recommendations are actually not that far off. He's recommending an interim period, as we do, with added privacy protections, and he's also recommending taking the bulk data out of the NSA.
And so, he may have different reasons, which are more privacy-oriented. Ours are both privacy, constitutional and legal. But in some ways, we end up pointing in the same direction, which is let's get the data out of the NSA and let's figure out an alternative, either going to providers or some better method of targeting information that strikes the right balance.
BLOCK: OK. David Medine, thanks for being with us.
MEDINE: You're welcome.
BLOCK: David Medine is chairman of the independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. They released their report on the government's telephone records program today.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
President Obama has reignited the debate over the nation's marijuana laws. In an interview with The New Yorker, the president said that the thinks smoking pot is less dangerous for the individual consumer than drinking alcohol. He quickly added that he doesn't encourage the use of marijuana, but he said it's important that experiments with legalizing pot in Colorado and Washington state go forward.
Such comments from a sitting president might be startling, but they come at a time when Americans' attitudes toward marijuana laws are rapidly changing. Here's NPR's Scott Horsley.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Pot has often been a punchline for Barack Obama. Here he is with Jay Leno during his first campaign for the White House.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO")
HORSLEY: As the laughter died down, Obama insisted he wasn't trying to make light of the issue. He'd already written frankly about his own youthful drug use and he called it a mistake.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO")
HORSLEY: The president adopts a similar tone in his recent New Yorker interview, calling pot smoking a vice and a bad idea. But he also says he personally doesn't think it's more dangerous than alcohol, which, after all, is legal. That's in contrast to the White House website, which highlights the hazards of heavy marijuana use, including memory problems and reduced IQ.
The administration's drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, underscored those risks in a 2010 interview with NPR.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED INTERVIEW)
HORSLEY: But Americans' attitudes are rapidly shifting from the Just Say No era. Over the last year, multiple surveys have found majorities who say recreational marijuana should be legalized. And in 2012, voters in Colorado and Washington state moved to do just that. Some have likened this turnaround to the rapid change in attitudes towards same-sex marriage. But analyst William Galston of the Brookings Institution disagrees. He says the growing willingness to legalize marijuana doesn't necessarily signal a growing acceptance of weed. On the contrary, he says, polls show Americans remain deeply ambivalent.
WILLIAM GALSTON: They don't think that smoking marijuana is a good thing, necessarily, but they are convinced that the social costs of enforcing our current marijuana laws are out of all proportion to the good that those laws are doing or ever did.
HORSLEY: Many conservatives who don't like marijuana still think states should be allowed to write their own laws on the subject and they're skeptical the government can wage an effective crackdown. Many liberals, on the other hand, including the president, are bothered by the heavy toll that drug laws take on poor blacks and Latinos.
Vanita Gupta of the ACLU says African-Americans are nearly four times as likely to be arrested for pot possessions as whites are, even though they use the drug at similar rates.
VANITA GUPTA: Those findings just really highlighted the degree to which there are two kind of pot users in the country. We don't have police on college campuses the way that we do in certain poor black and brown communities.
HORSLEY: Obama told the New Yorker, we should not be locking up kids for smoking pot when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing. A White House spokesman says the president still opposes legalizing marijuana, but analyst Galston suspects Obama's views are as nuanced as the public's.
GALSTON: And it just so happens that the president of the United States is where a lot of other Americans and a lot of other parents are.
HORSLEY: Obama told the New Yorker social change rarely happens in a straight line, adding those who are most successful typically have to zigzag like a sailor, taking into account winds and currents. The smoky haze over Colorado and, before long, Washington state, suggest the winds governing marijuana use are shifting.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, the White House.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block.
In Ukraine, antigovernment protests turned deadly this week. Yesterday, two men were shot in the capital of Kiev during battles with police. The protests have spread to other cities, notably in the western part of the country.
SIEGEL: Ukraine's government, led by President Viktor Yanukovych, backed out of a trade deal with the European Union late last year in favor of a policy of closer relations with Russia. And after demonstrations against that move, Yanukovych imposed a package of laws that restricted the right to demonstrate. That led to the current wave of protests.
Reporter David Stern is in Kiev. And, David, can you tell us where you are and what the state of things on the streets of the Ukrainian capital is today?
DAVID STERN, BYLINE: Well, I'm standing right now at the barricades at the very front of the protest. This is where these violent clashes have been taking place over the last days where the two men were shot that you mentioned. There's a kind of a ceasefire right now while the president meets with the opposition leaders.
But where I am right now, I wouldn't call it peaceful. People are preparing. They have iron bars and sticks in their hand. Everybody are wearing helmets. There's piles of tires in front of me which they're ready to ignite, and lots and lots of bricks that they're piling up from the street. They've also been using Molotov cocktails.
SIEGEL: Tell me, I mean, David, are these actions of the protesters, are they directed by the political leaders who've been meeting with President Yanukovych or are the protests pretty much spontaneous at this stage?
STERN: Well, it's difficult to tell, really, who is directing this. There are ultra nationalists and right extremists, and they've been leading these packs. But at the same time, the bulk of the protest is they have been supporting these clashes because these demonstrations have been going on for two months now and there's a very strong sense of frustration among the protesters.
SIEGEL: Yesterday, Vitali Klitschko - one of the opposition leaders, the famous former boxing champion warned - he said, if the president won't listen to us, we will go into attack or we will go on the offensive. What does he mean by that? What do people hear him saying?
STERN: It's not entirely clear what he means by that. One of the protest leaders said that he was going to be at the front of the line and if he got a bullet to the forehead, then so be it, he said. But they hope that they have the numbers on their side and that they will be able to perhaps overcome, either by sheer numbers or by peaceful demonstration, the riot police that have blocked their way up to the parliament building.
SIEGEL: And at this stage, what do you hear from the protesters? What is it that they're demanding? That Yanukovych resign, that he stay in office but withdraw these restrictions on demonstrations, that he reverse his policy with regard to Europe - what is it that they're seeking now?
STERN: Well, all of the above. They want him out. They want these laws that you've talked about to be revoked. They want to turn towards Europe and they want a new country. But it also should be said that as wide is the support of this movement is, there's an entirely different part of Ukraine and a very large part of Ukraine that don't support these demonstrations in the east and in the south. Even if they are not supporting President Yanukovych, they're also not supporting the opposition. They're very suspicious of the opposition.
SIEGEL: And so far, this has engaged protesters and riot police. Has the army shown itself at all in this? And has anybody mentioned the army playing a role?
STERN: Oh, yes. People are mentioning the army. There's a fear that President Yanukovych could bring out any number of forces onto the streets, that he could introduce a crackdown in Kiev or in the country as a whole. But no, the army has not been mobilized. And President Yanukovych has actually said that he will not introduce martial law.
But there's a fear that this violence could spread, especially if the talks between the opposition and the president yield nothing, that if the opposition goes on the offensive, as they say, that it could turn into a much wider conflict. And as Ukraine here is a split society, there's always the danger that there be a civil war, although we're quite far from that at the moment. But people are worried about that prospect.
SIEGEL: David Stern, thank you very much.
STERN: Thank you.
SIEGEL: That's reporter David Stern, speaking to us from Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Early this morning, FBI agents in and around New York arrested five men in connection with a number of unsolved crimes. At the top of that list is the infamous 1978 Lufthansa robbery at Kennedy International Airport. Law enforcement officials have long suspected that the mob was behind it. And today, more than 30 years later, they finally charged a reputed mobster in connection with the case. NPR's Joel Rose reports.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: The indictment reads like the plot of a mob movie: murder, arson, extortion and the $6-million heist at Kennedy Airport. Actually, that last part is the plot of a mob movie.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "GOODFELLAS")
ROSE: Martin Scorsese film "Goodfellas" is based on the Lufthansa heist. In December of 1978, armed gunmen really did break into the cargo terminal at Kennedy Airport. They got away with $5 million in cash and another million in jewelry. At the time, it was the biggest robbery in U.S. history. Here's how it went down in the movie.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "GOODFELLAS")
ROSE: Only one man, a Lufthansa airport worker, was convicted. No alleged mobsters were ever charged, until today when prosecutors unsealed an indictment against Vinny Asaro, a reputed mobster with ties to the storied Bonanno crime family. The FBI declined to comment on today's arrests, but they did connect us with Steve Carbone, the agent who led the case in the 1970s and '80s and is now retired.
STEVE CARBONE: It wasn't like we didn't know. I mean, we knew who did this job two days later.
ROSE: Carbone says the FBI had long suspected that Asaro was involved, along with Jimmy Burke, who was the basis for Robert de Niro's character in "Goodfellas." They could never find enough evidence to charge either of them. Burke was later convicted of murder and died in prison. But retired agent Carbone says all the witnesses who could have tied him to the Lufthansa heist were either dead or terrified.
CARBONE: Right after, we put up, I think, $100,000 reward for information and nobody called. Nobody. Not one call. I'll tell you the truth, I never expected this. I mean, it seemed like it was dead.
ROSE: Alleged mobster Vinny Asaro is also charged with strangling Paul Katz, a suspected police informant who disappeared in 1969. His remains were discovered last summer at a home in Queens that used to belong to Jimmy Burke. Asaro pleaded not guilty to all the charges. Four other alleged members of the Bonanno crime family were arrested this morning on a range of other charges, including bookmaking and extortion. All five were arraigned today in Brooklyn. Joel Rose, NPR News, New York.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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And as we just heard from Jim, economic mobility may not have changed much in the last 20 years, but income inequality has skyrocketed. More on the latter now from Michael Dimock, vice president of research at the Pew Research Center. Pew has a new survey out, asking Americans what they think about income inequality.
Michael Dimock, welcome once again.
MICHAEL DIMOCK: Thanks for having me.
SIEGEL: And first finding is Americans say there is growing income inequality, yes?
DIMOCK: Yes, they do. Sixty-five percent said they think the gap between the rich and the rest of the country has been growing over the past 10 years. And that spans party lines, Republicans and Democrats pretty much agree on that factor.
SIEGEL: Does this is also cut across demographic lines, as well?
DIMOCK: It does. The young and old, even higher and lower income Americans, tend to see a growing divide in inequality - or growing inequality in overall income. The rich, though, being defined potentially differently by different people.
SIEGEL: Now, to what extent do Americans say that income inequality, which so many say exists, is something that the government should do something about?
DIMOCK: That's where the rub comes in. A majority of Americans want this issue to be addressed. Sixty-nine percent said the government should do at least something about inequality in this country. But the partisan divide couldn't be wider. Democrats - this is a uniform issue - 90 percent think that this should be a priority for the government. Among Republicans, it's much more controversial; fewer than half of Republicans think the government should play a role in this.
SIEGEL: If you use the word redistribute - redistribute this - excuse me, I can't say it - redistribute wealth or redistribution at all in this survey?
DIMOCK: We didn't use that word. We're not sure what people would necessarily think about with a term like that. But we tried to test the concept, which is, what's the best way to address poverty. Is it too raise taxes, in order to have more resources to expand programs for the poor? Or is it to lower taxes, in order to spur investment and more economic growth?
SIEGEL: And here's where the party division now comes in pretty strongly.
DIMOCK: That's it's - yeah, predictably that's really where the divide is. By well over 2-to-1, Republicans say the right way to do this is more of a rising tide lifts all boats model; you spur the economy, you lower taxes, you get things supercharged. For Democrats, this is a clear-cut issue, 75 percent say the way to do it is more redistributive.
SIEGEL: Now, actually, I think you have a majority of the whole sample agreeing with the idea of a tax in that case.
DIMOCK: That's right, because independents tilt a little bit toward raising taxes on the wealthy in order to expand programs for the poor. In fact, across a range of questions in this survey, we find independents eager to see some sort of action - both in the realm of reducing poverty but also in the realm of addressing inequality.
SIEGEL: There have been debates in Washington recently over food stamps, unemployment benefits. Do people believe that those are things that the government should be doing more of?
DIMOCK: Very much so. I mean, the unemployment benefit issue, 63 percent in the survey said that they want - they support an extension of those benefits. When it comes to the minimum wage, raising it to $10.10 an hour is supported by 73 percent of Americans. Only 25 percent oppose. These are both issues that unify Democrats, get broad support from independents, and divide the Republican base.
Republicans are really split 50/50 on these issues and there's a deep income divide within the Republican Party. Lower income Republicans really favor these kinds of programs. It's the higher income Republicans that are more opposed.
SIEGEL: You said that while there is a majority in favor of a tax on the wealthiest Americans, to benefit people lower down, there is some difference of opinion as to what it means to be rich; as to who the wealthiest are. Are we talking about the one percent wealthiest, the 25 percent wealthiest?
DIMOCK: It's one of the challenges when we were trying to design the survey. What do people mean by rich? It all is a matter of perspective. In fact, we tend to find that many people who - when we find out what their income and economic situation has - by most economic definitions, would be considered rich or in the highest percentiles, describing themselves very much as middle class.
SIEGEL: Middle class.
DIMOCK: And you find a bunch of that at the other end, too. There are many people who, by many economic measures, would be considered below middle class, thinking of themselves as middle class. It's a part of an American characteristic to kind of always consider your position relatively. But middle class is just a natural landing point for a lot of us.
SIEGEL: Michael Dimock, thanks for talking with us about the survey.
DIMOCK: Thank you.
SIEGEL: That's Michael Dimock, who is vice president of research at the Pew Research Center.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
It's no surprise that many moms-to-be think a lot about what they eat. For some women, intense cravings and big appetites lead to concerns about too much weight gain during pregnancy. Well, now, new research indicates there may be a direct link between a mother's diet during pregnancy and her child's future eating habits and weight. NPR's Allison Aubrey reports.
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: Kim Cooper, who's the mom of two young boys, recalls precisely what she craved during her pregnancies.
KIM COOPER: It's funny, with my first - with my older son - lemon squares. I wanted them and was making them all the time, and eating them.
AUBREY: So sugar.
COOPER: Yes. And the lemon, the tartness.
AUBREY: Now, Cooper says, don't get her wrong; she also ate plenty of healthy things - salads, beans, avocados. So she did not gain too much weight. And now, almost three years later, she says her son is a healthy weight, and he knows what he likes to eat.
COOPER: He definitely has the same taste buds. So anything that I like, he generally likes. So that could be a pretty big indication of what I eat is what he now likes.
AUBREY: Now, it doesn't always work out this way. But new studies suggest there is a fascinating and somewhat complicated relationship between a mom's diet during pregnancy and her babe's behaviors. It's been known for a while that if a mom-to-be is overweight when she conceives or gains too much weight during pregnancy, her child is more likely to become overweight, too. Physician David Ludwig, of Harvard, says this is well-established.
DR. DAVID LUDWIG: Increasing degrees of maternal weight gain during pregnancy consistently increase the risk of that child being obese.
AUBREY: So the question is, why? Is it becomes mom and baby have the same genes, or is it that if a mom eats an unhealthy diet, so do the kids?
LUDWIG: Children and mothers share many factors that could promote obesity, such as genes or environment.
AUBREY: And this is likely part of the explanation. But Ludwig's latest research suggests it's more complicated. It often happens that within the same family, you can have one sibling who's overweight while brothers and sisters have no weight problem at all. And when Ludwig looked into why, he discovered that the difference in how much weight a mother gained from pregnancy to pregnancy predicted which of her children would be heavier. He looked at more than 40,000 moms and found, for example, if a mom gained more during her second pregnancy compared to her first, then her second child was more likely to be overweight by age 10. So this shows there's more than genes at work here.
LUDWIG: Correct. And the importance of that is that genes are - at least, at this stage - not modifiable whereas diet and pregnancy weight gain are.
AUBREY: So if you want to protect your babe-to-be from the risk of obesity, new research suggests that what moms eat in the last three months of pregnancy may be key. Here's Yale researcher Tamas Horvath.
TAMAS HORVATH: It appears to us, at least, that by changing the diet in that period of development, you will have an impact on development of vulnerability to obesity.
AUBREY: Horvath says in his study, when pregnant mice were fed a high-fat, high-calorie diet, the brains of their pups changed. The diet rewired the part of the brain that's critical to regulating appetite. And this was true of the offspring of mice moms who weren't obese, and only were fed a high-fat diet during lactation, a period that corresponds to the third trimester of pregnancy in humans.
Now, it's not clear that it works exactly the same way in humans. But remember mom Kim Cooper, who told us that despite a few lemon squares, she did eat well towards the end of her pregnancy.
COOPER: More salads and more protein - probably more protein. I don't think - added that to my diet.
AUBREY: And this healthy pattern of eating has likely influenced her son for a lifetime.
Allison Aubrey, NPR News.
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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block. A team of scientists claims they've created the most advanced clock ever. They say this clock is so precise it would neither lose nor gain one second in about five billion years of continuous operation. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports on why anyone would want a timekeeping device this powerful.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: At the most basic level, to make a clock you just need something that repeats itself over and over in a way that lets you count off equal increments of time. Like, say, the sun rising and moving across the sky or the phases of the moon.
ADAM FRANK: Those were literally the first clocks for people.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Adam Frank is an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester who wrote a book called "About Time." He says for ages telling time by the sun was good enough.
FRANK: If you asked somebody a thousand years ago what time is it, the best they'd be able to do is say lunch maybe?
GREENFIELDBOYCE: But when societies got more complicated, mechanical clocks took off. They were in bell towers, then in homes. Clock technology advanced from merely ticking off the hours to keeping track of every minute. It was a huge change for humanity that today we take utterly for granted.
FRANK: When you're waiting for the bus and the bus is late, you feel those five minutes. The bus was supposed to be here at 9:55. It's 10 - oh my God, what's wrong this system, right? You feel those minutes as boredom, as anger, but that's only because you have a device that allows you to count off those minutes.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: These days, though, we can do way better than count off minutes or even seconds. Since the 1960s, official timekeeping has been based on the natural oscillations of atoms. And so-called atomic clocks just continue to improve. A few years ago, a team unveiled a clock that would neither gain nor lose one second in about 3.7 billion years. You'd think that would be good enough, but physicist Jun Ye says no, it's not. He works at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This week, he and his colleagues published a report in Nature that describes an even more precise clock - one that would neither gain nor lose a second in five billion years.
JUN YE: Many people would say, well, one second in five billion years - how is that going to impact our life? It's not. It's going to be irrelevant to what we are doing in daily life or in the society. Well, that's actually not true.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says all kinds of technology we depend on - computer networks, GPS systems - is only possible because of the precision timekeeping of atomic clocks, even though the first atomic clock makers could not have predicted where their inventions would lead.
YE: Nobody would have imagined everybody can have a cell phone and know exactly where you are.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: His team's new clock is the most precise and stable in the world. It uses laser light to trap a few thousand atoms of a metallic element called strontium. Scientists can detect the oscillations or ticks of these atoms - 430 trillion per second. The team already has upgrades in mind to improve the clock's performance. Ye says maybe they'll be able to build a clock that is accurate to one second in 50 billion years or even way better than that.
YE: Where does it end? Does nature place a fundamental limit of how good you can keep up, you know, you can keep the time? And as far I can tell at the moment, I don't see the limit.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says future super clocks could help scientists explore the bizarre quantum world or probe the space-time fabric of the universe. He says imagine a network of immensely powerful clocks distributed around the Earth. If a black hole explodes in a distant galaxy...
YE: ...there will space-time ripples - they'll call it gravitational waves - will propagate. And we can actually just listen to the clock and they would know the heartbeat of the universe.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: That's the kind of thrill that keeps clockmakers ticking. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
There are tons of books about how parents affect their children's lives. Not so many about how kids change their parents' lives. Well, writer and mother, Jennifer Senior is taking that idea on in her new book with the provocative title "All Joy and No Fun."
JENNIFER SENIOR: That title was a casual aside uttered by a friend of mine. He was a new father and when he asked what he thought of the gig, his response was: All joy and no fun. And I stole it.
BLOCK: All joy and no fun, that's the paradox of modern parenthood, as Jennifer Senior sees it. To untangle that paradox, she spent time observing parents interacting with their children and each other, and she went through scads of research studies about parental happiness. By and large, she says those numbers are pretty discouraging.
SENIOR: We assume that children will improve our happiness. That's why babies are called bundles of joy. But what's so interesting is that one of the most robust findings in the social sciences - and it's been this way for about 50 years - is that children do not improve their parents' happiness. In general, they have a net effect of either zero or they slightly compromise their parents' happiness. There are exceptions but overall the effect is zero to a slight negative.
BLOCK: So for you, when you started looking at those numbers about happiness and being a parent, what was missing? What were those data leaving out?
SENIOR: Right. So what the data was really leaving out was, in my view, joy. On most of these questionnaires and surveys, joy is indistinguishable from other kind of pleasant feelings. You know, if you're happy you just give it a five. Maybe a "Spinal Tap" analogy is good here. You know, I mean I think the joy really goes to 11 and there's no way to, you know, kind of measure that necessarily on a scale of one to five.
That five you're feeling when your kid laughs or when your kid says something that is so totally, like, amazingly weird, or insightful, or sensitive, it's not the same as like getting a good laugh out of watching a movie or having a really nice time with a friend. It's just like a different category of experience. And the fact that they all just numerically translate into the same thing is frustrating.
BLOCK: One of the studies that got a lot of attention came from the behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman. And he asked a bunch of working women what activities gave them the most pleasure. And lo and behold, childcare was way down on the list - 16th out of 19.
SENIOR: That study blows my doors off every time I hear somebody repeat it back to me.
(LAUGHTER)
SENIOR: What's truly amazing about Danny Kahneman's study is that when the women were answering this question, they didn't even realize they were ranking childcare so low. Daniel Kahneman did not design this study to determine how happy moms were. He simply wanted to know how happy people were during the day as they were going about doing their daily business.
And only at the end - when everything was all added up - did he discover that parents would have preferred, yeah: napping, answering e-mails, shopping, watching TV...
BLOCK: Housework.
SENIOR: ...housework - vacuuming clocked in higher, which is amazing.
BLOCK: You spent time observing different families around the country. And I wanted to ask you about a couple in Minnesota, Clint and Angie. And as you describe them, they both do shift work. They have two small kids. She's a psychiatric nurse. He manages rental car locations. But it's really clear from your narrative that the toll of taking care of their kids weighs very differently on them.
She feels guilty all the time, right, that she's not doing enough. And Clint is very forgiving of himself and he put it this way - it really struck me. He says: At home, I am the standard - I feel like I do it the way it should be done. She doesn't have that.
SENIOR: I feel like I want to make up bumper stickers that say: I Am The Standard...
(LAUGHTER)
SENIOR: ...and give them to every woman I know. So women seem to have this running tickertape of concerns in their heads all the time about the kids. Whereas men just have this great gift of compartmentalization, and this is not just me speaking anecdotally. This has been borne out in not just one study but many. And, you know, the amount of kind of psychological effort that women sort of spent on the kids - in addition to his physical effort and all that stuff - is really quite striking.
And the kind of amount of time that women spend berating themselves for not spending enough time with their kids...
BLOCK: Or not spending the right time with your kids.
SENIOR: ...or not doing the right - that's right, or spending the wrong kind of time with them. Heaven forbid that they actually, you know, turn on the television and let their kids watch TV for half an hour so that they can do the dishes, you know. It's really striking what the differences are.
So what blew me away about Angie and Clint, is that Angie during the day, she works with psychotics who are often in a delusional state and quite violent, and will bite, and will kick, and will hit. Yet she told me, without any equivocation or ambiguity, that she found her home life and her role as a mother much, much harder because she's not sure what she's supposed to do as a mom.
Whereas Clint who sits at a desk - he's not contending with delusional patients - he finds working with his kids much easier. He finds his role of parent much easier...
BLOCK: Because he's defined it for himself.
SENIOR: Because exactly, because he just as well, I am right because I am the standard. He's very confident that what he's doing is just fine. He doesn't second-guess himself at all. Whereas when he's at work, he's second-guessing himself all the time. That whole exchange, that said everything to me in a very small universe, I heard all of the differences between how men approach this job and how women do.
BLOCK: How leery are you of making broad generalizations about how women and how men parent differently, approach parenting differently in a book like this? Because obviously there so many exceptions to every rule.
SENIOR: Oh my God, terribly and if you knew how many times I kind of hit Select All/Delete...
(LAUGHTER)
SENIOR: ...from those parts of the book. The fact that there was so much data about this made them a comfortable assertion to make. So much so that I actually stand by my initial declaration, I want those bumper stickers made for all the gals we know.
BLOCK: I Am the Standard.
SENIOR: I Am the Standard.
BLOCK: In the end, at the end of writing this book, do you think you've come to understand yourself as a mother and maybe as a wife any differently, than you did when you went in?
SENIOR: In many ways, yes. I mean first of all, I think a lot of the material that I've read about joy and meaning is something that I think about all the time now. And, you know, I do feel like - having spoken to parents of adult children and watching them well up with this wild sense of pride and accomplishment knowing what they know about who they've produced in the world - it's sort of an unrivaled feeling.
I think also some of the data also that I ran across just helped me figure out how to be a better wife. I have now learned, that if I have something to do on a Saturday, I say so on a Tuesday. And we make plans for me to do that, so that on Saturday we're not duking it out about who gets the three hours.
So, oh yeah, for sure.
BLOCK: Jennifer Senior, her new book is titled "All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood." Jennifer, thanks so much.
SENIOR: Thank you.
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BLOCK: You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Of course, outfits are a huge part of the fun at the big awards shows and 'tis the season. The Golden Globes just passed. The Grammy's two days off, the Oscars not long after. So it's a good time to catch up on last year's movies and check up on the red carpet. It's also a good time to read about the glamorous life. Here's writer Kevin Roose with a book recommendation for the run-up to Oscar mania.
KEVIN ROOSE: I'm not really into the Oscars. I don't care that much about the stars, and I haven't seen most of the movies. But there is one book that made me want to quit my job, move to LA and see Hollywood up close. It's Jess Walter's novel "Beautiful Ruins."
The book is about a young woman named Claire. She's an assistant to a movie producer who's a bit past his prime. He once worked on "Cleopatra" with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. But now he's in a slump. He's had so much plastic surgery that he looks like a lacquered elf. And Claire spends all day hearing pitches for reality shows like "Drunk Midget House."
The book begins as a send up. We see Hollywood in all of its crass commercial glory - washed up stars who refuse to get out of their silk pajamas and greedy studio executives. But by the end, we realize the joke is on us. We're the audience clamoring for lowbrow reality shows and Hollywood is just giving us what we want.
The book is sharpest when it's exploring that space, the one that TV and film occupy in our lives. It turns out that even the most low-budget productions can be genuinely meaningful when they become part of our common cultural experience. One aspiring screenwriter in the book makes the connection between film and religion.
Wasn't the theater our temple, he asks, the one place we enter separately but emerge from two hours later together with the same experience, same guided emotions, same moral?
It's a convincing epiphany, and it makes me want to pay attention to what happens this awards season. If Jess Walter is right, there's something much more important going on at the Oscars than stars, red carpets and the glittering mess of Hollywood.
BLOCK: The book is "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter. It was recommended by New York Magazine writer Kevin Roose. His new book, "Young Money," comes out next month.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Bud Light has Arnold Schwarzenegger playing ping-pong. Jaguar has Ben Kingsley doing a James Bond villain. And Toyota is using the Muppets to peddle SUVs. We're talking about this year's Super Bowl commercials. At a reported $4 million a spot, only the mightiest corporations can afford to advertise in the big game. Well, there is one exception. NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports that this year, one small business will get a coveted slot for free.
ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: The promotion is called Small Business, Big Game, and it's a little like "American Idol" for little entrepreneurs. Intuit, the company that owns software tools like Quicken and Turbo Tax, is the sponsor. They're giving a professionally produced ad on the Super Bowl to the small business with, among other things, the most inspiring story. To get the word out, Intuit recruited sportscaster and former football coach Jimmy Johnson.
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JIMMY JOHNSON: What will over a hundred million people see? The first ever small business commercial on the big game. Who's with me?
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #1: Yeah.
BLAIR: Intuit says some 15,000 small businesses entered the contest, from an organic ice cream truck in Los Angeles to a pet spa in Ashburn, Virginia. Small companies are among Intuit's primary customers and it wants more. Heather McLellan is Intuit's director of corporate communications.
HEATHER MCLELLAN: Our concept is all centered around the fact that small businesses are the unsung heroes of our country. So the whole idea was how do we put them on the world stage in a way that's never been done before, and that led us to the concept of a commercial on the big game.
BLAIR: To be eligible, businesses had to have no more than 50 employees. Contestants posted online videos on a special website, telling their stories and urging people to vote for them. Ultimately, four finalists were selected: a pet food business in North Carolina called Barley Labs, a natural compost company in Idaho called Dairy Poop, a girls' toymaker in California, and an organic egg farm in Wrenshall, Minnesota.
LUCIE AMUNDSEN: I can't walk down the street without people asking me if we've won.
BLAIR: Lucie Amundsen of Locally Laid Eggs is thrilled they've got a one-in-four shot at something they could never afford on their own: a commercial during the Super Bowl. Plus, she says, they've been getting a ton of free media coverage from local fans.
AMUNDSEN: We had lawn signs, homemade signs in storefronts. We had a free billboard.
BLAIR: So in the same way "American Idol" can catapult a singer to stardom, the winner of Intuit's contest could see its business explode. And what's in it for Intuit? Advertising expert Barbara Lippert writes a column for mediapost.com.
BARBARA LIPPERT: I think it's a really good strategy because when you hear the word Intuit, you have no idea what it is.
BLAIR: Lippert says not only is Intuit getting its name out there, but it's helping potential customers grow.
LIPPERT: And hoping that they will become huge customers once they become huge businesses. So it's a really good bet.
BLAIR: Now, there have been some hiccups in this promotional contest. The marijuana advocacy group NORML entered...
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UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Legalization.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Yes...
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: We...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Can.
BLAIR: ...and did extremely well in the public voting. But they didn't make it to the second round. Why not? Heather McLellan says their panel of judges valued businesses over causes.
MCLELLAN: The second round, when we got to the 20, it was based on a number of criteria. Some of those criteria, as you can imagine, are things like, does it represent the Intuit brand?
BLAIR: Another snafu: The toymaker GoldieBlox did make it to the final four but got involved in a legal battle when they adapted a Beastie Boys' song...
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #2: (Singing) Girls, you think you know what we want. Girls.
BLAIR: But GoldieBlox never asked the band's permission. Intuit says they are not getting involved. The winner of Small Business, Big Game will be announced two days before the Super Bowl on January 31st. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.
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Winners of the 56th annual Grammy Awards will be announced Sunday night. Millions of viewers are expected to watch the telecast despite perennial criticism of the choices. The organization that gives the awards, the Recording Academy, has also been criticized for how it spends its money. NPR's Mandalit del Barco reports on what the organization does besides stage its very elaborate televised variety show.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: More than 28 million people around the world tuned in to watch the Grammy Awards last year, and this year's telecast is once again being touted as the most complicated and expensive production on TV.
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BARCO: CBS has aired the Grammys for 40 years. In 2011 it renewed its deal with the Recording Academy to broadcast the live event annually until the year 2021. The previous deal was worth $20 million a year and the current agreement is reportedly worth even more. LL Cool J is this year's host.
LL COOL J: It's the biggest music show in the world and it has to be fun, it has to be exciting and it has to be entertaining to the majority of the world.
BOB LEFSETZ: There are so many categories. Who cares?
BARCO: That's Bob Lefsetz, a blogger who's widely read in the industry and a former music attorney. He's long been a critic of the Grammys and the Recording Academy.
LEFSETZ: It's really become about the TV show. That's where they get the lion's share of their money. Their number one mission is to get paid. Their number two mission is to put on a TV show that gets ratings.
BARCO: The Academy as it's known used to be called the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, NARAS for short. It operates a number of 501C3 nonprofits that include the NARAS Foundation and the MusiCares Foundation. The former was established to make grants to music preservation and education.
NEIL PORTNOW: We've funded hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to high school music programs.
BARCO: Neil Portnow is the Academy's president and CEO. He points out that music here supports musicians and others in the industry who are down on their luck or struggling with substance abuse. In 2011, the last year for which the Academy's tax records are available, MusiCares dispensed more than $3 million in grants and other services. That same year the NARAS Foundation spent more than $600,000. This week, 32 high school students from around the country are in L.A. for what's known as Grammy Camp.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: One, two, one, two, three, four...
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BARCO: The jazz combo, choir and big band are performing for all of the Grammy-related events, including a gig with the rock band Vampire Weekend. And they're gearing up to play at the Grammys after-party on Sunday.
COLBY EWTUYA: I'm nervous, personally.
STEPHANIE HENSON: Excited, anxious.
HENRY SOLOMON: I'm playing for Bruno Mars or Carrie Underwood or Jack Black, or the people like that. And you're just like...
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SOLOMON: ...like wow.
BARCO: Singers Colby Ewatuya from Dallas and Stephanie Henson from Des Moines, and saxophonist Henry Solomon from Michigan. Most students pay a tuition fee after they're selected to participate in Grammy Camp. Still, these 17 and 18 year olds say this is the experience of their lives.
HENSON: Not only are they teaching us about musical aspects, they're teaching us how to perform.
SOLOMON: Like, they treat us like professional musicians and they expect that from us.
BARCO: The Recording Academy also runs the Latin Grammys and The Grammy Museum in downtown L.A. It hosts private concerts and features exhibitions of Michael Jackson's jackets, Jenni Rivera's gowns, and interactive displays where visitors can play drums and sing along with a virtual Ringo Starr.
RINGO STARR: Hit the play button. Hit it now.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Singing) We all live in a yellow submarine...
BARCO: The Academy's various operations have been criticized for how much they spend on overhead compared to what they dispense in grants and services. Its finances drew the scrutiny of the Los Angeles Times and the IRS a decade ago. At the time, its outspoken president, Michael Greene, was the highest paid nonprofit executive in the country. No charges were ever filed and Greene ultimately resigned, replaced by Portnow. He says he was brought on to calm the turmoil.
PORTNOW: Part of the reason I was chosen for the job is a pretty positive image set of relationships in the industry, my demeanor, my temperament...
BARCO: I have to ask what your salary is.
PORTNOW: It's all available on the 990's.
BARCO: Those tax forms for 2011 show Portnow was paid more than a million and a half dollars. He will not say what The Academy spends staging the Grammy Awards telecast or how much of the $20 million it gets from CBS each year goes to grants and services. But Charity Navigator, which evaluates nonprofits, rates The Academy's efforts pretty close to those of other charities.
And critic Bob Lefsetz says he doesn't have anything negative to say about The Academy's charity efforts.
LEFSETZ: There is no smoking gun here, there's nothing hidden. They are raising money. And now more than ever, they're giving a higher percentage away. Those who deserve money, are they aware of the program? For somebody that puts on an international television show, I don't believe the footprint of their charitable efforts is commensurate.
BARCO: This Sunday's Grammy Awards show is expected to be one of the most highly rated TV specials of the year. And the head of the Recording Academy is no longer the highest paid nonprofit executive in the country.
Mandalit del Barco, NPR News.
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BLOCK: You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
The Obama administration announced today that health insurance sign-ups under the Affordable Care Act have topped three million. And so the push has begun to encourage those under 35 to get covered. All along, the theory has been that without young and health people in the insurance pools, premiums will spiral upwards in future years. But now, it looks like that may not in fact be the case. NPR's Julie Rovner explains.
JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: Now that the problems with the HealthCare.gov website have been largely fixed, the Obama administration finally feels confident enough to roll out its long-planned outreach campaign to lure the young and uninsured. Among their celebrity spokespeople is former L.A. Laker, Magic Johnson, who released a video last week.
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MAGIC JOHNSON: Young people, they think they're Superman, like nothing ever going to happen to them. But trust me, one day, something is going to happen and you're going to need a quality health plan.
ROVNER: Among other things, the administration plans to air ads during the upcoming Winter Olympics and March Madness college basketball tournaments. But increasingly, experts like Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation have been wondering just how critical young people really are to making the health exchanges operate smoothly.
LARRY LEVITT: There's been this incredible focus on reaching young invincibles and getting them to sign up for insurance. But it turns out that the invincible part is actually much more important than the young part.
ROVNER: That's because under the health law, insurers can no longer deny people coverage or charge them more because of their health status. So it makes getting healthy people the targets regardless of age. Levitt says...
LEVITT: An insurer would much rather have a healthy 60-year-old who goes to the gym every day than a sick 25-year-old.
ROVNER: Insurance industry consultant Robert Laszewski agrees that it's not the young who insurers want most.
ROBERT LASZEWSKI: We need healthy people. We need healthy 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds and 50-year-olds and 60-year-olds.
ROVNER: Laszewski says there's another reason insurance companies might want the older healthy person rather than the younger one. The older person is more profitable.
LASZEWSKI: It's not uncommon for a 20-year-old to only be paying $100 a month or a $120 a month. So getting lots of young people doesn't necessarily get us lots of premium.
ROVNER: That's because while the law doesn't let insurers charge sick people more, it does let them charge older people more, up to three times more. Laszewski says what worries him right now isn't a particularly small percentage of young people, but how few people of any age have signed up for insurance so far through the exchanges.
LASZEWSKI: We've always felt that you need 70 percent of a group to be able to get a good cross-section of healthy and sick to make the program sustainable. And the administration's only at about 10 percent. This is troubling.
ROVNER: And what if the mix, healthy versus sick, or young versus old, doesn't come out quite right? Well, the law is actually designed to take that into account, says Larry Levitt.
LEVITT: There are a number of shock absorbers built into the system that mean, particularly in the first couple of years, the insurance system can withstand a skewed mix of enrollees.
ROVNER: Those shock absorbers include several different kinds of additional payments that can go to health plans that end up enrolling sicker-than-anticipated populations. But those payments don't go on indefinitely, notes insurance consultant Laszewski.
LASZEWSKI: That's only going to help for a very limited period of time. It's training wheels, if you will, to get this thing launched.
ROVNER: He says the real key to making the exchanges self-sustaining is to build the numbers overall.
LASZEWSKI: I think the focus is wrong in that they're reaching out only to young people. They need to be reaching out to everyone.
ROVNER: The administration has two more months to get those numbers up. Open enrollment ends March 31st. Julie Rovner, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block. We begin today with our regular political chat and we're going to talk about the week ahead. And it is a big one coming up. On Tuesday, President Obama will deliver the State of the Union address for 2014. And it's common for presidents to state that the state of the Union is strong, but this year the president will focus on income inequality. So, how might the president frame a strong nation with a widening gap between rich and poor? Our regular Friday commentators are here to talk about that and more. E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and Brookings Institution and David Brooks of the New York Times. Good to see you both.
E.J. DIONNE: Good to see you.
DAVID BROOKS: Good to be with you.
BLOCK: And as we mentioned, the president will be talking about is income inequality and upward mobility. E.J., what would you like to hear?
DIONNE: Well, I would like to hear him talk both about the economics of it; in particular, you know, particular proposals, like the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits, expanded pre-K programs, all of which are very popular. I'd also like him to talk about the roots of the problem, both in globalization, technological change and the cultural issues used not as an excuse but as a problem we have to deal with partly through the economy. I think he's got an enormous opportunity here, not only to do something for himself over the next three years but to shape the post-Obama debate. We're already going to be talking about that. And I think on this issue, the public is on his side. There's a Pew poll that came out yesterday that shows Democrats and independents very together on this and Republicans isolated. And whatever the politics, it is the issue we need to talk about as a country.
BLOCK: David, you said before that the language of income inequality introduces a class conflict element to this discussion, which you don't particularly like. You'd like President Obama to widen the debate. How would you like him to do that?
BROOKS: Well, I think it's a little incoherent. The reason the rich are getting richer is one set of problems. The reason the poor are not rising is an entirely different set of problems. I guess I'd like him to talk about opportunity and mobility and what can we do to give people the tools to compete in the economy. And its ground that's perfectly familiar to him. How to give people better parenting skills in those family partnerships, how to give kids early childhood so they're school ready - some of the early childhood programs he's talked about, some of the charter schools. A lot needs to be done for teenagers. Teenagers are dropping out of the successful career path at greater rates than any other age group. So, I'd like to see him lay out a menu of human capital policies, not emphasizing the class inequality as much as just opportunity. And I do think you could get a bipartisan legislative victory out of that.
DIONNE: I would like to believe you could get some bipartisanship out of some of those things, but I don't think the cultural questions are so easily divided from the economic questions and the questions of class. There are reasons why families are in trouble, and many of those reasons are economic. So, we really have to bring together the class concerns with some of those issues that David is talking about.
BROOKS: I agree with that. Single parenthood strongly correlates to income inequality and low opportunity, especially for the children of single moms. And so why is that? A, economic, because there are not a lot of marriageable dads out there making decent money. And so you do have to have wage subsidies for that; you have to have infrastructure jobs to give men more jobs to make them more marriageable. But then there's also a cultural factor of prioritizing marriage, making it early in the life story where people decide to get married before they have kids. And so I agree, it's both those things.
BLOCK: This will be President Obama's first State of Union since the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act. It comes at a time when his approval rating is stuck in the low 40s. Should his address reflect that in its tone, E.J.?
DIONNE: I don't think he has to be defensive here. I suspect he will talk some about the Affordable Care Act, although my guess is he'll say the words middle class even more often than the Republican response says the words Obamacare. But I don't think he needs to be apologetic. He's got to say we had a problem and we fixed it and we're moving ahead. And then he's got to talk about the larger issues.
BLOCK: David?
BROOKS: A lot of the Republicans are bringing guests and they're bringing people who have been thrown off their insurance policies, people will illnesses. So, they're certainly going to raise it, and I think in a Republican response we're certainly going to hear a lot of that.
BLOCK: We have talked to you recently about the troubles facing the Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. Well, this week it's trouble for Republican Robert McDonnell, who just ended his term as governor of Virginia. He and his wife pleaded not guilty today to federal charges of conspiracy and fraud. They're accused of accepting luxury gifts and loans from a businessman who was seeking favors from state government. David Brooks, it was not that long ago that Bob McDonnell had been talked about, along with Chris Christie, as someone with great presidential potential in 2016.
BROOKS: Yeah. I, you know, I totally don't get this. You know, why do you want a Rolex anyway? I mean, you want it for status. But you're governor of Virginia. That is status. So what exactly are you getting out of the Rolex? My only psychological theory is years ago, I started to notice a phenomenon called status income disequilibrium, which is people of high status but low income. So they're hanging around people with Rolex, Rolex, Rolex; they go home and all they've got is a Swatch. And so they're desperately unhappy.
BLOCK: It's aspirational, you're saying.
BROOKS: Yes. And so we should have telethons for such people.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: E.J., there was a revealing email from Maureen McDonnell, Gov. McDonnell's wife, included in the indictment. She wrote to an aide: Bob is screaming about the thousands I'm charging up in credit card debt. We are broke, have an unconscionable amount in credit card debt already.
And that, of course, became pure grist for the mill of Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" this week. Let's take a listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, 'THE DAILY SHOW')
JON STEWART: So they had their own money problems. Well, we all know what needs to happen here. Somebody needs to sit the McDonnells down and give them some straight talk about financial responsibility.
(SOUND CLIP MONTAGE)
BOB MCDONNELL: You can't spend more than you have for any period of time. You'll go broke... Spending is out of control at a lot of levels of government... We have to live within our means... And until we start managing the government's money like people manage their own money...
BLOCK: E.J., of course, that was Bob McDonnell there, talking about fiscal responsibility.
DIONNE: The moral of this story is, as the old song says, Papa don't preach. I think that this is a remarkable story. I agree with David that there is a habit of politicians who hang around with rich people a lot, to think they should live just like them. They can wait until after they're out of office, if they want to make money. And there's so many morality tales here - the way in which the collapse of the housing market got them in trouble.
Some people blame her. Some people say, how dare you stick this on the wife? I just wish they had not wanted things so much.
BLOCK: E.J. and David, thanks to you both.
DIONNE: Thank you.
BROOKS: Thank you.
BLOCK: E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post, and David Brooks of The New York Times.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Every four years a handful of cities vie to host the big nominating conventions for the major political parties and the competition for 2016 has begun. Among the very aggressive bidders for the Republican National Convention is none other than Las Vegas. Certainly it's a place that knows how to host a big convention, but for the GOP to give Vegas the nod, the party known for conservatism will have to look past the city's well-earned reputation as Sin City. NPR national political correspondent Don Gonyea reports.
DON GONYEA, BYLINE: Casinos, the Strip, nightlife, world class performers, family shows, yes, but also adult entertainment venues - lots of them. All of this is what has drawn conventions to Las Vegas ever since it rose out of the desert. It's among the world's strongest brands, and there's that slogan - say it with me - what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. And if your gut reaction is that it's not exactly the kind of place a political party wants to be associated with, well, that's what the Las Vegas 2016 committee is eager to change.
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GONYEA: This video, featuring Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval makes a political case for the city.
GOVERNOR BRIAN SANDOVAL: Nevadans have come from everywhere and found success in coming together. We are stronger because of our vibrant Hispanic, African-American and Asian communities. Our party can and must appeal to everyone.
GONYEA: Another video - it's three minutes with no voiceover - has images of the nearby Grand Canyon, the Hoover Dam, kids running on a soccer field, the local NASCAR track, green golf courses in the desert and exterior nighttime shots of the Strip, though no photos of slot machines or gambling. Sentences fade in and out listing a series of facts: 21,000 conventions came here last year alone; 15 of the world's 20 largest hotels; 531 places of worship. And there's one that says Las Vegas could accommodate all the attendees from the 2012 Tampa convention inside a one-mile radius. That's a reference to the many far flung hotels and long bus rides GOP conventioneers endured two summers ago in Florida.
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GONYEA: Nevada Lieutenant Governor Brian Krolicki is at the Republican National Committee's winter meetings in Washington this week. He downplays the need to overcome the image of Sin City and how the RNC could be nervous about unflattering media coverage of delegates out on the town.
LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR BRIAN KROLICKI: There are opportunities everywhere in the world for behavior that's not believed to be acceptable by folks. We are the global entertainment of the world. Forty million a year come to visit because of our world class shopping, shows. You know, that is what we are and that's what we represent.
GONYEA: Other places here at the RNC meetings making a pitch for the Republican convention are Denver, which successfully hosted the Democrats in '08. There's also Columbus pointing out that Ohio is the most hard fought of all battleground states. Also here are Kansas City and Phoenix. But none have had the robust lobbying presence of Las Vegas, which, as with the Vegas Strip itself, sees bigger and bolder as better in luring a political convention. Don Gonyea, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Investigators and emergency crews are on the scene of a horrific fire in eastern Quebec. A senior citizens residence in the town of L'isle Verte became an inferno in the middle of the night. Eight people are confirmed dead and 30 are still unaccounted for. We have more from reporter Dan Karpenchuk.
DAN KARPENCHUK, BYLINE: Overnight, heavy specialized equipment was brought in to help investigators. This morning the gutted 52-unit seniors' residence resembled a macabre ice palace. And Leftenant Guy Lapointe of the Quebec Police says going through the debris is slow and painstaking work in minus-four-degree temperatures.
GUY LAPOINTE: The biggest issue for us now is the difficulty with the scene given the fact that a lot of water was used to put out the flames, given the fact that this water is frozen, that we're talking about a three-story building that has collapsed. And for us it's very important to go very delicately because we want to make sure to preserve potential victims that might have been inside the blaze.
KARPENCHUK: Twenty people were rescued from the burning building by firefighters, taken out through the back door in their pajamas and housecoats. But the fast moving blaze hampered rescue efforts. Many of the residents in their 80s were confined to wheelchairs and walkers. Grief counselors are on their way to L'isle Verte, a tight-knit community of 1,500. And Quebec's social services minister, Veronique Hivon, is urging people affected by the tragedy not to isolate themselves.
VERONIQUE HIVON: We will be reaching out to people, and we will be going into the streets, knocking on doors. We will be also going near the site to make sure that people who may not be asking for help, get the help.
KARPENCHUK: Francois Lapointe, a member of parliament, says this is a nightmare for residents of L'isle Verte.
LAPOINTE: I've talked with a social worker from (foreign language spoken) yesterday, who had to tell volunteer firefighter to take a break because they've been fighting a fire for, like, eight hours knowing that some of their relatives were inside.
KARPENCHUK: Investigators still don't know what caused the fire. And already there are other questions about whether the sprinkler system was working and why the fire spread so quickly. For NPR News, I'm Dan Karpenchuk.
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BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
A couple of centuries ago, there was a series of big earthquakes in what we now think of as the country's midsection. Geologically speaking, it's the New Madrid fault zone. Since then there's been some small seismic activity. And scientists have gone back and forth on whether this area still poses a threat for another major earthquake. Some say it's seismically dead or at least in a deep sleep. Well, now research suggests that the New Madrid fault zone is alive and kicking. Joining me to talk about that is geologist Susan Hough. She's with the U.S. Geological Survey. She's coauthor of the study published this week in the journal Science. Ms. Hough, welcome to the program.
SUSAN HOUGH: Thank you.
BLOCK: And let's talk a bit about these big earthquakes in the Midwest over several months in 1811 and 1812. How big were they and how far away were they felt?
HOUGH: Well, we don't know the magnitudes precisely because we didn't have seismometers, but we've estimated magnitudes of at least 7.0 for the four largest earthquakes. They were felt all the way to the east coast. They rang church bells in Charleston, South Carolina. One of the documented fatalities was actually near Louisville, Kentucky, which is relatively far from the New Madrid zone. But as we know, in the east coast, the seismic waves travel quite efficiently. So, the effects of any one earthquake are felt more broadly.
BLOCK: Now, I mentioned thought that the New Madrid faults were dead, even though there were some smaller earthquakes since those big ones. So, why the thinking that the fault zone was, if not dead, at least really sleeping?
HOUGH: Right. Well, it has been assessed as a high-hazard zone, so this isn't entirely new. But there were really two arguments that it might in fact be dead. One was that you don't observe a lot of warping at the surface from GPS measurements and the other is the argument that the earthquakes we observe at the surface in present daytimes are actually aftershocks of the earthquakes 200 years ago.
BLOCK: And your research seems to be saying otherwise, right? You're saying this fault zone is alive and kicking.
HOUGH: Right. So, that was the part of the story that we focused on. If you sort of look at the activity that we know about, it kind of looks like an aftershock sequence, but we really tested that hypothesis very rigorously. And when you do that, the hypothesis just fails, because we know it's not a plate boundary, where big plates are moving past each other. Every indication is that there's active processes going on deep in the crust and we're not sure what they are and why they're happening. But our results tell us that something is alive and kicking down there to keep generating these small earthquakes, which we conclude are not aftershocks.
BLOCK: Well, for folks who hare living in the New Madrid fault zone area, they're going to be wondering, you know, what's the likelihood, what's the probabilities that a really big earthquake could strike here again. Is there any way to answer that question?
HOUGH: We can just sort of give an assessment of the overall probabilities. And what we know about New Madrid, the expectation is that a magnitude 7.0-ish earthquake might happen once every 500 years. And a magnitude 6.0-ish event might happen, on average, once every 50 years. It's been 1895 since we've seen the last event close to magnitude 6.0.
BLOCK: Susan Hough is a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena. Thanks so much for talking with us.
HOUGH: Thank you. Glad to be here.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BLOCK: This is NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block. After a day of delays and threats of walking out, the Syrian peace talks are back on track. Tomorrow in Geneva, delegates from the Syrian government are set to sit down with delegates from the opposition face to face for the first time. UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi made the announcement.
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: I met the delegations of the opposition and the government separately yesterday and again today. Tomorrow we have agreed we will meet in the same room.
BLOCK: And we turn now to NPR's Deborah Amos who is in Geneva following the twists and turns of the day. And earlier today, Deb, it seemed these talks were on the brink of collapse. What happened?
DEBORAH AMOS: Well, it did seem so but Western diplomatic sources say that behind the scenes it was more positive. But there was a lot of posturing. The opposition insisted that it would not sit down with the regime unless the regime explicitly endorsed the Geneva One communique, and that calls for a transitional government in Syria. Government negotiators took to the media center today and they came out hitting hard. They said the opposition wasn't serious, they weren't ready. If we don't get the show on the road we are leaving by Saturday.
But, in fact, according to sources, the opposition wasn't ready to meet. You know, they only took the vote last week to come here. They only announced the official delegation late today. It's going to be headed by Hadi el-Bahara who's a U.S.-educated businessman. He's a member of the Syrian National Coalition. So what we saw today is that the regime delegation won the media war. The opposition tried late in the day to catch up. But Lakhdar Brahimi, behind closed doors, got everybody on the same page.
BLOCK: And Deb, you mentioned that the sticking point here has been the negotiations over a transitional government in Syria, which the Syrian government has adamantly opposed. Where do things stand on that?
: Well, the Syrian regime actually did endorse Geneva One. They did it on Wednesday. The UN representative from Syria said that they supported it. Western diplomats say that the Russians played a very helpful role behind the scenes today to get this all sorted. You know, the Russians have also signed on to this Geneva One, which calls for a transitional government. But since they have supported it they've sparred with U.S. officials over just what it means. The Russians don't say, for example, that Bashar al-Assad has to go.
So in the press conference it was striking that Brahimi, when he was asked about this specifically, he said about the regime's delegation, no one is contesting there are differences in interpretation.
BLOCK: OK. Well, tomorrow, as we said, the first face-to-face meeting will start between the Syrian government and the opposition. What are they going to talk about?
: Well, you know, since this conference began, both sides have been hurling invectives at each other. They've been calling each other terrorists and blaming each other for the ruin of Syria. So tomorrow they're going to sit face to face, not speak to each other. Brahimi's going to be in the middle. And he says about the day, they're going to talk about procedure. And then later in the afternoon they will have a longer session.
If it works out they'll continue. They'll talk about humanitarian quarters and that could be sorted by next week if they come to some agreement. This is what he said about the stakes of this meeting.
BRAHIMI: The huge ambition of this process is to save Syria, no less than that. So I hope that the government, the opposition and the United Nations will be up to the task.
: After he said it, he asked a number of reporters to pray for him.
BLOCK: And they'll be talking toward each other I gather but not to each other. NPR's Deborah Amos reporting from Geneva. Deb, thanks.
: Thank you.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And to Lebanon now where mounds of garbage are piling up in the capital, Beirut. Trash collection was halted after environmental activists staged a sit-in at an overflowing landfill just outside the city. Today police briefly arrested a leader of the protest. NPR's Alice Fordham spoke with him earlier this week.
ALICE FORDHAM, BYLINE: This could be quite idyllic. It's a warm Lebanese night, the stars are bright, I'm in between two cliffs covered in trees and there's a little creek running out to the sea. But the idyllic climate is spoiled about every five minutes when a huge garbage truck rolls on by.
(SOUNDBITE OF GARBAGE TRUCK)
FORDHAM: This is the little town of Naameh, home of the garbage dump, much bigger than it was ever meant to be. The smell is terrible and the residents have had enough.
ASHUA DIASH: Boy, it's really unbelievable when you have that stink.
FORDHAM: That's Ashua Diash, a professor and environmental activist. He's watched and smelled the landfill here grow since it was first built in 1997.
DIASH: It's becoming bigger and bigger, more and more, worse and worse everywhere.
FORDHAM: Mr. Diash is the leader of this protest camp that's blocked garbage trucks from driving into the landfill. He was briefly arrested earlier today but he says he will keep protesting. He's a Lebanese-American who spent 25 years in the U.S. And he says he wants to bring what he learned there about waste management to Lebanon.
DIASH: What we propose as a solution for this, I mean, tragedy that we have here, the landfill, the three R: reduce, reuse and recycle.
FORDHAM: After the trucks were turned away from the site for two days, Beirut's waste disposal company said that since it couldn't dump trash it wouldn't collect it either. And for a week it didn't. So dumpsters overflowed. In the wake of Lebanon's 15-year civil war, this landfill was created as part of an emergency reconstruction plan. But projected recycling plants and waste energy schemes were never completed. Almost all of Beirut's trash is dumped. The government collapsed last year and a caretaker cabinet doesn't have the authority to address the situation.
The plan was that this site would hold 2 million tons of waste and be closed by 2003. It's now set to hold 12 million tons. Mark Dual, an academic and activist, told me about the first time a couple dozen of them managed to stop a truck coming in.
MARK DUAL: We got the truck, climbed on it. We had all our posters, stamped them all around the truck, took the pictures we wanted and that created the big buzz and a lot of support for us. Because people knew it was doable. You could stop the trucks.
FORDHAM: Environment Minister Nasamel Houri told NPR that he sympathizes. But the problem can't be solved immediately. Politicians are still trying to deal with problems, like trash, left over from the civil war. After the release of Mr. Diash from detention earlier today, protestors went home. But they vow to be back on Monday staging sit-ins and demonstrations in new locations.
(SOUNDBITE OF GARBAGE TRUCK)
FORDHAM: For now the garbage trucks are rolling again but Beirut may have to prepare for even bigger trash piles. Alice Fordham, NPR News.
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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Although the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, there are ongoing fights in many states over how to carry it out. One conflict concerns navigators, the insurance counselors who are supposed to help people learn about the law. This week saw two major developments: a federal judge put a strict Missouri law on hold, saying the state didn't have the right to regulate the work of navigators. But in Texas, state officials did just that this week.
Carrie Feibel of member station KUHF in Houston reports on the new rules in Texas.
CARRIE FEIBEL, BYLINE: Navigators are the foot soldiers of the Affordable Care Act. They go to health fairs, libraries, community centers, anywhere they might find people who need help signing up.
CEDRIC ANTHONY: I'm seeing a really big demand. A lot of people are kind of bamboozled. They don't know which way to go.
FEIBEL: That's Cedric Anthony, a navigator in Houston. This week, he learned he'll have to take 20 more hours of state-mandated training on top of roughly 25 hours he's already completed for the federal government. The new rules also mean he'll have to register with the state, undergo a background check and get fingerprinted. Anthony worries the extra steps will distract navigators at a crucial time. As in other states, enrollment on HealthCare.gov has been slower than expected. This year's deadline is March 31st.
ANTHONY: I just feel that it's just going to be more hours in the classroom actually learning instead of the hours we could be putting manpower on the streets getting people signed up.
FEIBEL: But Texas officials say the new regulations will protect consumers because signing up involves sensitive data like Social Security numbers and income. Julia Rathgeber is the Texas Insurance Commissioner. She issued this recorded statement after the rules came out this week.
JULIA RATHGEBER: These rules will give Texans confidence that navigators have passed background checks and received the training they need to safeguard consumers' personal information.
FEIBEL: Texas Senator John Cornyn also praised the rules, saying, quote, "Obamacare presents enough problems for Texans without the risk of a convicted felon handling their personal information." But Orell Fitzsimmons dismisses the idea that navigators are untrustworthy. He's the field director for United Labor Unions Local 100, which employs 17 navigators in Texas.
ORELL FITZSIMMONS: We've been doing this for three months now and we know all the ins and outs better than anyone else in this city. So if they want to challenge us, that's fine. If they want fingerprints, they can have them. We're not hiding anything.
FEIBEL: Obamacare supporters say the regulations are merely political roadblocks preventing navigators from doing their jobs. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston says Texas should stay out of it.
REPRESENTATIVE SHEILA JACKSON LEE: It's a federal program. The state has no right to interfere with burdensome regulations. It's almost similar to blocking someone from the right to vote because of the color of their skin. Now, you're blocking a sick person or a person that is uninsured from getting access to the information.
FEIBEL: Texas has somewhere between four and 500 navigators. Orell Fitzsimmons of the labor union has only a few weeks to get his navigators registered and fingerprinted. And he also has to find money to pay for the new training. But overall, he's optimistic.
FITZSIMMONS: In the next open enrollment period, which starts October 15th, we're going to get swarmed by people. So it's the first taste, it's not the last taste. And it's going to be successful. In the long run, people are going to remember who was against this and they're going to remember who was for this.
FEIBEL: Texas is one of 17 states that have passed laws restricting navigators. Tennessee and Missouri have both been sued over the issue and their navigator laws are now tied up in the courts. For NPR News, I'm Carrie Feibel in Houston.
BLOCK: This story is part of a collaboration of NPR, KUHF and Kaiser Health News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
In Ukraine, it appears that massive protests are escalating. Today, protesters took over a government ministry building in the capital, Kiev, and they've extended their barricades further into the city. At least three protesters have been killed in clashes with riot police. And the protests have spread to other parts of Ukraine, especially in the west. The protests began two months ago when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich backed away from a deal with the European Union and instead tilted toward closer relations with Russia. Protesters were further inflamed when the government imposed new laws restricting the right to protest.
NPR's Moscow correspondent Corey Flintoff joins me now from the center of Kiev. He's in Maidan Square. And, Corey, you're just back in Kiev after time in Moscow. How have things changed since the last time you were in Ukraine?
COREY FLINTOFF, BYLINE: Things have changed surprisingly, Melissa. I'm looking around at the tent camp that's been built in the central square here in Kiev, and it's much more permanent. It's a tent city, essentially. There are tents built from one end of the square to the other. And there are enormous barricades now, mostly built up with bags filled with snow and then frozen. So this is now a fortified tent camp and it's going to be very, very difficult for the government or the riot police to dislodge these protesters. They are very determined.
BLOCK: And what about the tone of the rhetoric that you're hearing there?
FLINTOFF: Well, it varies quite a lot. The main protest leaders have been urging the crowd to maintain a sort of truce, at least until we hear more from the government. And the truce has largely been obeyed. It's been fairly quiet today. And, in fact, the areas where there were significant clashes over the past four days have been fairly quiet. I do see people here in what amounts to battle gear. They're wearing helmets and various kinds of homemade armor and carrying various kinds of homemade weapons - batons and sticks and that sort of thing. So they're obviously - they seem very ready to fight, if need be.
BLOCK: Corey, you went today to that government building the protesters were able to take over. What did you see there?
FLINTOFF: Well, it's basically a government office building. It's the office of agricultural policy. It's about a six-story building. And it was taken over this morning by about 30 protesters. We talked to their leader, who is now the supervisor of the building. He said that the government employees there let them come in, and there was no resistance whatsoever. They moved in and they're planning to house people in the halls of this office building. They think they can house as many as 3,000 people in what essentially will be a warm space and allow the protest to carry on longer.
BLOCK: Just get them out of the cold.
FLINTOFF: Exactly right.
BLOCK: Corey, there have been talks, negotiations of some sort between President Yanukovych and the leaders of the opposition. Is there any sense that those are bearing fruit in any way?
FLINTOFF: Well, it's very hard to tell what's going on. At one point, we were hearing that it sounded like Yanukovych might be willing to compromise. He's discussed the idea of having an amnesty for protesters who've been arrested and releasing them and making changes in the government, a government shakeup that would remove some of the officials who have been involved in violence against the protesters and presumably to put in someone who would be more acceptable to them.
BLOCK: I did read, Corey, that when the opposition leaders came out after those talks to address their crowds in the street, that they were greeted with jeers. It's not clear to me that the opposition leaders control the masses in the streets.
FLINTOFF: That's absolutely right. There's a big leadership problem here. The rank and file protesters have been increasingly dissatisfied with the fact that this sort of triumvirate that's been leading them - the leaders of three separate parties - haven't been able to settle either on a single program, a single policy toward the government. They haven't been able to make decisions in an effective way. And, you know, they just haven't been able to lead very well. And people are getting tired of it. That's why the leaders are getting so much guff from the rank and file. They want this triumvirate to decide on a single leader who can speak for them and can start making effective, decisive actions.
BLOCK: That's NPR's Corey Flintoff from the center of Kiev, Ukraine. Corey, thanks so much.
FLINTOFF: Thank you, Melissa.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Stock prices soared in the past year, but this was a rough week and prices really tumbled today. The Dow lost 318 points, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ both fell 2.1 percent. This was part of a global sell-off, as investors focus on the growing financial turmoil in the developing world. NPR's Chris Arnold is following this and he joins me now. Chris, the year started off looking like the global economy was more stable. We didn't have a financial crisis unfolding somewhere. So what's going on now?
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: Right. Well, the last two days have definitely been bad for the stock market, and we haven't been used to seeing that for a while. But keep in mind that the Dow and the S&P were up a lot last year. The S&P was up 30 percent. The Dow was up 26.5 percent in a single year. That's just a huge move. So a couple of down days really shouldn't rattle people too much. A lot of analysts were saying, look, maybe it's an understandable pull back. And it's important to say that investors themselves were not panicking today. This was not people running around with their hands in the air and selling everything they had.
(LAUGHTER)
ARNOLD: That was not happening today. It's hard to say exactly why these things happen. But yesterday, one thing did happen, and China came out with a disappointing report on how its manufacturing economy was doing. That got a lot of attention. And then there's this concern, as you talked about, with slowing economies in emerging markets. That's Argentina, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa. Currencies there are getting very beat-up.
BLOCK: Yeah. And so even though the U.S. economy is recovering, Europe is doing a little better, a lot of concern that other economies around the world aren't doing as well as expected and especially China, right?
ARNOLD: Especially China. China is the second largest economy in the world. We've heard that before, but it's actually the first largest economy if you look at it as a goods producer. So the largest manufacturer of stuff might be making less stuff, and so that means it's going to be buying less raw materials. That spills out into emerging markets because they supply those raw materials. So you can see those things are tied together. There's also some thought that the U.S. Federal Reserve has been juicing up or over-caffeinating(ph) the U.S. stock market and emerging markets to some degree.
And so as the Fed pulls back on that stimulus, and it's been pulling back on that stimulus, that could cause some pain. But other people say, look, you know, we've been hearing about the Fed pulling back for so long. The market has to have digested this. People don't think, well, look, this has probably more to do with new news about China and emerging markets.
BLOCK: So those emerging markets are in trouble. But why would that trouble be causing stocks then in the U.S. to take this tumble?
ARNOLD: Well, some of this could be sort of technical, like investors lost a lot of money in emerging markets, so then they have to sell U.S. stocks. And, you know, there's a little bit of that going on. But I think the bigger thing is probably jitters that, look, U.S. companies do business abroad. And companies like John Deere Tractor and Caterpillar Tractor, they do a lot of business in developing countries, so their stocks got hit.
Obviously, it's a global economy. Things are connected. But the takeaway here, I think, should be that this is probably a small correction and not the start of some really unsettling, damaging crisis for the U.S. economy.
BLOCK: OK. Good to know, Chris. Thanks for the vote of confidence there.
ARNOLD: Thanks, Melissa.
BLOCK: NPR's Chris Arnold.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada are taking the unprecedented step of jointly calling for tougher standards for trains carrying oil. Both agencies have investigated explosive train wrecks recently, including the one in Canada last year that killed 47 people. With the huge increase in oil moving across North America by train, the agencies warn another major disaster could be looming. NPR's David Schaper reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF PHONE RINGING)
(SOUNDBITE OF 911 CALL)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: 9-1-1. What's the object of your emergency?
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: The calls starting coming into the 911 Center in Cass County, North Dakota at about 10 minutes after two on the afternoon of December 30th.
(SOUNDBITE OF 911 CALL)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: It's about a quarter mile west of Casselton on the railroad tracks. We've got a train that derailed and there's a fire.
SCHAPER: An eastbound train carrying Bakken crude oil hit a grain train that had just derailed, and soon, one tank car after another exploded into flames, generating even more calls.
(SOUNDBITE OF 911 CALL)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: There's, like, huge black smoke. I don't know if somebody's house is on fire.
SCHAPER: Twenty-four hundred residents nearby were forced to evacuate as the wreckage continued to burn through the night and all the next day. It's one of a series of explosive oil train crashes, including one in Alabama last November, and another last July in a small town in Quebec that killed 47 people. The number of trains carrying Bakken crude oil has skyrocketed from fewer than 10,000 tank car loads in 2009 to more than 400,000 last year. And that worries people who live near the tracks.
STATE REPRESENTATIVE KENTON ONSTAD: We are going to have a derailment somewhere.
SCHAPER: Kenton Onstad is a state representative from the Western part of North Dakota
ONSTAD: Are we ready for that? Emergency services ready for that? This is not a case of if it's going to happen, it's when it's going to happen.
SCHAPER: Onstad is one of a growing number of local and state officials demanding new safety improvements. And among those leading the chorus is the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, Debbie Hersman.
DEBBIE HERSMAN: We believe action is needed and it's needed now.
SCHAPER: One problem, says Hersman, is that this oil from the Bakken Shale formation of North Dakota is not like other crudes. It's lighter and its volatile natural gases tend to ignite easily. So, the NTSB wants to ensure its properly classified to be certain it's shipped and handled properly. In addition, Hersman says the older tank cars that carrying much of this flammable crude are inadequate and prone to rupture easily.
HERSMAN: We want to make sure that if there is a derailment, if there is a collision, that these tank cars maintain their integrity because once we see a failure of a tank car, it starts a pool fire and it just spreads to the other tank cars.
SCHAPER: In the North Dakota crash, for example, 18 of the 20 tank cars that derailed ruptured and most of them burned. The railroads, the shippers and energy companies all agree there needs to be new regulations and they support many of the recommendations from the NTSB. In fact, since 2011, the rail industry itself has already been requiring that new tank cars be stronger and more puncture resistant. But there's disagreement on whether to retrofit or phase out older cars. Railroads and car manufacturers support it but those who own and fill the cars do not. Retrofitting could cost billions and energy producers say there's no guarantee retrofits will work. Here's Rayola Dougher of the American Petroleum Institute.
RAYOLA DOUGHER: You know, the cars themselves are not the cause of the accident. The cause is they're going off the track. The cause is operational or someone's not putting a brake on. So, that really should be a key focus of enhancing the safety.
SCHAPER: Where everyone in the business and even the NTSB agree is that the Department of Transportation has been too slow to enact new standards and regulations to meet new oil shipping demands. DOT would not make anyone available for comment for this story but issued a statement saying work on the NTSB recommendations is already underway. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx met last week with railroad and petroleum industry leaders, who agreed on some immediate steps to improve the safe transport of crude. Additional steps can be expected in the coming days and weeks. David Schaper, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Hollywood packs movie theaters with prestige pictures in December. After that, the movie industry mostly lets filmgoers catch up with all the awards' nominees for a few weeks. But worthy new movies still do crop up in January. This week, NPR's critic Bob Mondello finds much to admire in two foreign films. They're about people who are desperate to make connections. One is the Chilean comedy "Gloria," the other is the French thriller, "Stranger By the Lake."
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: We first see the exuberant title character in "Gloria" dancing by herself in a disco in Santiago. She is middle-aged with a hairstyle and oversized glasses that Dustin Hoffman could've worn in "Tootsie." Thankfully, they look better on her. Ten years after her divorce, her grown kids don't need her. Her only regular visitor is a neighbor's cat, and she's looking to connect. Rodolfo, whom she meets at a dance club, seems just right - handsome, attentive, maybe a little too devoted to his ex-wife. But when she brings that up over lunch...
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "GLORIA")
PAULINA GARCIA: (As Gloria Cumplido) (Foreign language spoken)
MONDELLO: ...she does it with a smile. The deckhand seems stacked against women in her situation, but Gloria, played without a trace of self-pity by Paulina Garcia, is gamely doing the best she can with the hand she's been dealt. Yes, she sometimes makes unfortunate choices, one of which sadly is Rodolfo. Happily, when she realizes that, she's able to exact a bit of retribution and come out dancing. "Gloria" is a movie that may show its heroine being knocked around for daring to dream, but that also acknowledges the power of the dream.
The characters in the French film "Stranger by the Lake" are also looking to connect, though, not in dance halls. Picture blue-green water, pebbly beaches, dense woods, families cluster on the far side of the lake. But on the side we see, there are only men. It's a gay cruising spot frequented by mostly nude sunbathers and swimmers, many of whom come here often enough to know each other by sight, though, rarely by name.
We watch as Franck, a handsome, 30-something regular, strikes up a conversation with a newbie, pudgy, middle-aged Henri, who sits apart from the rest.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "STRANGER BY THE LAKE")
PATRICK D'ASSUMCAO: (As Henri) (Foreign language spoken)
PIERRE DELADONCHAMPS: (As Franck) (Foreign language spoken)
D'ASSUMCAO: (As Henri) (Foreign language spoken)
MONDELLO: Entirely platonic encounter, just two guys talking about whether the lake is really home to a 15-foot catfish. As they talk, though, Franck eyes other men heading up to the woods for less platonic encounters. Other films might leave to your imagination what goes on in the woods. This one makes graphically explicit a Kama Sutric display of men with men, other men watching. Physical intimacy coupled with social isolation, just how much isolation becomes clear when the sun sets and from the now deserted woods, Franck watches two swimmers in the middle of the lake horsing around and then not.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "STRANGER BY THE LAKE")
FRANCOIS-RENAUD LABARTHE: (As Pascal Ramiere) (Foreign language spoken)
MONDELLO: One man's head disappears under water and doesn't resurface. The other man swims to shore, dresses, looks around and leaves. By which point, "Stranger by the Lake" has become an unnerving mix of Hitchcock's "Rear Window" and William Friedkin's "Cruising." Sex intertwined with murder, fear battling desire, and the police discovering that voyeurs don't make good witnesses if no one ever exchanges names or phone numbers. You have, observes a detective, as everyone dodges his questions, a funny way of loving each other. An indictment, clearly, although "Strangers by the Lake" suggests that for these characters, danger and desire intersect with more complexity than outsiders will ever see. I'm Bob Mondello.
BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
How many American grandmothers does it take to knit a Team USA opening ceremony uniform? That snarky question raised on Twitter after the unveiling of the uniforms for the U.S. Olympic teams heading to Sochi. Opinion is, we can politely say, divided. Paul Lukas is keeping tabs on this for espn.com and on his blog, uni-watch.com. Paul, thanks for being with us to talk about this.
PAUL LUKAS: Happy to be here, Melissa.
BLOCK: I'm going to try to describe this sweater that the U.S. team will be wearing in the opening ceremony parade. It's from Ralph Lauren, and he's basically thrown everything he's got at it. It's got stars. It's got stripes. It's got flags, the Olympic rings, 2014 Sochi and, of course, Polo right on the shawl collar. What do you think is going on here and does it work?
LUKAS: You know, designers often like to say less is more. Ralph Lauren clearly decided that more is more in the case of this sweater. I've heard a lot of people say it reminds them of the old "Cosby Show." It's like a Cliff Huxtable sweater, and it really does have the kitchen sink in there. And, of course, after the controversy at the last Olympics, where Ralph Lauren used foreign-made components for the attire, this time, they've gone to great lengths to assure us that it's all American-sourced - the wool, every thread, every button, all of it. It's almost like they've bent over too far backwards this time with some of the details of letting us know where every single component of this clothing came from.
BLOCK: What do you think, Paul, if you're designing a uniform for the opening ceremony, what are you trying to do?
LUKAS: You know, that's a good question. It's the kind of thing that doesn't really reward close attention in a still photograph but you have to think about the context in which it's going to be seen, not just with all the other countries but just all the other American athletes. It's not going to be just one person standing there. So they have an idea of how it's going to look. I'm not sure personally that I'm going to like it any better in the parade than I like it in a still photograph. But there's got to be some sort of method to the madness.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: Well, are there other countries, you think, that manage to do all that - look great at a distance and still, you know, stay classy?
LUKAS: One of the most interesting ones is the Netherlands. They're wearing what I would sort of describe as a combination of cocktail party attire and outerwear. It's sort of hard to describe on radio. But it was done by the Dutch company Suit Supply, and it does look sort of odd but sophisticated, if you want to put it that way. So it sort of looks like a men's suit jacket with sort of like a parka-looking garment under it.
BLOCK: I can't let you go without asking you about the Norway curling team.
(LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: And they've always made a splash with their uniforms. And this year, it's a red, white and blue zigzag kind of test pattern all over.
LUKAS: Yeah. You know, four years ago, at the last Winter Olympics, the Norwegian curling team wore these crazy, loud pants made by Loudmouth Golf and they did cause a big splash. And it's easy to overlook that the Norwegians were actually very successful in those pants. They won the silver medal. So it's not like they were just trying to look outrageous. And they have become a phenomenon.
Now, they're even crazier this time around. As you said, they have this zigzag pattern that is based on the Norwegian flag. It's certainly bringing more attention to a sport that otherwise doesn't usually get any. And curlers, you know, I think are probably happy to get any attention that they can get because it's a sport that usually gets pretty much overlooked.
BLOCK: They are rocking those pants.
(LAUGHTER)
LUKAS: They are.
BLOCK: Paul Lukas writes about uniforms for espn.com and on his blog uni-watch.com. Paul, thanks so much.
LUKAS: Thanks so much for having me, Melissa.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And we close the hour with a listen back. It's been 30 years since the Macintosh computer was introduced, which prompted us to go back into our archives. Let's listen now to how our program covered the birth of the Mac back in 1984.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
NOAH ADAMS, HOST:
You may have seen the ad on television during the Super Bowl, the one with the 1984 motif, advertising the new Macintosh computer made by Apple. With the Macintosh, Apple has decided to directly challenge IBM for the lead in the personal computer industry.
BLOCK: That's our colleague, Noah Adams, who went on to interview writer Peter McWilliams, the author of the 1982 "Personal Computer Book." In an age when computers were run by typing command lines, the Mac had a mouse and icons to click on, a graphic user interface. McWilliams concluded that the Macintosh was a mistake.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
PETER MCWILLIAMS: I think they're hoping people are going to fork out $2,500 for a computer for their home. And I can't see it.
ADAMS: What do you get for the $2,500 now?
MCWILLIAMS: What you get is a screen, a nine-inch screen. You get a keyboard. You get 128K of RAM, which is internal disk storage. And you get a 3-1/2-inch disk drive.
ADAMS: Let me translate a bit here or try to translate. You're saying it has a very good memory. It has a 3-1/2-inch disk drive, which is not compatible with other computers. What's the standard size, then?
MCWILLIAMS: The standard is five-and-a-quarter inch. And they have made a corporate decision that the 3-1/2-inch drive is going to make it. I don't see it myself. But this whole computer is a calculated risk on Apple's part. If the world is ready to accept a brand-new standard, this machine will make it. If it's not, the machine won't make it.
And it will have certain specialized applications like in architectural firms and so forth. But on the whole, it's gambling that the world is ready to accept a new standard. My personal point of view is that the world is not.
BLOCK: That's the late author Peter McWilliams, talking with our former host Noah Adams 30 years ago tomorrow, January 25th, 1984. They were talking about Apple's Macintosh computer, which had just been introduced.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
MCWILLIAMS: This is not just another computer. This is their last chance.
BLOCK: The Macintosh did indeed have an uphill battle against the standards of the time. But we hear that Apple survived and is still in business. More of that interview is posted at nprchives.tumblr.com.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
It's time for The New and The Next.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCEVERS: Carlos Watson is the co-founder of the online magazine Ozy. Each week, he joins us to talk about what's new and what's next. Welcome back, Carlos.
CARLOS WATSON: Really good to be here. Good to be here in person.
MCEVERS: Yeah. Nice to see you. This week, you introduce us to a rising star in the world of hip-hop. But he's kind of on the other side of the equation. Tell us about him.
WATSON: He is. He's an incredible young Yale graduate named Zack O'Malley Greenburg who writes for Forbes magazine but, instead of writing kind of complicated stories on hedge funds, has spent all of his time covering what he calls the kings of hip-hop. He writes an incredible annual digest, if you will, of who's been most successful. And whether he writes about Ludacris or Jay-Z, whether he's talking about Beyonce's recent success or what Drake is doing, he's actually turned music - and fun music - into serious business. And it's become one of those most popular portions of the magazine.
MCEVERS: It's no secret that music is business. I mean, how did he come up with this idea?
WATSON: Well, he always was a music fan, fell in love with hip-hop, tried to convince his editors early on that there was something more there than just something to listen to, that there was serious business underpinning it. And ultimately, as they saw the popularity of this segment grow, it went from what is called a sidebar in the magazine to really, effectively, its own mini issue.
MCEVERS: And I understand it gets phone calls from certain people if they don't appear on the list or if they appear a different - a place on the list that they don't feel comfortable with.
WATSON: Well, famous bad boy Sean "Diddy" Combs and others are famous for challenging his numbers and making sure that they get full credit for their entrepreneurial success. So it's been a lot of fun for a former child actor and Yale writer who never imagined that he would have so much fun at 28. He's not even 30 yet. So lots of good stuff.
MCEVERS: Another business story on Ozy this week, about young people and finances: life insurance. You know, this isn't necessarily a priority for young people. But there's some companies out there who are trying to come up with some creative advertising. What's that about?
WATSON: So life insurance - multibillion-dollar industry, usually selling life insurance policies to people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, older - found themselves in real trouble during the financial crisis looking for a new market. And who, of course, did they turn to? Twenty-somethings. But you and I - and you're looking at me. You're saying, well, what's the pitch to a 23-, 24-year-old? Like why in the world do they want life insurance? And two tacts have been taken. One, it's - you don't want to leave your parents stuck with a bill after all they've done for you, so if, God forbid, something happens. That's been one of the pitches.
And the other has been around Social Security. If it's not there when you need it, is this some version of a security policy, not just life insurance, et cetera. Hasn't been very successful for 12 million reasons, including perhaps the fundamental pitch, but it's a reminder, maybe, of the lengths that people go to or that industries go to in the midst of difficult times.
MCEVERS: Yeah, lengths like playing on your fears, like you're going to die when you're young, before your parents do - take care of them. I mean, it just seems kind of illogical.
WATSON: Seems illogical and yet in a fit of desperation they've pursued that both here and overseas. One of the critiques, though, that the number of people in the space make is even if you were going to go after so-called millennials, you'd want to use different approaches. In other words, you'd want to sell more of it online. Of course, it's hard to think of selling anything to young people today that doesn't involve giving them the convenience and sometimes the cheaper cost of selling things online.
MCEVERS: Carlos Watson is the co-founder of the online magazine Ozy. You could explore all the stories we talk about on npr.org/newandnext. Carlos, thank you again.
WATSON: Kelly, good to see you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Kelly McEvers.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCEVERS: That's the voice of Angelique Kidjo, the Grammy Award-winning artist from Benin. Her voice is larger than life, and so is her personality. When she came here to NPR West, she filled our hallways with her big laugh. She says she's been like that since she was a little girl.
ANGELIQUE KIDJO: I mean, from the moment I wake up in the morning, I'd be running so much my mom is like, can you calm down for a moment? I'm like, what for? Do you have something for me? No, not yet. Boom. I'm already gone. And she's just like, oh, my God.
(LAUGHTER)
MCEVERS: At 53 years old, Angelique is still moving at the speed of light. Her 11th studio album, "Eve," is out on Tuesday. On it, she collaborates with some big names - the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, Dr. John. She also showcases the voices of African women. Her first song, "M'baamba," features women she met on a trip to Kenya as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
KIDJO: I arrive in the second village. And as I walking in, I have those women standing with their beautiful gown. The voice come from out of this world. My heart start tingling, my - shiver everywhere, and I was just like - and then I joined the singing without even thinking. It was just - those are situation where you feel like you're in another world. And while I was experiencing that, my husband was smart enough to see me reacting to it, took the iPhone and filmed me singing with the ladies.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "M'BAAMBA")
KIDJO: Only God knows what they're saying. I don't speak that language. I don't understand the language. I just jump in. And after that, then I had a vision, because the song that I had been writing before was already about women issues. So I'm like, this it. I want the world to hear this beautiful voice and feel the same shiver that I felt.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "M'BAAMBA")
MCEVERS: You know, you say that you've done a lot of talking about African women. I mean, you're - like you said, you're a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. But with this album, you say you wanted to let the women kind of speak for themselves. How did that work? How did you go out and make these field recordings with women in your home country, Benin? What did you say to them?
KIDJO: I mean, the first experience I have of the field recording was in 1995 where I just assumed that because I grew up in the city, there's going to electricity outlet everywhere. So I learned hardly. And I have to plug all my equipment on the battery of the car. So this time around, I went there with a boombox and a recorder, a digital recorder.
So I brought a lot of batteries to be - I mean, I can open a store of battery right now as we speak. So I went first to Porto-Novo. There, I met two groups of women. And when I stopped playing the music, the reaction for every single women group was the look they gave me, like, you kidding us?
MCEVERS: So you were playing them songs - your own songs that you had written.
KIDJO: My songs. They look at me, and I say, OK, don't panic. I'll do it with you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KIDJO: Because they were so eager to give me songs, to be with me, that they don't want to mess it up. So would I start singing with them, and then step-by-step, the music call. You cannot just stay without reacting to it. You start singing and singing and singing.
MCEVERS: So all you had to do is play just a little bit of your own music...
KIDJO: And that's it.
MCEVERS: ...and then turn it off and then they would just follow through.
KIDJO: And they just go.
MCEVERS: Wow.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCEVERS: You have won a Grammy. You received classical training in Paris. I think people might be surprised to hear that you don't read music.
KIDJO: Yeah, I don't.
MCEVERS: How do you pull that off?
KIDJO: You know, I have a very great memory. I mean, when I was in the jazz school, I was going to a class of reading music. And after three months, the teacher told me, uh-uh. She called me aside and said come here. See, I saw you. You memorize everything. You know the whole book by heart. If you stay here, you're going to kill your memory and that's going to be hard for you. Get out of here.
I'm like, I was so - it was a boring class. I'm like, why, I'm like, (singing) do-re, do-re-mi (unintelligible) but what the hell is this, right? This is just bad (unintelligible) in my life. And when he said that, I said, God bless you. Hooray. I'm out of here. I ran fast. I'm like, I'm never going to come back. I was so glad I'm not doing it.
MCEVERS: I'm speaking with Angelique Kidjo. Her new album is called "Eve." And, in addition to the new album, you've also released a memoir earlier this month. It's called "Spirit Rising." You go back to your childhood in the West African country of Benin and to your first time performing on stage. Can you tell us about that?
KIDJO: Oh, wow. That was the freaking experience ever. That's the first time I experience the expression all your bone is shaking in your body and you can hear going (makes sound). But I'm like, hey, this is kind of cool. I have the light in front of me. I can hardly see anyone in the public. It was all dark back there. The only one spotlight in the whole theater, and it was on me. So I'm like nobody's seeing me. I can goof around, I can sing my song and get the hell out of here.
MCEVERS: What was the song you sang?
KIDJO: (Singing in foreign language)
MCEVERS: Thank you.
KIDJO: You're welcome.
MCEVERS: It's great. How old were you when you sang it?
KIDJO: Six.
MCEVERS: Six. Your book talks about, too, how you started as this really naive girl in the beginning, you know? You were from a family of musicians, but you were from a, you know, a small village. And now, you're this huge public figure on the world stage, you know, sort of representing your continent. How did you make that - how did that transition happen?
KIDJO: That happened two moment in my life. That first one, I didn't even know the impact it has before the second one arrived. When I first saw the cover of Jimi Hendrix on an album with his big afro and my brother was trying to wear the afro wig too. He said: I want to look like him, and I want to play like him and sound like him. I said, by the way, I wanted to ask you: what is this language he's singing? I understand nothing. He look African, but it's not an African language I can recognize.
He said: No, he's not African. He's African-American. I look at him, I'm like, yeah, right. I'm 9 and I'm stupid, you think. How can you be African and American at the same time? He say: He's a slave descendant. I say: What is a slave? What is a descendant? What's going on? So I went to ask my grandmother. She start telling me the story of slavery. I'm like, ah, you're losing your mind. I didn't believe it. And then when I turned 15, for the first time, I heard about apartheid when I saw Winnie Mandela on the Nigerian TV that we're smuggling(ph) to...
MCEVERS: Apartheid.
KIDJO: Apartheid. It's just like your whole world collapsed, because you're living in a family, in a household where you are taught by your parents that a human being is not a matter of color because we all one human family. And then suddenly, both of them - my 9 years old story and apartheid story just collide. It's just like explosion in my life.
And I get so angry. And then I went into my room, and I wrote for the first time what we can call today engage a political song in the album "Aye" where the song is called "Azan Nan Kpe" which means the day will come.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AZAN NAN KPE")
KIDJO: The first draft of that song was so hurtful I can't even start to remember it. When I start singing it, my father said to me: No, it's not going to happen here. Not under this roof. I told you violence and hate will not have any space in this house. Music has always been the last resource for me to dig down deep down in myself beyond anger, beyond pain to find that place that is always there of light, peace and love, to bring it out. Because if you let hate and violence into your heart and into your soul, there's no way you come back out of that.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AZAN NAN KPE")
MCEVERS: How do you, as an artist, you know, counter all the negative images we see out of Africa? You know, I mean, on one hand, you're supposed to be this, you know, international spokesperson about the challenges that some Africans face; but then on the other hand, your music is about victory and joy and music and dance. Does that kind of mean you're pulled in two different directions sometimes?
KIDJO: The negative image of Africa is the story that have been told by other people. We African have never told our stories. And the present today with the technology is showing a different story, a different vision from Africa. For me, as an African, I feel comfortable in my body enough and in the culture that I hold because my culture have impacted and inspired all the music of the world.
Whatever is out there, you take back, you find Africa in it. You can bring more to your own culture by being open. I have always been open to every different culture. That's what make me rich. That's what make me the artist that I am, because I don't - I really don't care. I don't care the skin color you have. I don't care the language you speak. When it comes to music, I am at the service of the song and also the beat.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCEVERS: That's Angelique Kidjo. Her new album is called "Eve." That comes out on Tuesday. You can hear the full album at nprmusic.org. Her memoir is "Spirit Rising." That's out now.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCEVERS: And for Saturday, with the volume turned up, that's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Kelly McEvers. Check out our weekly podcast. Search for WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED on iTunes or on the NPR app. Follow us on Twitter: @nprwatc. Tomorrow, I'll speak with David Crosby, who's back with his first solo album in more than 20 years. Until then, thanks for listening and have a great night.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Kelly McEvers.
Isabel Allende is known for her wildly popular novels full of strong women and magical realism. But her new book, "Ripper," is different. It's a grisly murder mystery about a brilliant young girl on the path of a serial killer. The regular host of this program, Arun Rath, sat down with Isabel Allende last week. She began by describing her main character, Amanda, inspired by her own granddaughter.
ISABEL ALLENDE: A nerd, with a hood, beautiful without knowing that she was beautiful and playing games online. And one of the games she would play was Ripper. And this is a role-playing game in which the players create a character around - avatar - that has weaknesses, flaws and skills. So with those skills and limitations, they play the game. And their whole idea is to catch Jack the Ripper in London 1888. So I just moved the action to San Francisco 2012 for the kids to find the real murder in real crimes.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
It's interesting you mention your granddaughter because it's a very kind of young world of online sleuths and people cracking codes and that kind of thing.
ALLENDE: Well, I'm surrounded by young people. You know, I'm always now the oldest and the shortest person in the room.
(LAUGHTER)
ALLENDE: There's nothing good about it. I carry around a little stool to stand on when people want a picture with their cellular phones.
RATH: But that must give you a certain perspective though, right?
ALLENDE: Yeah, a very low perspective.
(LAUGHTER)
RATH: So this book, a thriller, is not something that we really would associate with Isabel Allende, and it opens with a kind of a compelling cliffhanger. What led you to a thriller?
ALLENDE: It wasn't my idea. In 2011, I announced that I was going to retire, and my agent panicked. So she says: No, no, no. You have to write a book with your husband. My husband is a writer of crime novels. His name is William Gordon. And so I had to accommodate to his style because that what's he writes. So we decided we'd give it a try. Well, we almost divorced. We ended up fighting like dogs, because he has an attention span of, let's say, 11 minutes, and he writes in English.
I can write for 11 hours, and I write in Spanish. I research. He invents. So we ended up fighting because I was sure that I would end up writing the book while he would get half the credit. Not a good deal for me.
RATH: How did you strike the balance between research and imagination and your warring approaches?
ALLENDE: I research and I study. I went to a mystery writer's conference at Book Passage, here in Marin County where I live. And I learned a lot from - not only from the faculty - and in the faculty, we had forensic doctors, detectives, policemen, experts in guns, et cetera - but from the questions of the students.
For example, if I inject my victim with a blood thinner and I stab the victim 13 times and then I hang the victim upside down in the shower, would the blood congeal in the bathtub? I would never come up with that kind of question or that kind of situation.
RATH: Yeah, not something that I spend a lot of time thinking about myself.
ALLENDE: Yes. But if you ask me now, now I'm an expert. I can kill anybody and not be caught.
RATH: Were there any, you know, the conventions of this form that you found especially difficult to adapt to or anything that you just had to rework to fit yourself?
ALLENDE: Well, the book is tongue in cheek. It's very ironic. And I'm not a fan of mysteries. So to prepare for this experience of writing a mystery, I started reading the most successful ones in the market in 2012. And that was the Scandinavians - Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbo and that kind of people. And I realized that I cannot write that kind of book. It's too gruesome, too violent, too dark. There's no redemption there. And the characters are just awful, bad people - very entertaining, but really bad people.
So I thought, I will take the genre, write a mystery that is faithful to the formula and to what the readers expect, but it is a joke. It's tongue in cheek. My sleuth will not be this handsome detective or journalist or policeman or whatever. It will be a young 16-year-old nerd. My female protagonist will not be this promiscuous, beautiful, dark-haired, thin lady. It will be a plump, blond, healer and so forth.
RATH: The book is set in San Francisco, and it's a - in ways, it's a very loving portrait of the city. And this is the city that you've chosen now to make your home. Can you talk about...
ALLENDE: Look, 26 years ago, I was passing by on a book tour without any hope of ever staying in San Francisco. But I met a guy, very exotic to me - he was blonde with blue eyes - and I just had a fling that turned out to be love. I moved to San Francisco to spend a week with him and get him out of my system. I'm still here 26 years later. Now, I'm stuck with a husband.
RATH: And in San Francisco.
ALLENDE: Yeah, but San Francisco's wonderful.
RATH: So this book, you could really seeing this becoming a movie. Are we going to see this thriller, "Ripper," become a movie?
ALLENDE: Look, my dear, don't - let's not talk about Hollywood. They want everything.
RATH: I'm right next to Hollywood. I have to ask.
ALLENDE: Well, I'm not willing to sign a contract. They want everything. They want the rights to do the movie and everything else they can think of, forever. There's no limit to the contract. In this universe and universes to be discovered - I'm not making this up - this is in the contract. And they also want the copyright of the characters. So I lose my characters. And if I want to repeat them in another book, I have to pay them a royalty. Give me a break.
RATH: OK. You hear that, Hollywood? Isabel Allende is looking for some reasonable producers.
(LAUGHTER)
RATH: Isabel, it's been wonderful speaking with you.
ALLENDE: Thank you very much.
MCEVERS: That was the regular host of this program, Arun Rath, speaking with Isabel Allende about her new thriller "Ripper."
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Kelly McEvers.
Neil Ross studies Antarctica. Not long ago, he found something amazing under the ice.
DR. NEIL ROSS: We discovered a huge valley underneath the West Antarctic ice sheet, which was over 300 kilometers long, more than two kilometers below sea level, with a relief of something in the order of about 3,000 meters. So deeper than the Grand Canyon.
MCEVERS: The crazy thing about this story is Ross found the valley by accident. He was on a routine research trip to Antarctica measuring the thickness of the ice. Back at home, he was checking his data when it started to become clear - this massive valley had been under his feet the whole time.
ROSS: That was a really exciting moment. And it took me a while to convince myself that what I was seeing was actually true.
MCEVERS: Ross says the valley was carved by glaciers millions of years ago. Now, it provides a record of how the Antarctic ice sheet behaved in the past when the climate was actually warmer, so studying the valley could help us know how the ice will change as the climate warms again.
ROSS: We're seeing that the ice sheets are changing in certain parts, particularly around the coastal fringes. And West Antarctica alone could change global sea levels by three meters. What we need to do is to understand how these systems might have behaved in the past. So it's a window into the past, but it also gives us a clue as to what might happen in the future.
MCEVERS: Of course, Ross says ancient ice can't predict the future. But he says one thing is certain.
ROSS: Some of the changes that we're seeing to our climate system and to our environment are amplified in the polar regions. And as a result, there has to be a real focus on these areas. And to some extent, that's happening, and that's why we're making these discoveries. We're getting people out there to make the measurements and to observe these situations and these environments, and we're learning more and more.
MCEVERS: That's Antarctic researcher Neil Ross. He is the lead author of a paper on the discovery of the valley, published this month in the Geological Society of America Bulletin.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
These days, it seems like Democrats and Republicans have very different visions of the future. But it turns out they can agree on one thing.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Computers are going to be a big part of your future.
REPRESENTATIVE ERIC CANTOR: Becoming literate in code is as essential to being literate in language and math. It is the only way for you to prepare for the future.
MCEVERS: That was President Obama and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Soon, they say, everything will be run by machines. And Cantor has a message for how to function in that new world.
CANTOR: Coding is the necessary tool of this century.
MCEVERS: It's an interesting idea, but how true is it? That's our cover story for today: Is coding really for everyone?
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MCEVERS: It's a warm Saturday night in downtown Santa Monica, California, just a couple of blocks from the beach. Streets are packed with tourists and shoppers. Look through a window on 2nd Street, though, you'll see 40 or so young people crowded around little square tables. They've got laptops, cords and notebooks splayed out everywhere. Their plan is to spend the night coding.
SCOTT MOTTE: Instead of go and party for the weekend, stay up for 24 hours and build something cool.
MCEVERS: This is Scott Motte. He works for a tech company that builds email servers, and he teaches people to code.
MOTTE: I'm actually a developer evangelist as my official role.
MCEVERS: The event is called CodeDay. A group called StudentRND throws these all over the country, 24-hour code-a-thons for programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels. The deal is you show up at noon on Saturday, pitch ideas, form teams, code through the night and finish by noon on Sunday.
At this CodeDay, there are about a dozen teams. Most projects like Rachel Feng's are pretty straightforward.
RACHEL FENG: A site that you can, like, upload videos and then watch them simultaneously with friends over the Internet.
MCEVERS: Across the room, Edward Foux and Jack Wong are working on something a little more unusual. It's an app you use at night.
EDWARD FOUX: It's called Snore App. We want to make sure that everybody who snores and talks at night never misses that again.
JACK WONG: So you turn it on when you go to sleep, and then it listen. And then when it hears people making noise, like, it record that. So then in the morning, you can wake up and listen to your snoring or, like, any sleep-talking that you do.
MCEVERS: Edward Foux and Jack Wong have five screens set up between them, two laptops, two phones, a tablet. They decided to code their Snore App on the bus on the way to the event. Whether they finish by noon on Sunday doesn't really matter, they say. What does matter is the project will be on their resumes.
WONG: I'm hoping to work for Google or maybe Microsoft. But Google would be like my, like, dream job.
MCEVERS: Everyone here is thinking about jobs. But no one is too worried about it. They all know how to program. Edward Foux says programming isn't some kind of secret language anymore.
FOUX: You don't need to be genius today. Maybe 30 years ago, you had to. But today, not. Just look at me.
MCEVERS: Jacob Sharf is a junior at UCLA. He's working on a video upload site. To him, learning to code is just the way of the future.
JACOB SHARF: It'll be something that everyone knows. Just like everyone knows how to read or write, it'll be something that's taught in middle school or elementary school, and so everyone will be familiar with the basics of it.
MCEVERS: Jacob Sharf is not the only person with this idea. Back when he was mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg tweeted that his New Year's resolution would be to learn code. And just last month, this is how President Obama announced Computer Science Education Week on YouTube.
(SOUNDBITE YOUTUBE VIDEO)
OBAMA: Don't just buy a new video game. Make one. Don't just download the latest app. Help design it. Don't just play on your phone. Program it.
MCEVERS: And it's not just the White House that's encouraging people to code. U.S. Representative Tony Cardenas from Southern California has introduced a bill with a name I won't even try to say. It's a string of 34 letters and numbers that spells out, in hexadecimal, the words America Can Code. Cardenas is hoping to classify computer programming as a foreign language, and allocate grants for schools to start teaching coding as early as kindergarten.
But some people are starting to push back.
JEFF ATWOOD: Reading and writing are hard. The basics are hard. And now, we're telling people you have to learn this programming thing, too, or else the robots are going to get you.
MCEVERS: This is Jeff Atwood. When he was a 12-year-old in the '80s, he was making his own video games. Now, he runs a coding blog and a set of websites to help people with programming. That said, he does not think everyone needs to learn how to code.
ATWOOD: You know, when I got my first computer in the mid-'80s, when you turned it on, what you got was a giant blinking cursor on the screen. That was the boot up. It wasn't like turning on an iPad where you have a screen full of apps and you start doing things. No. You had to figure out what that cursor meant and when the magic incantations to type at that cursor to make programs actually run. And that's the way computers worked back then.
And when I hear everyone must learn to program, what I hear is we're going back in time to a place where, you know, you have to be a programmer to do things on the computer.
MCEVERS: Right. Somebody's figured it out now how to not have to do that is what you're saying.
ATWOOD: Yeah. And, you know, I think in some sense, that's going backwards. I always loved the idea that, say, you're, you know, I don't know, a tax prep person, that you don't actually need to learn programming to do your job, like some programmer figure that out for you.
MCEVERS: And what you're saying is they're not - there's just only so many people who need to be doing that, not everybody.
ATWOOD: Well, it's like - sort of like an obsession with being an auto mechanic. I mean, there's tons of cars, there's tons of driving, and it's obviously essential to a lot of what we do as a country. But I think it's a little crazy to go around saying, you know, everybody should really learn to be an auto mechanic because cars are so essential to the functioning of our society. Should you know how to change your oil? Absolutely.
There's some basic things that I think you should know when you use a computer, but this whole become an auto mechanic thing is just - it's just really not for everyone.
MCEVERS: So maybe we don't all need to be coders, but Atwood says it's much easier now to figure out if programming is something you do like. He points to tutorial websites that recreate that 1985 experience complete with blank page and blinking cursor.
ATWOOD: And now, you go to figure out what to do in the page or it walks you through. And you see if you like commanding the machine.
MCEVERS: That's the best thing to come out of all this, Atwood says. If you do want to code and you're really serious about it, the resources are there for you to do it on your own.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Kelly McEvers, in for Arun Rath.
Today marks the first time the two sides in the Syrian conflict have sat together for talks. Today also marks three years since a revolution ousted a dictator in Egypt. Since then, Egyptians have experienced the first free elections in decades, the toppling of an Islamist government and a resurgent military-led government.
Today, violent clashes between those who support the government and those who oppose it left 29 dead and 700 arrested. NPR's Leila Fadel joins us now from Cairo. Hi, Leila.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Hi.
MCEVERS: You were out reporting around Cairo today. Tell us what you saw.
FADEL: Well, on the one side, we saw people celebrating, calling for the head of the military, General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, to run for president, dancing, holding pictures of him, wearing buttons and even some gold Sissi masks. And then on the other hand, we saw protesters, some in support of the Muslim Brotherhood, and other secular and liberal activists protesting. And those protests were being violently dispersed, shot at, tear gassed.
MCEVERS: So where were most of the killings? I mean, who was killing who?
FADEL: In the protest that I witnessed myself, it appeared that anybody protesting and saying down with military rule was immediately getting shot at. We were seeing police vehicles swerve through streets and then bear guns and then gunfire. In other parts of the country, we were also seeing civilian on - apparent civilian-on-civilian violence where local residents in support of the military and the state were carrying weapons as well.
MCEVERS: Is there a sense that the gains that were made by the revolution three years ago have been completely eroded at this point?
FADEL: Yes, I think there really are. We've spoken to a lot of the revolutionaries of that time three years ago, the ones that are not in jail really who are saying they feel defeated. They feel that this has failed. And in some ways, it's worse than what it was under Mubarak.
Just today, one of those voices, (unintelligible), was also arrested. She was accused of being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. And it's ironic because she's so staunchly anti-Brotherhood but has also been fighting against human rights abuses under this government.
MCEVERS: It sounds like things are really divided now. I mean, how is that playing out in the streets?
FADEL: Well, what struck me the most today watching both people who celebrated and were being protected by the police and those that protested that there was a choice here. You either support the military in this government or you protest and you face possible arrest or even death.
MCEVERS: That's NPR's Leila Fadel in Cairo. Thanks so much, Leila.
FADEL: Thank you.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
After months in the making, Syrian peace talks began today in Geneva. Leaders from the Syrian government and the opposition met face-to-face today in the first ever direct negotiations between the two sides. The goal: to end the violence that's killed more than 100,000 people.
NPR's Deborah Amos is in Geneva, and she joins us to talk about the day's events. Hi, Deb.
DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE: Hi.
MCEVERS: The talks are off to a, shall we say, slow start. So far, nothing has actually been agreed upon. Just a few hours ago, the international mediator for the talks, Lakhdar Brahimi, gave a press conference. What did he say?
AMOS: Well, he said exactly that, not much has been achieved. He talks about not steps but half steps. It was a very shaky day, a half-hour meeting in the morning, a little over an hour in the afternoon. What they talked about was humanitarian aid. What was interesting is the opposition seemed more prepared for these talks. They brought in a very detailed plan to have convoys rolling into one city in central Syria, the city of Homs.
And if there is agreement tomorrow, those convoys could roll as soon as Monday. But it's not clear - and even Brahimi said it wasn't clear if they could get that agreement by tomorrow.
MCEVERS: And I understand there was some drama this morning. Syria's foreign minister who's heading up the Syrian government delegation and some of his delegates didn't show up for the first session. What was that all about?
AMOS: Well, what I think we were seeing is the regime's deep reservations about these talks on Syrian state media. The opposition was referred to as the so-called opposition. The foreign minister and two senior government ministers skipped the talks today. The U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi was not happy about that. What he said in the news conference tonight is that the foreign minister was in the building, but he was not in the talks.
MCEVERS: So expectations are low for these peace negotiations. With the first day of talks over, though, do you see that the expectations have changed at all?
AMOS: I don't, and I think that the diplomats that we are talking on - with on the sidelines all are keeping expectations low. The very fact that they're going to come back again tomorrow, all of their hotels are booked for a full week. So the delegations think they are staying. And I suppose there is some success in that. But they haven't even tackled the hard stuff.
They haven't talked about the war itself, the future role for Bashar al-Assad. They have completely divergent views on how they see those issues. So I suppose the fact that we got through the first day is a half step, as Brahimi talked about, but there are tough, tough things to talk about this week.
MCEVERS: NPR's Deborah Amos in Geneva. Deb, thanks so much for your time.
AMOS: Thank you.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
Ahead of the Geneva talks, the Syrian government actually granted rare visas to a handful of Western journalists to enter Syria.
CNN's Frederik Pleitgen is one of those reporters. He's in the Syrian capital Damascus. I asked him what message the Syrian government is trying to convey.
FREDERIK PLEITGEN: What it seems to me they're trying to convey is that they're winning. I mean, they took us on a trip to Aleppo the other day. And everything about that was trying to show that they're in control. They took us around the entire Aleppo area. They showed us places that they'd recently won back just to show that they were the ones who were in control, who were taking the initiative. And that's just in the seam of this entire trip.
MCEVERS: That airport has been out of commission for a year. What was that flight like?
PLEITGEN: Oh, it was absolutely crazy. I mean, basically, they told us in the morning in Damascus that they were going to take us on an embed around the Damascus area. And then as we were on our way there, the bus all of a sudden took a turn and went to an airfield, a military airfield. They had an airplane waiting, which was a government jet, one of the oldest Russian planes that I've ever been on.
Then shortly before landing, they told us that we were actually flying to Aleppo and that we were the first commercial flight to land in Aleppo in more than a year. So we obviously didn't feel too great about that, having this sort of guinea pig role. And then we landed in Aleppo, and then you could see from the window that there was a live truck there. There were all sorts of Syrian television crews there.
At that point, we had become the news. They put this live out on Syrian TV that the first commercial flight had just landed in Aleppo. So that was - it was quite crazy. Yeah.
MCEVERS: And I saw your coverage. I mean, people - it looks like people applauded when the plane actually, you know, hit the ground.
PLEITGEN: Yeah. I mean, we certainly applauded. I think, though, the officials there were probably just as happy as us. And they just made a huge event out of the whole thing.
MCEVERS: Beyond just Aleppo, what can you say about the state of the war in Syria? I mean, does it seem like the government really does have the upper hand in the country?
PLEITGEN: I would say that it depends on which battlefield you're looking at. I would say that in the Damascus area, they do seem to have the upper hand. We saw a lot of parts that are very much entrenched with the opposition. And I would say that there is more momentum on the government side at this point in time, especially with the rebels weakening each other with the infighting going on between the Islamists and the more moderate forces. But I don't think that that momentum will lead to a decisive victory anywhere in the near or medium-term future.
MCEVERS: Frederik Pleitgen is a Berlin correspondent for CNN. He joined us from Damascus. Thanks so much, Fred.
PLEITGEN: Thank you very much.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
The political crisis in Ukraine has taken a stunning turn with news that embattled President Viktor Yanukovych may be near an agreement with leaders of the opposition. The move comes as anti-government protests spread to more parts of the country. And demonstrators in Kiev, the capital, seemed poised to launch violent clashes with police.
The agreement between the two sides involves concessions from the government and key jobs for top protest leaders. NPR's Corey Flintoff is on the line with us from Kiev. Corey, this is a fast-moving story. What's the latest?
COREY FLINTOFF, BYLINE: Well, Kelly, this whole set of new developments came out this afternoon after Yanukovych held a long meeting with the three top leaders of this protest. He's offered the job of prime minister to Arseniy Yatsenyuk who's the leader of the Motherland Party. Yatsenyuk is actually the most experienced politician among these three opposition leaders. He's a former foreign minister.
He just spoke to the protesters a little while ago in the central square here in Kiev where they've been holding out now for longer than two months. He said the opposition is ready to accept responsibility for leading the country, but he didn't explicitly say that he's actually accepted Yanukovych's offer.
The job of vice prime minister in charge of humanitarian affairs has been offered to Vitali Klitschko. He's a former heavyweight boxing champion, although he's had very little political experience before emerging as one of the leaders of this protest.
MCEVERS: I mean, this isn't what the protesters originally wanted, is it? I mean, they've been saying all along that nothing would satisfy them short of President Yanukovych's resignation. Why would they accept now?
FLINTOFF: Well, the leaders are portraying this agreement as a victory for the protesters. And I think they may have realized that it would have been exceedingly difficult to oust Yanukovych and call for new elections. Yanukovych is up for election next year anyway, and this would give the opposition leaders time to prepare to run for president themselves, which is what many people have been expecting them to do.
The catch with this deal is that it would apparently leave Yanukovych in place as president with his ruling party in control of parliament. So prime minister might not be such an enticing job. There is more to this deal than the job offers. It includes an offer to change the new law that bans most kinds of public protests. That's one of the big things that ignited this most recent round of violent clashes between the protesters and the police. There's also a proposal to return to an earlier version of Ukraine's constitution that would reduce the president's powers.
MCEVERS: So far, we've heard about what the protesters will get out of the deal. What does the government want in return?
FLINTOFF: The government wants the protesters to vacate all the buildings that they've seized around the country. And they've seized several more of them in the last couple of days. It's not at all clear at this point whether the rank-and-file protesters will agree to any of this because there's not a radicalized part of the protest that wants to go all the way and force Yanukovych's resignation.
MCEVERS: NPR's Corey Flintoff in Kiev, Ukraine. Corey, thank you so much.
FLINTOFF: My pleasure, Kelly.
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MCEVERS: This is NPR News.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Kelly McEvers.
This week, the company responsible for a toxic chemical leak into the Elk River in West Virginia announced that a second previously undisclosed chemical was present and may also have slipped into the water supply - this after people in and around Charleston, West Virginia, had already spent days avoiding the tap water only to have officials declare it's safe for drinking last week.
If this sounds like a bunch of mixed messages, it is. Ken Ward is a reporter for The Gazette in Charleston where he lives. He joined me to explain how people are reacting to the confusion.
KEN WARD JR.: If you go to grocery stores here locally, you see people buying carts full of bottled water. If you go to restaurants, people are asking if they're cooking with bottled water. Restaurants are putting up press releases and putting signs up saying, hey, we're using bottled water. Come here and eat.
Earlier this week, I asked Governor Tomblin about the sight of people continuing to get bottled water, even though the state was telling them the water was safe, and asked him if he thought that that meant that people had lost trust in these agencies that are supposed to ensure our health. And the governor's response was to say, well, you know, it's really a personal decision. It's up to you if you want to drink this water. And if you're uncomfortable with it, then don't drink it.
MCEVERS: Are you drinking the water?
JR.: I and my family are not drinking the water.
MCEVERS: So despite the new chemical, they're still saying - officials are still saying it's safe. The first chemical is dropping. The second chemical isn't posing a safety risk.
JR.: Correct. But the other thing that's happening is that the water company told residents, what you need to do is flush out your home plumbing system. They told us to run the hot water for 15 minutes, the cold water for five minutes. Then you can go about your business like nothing ever happened. But we're hearing reports from lots of people that even after they do that, they continue to smell this chemical. It has a sweet sort of licorice smell to it. And the explanation from the state is, well, it has a lower odor threshold than the health threshold.
The problem with that is the ATSDR, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, advised the state early on, tell people to flush their home plumbing until they don't smell it anymore. And the state didn't follow that recommendation and really hasn't provided that clear of an explanation for why. And I think that further kind of eroded people's trust here.
MCEVERS: Was there a silver lining in all this? Do you think that these revelations, will they change things? Will they make these agencies and these companies better about disclosure in the end?
JR.: I mean, first of all, it almost always in our society unfortunately takes a terrible disaster for us to react and do things. The history in West Virginia is of coal mining disasters, of explosions and underground mines that killed hundreds of workers. And only after those terrible things do we really kind of reform things and try to make things safer.
What I and my neighbors in Charleston are going through, this uncertainty about what's in our water and going for a number of days or a week without our tap water - there's a lot of people in the coalfields of West Virginia that that's their life every day and has been for a long time. And it's very easy for people that live here in Charleston to kind of ignore those problems.
And one of the things that I'm seeing is a lot of folks who might have, you know, a month ago poo-pooed these concerns are now starting to think twice about this. And, you know, maybe that will change the politics here and the regulatory climate here a little bit.
MCEVERS: Ken Ward is a reporter for The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia. Ken, thank you so much.
JR.: Thank you.
MCEVERS: West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin said today he has ordered the company responsible for the chemical spill to dismantle and remove all aboveground storage tanks from its facility on the Elk River. That process is set to begin March 15th.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
Here at ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, we've been collecting stories of triumph - big and small - those moments when people make great leaps forward in their careers. We call it My Big Break. And for our next guest, the hard part wasn't the audition. It was waiting for a call from the big boss - Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of "Saturday Night Live."
BOBBY MOYNIHAN: My name's Bobby Moynihan, and I'm a cast member on "Saturday Night Live."
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MOYNIHAN: For many years, I was working all day as a bartender at a Pizzeria Uno, then going and doing improv at night, and then doing it all again the next day. I kind of just spent 10 years just doing improv, and kind of got on "SNL's" radar. They asked me to come audition, and I was absolutely terrified but elated because that's all I've ever wanted to do. It's like the equivalent of like, hey, you're going to go to space. It's like, yeah, that's a great idea. I would love to go to space, but it's really dangerous and terrifying up there.
(LAUGHTER)
MOYNIHAN: They put you in a dressing room, and then you sit there for four hours, panicking that your life is about to change in 10 minutes. They finally brought me into the studio, and you see that stage and you're like, oh, my God, I'm here. I think I - for my impressions, I did Nathan Lane. I did the dumbest bit in the world. I did Nathan Lane for the Hamburger Society. And I believe the only thing I said was (Singing) Something familiar, something peculiar. Something for everyone, eat a hamburger tonight...(LAUGHTER)
I did somebody that was based off of somebody I worked with at Pizzeria Uno; a character named Mark Payne, who constantly thought everything smelled like pepper. He just walked around, and he'd say, what - can you - do you smell that? It smells like pepper up in here. It smells like there's a pepper tornado, like we're in the movie "Twister." Someone call Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, and tell them that we got a class five pepper twister on our hands - lots of that.
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MOYNIHAN: I auditioned, and then I got called in to meet with Lorne relatively soon after, maybe the next day. Waited on his couch for about - I think that one was nine hours. Talked to Loren for about 40 minutes, and then he said very fleetingly: You know what? I think we'll start you in January, and - you know, we'll figure it out. And I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know if I had gotten the show or not. And then the writers' strike happened.
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MOYNIHAN: So I spent, I think, nine months or whatever - however long it was just sitting in my apartment, waiting. And then the writers' strike ended, and I got a phone call from "SNL," and I was like, this is it. They're going to tell me to come to work on Monday. And they told me that Maya Rudolph had had a baby during the break, so they had to hire a woman instead. And I was devastated.
(LAUGHTER)
MOYNIHAN: Yeah, that was the worst ever.
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MOYNIHAN: I ended up getting lucky and doing a couple movies. And then I got a phone call from Seth Myers. Seth said: Why don't you come back in and audition? We're having auditions this week.
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MOYNIHAN: And when it was over, I was just more relieved because it had been like, a 14-month process. I went out that night. I'm not a big drinker. I polished off a bottle of wine. And I woke up at 1 o'clock in the afternoon to my phone ringing, with a very bad headache. And it was Lorne. All I remember was the very last thing he said was: So I think - you know - I think America will like you on the show and, you know, we'll see you next week.
And then I said, thank you so much. You made my day. And he said: Well, I hope it lasts longer than that. And - great, well, you sound tired. I'll let you go. And I thought I lost the job at that moment. And then I hung up the phone and had no idea what had happened. I wasn't sure if I had really gotten it. I didn't know what was happening. But then I got a text from Seth a couple minutes later saying, congratulations. And that was it.
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MOYNIHAN: I had moved back home, at that point, for a little while. And I - my mother works at the town hall across the street from my apartment. And I ran across the street in boxers and a T-shirt - didn't even think to put pants on - and ran across the street to my mom, hysterically crying; and told her that my life's dream had come true, and sat on a bench and smoked about 70 cigarettes. (LAUGHTER) My big break was spent in my underwear smoking cigarettes, yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCEVERS: Bobby Moynihan is still a cast member on "Saturday Night Live." You can also catch him on the new FX series "Chosen." And we want to hear about your big break. Send an email with your story to My Big Break, at npr.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DEJA VU")
DAVID CROSBY: (Singing) If I had ever been here before, I would probably know just what to do. Don't you?
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
In the history of rock 'n' roll, few people have had the vantage point of David Crosby. He was a founding member of The Byrds, and Crosby, Stills & Nash and sometimes Young. He performed at Woodstock. He worked with Jackson Browne, Jefferson Airplane, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Carole King. He is the consummate collaborator and yet in all that time, David Crosby has released only three solo albums. That is, until Tuesday, when he shares his first in more than 20 years. It's called "Croz."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHAT'S BROKEN")
CROSBY: (Singing) Looking out on the buzzing city molecules go flying by. Standing here is a very lost disciple. How could it be that angels fly.
MCEVERS: David Crosby's last solo record was "A Thousand Roads" back in 1993. Not long after that, he almost died. A new liver gave him the time he's had since. So when he came by our studios here in Culver City, California, I asked if this David Crosby is different than the man we heard 21 years ago.
CROSBY: Well, considerably. I came very close to dying. I remember when I was watching a biographic piece, and they had interviewed my main doctor. They said: Well, how close was it? And he said: He was about a week from dying. And I just rocked back in my chair, because of course they don't tell you that. But that's a pretty close call.
MCEVERS: Are there lyrics on this album that you, you know, wrote because you've been through an experience like that?
CROSBY: There's certainly an attitude. It affects you, you know, very strongly. You feel like every day that you get you wake up and you say, oh, my God, they gave me another one. Oh, boy, what can I accomplish today, you know? And it makes you really treasure your time. Yes, there's a lyric I can think of. In "Time I Have," I talk about not wanting to waste my time being angry.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TIME I HAVE")
CROSBY: (Singing) People do so many things that make me mad, but angry isn't how I want to spend the time I have. Cognitive dissonance they call it, and I wonder just how small it could be made to be in me.
MCEVERS: You've been recording and touring with your son James Raymond for several decades now. He's also a major part of this record. I know you've told the story 1,000 times, but I'm hoping you can tell it again, the story of how you guys came to find each other again.
CROSBY: Yeah, it's kind of a miracle. His mom put him up for adoption when he was born - and it was a good choice. And you can't hunt for him from the parent down, only from the kid up. So when he got married, and he was just about to have his first child, his parents had said, you know, you ought to find out who your genetic parents are.
So he had found out that his mom lived in Australia, and he'd found out that it was an open registration. And he looked at the papers, and there was my name. And he said, nah, couldn't be. And then he found out that it was. And he got a hold of someone who knew me, and he did one of the kindest things I've ever seen another human being do.
Now, those kind of meetings usually go badly. Both people arrive with a lot of baggage - the parent usually with a lot of guilt and the kid with a lot of anger - why did you leave me and mom? We weren't good enough for you? He came with nothing. He came with no baggage. He gave me a clean slate. He let me earn my way into his life and his heart. And that is a very high level of human being.
MCEVERS: And James has written a couple of songs on this album, yeah?
CROSBY: Oh, man. He wrote so well on this record that I can't believe it. He's as good as I am or better.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CROSBY: (Singing) This kind of love don't need a home. This kind of heart beats all alone. This kind of world, gonna let it go. Lay down the things that came before.
MCEVERS: My guest is the legendary David Crosby. His new solo album is called "Croz." I want to ask you a question that's possibly out of left field. I'm wondering if you saw the Coen Brothers' film "Inside Llewyn Davis."
CROSBY: Not yet.
MCEVERS: Okay.
CROSBY: I'm going to see it. I'm a little afraid of it.
MCEVERS: Oh.
CROSBY: Well, I've been a Coen Brothers' fan since "Blood Simple." And I know that if they write about singer/songwriters who are not stars, it's going to be real. It's going to affect me very strongly emotionally. I know this movie is going to affect me very strongly because I know it will be truthful and I know there will be pain there.
But they do tell you the truth about what it's like to have this drive to put your songs out there and sing, you know, to people.
MCEVERS: Why would that be painful for you, because you put your songs out there and people accepted them and liked them and you are now who you are.
CROSBY: Yeah, but that's now. For a long time, I was a kid in a bar, broke, before that, in a coffeehouse. My earliest ones, I was passing a basket in a basket house in New York after I sang. And if there wasn't any money in the basket, I didn't have dinner. That was that. It's not easy. And it's gotten harder since then. I'm lucky I got in when I did.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCEVERS: We talked about working with your son James on this album.
CROSBY: Mm-hmm.
MCEVERS: And your other son Django took some of the photographs for it.
CROSBY: Yeah, he took the cover.
MCEVERS: He's in his 20s now?
CROSBY: He's 18.
MCEVERS: He's 18? We heard a line in the song "Dangerous Night." I want to believe I can pass happy to my child, but the truth gets lost and the system runs wild.
CROSBY: Yeah, and the two lines before it are: I try to write Buddha and it comes out guns. I vote for peace and the blood still runs.
MCEVERS: So what are these lines about? Is this about what you - the legacy you want to leave to your kids?
CROSBY: Yes. And I worry a great deal about the world we're handing them. Our government is broken. Our democracy is broken. Other people own our government now. Yes, I am worried.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CROSBY: (Singing) Send me someone who has doubts about it, who has conquered their own fear and lived to tell about it, someone who won't give up...
MCEVERS: Listening to this new album, "Croz," you know, there is a kind of hopefulness there, maybe a weary hopefulness, but it's there.
CROSBY: Yes.
MCEVERS: I know you're worried about the future and what you're going to - the country you're going to leave your kids. But there's got to be some hope there too, huh?
CROSBY: Yes. I have hope because of human beings. I like human beings. It's an attitude thing. If you go down in despair, you can't function, and you can't do any good. If you have hope in your heart, you can. It's that simple.
MCEVERS: David Crosby. His first solo album in more than 20 years comes out on Tuesday. It's called "Croz." Mr. Crosby, thank you so, so much for being here.
CROSBY: It's such a pleasure, ma'am. I am a huge - I have to say this, a huge NPR fan. I listen all the time.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCEVERS: And for Sunday, that's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Kelly McEvers. Check out our weekly podcast. Search for WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED on iTunes or on the NPR app. You can follow us on Twitter: @nprwatc. We're back next weekend. Until then, thanks for listening and have a great week.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
Here's a medical mystery. It starts with a kindergarten teacher who we'll call by her first initial, M. We're not using her full name to protect her privacy. M. taught reading to 4- and 5-year-olds. But a few years ago, something happened that changed her life. She lost the ability to read. NPR's Rebecca Hersher reports.
REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE: M. always knew she wanted to be a teacher.
M.: A teacher is all I ever knew how to do. It's all I ever wanted to do. I wanted to work with the younger children.
HERSHER: M. taught reading at a kindergarten outside Chicago. She had walked the 4- and 5-year-olds in her class through their first sight words, the dog is brown. She had her own condo and taught Sunday school on weekends.
M.: I'm a single person. I was living independently, lots of friends. I thought I had a pretty good life. I don't know, I loved teaching. I loved what I did, and it just made life very fulfilling.
HERSHER: But in the fall of 2011, a week before Halloween, weird things started to happen.
M.: There was a Halloween party at the park district, and I was taking money. And I remember, oh, there's three people here, that will be $9. And the woman looked at me and said, there are six of us. I didn't realize I had lost vision. I just knew that there was something weird.
HERSHER: And other strange things were happening. M. got lost driving in her own neighborhood. She was confused about dates and times. And about a week after it began, she was trying to take attendance at school when she realized she couldn't type the numbers and letters of her computer password. Something was wrong.
Dr. Murray Flaster is one of the doctors who's treated M.
DR. MURRAY FLASTER: We believe that she had an inflammation of blood vessels in the brain. And that inflammation led to the cutoff of blood flow to a few areas in the brain.
HERSHER: When blood doesn't get to the brain, that's a stroke. M. had had many, maybe even dozens of little strokes. And as she recovered, her most striking symptom was this: M. could write but she couldn't read.
FLASTER: So if you give her a book and you ask her to read it, she knows it's a book. She knows there must be letters on the page. She knows there's words there, but she cannot recognize letters and put letters into words because of the exquisite nature of the brain damage.
HERSHER: The strokes damaged the connection between the part of M.'s brain that takes visual information from the eyes and delivers it to the part of the brain that deciphers words. In a healthy brain, when you open a book, one part of your brain says, hey, those are words you're seeing. And it sends the words to be decoded in another part of the brain. In M., that connection, which she built when she first learned to sound out words as a little kid, it's gone, which means she can't read anymore.
M.: I miss the normalcy of it. There's so many things in the world that you take for granted. I never thought that I would say that reading was something that I took for granted.
HERSHER: But here's where M.'s story goes from pretty dismal to kind of beautiful. Remember, M still knows how to write. In fact, she can understand language using other senses, just not sight. So she can listen to audio books, write stories and even transcribe words as they're said to her, which gave M. an idea. Instead of relying on her eyes, she would use touch and hearing to read. It works like this.
When M. sees a jumble of shapes that look like a word, she begins by tracing each letter with her finger.
M.: Let's say pit is the word that I'm looking at. So I would start M, N, O, OK, P. And I would keep tracing the P. Then I would go to the next letter, and I would trace A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I. OK. The first letter was a - and I would forget the first letter by this time.
HERSHER: It's a maddeningly slow way to do it, but it's reading. Dr. Flaster says without knowing it, M. came up with a genius way to work around the damaged parts of her brain.
FLASTER: She discovered that all by herself. And we speculate that the fact that she was an expert in teaching children how to read perhaps made her more likely to discover that than someone else who might otherwise be stricken similarly. Of course, I can't prove that, but it seems to make sense.
HERSHER: M. isn't the first person to come up with the tracing method. It's actually worked for other patients too. But it's a long road. Two years after her strokes, M.'s reading is still laborious. On a good day, she can decipher about one word every two seconds. But she's not letting it slow her down too much.
She has a new job, working at the community gym. And she wants to tell her story. In her free time, M. is writing a book, typing it word by word and getting friends to help her read it.
Rebecca Hersher, NPR News.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Kelly McEvers.
Back in 2009, two newspaper reporters discovered that police in Cleveland had a massive backlog going back decades of so-called rape kits. These are the DNA swabs that are taken from women who've been raped, DNA that could identify the men who committed the crime. But in thousands of cases, the DNA simply wasn't tested. The kits sat on the shelf. The cases went unsolved, and the rapists went unpunished.
Now, the kits are being taken down, one by one, and tested, not just in Cleveland but in cities like Detroit and Houston with some amazing results.
MCEVERS: Rachel Dissell and Leila Atassi of the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper are the reason we know about this story. I asked Rachel Dissell how they first heard about the rape kits.
RACHEL DISSELL: We had been doing some reporting after a serial murder case here in Cleveland where 11 women were raped and killed. And in our reporting that followed that, we started asking a lot of questions about how sexual assault cases were handled. And one of the questions that we asked were about these exams that were done on women and the evidence that was collected and what was done with it.
And we couldn't really get a clear answer from Cleveland Police. You know, it was basically, I don't know. To their credit, they really decided to find out, and they started a project to count them all. And they had to sort through thousands of kits and other pieces of evidence in their evidence room. What they found was that there was about 4,000 that had never been tested.
MCEVERS: Why hadn't they tested 4,000 rape kits?
DISSELL: DNA testing became more widely available in the early '90s but that doesn't mean that every state or every police department had a method for getting that testing done. It was quite expensive in the beginning. And so the investigations themselves really were not all that extensive.
MCEVERS: These untested kits, some of them are very old - you know, 20 years old, some of these cases - how is it that investigators are still able to test them?
DISSELL: So long as they're kept in a cool, dry place, that DNA can be usable for quite a long time. You know, older DNA degrades a little bit, but the DNA tests that they have now are absolutely fabulous when it comes to taking a very small amount of DNA and being able to get a profile. And they've gotten quite a bit of results.
MCEVERS: So tell us about those results. I mean, how many prosecutions have they gotten so far?
DISSELL: From around the state, what they're finding with the thousands of kits that have been submitted, about a third of them get something called a hit or a DNA match. And so far, with a little over 1,000 kits tested from Cleveland, it's resulted in close to 80 indictments. And it was well over 20 percent of these cases that once they went back and got tested, we found out that the suspect wasn't just indicated in one rape but in multiple rapes.
MCEVERS: Cleveland is just one example of these backlog cases, thousands of cases. Like you said, this is happening in other cities. How many, in your estimation, of these untested rape kits are there across America?
DISSELL: The best estimate that I've seen that's used at this point by the federal government is about 400,000. And it's different all across the board. You know, in Houston, they had, you know, more than 8,000. In Detroit, they had 11,000. So we're looking at the big cities, but it's really hard to get a count in all the small areas and the rural areas of what they actually capped, what they threw away and what they might send in.
MCEVERS: Reporter Rachel Dissell. She and her colleague broke this story at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. As the cases get solved, Rachel and her colleague, as well as prosecutors and detectives, are finding themselves in the difficult position of knocking on the doors of rape victims and asking them to talk about horrific things. One of these women is Allyssa Allison. She was raped back in 1993. But her kit was never tested. She says she even told police she knew who her rapist was. Even though he was hiding his face, she was sure it was her landlord.
ALLYSSA ALLISON: I had a gut feeling. Everything was pointing that way because he just knew too much about the things that were wrong with my apartment.
MCEVERS: Like the broken window in the bathroom the rapist used to break in.
ALLISON: Because I had told him numerous times that that needed to be fixed. And he never fixed it.
MCEVERS: Fast forward 20 years to this past summer and Allyssa gets a knock on the door from a female detective.
ALLISON: I wasn't very nice, to be honest. She's like, I really have to talk to you. And I was like, I'm not ready to talk. I don't know what you - what are you hear for. And she's like, well, this is important.
MCEVERS: The detective eventually left but later called Allyssa on the phone.
ALLISON: Well, I'm calling in regards to you being a victim in 1993. And then I had said, are you talking about my rape? And she had said, yes. And literally, my jaw did drop, literally. I mean, it just - my mouth got really wide open and I just - it was very surreal because I kind of knew where the conversation was going to go. I said, well, did you find him? And she's like, no, but we do have something called a possible hit, a DNA hit.
MCEVERS: That means police had finally tested Allyssa's rape kit and matched the DNA of her rapist to the DNA of the son of the landlord. It was a positive ID.
ALLISON: I think I had said over the phone to her, I knew it. I knew it. You know, and 20 years ago, the police didn't want to listen to me.
MCEVERS: It turns out the landlord had raped again, including a woman who lived in Allyssa's building complex. That news was not easy for Allyssa to hear.
ALLISON: And that's the part that really kind of gets me sick, literally makes me nauseous is the fact that he got away with doing this after he did this to me. I mean, so far, I think we've got three other victims. I don't like that word. I'm going to say survivors. But who knows? There might be others. And that's the part that really gets to me. That breaks my heart.
MCEVERS: It was too late to prosecute the landlord. He died in 2005. Allyssa had been keeping a picture of him from his obituary in the newspaper. So once the case was solved, what did you do with that picture?
ALLISON: I punched it really hard, like, many times with my fist. I think, like I said, the part that gets to me most was that he had did this to other people. I don't - oh, I just - I just literally punched the hell out of the paper. So that's what I did.
MCEVERS: Is there any solace right now for you?
ALLISON: It's closure. I just wish that I would've been taken seriously 20 years ago.
MCEVERS: Allyssa Allison told us there is one thing that gives her solace - knowing she doesn't have to be afraid of that landlord anymore.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Kelly McEvers, in for Arun Rath.
It was one of the strongest storms ever recorded at landfall. Typhoon Haiyan clocked at 147 miles an hour when it struck the Philippines late last year. More than 6,000 people were killed, nearly 2,000 more are missing, and millions were displaced when their homes were destroyed or washed away. And still, authorities are struggling with the simplest tasks like clearing away debris, rebuilding houses and counting the dead.
I just got back from the Philippine city of Tacloban, a city that bore the brunt of the typhoon. I landed at an airport that has no walls, no control tower. It was clear it's a place with a lot of work to do. And that's our cover story today: Tacloban two months after the storm.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCEVERS: I started my tour of Tacloban with Aurora Almendral, a reporter who was there right after the storm and who keeps coming back.
So we just got - we just landed in Tacloban. It's pouring rain. The skies are grey, and everything is soaking wet. And we're driving down, like, the main drag, right?
AURORA ALMENDRAL: Yeah. This is the main airport road.
MCEVERS: And you were here, like, the fourth day after the storm. You were here really early.
ALMENDRAL: Yeah.
MCEVERS: How is it different?
ALMENDRAL: Well, this main road was completely blocked by debris, as in you couldn't drive down it. And we had to walk. We had to walk through debris. We had to walk through neighborhoods. We had to climb, like, 10-foot high piles of people's former houses.
MCEVERS: So now, the roads are clear. We're obviously - we're in a car. We're going down. But what struck you when you got here yesterday?
ALMENDRAL: There's been a lot of cleanup, but what also struck me is that there's - it's not finished. It's, like, far from finished.
MCEVERS: Hardly any single structure of the structures that remain has a roof.
ALMENDRAL: I mean, it's about 100 times better probably. But nothing is fixed. So it's been cleared, but nothing has been repaired for the most part. Like...
MCEVERS: There's no electricity.
ALMENDRAL: There's a little bit of electricity, but this area, no.
MCEVERS: So it's a sense that there's still, like, a long way to go.
ALMENDRAL: For sure. I mean, there's no way to look at this and think, yeah, this is fine, this is normal. It's miles from normal.
We keep driving into the city. Getting closer to downtown, we start seeing people in the streets.
MCEVERS: Shops are open. There's food. People are selling lumber. Obviously, there's fuel. Are prices really inflated?
ALMENDRAL: The food is quite expensive. It's just slightly less than double the price for something, which is huge, especially if you're making zero money because you don't have a job.
MCEVERS: You operating a, quote, unquote, "shop" out of - almost out of like a pile of garbage.
ALMENDRAL: Make a little table and gather some stuff and sell it.
MCEVERS: Here's a stall selling instant coffee, limes, boiled eggs.
Beyond downtown, we come to another hard-hit area. This is where massive ships crashed onto shore and destroyed entire neighborhoods.
So, yeah, I mean, these are already areas where people's houses were sort of built in a pretty haphazard way. But it looks like people are rebuilding their stilt houses, like lots of them, exactly where they were before.
ALMENDRAL: Anything you see standing has been rebuilt. This entire area was completely flattened.
MCEVERS: So, I mean, the next typhoon and all these...
ALMENDRAL: I mean, unless there's another option, we know exactly where the typhoon is going to pass. And that's a bay. You know, the ships were there for a reason.
MCEVERS: And what'll happen?
ALMENDRAL: So if there's any more ships that come, when another typhoon comes, it's going to be, like, the same sort of, like, running-over thing.
MCEVERS: The same running-over thing, if authorities don't provide housing. The Philippine government is building temporary dorms called bunkhouses where each family lives in one small room. But critics say the bunkhouses aren't strong enough to withstand the next storm. And they say with four million people displaced, a few thousand bunkhouses aren't nearly enough.
Arjun Jain is with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. He says the era of big storms is upon us, and officials, international organizations and communities need to do better at responding.
ARJUN JAIN: These storms are not just freak storms. They are probably going to hit many coastlines all over the world, and they are probably just going to get stronger over the next few years and over the next few decades. And we just have to be better prepared to deal with that. We all need to have better contingency plans. We all need to have faster recovery plans. And I think both the Philippines and other countries by the coastlines have to be prepared for this much better.
MCEVERS: One thing Tacloban was not prepared for was how to deal with so many casualties. So let's back up for a minute to November 8, 2013. Typhoon Haiyan is about to make landfall in Tacloban. A guy named Bubi Arce and his friend decide to hide out in a two-story apartment.
BUBI ARCE: Communication cut off, TV gone, electricity gone, everything gone. And the roof flew away.
MCEVERS: Water filled the first floor, so they went to the second floor.
ARCE: And I said, do you know how to climb the wall? He said, why? If we don't do that, we're going to die.
MCEVERS: They climbed. The water went up, then went down. By the time they got outside, entire neighborhoods were missing. Cars, furniture, fish floated by. Under a bridge, Bubi and his friend saw the first dead body.
ARCE: And he said, no, it's a single. It's an isolated case. I said, I don't think so. My friend said, why?
MCEVERS: Because if a body ended up that far inland, Bubi said...
ARCE: There's going to be a lot of dead people.
MCEVERS: Bubi's friend went to find his family. Bubi went to city hall. He found a working truck and a couple more friends. That's when he decided he had to start picking up bodies.
ARCE: First five in the first run, then seven, then 15, then 20.
MCEVERS: And that was just the first day.
I mean, why did you do it? I mean, what - you just thought, we need - this needs to be done?
ARCE: I know nobody would do it.
MCEVERS: At first, Bubi and his team just put the bodies in a big pit, a mass grave in an existing cemetery. Then the government showed up, an alphabet soup of federal agencies, each with its own idea about what to do. Aid workers say the effort was pretty badly managed.
Now, more than two months after the storm, Bubi has been appointed the head of Task Force Cadaver in Tacloban, which means even though he's never done this before, Bubi is the guy in charge of collecting, burying and identifying bodies in the city, like 2,500 bodies. That's about a third of the total dead in the whole region.
And while things are getting better, there are still a lot of challenges. First, what to do with the bodies. Many people in Tacloban agreed an open mass grave was no good. So just a few weeks ago, it was finally covered over with dirt.
Now, authorities from the Philippine equivalent to the FBI are digging up these bodies, cataloging them and burying them separately until they can be ID'ed. Then there's the issue of how to make those IDs. If someone wants to match a body with a missing loved one, how do they do that?
Turns out they have to look in a stack of handwritten notebooks at a local branch of the Philippine National Police. Problem is their office was blown away by the storm. So the notebooks are kept under tarps inside this rain-soaked tent.
Commander Ramos Bergonio(ph) shows me the notebooks.
So this is like...
RAMOS BERGONIO: This is the case number.
MCEVERS: Case number, okay.
BERGONIO: Yeah, or...
MCEVERS: Time and date of the recovery.
BERGONIO: Place.
MCEVERS: The place, height, approximate age.
BERGONIO: Yes. Yes. This is the description.
MCEVERS: Wearing a black...
BERGONIO: Black sandal.
MCEVERS: Leopard print shorts. And the gender.
So far, there have been only a few hundred bodies identified. Thousands are still unknown. Officials are taking some DNA samples, but they say there's not enough money to test them, which brings us to another problem: what to do if IDs are never made?
Siobhan Reddel with the World Health Organization is in Tacloban to help Bubi and his team, standing in the rain at a temporary cemetery. She says the ultimate goal is a monument to those who died in the storm.
SIOBHAN REDDEL: We have to know now there will be some that won't be able to be identified. And that will be important for the community and individuals to understand that they can come to a particular space, a particular monument and grieve knowing that it represents the loss of that person as well.
MCEVERS: And now for yet another problem, bodies are still being found every day as we see at the cemetery.
So it's a body bag, and there's some tagging information on it. It's got a date. It's been assigned a number.
REDDEL: That's all the retrieval data.
MCEVERS: Siobhan is trying to get funding to bring in a team of dogs that are trained to scan the massive piles of debris and find the remaining bodies. She says that way, people won't think their dead relatives are still out there. Siobhan and Bubi say there's a lot more to do, but, they say, they hope their failures and successes will be a lesson for cities and villages hit by the next Pacific storm. But for the people still looking for their relatives, it isn't much comfort.
So now, we're kind of walking into - in a tent city, it's mostly mud, climbing in here into a tent. What's her name?
LORENA SABUSA: Lorena.
MCEVERS: Lorena?
SABUSA: Lorena Sabusa(ph).
MCEVERS: Lorena Sabusa now lives in this tent. During the storm, she and several of her nine kids sheltered in a sports stadium. After the storm, when she came back to her neighborhood, she saw that her house, everything had simply washed away. Her sister, her niece and her brother-in-law were just gone. The family searched for three weeks for their bodies. We asked if they reported it to the police in the tent with the notebooks.
SABUSA: (Foreign language spoken)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: She says, no, we didn't go to report it, because it's not like they could've done anything. They're not going anything to help us now. And then I asked her, like, how did you know that they aren't alive anymore? She said, well, my niece that died, she showed her soul. Like, her other niece saw a child in white that was, like, wet and crouched over. So they knew that that was the ghost of the niece that died.
MCEVERS: As for Lorena's own sister, the mother of the girl, Lorena says she heard she survived and made it to shore in the next city over.
Does she believe that?
SABUSA: (Foreign language spoken)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Yeah, she believes it.
MCEVERS: She believes her sister is alive. Disaster counselors say this is what you do when you don't get closure. You tell yourself a story that's easier to believe than the thing that might actually have happened. The best thing, they say, is to embrace the ambiguity. Maybe she did wash up on shore, with amnesia. Maybe she didn't. That, not a positive ID verified by some government agency, is how Lorena's family might get through the grief.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MCEVERS: This is NPR News.
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Kelly McEvers.
Next week, NPR News will take an in-depth look at the unprecedented oil drilling boom going on right now in the Northern Plains. The state of North Dakota now produces over a million barrels of oil a day. That means it's now second only to Texas as the top oil producer in the U.S. This drilling boom is transforming the once isolated Northern Plains, making some towns in the area unrecognizable to the people who live there.
NPR's Kirk Siegler just got back from a reporting trip in North Dakota. He joins me now at NPR West. Hey, Kirk.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Hey, Kelly.
MCEVERS: So this series is going to look at what sounds like a pretty major transformation of western North Dakota. Can you just tell us what does it look like up there?
SIEGLER: Well, it's really a modern-day gold rush going on up there. You know, in some places, the infrastructure is starting to catch up with all the influx of these people coming in. But in other places, not at all. One place we're going to visit for this series is Watford City. Now, this used to be a sleepy little farming town in the northwest part of the state. 2010 census put it at 1,500 people. Town officials told me they think it's about 10,000 people.
We'll also visit a town just across the state line in Montana, which has a budget of $10 million. And the mayor there told us that $50 million in infrastructure improvements are needed. They're hammered by all this truck traffic. The roads just weren't built for it.
MCEVERS: And you had an incident yourself, didn't you? Do you want to talk about that?
SIEGLER: I did actually. Like, the very first day I was there, I took a trip down to Watford City and, boom, a boulder the size of my palm went into my windshield. First person I told was like, yep, that happens all the time. And what's worse is an hour after you fix it, it happens again.
MCEVERS: Wow. So with this population booming like this, where are people living? I mean, what does it actually look like, you know, to see...
SIEGLER: On the outskirts of these little towns are mobile home parks, modular homes, temporary housing, man camps is what they're called. Workers are coming in and crowding into hotels. One night I stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Williston, North Dakota. It cost $250 just for one night. So big city prices.
MCEVERS: Wow. What do the locals make of all this?
SIEGLER: Well, the biggest complaint I would hear is about all the heavy truck traffic clogging these little towns. There's also a lot of crime now, DUIs, prostitution, bar brawls. You know, a lot of people would tell me, though, that the boom is sort of bittersweet. You know, not that long ago, people were talking about western North Dakota maybe being turned into a bison refuge just to attract tourists.
Well, now, you know, all of a sudden, there's so many jobs, there's so much money coming in. I talked to a woman named Myra Anderson in Watford City. You know, she's lived in that area for more than 40 years and taught for most of them at the local school. Let's hear from her.
MYRA ANDERSON: It's been a huge change, but there's been good. We were very close to being one of those dried-up towns that didn't exist.
SIEGLER: But then, Kelly, Myra went on to tell me that she lives out in the country on a farm. And it used to be quiet, but now her night-light out there is an oil flare. In fact, tensions between the oil industry and farmers and ranchers is also quite palpable. And that's one of the stories we'll explore in the series as well.
MCEVERS: But this isn't the first time this part of the world has had an oil boom, right?
SIEGLER: No, it's not. This area boomed in the '50s and the '80s as well. But, you know, there's a pervasive sense when you go there that this one is different. A lot of folks are saying and planning for this boom to be there for quite a while. And people told me that things had started to settle down a bit compared to, say, two, three years ago. But there are still a lot of people coming in there with the promise of good-paying jobs.
I met a guy from New Zealand who had just moved there. I met other commuters coming from Washington and Idaho where jobs are scarce. It's quite a time to be there right now.
MCEVERS: That's NPR's Kirk Siegler. He just got back from North Dakota where there's an oil drilling boom on. The first of his stories about the Northern Plains will air on MORNING EDITION this Wednesday. Thanks, Kirk.
SIEGLER: Thank you.
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(AUDIENCE CHEERS, APPLAUSE)
JAY LENO: Welcome to ''The Tonight Show.'' Now, folks...
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
Next month, a new host will welcome the audience on "The Tonight Show." After two decades of hosting the program, Jay Leno is passing the torch to Jimmy Fallon. Fallon announced NBC's decision to change hosts last spring.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
JIMMY FALLON: There's rumors lately that - but I want to let you guys know that as of today, it's official. Starting in February, I'm going to be hosting "The Tonight Show" here, on NBC.
(AUDIENCE CHEERS, APPLAUSE)
MCEVERS: In tonight's interview with "60 Minutes," Leno says it wasn't his choice, but he gets it.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "60 MINUTES")
LENO: You go with the new guy. Makes perfect sense to me. If they said: Look, you're fired. We don't know who we're going to get. We don't know what we're going to put in there, but anybody but you, we just want you out - I would be a little hurt and offended.
MCEVERS: As we head into the last days of Jay, I asked "The Hollywood Reporter's" Matt Belloni about Leno's final lineup.
MATT BELLONI: His final lineup is going to be Billy Crystal, who was actually one of his first guests; and Garth Brooks, who's been on the show many times. He's a Leno favorite. The interesting thing about it is the fact that Leno's going out earlier than he had planned, even. And that was a whole messy transition, to begin with.
MCEVERS: So just remind people again: Why is Jay Leno leaving early, anyway?
BELLONI: NBC has decided that even though Jay Leno is the No. 1 talk show host in broadcast TV, they're going to replace him starting with the Olympics with Jimmy Fallon, who is the upstart. He's, you know, the guy they envisioned being able to do this job for 20 years. So that's what's really fueling this - is Leno may be No. 1 now, but they see the direction that this is going, and they see an opportunity to put Jimmy Fallon into that chair now. And they're going to take that opportunity.
MCEVERS: So what are the theories about what Leno's going to do next?
BELLONI: He has said that he's been approached by everyone under the sun. We know that he has been specifically approached by CNN, to do a show there. Leno has really indicated that he is not going to make any decision, or even think about this, until after his final show.
MCEVERS: So there's been a lot of controversy about the reign of hosts in the late-night kingdom. Why is this market so valued, anyway?
BELLONI: It's interesting. You know, the late night comic landscape is just one of those American things that people talk about because the value of these late-night shows has actually been decreasing over the past few years. "The Tonight Show" used to generate about $150 million in profits. And that's down to about 30- to $40 million a year in profits.
So it's not as lucrative as it once was, but it's just something people talk about. You have these people in your home late at night, and you develop an attachment to them. People care about them.
MCEVERS: I cannot let you get away without asking a question about Sundance. I understand you just got back from the film festival in Utah. There's been a lot of buzz about some films. What are the ones that excited you?
BELLONI: I care about which films sell for distribution because it means that these films are going to be able to be seen by a mass audience. And so far, the ones that have generated the most buzz has been the Zach Braff movie "Wish I Was Here," which is a follow-up to "Garden State," which was a big hit about 10 years ago. That one got a big deal from Focus Features, and it's going to get a release later this year.
Another one is called "Whiplash," which is a drama about drumming. And it's got Miles Teller in it, who's kind of a hot star right now. That one is going to get a release later this year as well.
MCEVERS: What's changed in the 30 years since that festival started?
BELLONI: What's changed - besides everything?
MCEVERS: (Laughter) Really?
BELLONI: I mean, when Sundance started, it was a nothing little gathering in the snow. I mean, Robert Redford jokes that he made it in January to get the Hollywood people out of LA and up to the middle of the freezing weather. But the fact that Sundance is the launch pad for the year-end movies, I think that could never have been imagined when they first started it; the fact that now, if you want a wide audience for an independent, small film, the best shot is to take it to Sundance, try to get a distribution deal, and try to get some marketing muscle behind it. And you'll see that year after year.
MCEVERS: Matt Belloni writes for "The Hollywood Reporter," where he is the executive editor. Matt, thanks for your time today.
BELLONI: Thanks a lot.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
For years, California officials have fought to keep the state's richest residents from blocking public access to the beach. This issue comes up especially in the Southern California city of Malibu. Now, as California's economic center has shifted north, so has the battle over its coast.
And the latest fight involves a Silicon Valley billionaire. Amy Standen, of member station KQED, tells us about it.
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AMY STANDEN, BYLINE: Even on a windy, gray day, Martins Beach, half an hour south of San Francisco, is perfect: a crescent-shaped stretch of sand totally hidden from the highway.
MIKE WALLACE: I mean, to a lot of us, it feels like a little Yosemite of the coast.
STANDEN: Mike Wallace is a surf coach at the local high school. His daughter caught her first wave off of Martins Beach.
WALLACE: It's very spectacular.
STANDEN: But the heart of the battle is not on this beach - lovely as it may be - because all California beaches are, by law, public between the ocean and the high- tide mark. The problem is getting here because unless you're on a boat, there is only one way to get to this beach - the road, which now has a gate and a big, blacked-out sign.
WALLACE: It originally had a really kind of nice mural of what's called Pelican Rock. It was welcoming visitors in.
STANDEN: For almost a century, this land was owned by a family who charged a small entrance fee to visitors. In 2008, they sold Martins Beach to a new owner for $37 million. Almost immediately, Wallace says, a gate went up with a sign saying, "Private Property. Keep Out."
WALLACE: Nobody really knew quite what the status was. They didn't know who the owners were.
STANDEN: Eventually, they figured it out. The new owner of Martins Beach was this guy.
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STANDEN: That's Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, promoting one of his clean energy ventures on "60 Minutes" earlier this month. Khosla wouldn't comment for this story. His lawyers declined to answer questions. Part of what's gotten this case so much press is that with his background in solar power and bio fuels, Vinod Khosla isn't the kind of person you'd expect to find in a showdown with environmentalists. Take, for example, attorney Mark Massara.
MARK MASSARA: Even billionaires with a solid track record of conservation efforts, taking coast property and trying to privatize it - people generally are not willing to allow that to happen.
STANDEN: Massara is a longtime surfer, and a lawyer on one of several lawsuits filed over Martins Beach. He and others say look, there are public bathrooms at Martins Beach; an old cafe; a parking lot. These amenities, the fact that people have been coming here for decades, set a precedent of access. And Massara says if Vinod Khosla wins this fight, well, he won't be the last one.
MASSARA: Make no mistake that if the beach is allowed to be privatized in this case, it will inspire other efforts by other wealthy individuals.
NANCY CAVE: We wrote the owner.
STANDEN: Nancy Cave is with the California Coastal Commission, the state agency whose job it is to keep beaches open to the public.
CAVE: We asked them if they wanted to try to resolve it; and we, in fact, sat down and met with the owner's attorneys.
STANDEN: Maybe, she thought, they could work something out. After all, Khosla is going to need permits if he wants to develop the property, and he's going to have to get them from her office.
CAVE: They showed no interest in resolving. They only wanted to litigate.
STANDEN: She and her colleagues say they know how quickly a billionaire can strain the legal resources of a small and chronically underfunded state agency like this one. But they're steeling themselves for a long fight.
ALEX HELPERIN: We're pretty used to litigating against deep pockets.
STANDEN: Alex Helperin, one of the commission's lawyers.
HELPERIN: We've been in litigation with David Geffen...
STANDEN: That's the Hollywood billionaire who tried - and failed - to keep the hoi polloi away from his Malibu Beach estate.
HELPERIN: We've been in litigation with a lot of very wealthy adversaries.
CAVE: Does that stop us from doing our work?
STANDEN: Nancy Cave.
CAVE: No. No.
STANDEN: Meanwhile, the most recent lawsuit could go to trial this spring. For NPR News, I'm Amy Standen in San Francisco.
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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
The 19th century English writer Mary Ann Evans, known by her penname George Eliot, was once described as magnificently ugly. Her contemporary, American writer Henry James described her dull, gray eye and a huge mouth full of uneven teeth. But he went on to say that, quote, "In this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty."
James was not the only one to find Eliot enthralling. Rebecca Mead is out with a new book about George Eliot, specifically about the novel "Middlemarch." Here's Meg Wolitzer with a review.
MEG WOLITZER: The first time I tried to read "Middlemarch," I got 20 pages in and put it down. My teenage self was feeding at the time on Pearl S. Buck and "Go Ask Alice." "Middlemarch" seemed hard and dry. But then when I was older and less antsy, I tried it again. This time I was swept in.
Rebecca Mead never had my problem. Her first time out with "Middlemarch," she was 17. It became her touchstone. She re-read it at critical moments in her life, and she wrote about it, too. The result is her unusual and deeply felt new book, "My Life in Middlemarch." It's a mash-up of literary criticism, her own memoir and a biography of George Eliot.
Mead herself is a sympathetic narrator. We learn little bits about her seaside childhood, life at Oxford, love affairs, marriage. I really enjoyed these sections, and I would have been happy to read more of them. But she doesn't take up a lot of space with her own story, which is deliberate. The big figure here, the one whose presence dominates, is George Eliot.
Mary Ann Evans chose George as her pseudonym because it was the first name of her life partner, George Lewes. One early biographer speculated that the last name night might also honor him: To L, I owe it. Eliot. Also on display in the book is the heroine of "Middlemarch," Dorothea Brooke, and her terrible marriage to the Reverend Casaubon. It's been a long time since I read the novel, and my most recent encounter was in the form of a BBC mini-series.
But it doesn't matter. When Mead describes the characters, even minor ones who I forgot about, it was like being at a dinner party where a really smart person is talking about people I've never met. By the end of the meal, I felt like I knew them. Mead also describes her own experiences with the book, and she wrestles in a bigger way with what novels do, at least great ones, or what we do with them.
A book may not tell us how to live our own lives, she writes, but our own lives can teach us how to read a book. When she becomes a stepmother to a house full of boys, she searches "Middlemarch" for clues about how to step parent,and doesn't find any. But later, after she learns that Eliot also had stepsons, she realizes that experience infused the book with the idea of all that might be gained from opening one's heart wider.
She describes the theme of the novel as growing out of self-centeredness. And I got excited when I read that. And I thought, yes, yes, that's exactly what novels can do. She's writing about the power of fiction and the power of George Eliot. All of this brings up the obvious and very reasonable question: Do you have to have read "Middlemarch" to read "My Life in Middlemarch"?
I'm reminded of the old ad for rye bread that went, you don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's. And I'm certain that you don't have to read or re-read "Middlemarch" to love this extraordinary book. But I have the feeling that you'll probably want to anyway.
SIEGEL: The book is "My Life in Middlemarch" by Rebecca Mead. Our reviewer is author Meg Wolitzer. Her latest novel is "The Interestings."
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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
For decades, American companies have sent manufacturing work overseas. It's known as off-shoring. They've taken advantage of extremely low wages in places such as China, Vietnam, the Philippines and that has reduced business costs and helped consumers buy cheaper flat-screen TVs, dishwashers and the like. Well, a growing number of American companies are rethinking that business model and bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.
NPR's Jackie Northam reports on what some industry advocates call re-shoring.
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KIM FREEMAN: This is the hybrid water heater factory. And you can just see rolls of raw steel that are there. That steel will be made into the tanks...
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: Kim Freeman, a spokesperson for GE Appliances, walks into a sprawling plant in Louisville, Kentucky. The noise from the machinery in the brightly lit room is thunderous. The finished product - a hybrid water heater - is not much to look at; tubby, about four feet tall with a few knobs and levers. But it's actually a high-tech, energy efficient appliance.
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NORTHAM: For years, GE outsourced the manufacturing of the water heater to a company in China. In 2009, GE did the math and - considering rising wages overseas, as well as climbing transportation costs - decided to bring production back here to the U.S.
Freeman says the company wanted more control of the product, especially the technology that goes into it. She says to maximize savings the water heater had to be completely redesigned.
FREEMAN: We could not just bring this product and plop it in the U.S. and make it the way we had traditionally manufactured.
NORTHAM: And why is that?
FREEMAN: Because we couldn't have done it cost competitively.
NORTHAM: GE ripped apart one of six massive factories at the complex here in Louisville, and built a water heater assembly line. It worked out a new, lower-wage structure for employees, brought in experts to help reduce waste and time, make the production more efficient while reducing costs.
A month later, GE began producing high-end refrigerators, the type with the bottom drawer freezer, a version which up until then had produced in Mexico. Mike Chanatry, the head of manufacturing for GE Appliances, says the decision to bring some of the manufacturing back to the U.S. was a risk, but one worth taking. He says GE faces stiff competition from LG Electronics and Samsung, two new up-and-comers in the world of appliances.
MIKE CHANATRY: We need to be introducing and enhancing our product not every couple of years, but every three and four months. Now think of a world where you have to deal with a supplier halfway around the world to do modifications and design and change the quality.
NORTHAM: Other major companies, Ford and Whirlpool among them, have also brought back some of their products. But so have many smaller companies, says Harold Sirkin, a senior partner with Boston Consulting Group. Sirkin has been surveying companies, large and small, about reshoring.
HAROLD SIRKIN: In the beginning in 2011, for the most part, most people thought that this was just impossible, that there would be no reshoring to the U.S., that everything was going to China, manufacturing was leaving the country and will never come back. And I think the striking thing is how much that's changed in the last three years.
NORTHAM: Sirkin says at least 200 companies have already returned, and there's been a dramatic jump recently in the number of companies saying they're seriously thinking about it. Sirkin says a huge factor has been rising wages overseas, that pay in China has risen at least 15 to 18 percent annually for the past few years. Wages there are still comparatively low to the U.S., but Sirkin says there are other important factors.
SIRKIN: You went to China because it was just so cheap you couldn't help it, but if you've got the engineers and people in the U.S., and the customer base in the U.S., you'd like to be close to the customer. It gives you a smaller and a shorter supply chain and it also makes sure that you know what your customers are doing and that you can react faster.
NORTHAM: Sirkin says if this trend continues, he believes 20 to 25 percent of products now offshored will return to the U.S. But there are challenges in bringing back manufacturing, says professor Arie Lewin, the director for the Center for International Business, Education and Research at Duke University. He says one issue is finding skilled labor. He points to Apple's decision to open a plant in Arizona.
ARIE LEWIN: It's one thing to open up a specialized facility, in this case, you know, the special glass for displays, but it's another thing to be able to put together 10,000 people in one week who will start manufacturing an iPhone.
NORTHAM: Harry Moser is the president of the Reshoring Initiative, which helps companies figure out if it's worth bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. He agrees reshoring can be a challenge. Some companies have to relearn how to make their product and it's tough getting Americans on board.
HARRY MOSER: There's challenges of getting the consumer to understand that the product is made in the USA and to give a little extra preference to that product.
NORTHAM: Moser says the decision by Wal-Mart's to put $50 billion of American-made goods on its shelves over the next 10 years is dramatically important. Still, Wal-Mart has stipulated any of those products have to come in at the same price. Moser says it's a challenge, but it's doable. Jackie Northam, NPR News.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
I'm Robert Siegel. And it's time now for ALL TECH CONSIDERED.
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SIEGEL: NPR's tech team is covering the intersection of technology and entertainment this week. And we begin with a trip to Taipei. When Tiger Woods crashed his car a few years back, video cameras didn't catch the action, so the Taipei-based Next Media Animation animated it.
(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS ANIMATION)
SIEGEL: That's a clip from a Taiwanese news animation, an over-the-top 3-D re-enactment. The video went instantly viral, putting these cartoonish clips on the cultural map. Today, the company that makes these videos gets 40 million YouTube views a month. It's not just online silliness, it's also serious business.
NPR's Elise Hu takes us inside its Taipei headquarters.
ELISE HU, BYLINE: At 15 minutes past the hour, all 24 hours of the day, teams of animators, editors and directors cram into a meeting room to talk out the latest news story Next Media Animation is creating from scratch.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Foreign language spoken)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: (Foreign language spoken)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Foreign language spoken)
HU: Animation is painstaking, time-consuming work. When they first started seven years ago, the 200-person animation staff here produced one story a day. But after years of trial and error, Next Media perfected its pipeline to become an animation studio on steroids. CEO Kith Ng says the company now makes 50 animated news stories every 24 hours.
KITH NG: I think we have the know-how, which basically we developed in the last seven years. I consider that our trade secret.
HU: Teams responsible for different parts of the process work together on their people-powered animation production line that runs day and night. It starts with the writers.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: We should do Sir Mix-a-Lot.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: Sir Mix-a-Lot?
HU: They turn the day's most interesting headlines into scripts. Directors lay out storyboards that get scrutinized during the hourly meetings, but making the scenes seem real requires capturing human movement. Today's news calls for a cop writing a ticket.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: (Foreign language spoken)
HU: Motion capture actors who wait around in skin-tight, full-body leotards with sensors on them that look like little marbles get called on to act out scenes.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #6: (Foreign language spoken)
HU: This actor gets some instructions before the 40 cameras positioned all around the room start rolling. The director counts him down during the sequence.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #7: And cut.
HU: Animators then go to work, rushing to turn around their creations. The music team then scores each story...
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HU: ...a voiceover artist reads the final script...
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: (Foreign language spoken)
HU: And video editors put all the elements together. The whole process takes about two hours per story. Kith Ng.
NG: It's very important how fast you can deliver the content to the audience because people expect real-time information.
HU: Next Media's latest globally viral hits: Animated Rob Ford, Toronto's crack-smoking, loose-lipped mayor.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANIMATION)
HU: The animations of Ford showed the mayor meeting with his dealer, Canadian cops taking video of him in a crack house and a rambling news conference where he denied having sex with an aide, which is all basically what happened.
RICHARD HAZELDINE: We just had to animate what was happening because it was crazy enough anyway.
HU: Richard Hazeldine is one of the lead writers.
HAZELDINE: Some of the stories, that's the way it goes. It's so crazy that you don't really have to change anything or put any jokes in.
HU: The Next Media team thinks of its funnier pieces as modern day political cartoons. They aren't meant to be taken literally. But for all the attention on the zanier work, the funnies, as the team calls them, make up less than half of each day's animations. CEO Kith Ng.
NG: The funny and crazy video is just a door for people to enter our world. We're always serious.
(LAUGHTER)
NG: We're always serious.
HU: Serious because Next Media's paying partners now include the global news wire Reuters, digital outlet Yahoo News and the Spanish-language network Univision. They use animation to help illustrate news events like plane crashes or oil spills.
NG: Serious news story is what we keep trying to do.
HU: The earlier sensational stuff has led to rejections of TV licenses in Taipei and serious fines for obscene and violent content. And when it first became big, the company caught criticism from media traditionalists.
HOWARD KURTZ: If this is the future of tabloid journalism, then I don't want any part of it.
HU: That was American media critic Howard Kurtz on CNN in 2010.
KURTZ: If this creeps into what I would call more serious journalism, then we - people are just going to lose confidence in us.
HU: Caroline O'Donovan covers future of journalism topics for Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab.
CAROLINE O'DONOVAN: I do sort of personally think that the viewer has a pretty good capacity to figure out when something is supposed to be entertaining them as much as it is informing them.
HU: She says there's value in animation, both editorially and financially.
O'DONOVAN: News outlets have the opportunity to make a lot more money the more video content they have. That's where all the ad dollars are. And animating is a really compelling way to be able to get some of those dollars for your outlet without having to necessarily be on the scene.
HU: Next Media is funded by a Chinese media tycoon, who continues to support its growth. The drive now is to make more realistic animations and turn them around even faster. Kith Ng.
NG: Hopefully in the future, we can deliver animated news story in real time. In real time, not two hours or three hours.
HU: Of course, as Rob Ford's story reminds us, real life can be way crazier than even a real-time animation.
(LAUGHTER)
HU: Elise Hu, NPR News.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
And I'm Robert Siegel. Let's go back now 100 years to a key moment in the long debate over the importance of a living wage. It was January 1914, a frigid month in Detroit, much like January 2014, still thousands lined up in the bitter cold outside a factory in Highland Park, Michigan. They were there to take Henry Ford up on an extraordinary offer: $5 a day for 8 hours of work.
As Michigan radio's Sara Cwiek reports, for U.S. workers, it was one of the defining moments of the 20th century.
SARA CWIEK, BYLINE: I'm standing here in front of what's now an abandoned factory complex along busy Woodward Avenue. It's hard to imagine now those big crowds lining up in the frigid cold eager for the chance to work in a bustling factory for $5 a day. That was more than double the average factory wage at that time. There's not much to distinguish this place from Detroit's other industrial ruins. But if you take the time to stop and walk up to the front of the building here, you'll find a pretty modest historical marker proclaiming this the home of the Model T. It tells us that by 1925, this place churned out more than 9,000 Ford Model T's a day. And it ends with this: Mass production soon moved from here to all phases of American industry, and set a pattern of abundance for 20th century living.
But Henry Ford was a hardnosed business man. He didn't introduce the $5 workday because he was a nice guy.
BOB KRIEPKE: It was mainly to stabilize the workforce. And it sure did and raised the bar all over the world.
CWIEK: That's Bob Kreipke, corporate historian for the Ford Motor Company.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: By 1913, Henry Ford broke the 200,000 mark in Model T production, the first moving assembly line made this possible. Conveyor belts transported small parts to the worker. They performed a specific task.
CWIEK: This tremendously sped up production, but Ford still had a problem. While he had standardized production, he hadn't standardized his workforce. Now he didn't need particularly skilled workers; he just needed ones that would do the same repetitive, specialized tasks hour after hour, day after day.
Kreipke says there was chronic absenteeism and lots of worker turnover. So Ford gambled that higher wages would attract better, more reliable workers.
KRIEPKE: It was an absolute, total success. In fact, it was better than anybody had even thought.
CWIEK: The benefits were almost immediate. Productivity surged, and the Ford Motor Co. doubled its profits in less than two years. Ford ended up calling it the best cost-cutting move he ever made. Now, it's widely believed that Henry Ford also upped wages to expand his market, paying employees enough to buy the cars they made. While that wasn't Ford's main motivation, it was a welcome byproduct, and University of California-Berkeley labor economist Harley Shaiken says it was a game changer.
HARLEY SHAIKEN: What that gave us was an industrial middle class, and an economy that was driven by consumer demand.
CWIEK: Shaiken says Ford proved that higher wages lead to more productivity, which in turn was good for business. That positive feedback loop gave rise to a broad prosperous middle class. But over the years, waves of economic pressures and political changes have broken that link.
SHAIKEN: Today, overwhelmingly employers view the lowest wage as the most competitive wage.
CWIEK: These days, global supply chains feed a hyper competitive auto industry where no one wants to give up even an inch of ground. And keeping up with technology takes precedence over stabilizing the workforce. Harley Shaiken agrees that this just isn't Henry Ford's economy anymore.
SHAIKEN: There are very real economic pressures out there that push down on wages so it's not a simple story, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a core truth into what Ford found.
CWIEK: So a century after Henry Ford started paying $5 a day, it's not at all clear that today's employers and workers can reach a similar bargain and reboot a 21st century version of the working middle class. For NPR News, I'm Sara Cwiek in Detroit.
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Remember Scratch N' Sniff, paper you can smell? Or Smell-O-Vision, a technology that didn't quite catch on that was supposed to bring smell to movie audiences.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Or what about the Smell Master 3000 from the 1994 movie "Richie Rich"?
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SIEGEL: Well, now a company in Paris has developed a mobile phone that sends aromatic text messages. It's called the oPhone, O for olfactory. And the mastermind behind it...
DAVID EDWARDS: David Edwards. I'm the founder of the Laboretoire in Paris, and I'm a professor at the University of Harvard.
CORNISH: He and his students thought up a way to transmit all kinds of smells.
EDWARDS: Aromas that range from bread and flowers to the smell of Paris 300 years ago.
CORNISH: The aromas are pre-programmed into the oPhone. Type a message and you can attach a smell that you think relates. Someone with an oPhone on the receiving end will get a whiff.
SIEGEL: Why do this? Well, David Edwards says communication is just missing something without a smell.
EDWARDS: Clearly, a big difference between me saying to you the word croissant or even showing you a picture of a croissant and you smelling a croissant.
SIEGEL: Edwards says oPhones will be for sale later this year although you can't record your own smells yet.
EDWARDS: However, being able to transmit the aroma of what I'm experiencing through a kind of a camera is imaginable, and so I think that will be coming for sure.
SIEGEL: And he's working with businesses like coffee shops to make the oPhone part of the consumer experience.
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With the Super Bowl just days away, it's time to consider perhaps the most taken-for-granted play in professional sports. After a team scores a touchdown worth six points, the kicker boots the ball through the goal posts for the extra point; thus, seven points on the scoreboard.
That attempt is successful 99.5 percent of the time - so successful that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell talked about eliminating the extra point. Here's NPR's Mike Pesca.
MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: The extra point is officially the point after touchdown and thus, one of those phrases like after-dinner drink or West Virginia that defines itself in relation to another entity. In football's case, that other entity is the essence of the game; the exciting culmination of strategy and skill that offensive players train all their lives to achieve, and that the defense attempts like mad to avoid. The touchdown is the symphonic orchestration of highly skilled players - the crescendo, the climax.
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PESCA: But wait! Still the musicians, stay the conductor.
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PESCA: And that is the extra point. Two hundred sixty-seven times last season was an extra point attempted. Two hundred sixty-two times, was it made. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, in an interview, toyed with idea of making touchdowns worth seven points. Of course, some kickers, like Matt Stover, say don't blame us for our skills. There are lots of plays that athletes are supposed to make, as Stover analogizes.
MATT STOVER: It's a pro golfer hitting a 5-foot putt.
PESCA: But pro golfers miss 5-foot putts a lot. Tiger Woods missed 11, 4-foot putts in 2013. Jason Dufner won the PGA championship last year but missed 19, 4-footers. First basemen aren't supposed to make errors, but only three in history have actually had an errorless season. But the vast majority of kickers finish the vast majority of seasons without missing an extra point.
Stover ended his career having made his last 422 tries. His fellow kicker, Billy Cundiff - last year, of the Browns - has made 249 of the 250 extra points he's ever tried. But he does remember that one miss. It was Week 1 of the 2003 season, and Cundiff also recalls the fans' ire leading up to Week 2.
BILLY CUNDIFF: Everybody was kind of calling for my head before that game. So I can remember 'cause they kept saying, who misses an extra point'
PESCA: So Cundiff went out and nailed seven field goals the next week. He also converted two extra points, but even he doesn't include that stat in retelling the story. Cundiff wants to keep the extra point. Matt Stover worries that doing away with extra points might diminish the kickers' importance to the team.
STOVER: The more part of the game you are, the more valued you are.
PESCA: From a practical standpoint, Stover wonders if eliminating the point after might affect the kicker's main job - converting field goals. Those extra points are a chance to get some real game reps, which helps with the more challenging kicks. Of course, field goals themselves have also gotten so accurate that there has been some talk of making them harder, perhaps by narrowing the distance between the goal posts.
Maybe that's a real proposal, maybe just the sort of idea meant to intimidate kickers so they quietly give up their point afters. In any case, should the league decide to change therules, the protestations of a few field goal kickers would be, like touchdowns themselves, extra pointless.
Mike Pesca, NPR News.
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This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. President Obama prepares to hit the proverbial reset button on his second term tomorrow night. The president will lay out his agenda in the State of the Union address. After a rough and tumble 2013, sparring with Congress over the budget and Obamacare, the president is expected to make some adjustments. He will rely more on the power of the executive order.
Now, in a few minutes, we'll talk about how effective a strategy that might be. But first, NPR's Mara Liasson on what to expect from the president's speech.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Tens of millions of people will be watching and listening Tuesday night as President Obama tells the country what he wants to accomplish. As former White House speechwriter Don Baer explains, this is the best chance the president will have all year to frame the debate.
DON BAER: It's an enormous opportunity to inject a new sense of energy into his administration, a new sense of focus around what really is going to matter; to bring Congress along with them, to the extent that's possible, but more important, to bring the country along with him.
LIASSON: The president has already laid out the themes he'll highlight tomorrow night. He wants to provide more economic security for the middle class and, as he calls it, ladders of opportunity for those trying to join it.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: While our economy is growing stronger and we are optimistic about growth this year and subsequent years, we've got a lot more work to do to make sure that everybody has a chance to get ahead. If they're willing to work hard and take responsibility, they've got to be able to participate in that growth.
LIASSON: President Obama has called income inequality the defining challenge of our time. But tomorrow night, according to his aides, he'll deliver an optimistic message that focuses on economic growth and upward mobility, not only on populist redistribution. The State of the Union is also an opportunity the president can use to help himself out of a deep hole. His approval ratings have slumped from the high 50s a year ago to the low 40s today.
And this year, his party is in danger of losing control of the Senate and seeing its minority in the House shrink even further. Republican strategist Mike Murphy.
MIKE MURPHY: I think the president is facing one of the worst problems you can have in politics, which is the "enough already" problem - which is, his numbers are upside down. People have been hearing promises without action for a long time, so I think there is going to be a lot of eye-rolling if the White House overplays its hand.
LIASSON: White House aides insist that will not be the case. With expectations low for legislative action this year, the White House is proposing a relatively modest agenda. Last year's State of the Union proposals on gun control, immigration, and a hike in the minimum wage went nowhere. Some of them will be back again this year, and while Mr. Obama may play off of Congress on some of these initiatives, his tone on immigration will be carefully bipartisan in order to preserve any possibility for progress on that issue in Congress.
Mr. Obama will also be showcasing his new approach to governing, relying less on Congress and more on his own executive authority. He'll announce unilateral actions on education, manufacturing and climate change. The president's senior adviser, Dan Pfeiffer, says with Republicans in Congress disinclined to pass his proposals, the president needs to act more vigorously on his own.
DAN PFEIFFER: Where Congress blocks us, we're going to use every ounce of creativity we have, to find ways to help. Let's take the example of unemployment insurance. Only Congress can extend it. But we can do things like, we're going to bring together companies around this country who have made commitments to hire the long-term unemployed, a population with great talent and skills we need to get back in the workforce. That's something that we can do on our own while we need to push Congress to act in the way we feel they should.
LIASSON: That hiring pledge, which the president will announce on Friday, doesn't have the impact or the permanence of legislation. But it does demonstrate to the public that Mr. Obama is moving forward in any way he can, and it may result in some of the long-term unemployed getting hired.
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DENIS MCDONOUGH: This year, there are more ways than ever to take part in the State of the Union.
LIASSON: That's White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on YouTube. With TV audiences declining, the White House is trying to promote the State of the Union with every social media trick in the book. It's been posting pictures to Instagram, showing the president and his aides preparing for the speech; and Denis McDonough is encouraging Obama supporters to watch it on WhiteHouse.gov/live and participate.
MCDONOUGH: During the speech, you can be part of that conversation on Twitter, and you'll have the opportunity to share exclusive graphics from the enhanced broadcast with your social networks. Immediately after the address, you will have the opportunity...
LIASSON: Right after the State of the Union, the president will get out of town and spend two days traveling to Maryland, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Tennessee, promoting ideas he believes the public will like - even if Republicans in Congress do not.
Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.
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A couple of minutes ago, we heard White House aide Dan Pfeiffer speak of using every ounce of creativity to advance policies that the president favors and that Congress will not approve. That is an illusion to the realm of executive orders, directives from the White House that bypass Capitol Hill. And joining us to explore that realm is Kenneth Mayer, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and author of "With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power." Welcome.
KEN MAYER: Thank you.
SIEGEL: And let's start with a set of boundaries here. What are things that a president simply cannot do without Congressional approval?
MAYER: Well, the president can't violate the constitution. The president can't change statutory language and do things like raise marginal tax rates. But within that, there are a number of things that presidents can do within their constitutional powers as chief executive and commander in chief and implementing statutes that is based primarily or solely on executive discretion.
SIEGEL: Presidents have been doing this from the beginning of the republic. Tell us about some famous executive actions that didn't involve Congress.
MAYER: Some famous ones were Thomas Jefferson negotiating the purchase of the Louisiana territory, Lincoln with the emancipation proclamation, Roosevelt creating the executive office of the president, Truman desegregating the armed forces and Kennedy and Johnson establishing the contemporary framework for affirmative action by specifying that government contractors had to have these programs in place in order to be eligible for government contracts.
SIEGEL: That's a pretty big chunk of American history you've just described.
MAYER: That's correct.
SIEGEL: Now, I gather that President Obama has been less active in this area than other recent presidents. Is he less quick to use executive orders and who were more quick to do so?
MAYER: Well, he's issued fewer executive orders as the instrument that is published in the federal register under the title, Executive Orders. He's issued about 33 per year compared to previous presidents. Bush was about 36. Clinton was about 36. Reagan was 49 per year. But he's been aggressive in other areas, doing things like continuing NSA surveillance from the Bush administration, asserting the authority to order the killing of even American citizens abroad who they suspect as being involved in terrorist groups.
One of the most important ones was Obama's mini Dream policy which he announced in the summer of 2012 after Congress refused to enact immigration reform.
SIEGEL: Yeah, the so-called Dream Act, which did not become a law would've legalized the status of people who were brought here as young children by parents who entered illegally and those grownup children then face deportation. So failing to get the law done, the president said, as a matter of policy, we just won't deport those people.
MAYER: That's correct. Using prosecutorial discretion or the president's constitutional authority to determine who is going to be prosecuted for violating federal law and the conditions under which those prosecutions will be carried out, issued a policy specifying the conditions under which they would not initiate deportation proceedings against people who are in the country illegally.
SIEGEL: Well, in what's called this mini dream policy, some people are processing applications, they're talking to applicants who want to be covered by this policy. The federal government is working. Don't you need somebody in Congress, somewhere, approving their pay for doing that?
MAYER: Not really. The difference is that these are tasks and duties that these executive branch officials and employees would be carrying out in any case in the normal course of their duties. So it doesn't require a change to the law. It takes the form of an administrative directive in terms of how they will do their law, how they will carry out their duties which are otherwise authorized and funded by statutes.
SIEGEL: Kenneth Mayer, thanks for talking with us today.
MAYER: It's my pleasure.
SIEGEL: That's Professor Kenneth Mayer, political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
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In India, allegations of another gang-raped of a young woman last week have trained a spotlight on tribal justice. The rape allegedly took place as a punishment. The woman was accused of having relations with a man from another community. Informal village councils in India can impose fines, ostracism, sexual humiliation and even death. Critics liken them to kangaroo courts, and say this traditional system undermines India's current law.
From West Bengal, NPR's Julie McCarthy has more.
JULIE MCCARTHY, BYLINE: Across India Sunday, Republic Day commemorating the constitution drew people to parades. Delhis bristled with armaments.
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MCCARTHY: And in the West Bengal town of Suri, a six-hour drive north of Kolkata - formerly, Calcutta - residents strained for a glimpse of drill teams and the city's water cannon.
Across town, beneath the hospital room of the young woman at the center of India's latest alleged gang-rape, students staged a silent parade. Removing the tape covering his mouth, 20-year-old Subhadeep Mondal says incidents of rape are rising in West Bengal and that it's a social massacre.
Social massacre.
SUBHADEEP MONDAL: Yeah, because when we open the newspaper in the morning, then we see at least three or four cases per day. (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: Slipping into Bengali, he says the increase of such crime makes a mockery of Republic Day. Since the fatal gang rape of a student in Delhi, in December 2012, sexual crime is at the center of debate in the world's largest democracy. But social attitudes, especially in rural India, remain widely out of sync with those changes.
The woman recovering in the hospital filed a police complaint alleging that at least 12 men gang-raped her in her village of Subalpur one week ago. She said the justice council there tied her up along with a married Muslim man she had been seeing, tried them, and fined them about $425 each. He paid the fine; she was unable to pay.
A look around her meager living quarters - a small hut - makes it doubtful she could afford even the smallest fee. The walls are adorned with film stars and small paintings of Hindu gods. But again, nothing extravagant here. This is a very poor village and, as she said in her complaint to the police, she was a very poor woman.
Her complaint alleges that because she could not afford the fine, the head man of the council told the 12 others to, quote, "Have fun. Do whatever you want to do with her." After that, she says, "they took me to a shed beside the head man's kitchen, and the 12 men started raping me one after the other." Thirteen men have been arrested on the basis of the victim's statement.
The infuriated village says all of the accused have been framed. One of the few villagers willing to talk denies that the local council ordered anyone raped. Sunil Mur-mu says the victim fabricated the story because she'd been caught in a compromising position. The victim, who cannot be named under Indian law, had worked in Delhi for several years, the first female in her village to do so. Mur-mu says her behavior threatens the community.
SUNIL MUR-MU: (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: Because, he says, we don't know what the women are up to while they're gone.
As for the victim who brought a man from the outside into our village, he says, she gave us a bad name. If women get married or start having affairs outside, that erodes our culture and our tribal identity, says the village life insurance agent.
Mur-mu's three-piece, fraying suit seems out of place among the rows of mud huts and golden fields of mustard. As competing narratives emerged over what happened in this village, one official source downplayed some of the more sensational aspects of the victim's complaint. The two people who could best clarify events are the two who are not available. The victim and her mother are prevented from talking to the media, by orders of the hospital.
But Superintendent Dr. Asit Kumar Biswas says the young woman is improving and suffering more mental anguish than physical pain. The same could be said of the wife of the Muslim man the victim wanted to marry. She leans her slight frame against the doorway of her home, and says she is horrified by the reports of the rape. It should never happen to anyone, she says.
As for her husband, she will take him back. But there is a sad bitterness. What else can I do? she asks. When the Subalpur village council took her husband prisoner last week, she was forced to sell her daughter's jewelry to secure his release.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Foreign language spoken)
MCCARTHY: We are poor people, she says. It's terrible that we had to pay this amount to the village.
Julie McCarthy, NPR News, Kolkata.
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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
"The Commitments" was the first novel from Irish writer Roddy Doyle. The story introduced us to a young Dubliner named Jimmy Rabbitte, the founder of a neighborhood soul band. Subsequent books stayed with the Rabbitte family, detailing life's trials as they've aged. Well, now a new novel and we have the story of a middle aged Jimmy Rabbitte recovering from cancer surgery.
Alan Cheuse has our review.
ALAN CHEUSE, BYLINE: "The Guts" brings Jimmy Rabbitte's story up to date. And at first glance it's not exactly cheerful with the once feckless music entrepreneur having just emerged from the hospital, after having had part of his bowel removed and lining up for his chemotherapy sessions which he calls Chernobyl. Fortunately, Jimmy has still got his love of soul music and a lot of people who love him. Comforted by his wife - she gives him the gift of a stray dog - and ready to make peace between himself and his long-estranged brother, Des, who gives him the gift of a trumpet, Jimmy tries to learn how to play his own music.
He certainly talks a kind of soul, talking truth about his illness with his children, including Marvin, his musically-inclined eldest. Renewing friendships with some of his old pals from commitment days, all of them sounding off almost line by line with the foulest mouths in contemporary fiction
"The Guts" is made up mostly out of this dialogue, however salacious, and the lively speech of this Dublin crew becomes the music of the story, along with plenty of twist and shout. Everything, shouts Jimmy's son Marvin and his band at a Dublin music festival at the novel's end.
Everything, everything going to be alright this morning. You can hear it yourself. Despite all the poverty and adversity and illness Doyle depicts here, he's written a novel filled with so much joyful love and life and song that it might - picture this - it might even have made his stern-faced Irish ancestor in the business of creating fiction out of dramatic speech, it might even have made Samuel Beckett smile.
SIEGEL: Roddy Doyle's new novel, "The Guts," bringing smiles to Alan Cheuse. Alan teaches writing at George Mason University.
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At the Syria talks in Geneva today, government and opposition representatives held their first face-to-face discussion about a political transition. By the end of the day, United Nations' mediator Lakhdar Brahimi had no progress to report. He urged both sides to focus on the desperate humanitarian situation facing Syrians in several besieged cities.
NPR's Peter Kenyon has more from Geneva.
PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Brahimi is too experienced a negotiator to identify whoever may be keeping these talks from bearing fruit, but his remarks were laced with words of disappointment. Regrettably, there was little to report after the first direct talks on Syria's future. Syrian state media report that the government delegation produced a set of basic elements of a political communique, which left the door open for President Bashar al-Assad to run for re-election - a nonstarter for the opposition.
Government spokeswoman Bouthaina Shaaban told Syrian state television that the country's future must be decided by Syrians, not by what she called the Western hegemony that dictates what is good for Syria.
Unfortunately, said Brahimi, there was no progress on the humanitarian front either. The immediate focus is the old city of Homs, where an estimated 2,500 civilians are trapped and an international aid convoy has been kept out for weeks. Brahimi says there are several such besieged areas, some surrounded by loyalist forces, some by opposition fighters.
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: I am asking the two parties to consider doing something about all these areas that are surrounded by one side or the other. These people are really suffering inside. So I'm still again asking.
KENYON: In the case of Homs, the Red Cross says once again today permission to deliver the aid did not come from Damascus. Opposition spokesman Louay Safi says such tactics must be condemned.
LOUAY SAFI: And the regime is using starving tactics to force people to submit to its own rule. We believe this kind of behavior rise to the level of crimes against humanity.
KENYON: In Washington, a State Department spokeswoman says what the regime has proposed - evacuation of women and children - is not sufficient, adding, quote, "We've seen similar tactics before from the regime, through its despicable starve or kneel campaign," unquote. She says what's needed is immediate humanitarian relief.
Rebel fighters have also surrounded certain areas in Syria, and opposition officials say they're willing to allow humanitarian aid there as well. Tomorrow, the two sides are due to discuss the 2012 Geneva 1 communique, the nominal basis for these talks.
SIEGEL: Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Geneva.
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The meeting between Syrian government and opposition leaders also brings competing entourages to Geneva. Pro-government reporters and opposition journalists are covering the same events, often in the same room, and it's not pretty. They've sparred, traded insults and even thrown punches.
NPR's Deborah Amos reports on a media war that reflects the passions of the battlefield.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken)
DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE: OK, here's the scene: a hotel door in Geneva is open, the room has been turned into a radio studio for a marathon broadcast into rebel held-areas inside Syria. Journalists Rami Jarah and Adnan Hadad are reporting details of this first-ever Syrian peace negotiation.
RAMI JARAH: Giving news on what it happening.
AMOS: So that's live?
JARAH: Right, it's live now. So each hour we call in and there are people talking from inside, as well. So it becomes a sort of discussion. So this is done about six or seven times a day.
AMOS: More than 30 pro-government reporters are in Geneva, there are only six anti-government media outlets here. But there's a growing audience for these young activists-turned-journalists.
MIRAN AHMAD: My name is Miran Ahmad. I am from Suria Radio.
AHMAD ZAKARIA: Ahmad Zakaria, Radio al Kul.
AMOS: Their regular beat is on the front lines. Orderly Switzerland seemed a world away from Syria, until these opposition journalists realized that government officials had checked into the same Swiss hotel. Their first instinct was panic, say Jarah, especially for activists who had been jailed by this regime.
JARAH: It was weird at first. They are less scary than we know them to be. The Syrian regime has always depended on giving that strong presence when you don't see them a lot - and that's being smashed.
AMOS: The panic passed but real confrontations came with regime supporters and government journalists. Jarah posted this heated exchange on YouTube.
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AMOS: When he asked these pro-regime demonstrators a provocative question - about the future role of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad - Jarah got more than an answer.
JARAH: And that was the reason for them to attack us. They beat the camera man. They best me as well.
AMOS: Have you seen people from government media, where you have positive exchanges?
JARAH: I haven't had a positive exchange yet, no. The fellow there who was accusing us all of being Al Qaida and Al Qaida-driven.
AMOS: The Syrian journalist leveled the same charge at another opposition reporter. He called her a radical Islamist, says Adnan Hadad, in the media center where reporters mingle.
ADNAN HADAD: He accused her of supporting terrorism and she's wearing a short shirt.
(LAUGHTER)
HADAD: This is funny.
AMOS: The rancor is part of the fabric of these talks. A civil war after all is a family fight, so the anger is personal - a competition over who has suffered the most.
TV reporter Achmad Fakhouri says he had the biggest adjustment in Geneva. When the uprising began against the Assad regime, he was the top news anchor for Syrian State TV.
You were a big star in Syria, right?
ACHMAD FAKHOURI: Not star, but I was famous because I was reading the main news bulletin every day.
AMOS: Now, he's on the other side. He defected 18 months ago, with the help of rebels who whisked him out of the capital. He reports for a new opposition TV channel. But for him, coming to Geneva had a personal edge: He hoped to see old friend from Damascus, but they looked away or avoided him altogether.
FAKHOURI: They are afraid from accusations by the regime that you are a terrorist or something else. Or you are making a connection with the opposition. It's a big crime in the regime point of view.
AMOS: Fakhouri understands the fear - it's the reason he walked away. Still, he says, he misses Syria.
FAKHOURI: I just want to go back to my country and work for my people, not for the regime.
AMOS: Does this conference get you closer to that?
FAKHOURI: We hope and without hope we can't do anything.
AMOS: Hope has faded for any quick wins at the Geneva talks. The two sides are as far apart as the Syrian media that has come to cover this historic event.
Deborah Amos, NPR News.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
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And I'm Audie Cornish.
And we begin the hour with the volatile political situation in Ukraine. Today, President Viktor Yanukovych added a new concession to the list he has already offered to the opposition. He agreed to scrub anti-protest legislation that recently sparked another wave of unrest against his government. But also today, Ukraine's justice minister threatened to call for a state of emergency after protesters temporarily occupied her office building.
As NPR's Corey Flintoff reports, that ministry is central to the protesters' wider complaints about the Ukrainian government.
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COREY FLINTOFF, BYLINE: About 50 activists from one of the more radical opposition factions broke into the Justice Ministry last night. Protest leader Vitali Klitschko tried to talk them into leaving, but they refused to go. At one point, it appeared that the authorities might declare a state of emergency, a move that would give them broad powers to quell the protests. Late in the day, the activists finally withdrew from the building but continued to picket outside. Many in the opposition see the Justice Ministry as part of the problem: law enforcement and the judiciary controlled by a president whom they accuse of massive corruption.
Daria Kaleniuk is executive director of an independent watchdog group called the Anti-Corruption Action Center. She says federal prosecutors have refused to investigate obvious questions of corruption surrounding Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych, including his palatial home.
DARIA KALENIUK: Many of us have seen the luxury mansion where Yanukovych resides. And when you have golden toilets and chandeliers for $80,000, helicopter pad and all this luxury, the question is very obvious, where is it coming from? And the answer is, of course, corruption and abuse of office.
FLINTOFF: Yanukovych says he only rents the home, which is valued at more than $75 million dollars. Daria Kaleniuk says the real ownership of the home is obscured by layers of shell companies in Austria and Britain. Critics like to point out that Yanukovych, who served two prison terms for criminal offenses as a young man, has never officially earned more than about $2,000 a month in his life, yet seems to have enormous unexplained wealth.
Andrei Marusov is the chairman of the board of Transparency International Ukraine. Last month, the organization ranked Ukraine as the most corrupt country in Europe. Marusov points to one case that's become a joke among the president's critics, the claim that his earnings come from authoring books.
ANDREI MARUSOV: Recently, he earned $5 million by selling his books. So for any Ukrainian writer, it would be just a fortune. And then there were a series of investigations. And people just didn't find these books on sale in bookshops or even in libraries, and so everybody is kind of, OK, what is going on?
(LAUGHTER)
MARUSOV: But none of these cases brought attention of the general prosecutor's office.
FLINTOFF: The anti-corruption groups also question the business activities of the president's son, Alexander Yanukovych. They say a bank owned by him increased its business by 10 times after his father became president. That's because government ministries shifted their business from a state-owned bank to the one owned by Alexander. Andrei Marusov says the president's immunity from official investigations will only last so long as he remains in power.
MARUSOV: He understands pretty well that if he would fail now or in the coming presidential elections, then there will be prosecution.
FLINTOFF: That perception, that Yanukovych will cling to power at any cost to protect himself from prosecution, underlines a lot of the opposition's mistrust of any concessions that he may offer. Corey Flintoff, NPR News, Kiev.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Now, to Egypt where there were more indications today that the country's top military chief is preparing to run for president. The armed forces announced on state television that Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi should, in their words, heed the call of the people and run for president in an election expected to be held within the next three months.
NPR's Leila Fadel joins us now from Cairo. Hi, Leila.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Hi.
SIEGEL: And does this mean that Egypt's military chief is definitely running for president?
FADEL: Well, in the past, Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi has said he would run for president if he got the request from the people and the mandate from the army. And so right now, he has both of those things. And the only thing left to be done is for him to officially declare his candidacy.
SIEGEL: Today's announcement from the armed forces really doesn't come as a surprise, does it?
FADEL: No, not at all. For months, we've seen the build up to what people see as the great hero of Egypt now. Sisi is - his face is on chocolates, on posters. There are gold Sisi masks. There are columns about his Herculean strength. I spoke to an analyst today, Josh Stacher, from Kent Sate University, and he had this to say.
JOSH STACHER: What he represents is he's the public face of a military junta that is attempting to reassert control over a population.
SIEGEL: Not such an easy task. This comes after a particularly violent weekend in Egypt. Dozens of people were killed in clashes with security forces. Is more violence expected in Egypt?
FADEL: Yeah. What we saw over the weekend is that, really, no dissent against the military is acceptable. Police open fire pretty much on protests across the country of both Islamist and non-Islamists. Again, I'd like you to listen into what Stacher had to say about this.
STACHER: Any resistance from society, whether that comes from groups like the Muslim Brotherhood or whether that comes from groups like the revolutionaries, is going to be suppressed because they've made it a zero-sum game in which there's no easy outs for el-Sisi or the military junta.
FADEL: So now, if Sisi does run for president and wins, it looks like even less dissent will be accepted here in Egypt.
SIEGEL: Is the military taking a risk here? After all, Egypt faces huge problems: a battered economy, a corrupt bureaucracy, a country in which half of the people live at or below the poverty line. One could argue that you become president, you take responsibility for all of that.
FADEL: That's right. We've seen two leaders in the past have huge masses come out on the streets: Hosni Mubarak and then later, Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, who's now facing trial because their life wasn't getting better. And so far, none of those underlying problems have been solved. And the military has shied away from taking such bold responsibility. They've always sort of led in the background in the past three years other - during that transitional period. So by taking the presidency, they're taking that responsibility. And on top of that, they're also facing a low-level insurgency. We saw signs of that again this past weekend with bombings in Cairo. And a militant group taking a military helicopter out of the sky with the surface-to-air missile.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's Leila Fadel in Cairo on news today that Egypt's senior military leaders have endorsed Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to run for president. Leila, thank you.
FADEL: Thank you.
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The X Games just wrapped up in Colorado, a weekend of extreme winter sports action - flying snowboarders, upside-down skiers. And now, some of those athletes are trading in their baggy pants and T-shirts for an Olympic uniform.
NPR's Robert Smith reports on how the X Games, more than ever, are changing what we'll see in Sochi for the Winter Games.
ROBERT SMITH, BYLINE: I don't know about you, but if I were about to compete in the Olympics, I would rest up a little. I certainly wouldn't spend the days before hurtling through the air on ESPN.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: He's a master on the rails. His jumps are solid. He's got a triple on the bottom we've seen.
SMITH: We're watching Nick Goepper ski down a sort of obstacle course in the snow. It's called slopestyle and it's the newest Olympic sport. But the X Games, they've been doing it for more than a decade. Goepper says he wasn't going to miss it.
NICK GOEPPER: This is one of best training tools that I use right before the Olympics. Because, I mean, you're going to see a lot of the same runs, a lot same styles that are going to happen at the Olympics. So it's kind of a good test event.
SMITH: The X Games is a competition designed and hyped by ESPN, beloved by teenagers and the sponsors who want to sell things to teenagers. Let's take that sport I just mentioned, slopestyle. It's basically the ski hill as re-imagined by a 12-year-old - all rails and jumps - the skier or snowboarder races down spending about half the time upside down or going backwards.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Oh, so far so good. Will he finish it with a triple? One, two and he's done it...
SMITH: On of the spectator, Lorenzo Semple, brought his kid out to see slopestyle at the X Games and says it is built for something inside the teenage mind.
LORENZO SEMPLE: Kids are like the Terminator when they are looking for terrain features and jumps. Anything basically to upset their parents. And this is just kind of like an extension of that on a much grander scale.
SMITH: Here's how I imagine it all goes down. One kid gets on a ski slope and tries something new - that kid breaks his leg. But the next kid pulls it off, maybe with a 360 and that kid is a hero. Then, years later, the sport they invent is at the X Games. And a years after that, the Olympics say: Hey, what is this new thing?
It happened with snowboarding. It happened with half pipe, now with slopestyle.
Tim Reed is the senior director of events for ESPN. And he has no problem with the Olympics imitating them.
TIM REED: It's a goal every year to...
SMITH: To what- make the Olympics pick up your sports?
REED: No. No. No...
(LAUGHTER)
REED: It's - well, it's nice when they do. It's, you know, kind of shows we're kind of pushing progression and doing things that, you know, kids and youth lifestyle youth lifestyle are into.
SMITH: But when a youth-lifestyle, punk-rock sport makes it to the Olympics some things inevitably change. Gus Kenworthy is a slopestyle skier.
GUS KENWORTHY: I definitely think that there are people that kind of even resent the Olympics because they think that it's changing the sport. The sport originally started because we didn't want rules. We wanted it to be free and have all this freedom, and be unique and creative and individualized. And I think that, yeah, the Olympics does take some of that out of the equation.
SMITH: Kenworthy says there were debates about who should run the sport and who makes the rules. But in the end, Kenworthy is excited for the Olympics and what it can do for his sport. Just look at what the exposure did for snowboarding.
KENWORTHY: Since then its really pushed the athletes. I mean, you've had snowboarders on "Dancing With The Stars," just the opportunity to kind of grow and be something more than just a skier or a snowboarder.
SMITH: The Olympics have adopted more than just sports from the X Games. They have learned from the whole X Games atmosphere. The DJ for the X Games blaring the rock music under every run...
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SMITH: ...he's been hired by Sochi to play the same soundtrack for the Olympics. Some of the announcers and the technical crews already have their tickets booked for Russia.
The Olpymics wants those young viewers that the X Games have energized. But it has drawn the line at the raw commercialism you see here in Aspen.
Spectator Lorenzo Semple says it does get on his nerves.
SEMPLE: You can see the priority is to get on TV, to hold up your skis, to show your sponsor, to hold the Monster energy drink can up in front of the camera.
SMITH: In the case of X Games champion Nick Goepper, it's actually a Red Bull. The name is emblazoned on his helmet. But he's going to have to take it off when he heads to the Olympics later on this week.
GOEPPER: It's kind of hard to, like, abide by all the guidelines. But...
SMITH: Because that's how you make your living.
GOEPPER: Yeah, exactly.
SMITH: But the hope is that the payoff comes when the whole world starts talking about your crazy new slopestyle sport.
Robert Smith, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
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The relationship between the United States and Pakistan has never been easy, but it is important. Secretary of State John Kerry sat down today with Pakistan's national security and foreign affairs adviser to talk strategy. The big themes: How to stabilize Afghanistan and what to do about a dramatic surge in deadly Taliban attacks in Pakistan.
And then, as NPR's Philip Reeves tells us, there is a very pointed dispute over one man.
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: It's the case of Shakil Afridi. He's the Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA track down Osama bin Laden in 2011. To most Americans, that makes him a hero. But not to most Pakistanis, says General Javed Ashraf Qazi, former head of Pakistan's intelligence agency - the ISI.
GENERAL JAVED ASHRAF QAZI: Any person who cooperates with a foreign intelligence agency is considered a traitor.
REEVES: The ISI detained Afridi after they discovered his role in the raid that killed bin Laden. The doctor's been in prison ever since. The U.S. government's repeatedly called for his release. Websites in America are collecting signatures. And now Congress is piling on pressure. Its recently passed appropriation bill says $33 million in aid to Islamabad should be withheld until Afridi's released. That's a very small sum, but it sends a signal - a signal that irks General Qazi.
QAZI: Shakil Afridi is our business. He's our citizen. So whatever we do with him, it should not be a concern of United States.
REEVES: That congressional bill also says Afridi must be cleared of all charges relating to the help he gave the U.S. in finding bin Laden. Yet the doctor's lawyers say the charge he's actually facing is entirely different. After his arrest, Afridi was tried for having alleged links with an Islamist militant group. The case was heard by a court in Pakistan's tribal belt in the mountains bordering Afghanistan. In the tribal areas, there's a separate legal system that dates back to the British Empire and is in dire need of reform, says Samina Ahmed, of the International Crisis Group.
SAMINA AHMED: The normal courts don't operate there, so you don't have the normal process. You don't have the normal protections either that the constitution offers.
REEVES: Afridi's lawyers say he wasn't even in court for his own trial and nor were they. Qamar Nadeem Afridi is on the doctor's legal team and is a relative. He dismisses the allegations against the doctor as...
QAMAR NADEEM AFRIDI: Totally false. The case is totally false and fabricated case.
REEVES: The tribal court convicted Afridi and, in May 2012, sentenced him to 33 years in jail. That sentence was later overturned. But the doctor remains behind bars awaiting a retrial, again before a tribal court. Qamar Nadeem Afridi says this should be an entirely new trial where witnesses can actually be questioned. But he fears that won't be allowed.
AFRIDI: The political authorities are not willing to restart the case, and they said that they will decide the case upon the same old file.
REEVES: Qamar Nadeem Afridi says he's had no access to the doctor since August 2012.
AFRIDI: I am not allowed to meet him. I tried several times to go to central jail and the other departments, and we requested them that I want to - as a lawyer and as a family member, I want to meet him, but they are not permitting me.
REEVES: Even if the retrial clears the doctor, his problems may well not be over. Prosecutors have told the Pakistani media that they're working on a new case, alleging he murdered a young patient some eight years ago. Over the years, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship has hit some serious bumps in the road. The dispute over Afridi is not one of these, but it is a source of friction. Islamabad says it's disappointed by Congress' plan to hold back $33 million. General Qazi argues that the move is simply counterproductive.
QAZI: Actually, you are making sure he's not released by doing that because you are humiliating Pakistan. It gives a very bad taste in the mouth.
REEVES: Philip Reeves, NPR News, Islamabad.
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In poor sections of some southern American cities, you'll find lots of stray dogs. In Macon, Georgia, one woman has taken it upon herself to try a drastic solution to the problem. Georgia Public Broadcasting's Adam Ragusea reports.
ADAM RAGUSEA, BYLINE: During the worst of the recession, a lot of people decided they couldn't care for their pets. The shelter in Macon euthanized more than 4,000 animals in one year, seven times the number they do these days. That's about when Kerri Fickling got involved with the local rescue organizations. But just before this past Christmas, she says something inside snapped.
KERRI FICKLING: I get my child off to school to school, I'm getting ready for work and I'm just being pinged left and right on Facebook and on texting, you know, pregnant mama in the woods, her second litter is due any day, the first litter is getting hit by cars. And I just finally said, we can't just keep putting Band-Aids on gushers. We've got to stop the problem from its commencement.
RAGUSEA: So Fickling made a public offer. I will spay any female dog in Macon, she said. I'll pick them up, drive them to the vet and pay the bill myself. One month and 100 dogs later...
FICKLING: It's kind of gotten a little bit out of hand, where I'm spending more time doing this than I am working.
RAGUSEA: Fickling also thinks some people she helps can pay for it themselves, but don't. So increasingly, her strategy is to go door-to-door in poor neighborhoods. Today, she has got a tip about some abandoned dogs in a trailer park.
FICKLING: Hey, puppy dog. Hey, puppy dog. Well, come here. Well, come here.
RAGUSEA: As accounts of Fickling's work have spread online, she's become a hero in rescue circles. It turns out she may have also stumbled onto the cutting edge of animal control.
EMILY WEISS: We have developed a program. We call it X Maps Spot.
RAGUSEA: This is Emily Weiss, vice president of shelter research for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. What she describes is basically a formal version of what Fickling is doing. They electronically map where shelter dogs are coming from.
WEISS: And take a look at if we apply a spay-neuter focus in this particular area where we see intake is highest, then when we do that, we are starting to see that we can better focus our resources.
RAGUSEA: Case in point: Portland, Oregon, where stray dogs aren't so much a problem as feral cats. Sharon Harmon of the Oregon Humane Society piloted Weiss' mapping system. Overlaying census data, one conclusion was clear.
SHARON HARMON: Whether your cat is spayed and neutered is directly tied to your household income.
RAGUSEA: So they targeted their sterilization programs on the lowest income areas.
HARMON: In three years, the Animal Shelter Alliance of Portland has seen a 30 percent drop in cats coming into our shelters.
RAGUSEA: Of course, that's all easier said than done.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING)
RAGUSEA: Back in Macon, Kerri Fickling pulls up to a house with a dog chained out in the cold. She asks me to hang back while she tries to convince the people inside to let her get the dog fixed.
FICKLING: Hello?
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)
RAGUSEA: She talks her way in the door, but returns empty-handed.
FICKLING: They are not interested.
RAGUSEA: In her quest to spay every dog in her city, Fickling is learning what child welfare advocates have known forever: Not many people appreciate a stranger coming in and saying, you can't take care of your own, let me do it for you. For NPR News, I'm Adam Ragusea in Macon, Georgia.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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In preparation for the Sochi, 19-year-old American figure skater Jason Brown took to the rink today.
(SOUNDBITE OF SKATES ON ICE)
CORNISH: He was practicing in Monument, Colorado, spinning on the ice...
(SOUNDBITE OF SKATES ON ICE)
CORNISH: ...just as he did earlier this month in Boston. That's where he made the Olympic team with an epic free skate at the U.S. Figure Skating Championship.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Oh, man. That (unintelligible). Shut this building down for repairs after this program because he's going to blow the roof off of it.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)
CORNISH: Brown excited the audience that night in Boston. Man, was he excited to talk to us.
JASON BROWN: Hi.
CORNISH: I asked him about that performance at nationals that now has over three million views on YouTube.
BROWN: Oh, my gosh, I don't even - you know, I freak out when it gets 100 hits. I'm like: Oh, my god, it's like 100 people have watched it on YouTube, this is insane. And I think like my highest-watched video, like, since before nationals, was 8,000 views. So the fact that it's at three million, I don't know how it happened. I'm, like, so blown away and so shocked, beyond shocked. It's so surreal to me.
CORNISH: Now, one of the things that was easy to see, for folks who want to go and look at this video, is that you have infectious energy. And the commentators...
BROWN: Thank you.
CORNISH: ...were talking about a couple of things about your performance. One: Your Riverdance footwork, right? Like where does that come from?
BROWN: Yup.
CORNISH: And were you a bit of a ham as a kid?
BROWN: I was the devil child growing up and I had just tons and tons of energy. And, like, I was just like one of those kids that always looked like nonstop or be going from one place to the next place. And I don't know how my coach put up with me and how she, you know, was able to calm me down.
But, yeah, for the footwork now this year, my choreographer, Rohene, it was all him. And he really took each like second of the footwork and made a move for each second. And we would work on that footwork for hours and hours every day.
CORNISH: And then the other thing people talk about is the fact that you don't cram your program full of jumps; that you don't include one of the more difficult moves like a quadruple jump. And you have any worries about that going into this
BROWN: Yeah, of course. My main focus as, you know, I went into nationals being, like, all I can do is compete in the programs that I've been training. I can't, you know, expect to go there and suddenly land a jumped that I haven't really done before.
So I really have that same mentality going into the Olympics; just staying focused, doing what I've been training to do. And wherever that puts me, if I'm able to go out there and do my best performances, then I'll be happy no matter where it puts me. And I couldn't ask to do anything more.
CORNISH: So is there any chance that you will try something like the quad jump in Sochi?
BROWN: I am not going to be trying it there.
CORNISH: Now, your mom was one of the founding producers of the Arsenio Hall TV show. And I did wonder if that - if she's taught you anything kind of about show business? It feels like you've got a real kind of knack for that when you're out on the ice.
BROWN: Oh, thank you so much. You know, I think she's just raised me very openly because of everything that she went through as a producer. And I think she put me in tons of different activities, and she exposed me to tons of things as a kid. So I definitely think that was something that really helped me and really made me who I am today.
CORNISH: Oh, I should have - I can't believe I almost forgot to ask this. Your famous ponytail...
(LAUGHTER)
BROWN: Yes.
CORNISH: ...now has its own Twitter account.
BROWN: Crazy, it's crazy.
(LAUGHTER)
CORNISH: Are you following this Twitter account?
(LAUGHTER)
CORNISH: It is attached to the personality.
BROWN: I am following. I just started following the Twitter account and I couldn't stop laughing. I was laughing so hard reading some of the tweets that it or she or he wrote. I think it's just so funny and I can't stop laughing over it.
CORNISH: Well, Jason Brown, best of luck at the Olympics. Thanks so much for taking time out of your training to talk with us.
BROWN: Thank you. This was so much fun. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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Lawmakers have made a breakthrough on a long-awaited farm bill. Late today, House and Senate negotiators announced that they reached a compromise that would, among other things, make cuts to the food stamps program, but those cuts would be only a fraction of what House Republicans wanted. It will also cut or consolidate many agriculture subsidy programs, and for more on this we're joined by reporter Derek Wallbank of Bloomberg News. And Derek, what exactly would happen to the food stamps program as a result of this bill?
DEREK WALLBANK: Well, food stamps would wind up getting cut by about $8 billion over ten years. That's roughly one-fifth of what House Republicans had originally asked for, and while it's a little more than Senate Democrats had wanted to give, I think they're very happy with the result at the end.
SIEGEL: Government subsidies to farmers will also be affected by this measure. What would happen?
WALLBANK: Well, direct payments to farmers, which are sort of the apex example of government fraud and waste and things that we could do without. The direct payments are gone. In their place is an expanded insurance-based safety net, although it's come under fire for being, in some people's minds, too generous. There is some concern that it could pay out in good times as well as very bad times. So you will see a little opposition to that, however in most cases we see farm commodity crop groups supporting this final bill, they've all rushed out to say that they really like it and this will be a good change that will not leave farmers in the lurch in very bad times.
SIEGEL: Derek, there are real differences over farm legislation but a farm bill doesn't seem to be one of the hot-button questions on Capitol Hill. Why has it taken so long for a farm bill to finally emerge from Congress?
WALLBANK: There are deep, deep divisions in very specific areas. What you've seen are, you've seen a large fight over dairy policy. Basically, how do we not have milk be $1 a gallon to where dairy farmers would go bankrupt, but not soar up to $8 a gallon where you wouldn't be able to buy it at the grocery store easily. You get into entrenched battles here among people who might not have a lot, in terms of broad stake in here, but their very specific part is almost all that they care about, and you have a lot of those little fights and that has played out in Congress for basically the last three years here, in addition to the partisan wrangling over food stamps and how much to cut them.
SIEGEL: What happens to the farm bill from here?
WALLBANK: We have confirmation from the majority leader's office that the House will take this bill up this week. The Senate is expected to follow as early as next week, meaning that by Presidents' Day this should all be done. And tomorrow, President Barack Obama can take credit for Congress finally getting a piece of bipartisan legislation to his desk that he's expected to sign.
SIEGEL: OK. Thank you, Derek.
WALLBANK: You're very welcome.
SIEGEL: That's Derek Wallbank of Bloomberg News talking about the farm bill that congressional negotiators have agreed on today.
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The American art form known as jazz was embraced around the world right after its birth almost a century ago. In China, specifically Shanghai, jazz musicians began writing their own music in the 1920s, '30s and '40s. It was suppressed later under Communism, but many of those early jazz standards were reborn decades later in Chinese pop arrangement.
Now, they're back again in this country in yet a new form, as NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: You may not hear it when you're listening to Shanghai jazz standards from the 1930s and '40s, but producer Dave Liang says dig deeper into their history and you'll find a generational skip in the record.
DAVE LIANG: In the U.S., usually when you hear a jazz song you say, well, there's probably an original version back then. But in China, it's interesting with these pieces because some folks will say, that's an old '30s classic or '40s classic.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LIANG: And other folks would be like, no, that's a pop song from the '80s.
WANG: Liang, a Chinese American who started the electronic music group, The Shanghai Restoration Project, says it depends on when and where you first heard a song.
JAMES TIO: My high school education was in Malaysia.
WANG: You were in Malaysia when you heard this song.
TIO: It's very popular there, very popular.
WANG: James Tio who is Chinese and now lives in Edmonton, Canada, grew up listening to the original, (unintelligible) sometimes translated as "The Evening Primrose" on vinyl in the 1950s.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WANG: We met recently at a Shanghai-ese restaurant in New York city where Tio may have forgotten the exact lyrics, but could still remember the tune with a little help.
TIO: (Singing foreign language)
WANG: In 1950s mainland China, many of Jame's Tio's contemporaries would not have heard this song in their youth. The probably first encountered it nearly three decades later in this 1978 cover version by pop singer (unintelligible) or Teresa (unintelligible)
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ZHANG LE: That's the way, how we heard the new song at the beginning. Later, we heard the first version. So, for me, like, (unintelligible) always seems to be the original singer for this tune.
WANG: Zhang Le, a jazz singer from Shanghai, grew up with (unintelligible) as a poppy love serenade in the 1980s. The original, that once filled the dance halls of Shanghai's jazz age, had virtually disappeared from mainland China's music scene during the early decades of communist rule.
LIANG: At that time, these songs were considered...
LE: Yellow music.
LIANG: Yellow music, yeah. It's sort of a term for pornographic music.
WANG: Music that's part of an often forgotten history that Dave Liang and Zhang Le hope to revive in their new cover album of Shanghai jazz standards.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WANG: It features yet another take on that serenade to an evening primrose with lyrics that may be not just about a flower, but about the people and the places where this music once blossomed.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LIANG: There's a lyric (foreign language spoken) and it's sort of about I'm concerned for your future, I guess, which is weird if you're talking about a flower. But you're talking about a singer in a nightclub, especially at that time when a lot of people likened nightclubs almost like two steps away from brothels.
You can understand where that sentiment comes in.
WANG: Jazz was an American import that once thrived in Shanghai beginning in the 1920s, a legacy of the international city's colonial history.
LIANG: I think there is this somewhat dark side to it, but there was a beautiful fusion that came about as the result of combining Chinese lyricism and Chinese singers with this American Jazz.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WANG: There was one thing the music lacked.
LIANG: In the old versions, I always felt the singers didn't swing as much. And I grew up listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday and so I think we wanted to really feature some scatting because that was just sort of unheard of, scatting in a Chinese song.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WANG: One of the album's last tracks hearkens back to the song's history in 1940 Shanghai dance halls.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WANG: Before a heavy beat transports the dance hall sound into a modern day club. It may sound like a party, but Zhang Le says listen closely to the lyrics and you'll hear a singer warning that flowers don't blossom forever.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LE: You analyze the lyrics and then you realize, Oh, a tune like telling just don't think about the future. Just don't talk about that. Let's just enjoy now.
WANG: Signs of unstable times, that Zhang says still resonate in today's China.
LE: There's nothing guaranteed, you know. Mentally, you're very pressured in a way.
WANG: And that feeling is bound to cross cultures, says Dave Liang, of the Shanghai Restoration Project.
LIANG: Somebody doesn't need to be able to understand Chinese to be able to understand what the singer is conveying in these tunes. That, to me, is why I believe these songs ultimately are for everyone.
WANG: And perhaps why these songs, generations later, are still played again and again. Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
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And I'm Audie Cornish.
You've heard about China's explosive economic growth. Well, some of it has been driven by rampant borrowing on the part of its municipalities. And the bill for all that borrowing is becoming clearer and it's big. China says its local governments owe nearly $3 trillion - that's more than the gross domestic product of France.
NPR's Frank Langfitt visited one of China's more debt-ridden cities for a closer look.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Wuhan is an industrial hub along the Yangtze River in Central China, with a population larger than New York's and an impressive growth rate of more than 11 percent. To finance some of that growth, though, Wuhan has racked up big debts. According to China's state-run media, the city owes more than $33 billion - nearly twice Wuhan's GDP. Banks became so concerned they cut off funding for a 17-mile highway project.
The debacle became a source of public debate. Here, on a Wuhan TV show, a host reads people's complaints.
(SOUNDBITE OF A NEWSCAST)
LANGFITT: On the show, Zhao Zhenyu, a university professor bashed the government for launching a project it couldn't afford.
PROFESSOR ZHAO ZHENYU: (Through translator) Even though you knew the project was not ready to proceed, you still insisted on holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony. I don't know if this was lower-level officials deceiving their bosses or bosses just making arbitrary decisions.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken)
LANGFITT: The project did re-start again. In fact I'm looking at it right now. There are a bunch of tall supports for a bridge and a bunch of workers here. But I talked to some one involved in the project and he said there still is no financing, and that the company that's working on it has not been paid in a year and is still owed about $16 million.
Wuhan's government has tried novel ways to offset the massive cost of infrastructure, including the city's first subway lines.
Wu Xinmu is an economics professor at Wuhan University.
WU XINMU: (Through translator) Wuhan subway's adverting rights were auctioned off and the government recovered about $300 million.
LANGFITT: Officials even sold the naming rights to a subway station to a duck parts company, but dropped the idea after people complained. Wu says such schemes don't bring in enough money and the city has to control its borrowing.
XINMU: (Through translator) The government can't just rack up unlimited amount of debt, even if the projects are for the public good.
LANGFITT: When Americans hear these kinds of debt figures, they might think of analogies close to home.
(SOUNDBITE OF A NEWSCAST)
LANGFITT: In fact, Wuhan's debt is more than 50 percent larger than Detroit's. But economists say the chances of Wuhan or any other city here going bankrupt is close to zero.
ANDY ROTHMAN: The problem is not that there is going to be a local government default on the banks. That's not going to happen.
LANGFITT: Andy Rothman is the China strategist for CLSA, a brokerage firm. He says cities won't go under because the Communist Party controls the financial system.
ROTHMAN: It's nothing like the way we think about the United States, because this is in many ways a fake financial system.
LANGFITT: In the case of Detroit, the local government was at odds with private creditors, unions and pension boards. In Chinese cities, the Communist Party is on both sides of the loans.
ROTHMAN: What we have in China is a Communist Party-controlled bank lending money to a Communist Party-controlled local government to build Communist Party-approved public infrastructure.
LANGFITT: Rothman says the party can handle local governments' huge debts because it still has a ton of money and China's annual GDP is over $9 trillion. But Rothman adds things have to change.
ROTHMAN: Spending on public infrastructure in China was growing at about 20 percent a year. It spiked up to about 60 percent in 2009. And now it's growing at 20 percent a year again. That's just unsustainably fast.
LANGFITT: Unsustainable, because it could eventually threaten China's financial system. Economists say the increase in infrastructure spending must ease. That will mean fewer new highways and subway lines, which many cities in China's interior still need. And ultimately, all this will spell slower growth for China's once-blistering economy.
Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Shanghai
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Vermont's governor recently devoted his entire state of the state address to one subject, what he called a full-blown addiction crisis. To turn things around, Vermont has expanded treatment. And as Steve Zind of Vermont Public Radio reports, the state has come to grips with one of the most difficult and emotional aspects of the crisis: addicted mothers.
STEVE ZIND, BYLINE: What was news to the rest of the country was not news to Vermonters. More than a dozen years ago, a study sounded an alarm about heroin addiction and said treatment was practically non-existent. Since then, the addiction problem in Vermont has grown, including opioid use by pregnant women. Between 2005 and 2010, the number of babies with symptoms of opioid exposure tripled. But treatment programs in Vermont are no longer meager and disjointed.
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UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Oh, there. The torture's over, little lady.
ZIND: As she swaddles her healthy, day-old baby at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, this young Vermont mother, who wants to remain anonymous because she comes from a small town, is more relieved than most. Not long before she became pregnant, she hurt her back. A friend gave her some prescription pain killers.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: It didn't take long to go from this is all right to take sometime to I've got to do it every day. And I'm puking and to having withdrawal symptoms if I'm not doing it.
ZIND: Most pregnant Vermont women addicted to opioids seek treatment. This mother was one of the first to go to a new Dartmouth-Hitchcock clinic that reflects a shift in how mothers like her are being cared for. From a location in a renovated mill, the clinic offers treatment, group counseling, and psychiatric services, and works in partnership with the doctors at the hospital. Before the clinic opened, those services were scattered, uncoordinated, and often hard to access.
Nurse-midwife Daisy Goodman says finding treatment for the women was especially frustrating.
DAISY GOODMAN: Our patients, if they were brave enough to come forward - and it takes an enormous amount of courage to come forward and ask for help - were then being told, there's really nothing we can do to help.
ZIND: The clinic, in bordering New Hampshire, gets nearly half of its funding from Vermont. Health Commissioner Dr. Harry Chen says treating addiction in pregnant and new mothers is especially challenging.
DR. HARRY CHEN: Because it requires so many different systems working together well: the social service system, the health care system, the substance abuse treatment system, and even to some extent the correctional system.
ZIND: Each of those systems makes its own demands on a mother in treatment. There's daycare and transportation to arrange for a crowded schedule of appointments at different locations. For more than a decade, a program at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington has tried to bring them all together. Dr. Marjorie Meyer is an obstetrician at Fletcher Allen.
DR. MARJORIE MEYER: That's one of the keystones, trying to get everything all in one place. Again, these women don't have very organized lives.
ZIND: Meyer says the other key is communication. That's done at regular meetings where health care providers, social workers and state agencies compare notes on each mother. Programs like this aren't unique, but they are the exception. Dr. Lauren Jansson is pediatric director at a drug treatment program for pregnant and parenting women in Baltimore.
DR. LAUREN JANSSON: While we recognize that it's the ideal way to treat this population, in reality, I don't think a lot of that is happening.
ZIND: The stress of raising a newborn and factors like poverty and family dysfunction increase the risk of relapse soon after a child is born. Vermont providers say that period in a mother's life needs more attention.
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ZIND: As she prepares to return home with her newborn, the mother at Dartmouth-Hitchcock says she worries about relapsing.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I do. You know, the stresses of a new baby and also the stresses of being a mom of three. Just - it used to be a coping mechanism for me. It was like my mom time kind of - you know what I mean? Like, time for me.
ZIND: She hopes the new Dartmouth-Hitchcock program will help her stay clean. For NPR News, I'm Steve Zind.
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When the Olympic luge competition begins in Sochi, Tucker West will be the youngest competitor. The 18-year-old Connecticut native got a head start in the sport when he was young - really young - thanks to his father and a remarkable amount of plywood. Craig LeMoult of member station WSHU explains.
CRAIG LEMOULT, BYLINE: It's single-digit cold as Brett West steps into the snow in his backyard in Ridgefield, Connecticut and points to a wooden monstrosity looming there.
BRETT WEST: The whole thing is made of wood, two-by-fours, four-by-fours and three quarter-inch plywood, all pressure-treated lumber with a lot of screws holding it together.
LEMOULT: It stands 32 feet high and looks kind of like a wooden roller coaster.
WEST: You want head up to the top?
LEMOULT: Yeah.
WEST: Come on, let's go.
LEMOULT: From the top, a wooden shoot drops off at nearly a 40-degree decline.
WEST: You know, this first shot, when you come out of here, by the time you get to the bottom down there with that big first curve, you're doing about 35 miles an hour.
LEMOULT: From there, the track snakes through the trees. It used to have a system to spray water on it to coat it all with a layer of ice. West climbs down the ladder and walks down the track.
WEST: This is a jump. You could actually get enough distance in your jump that you'd land on the downhill section.
LEMOULT: That's like 15 feet away, though, right?
WEST: Yeah, yeah. If you're hauling, it launches you.
LEMOULT: His son, Tucker, says the idea for the backyard track came when he was just 6 years old. He and his dad were watching the 2002 Olympics.
TUCKER WEST: He just said, man, that's cool. Do you want to try that? And I said, heck, yeah. I mean, this is just the advanced version of sledding.
LEMOULT: A couple of attempts to build a track in the snow melted too quickly.
WEST: So I decided at that point that what we needed was a wooden luge track.
LEMOULT: After months of obsessive work, they had their track. Brett says his son couldn't get enough.
WEST: You know, we had a PA system out there, and I would announce, here we are at the Olympics and next up is Tucker West, and Tucker's track is clear and he's going. And, you know, we would pretend things like that, which is what was part of that built this Olympic dream in him.
LEMOULT: Tucker's dream took a turn towards reality when a local newspaper article about the track wound up on the desk of Gordy Sheer, the marketing director for USA Luge and an Olympic silver medalist in the sport. Sheer was intrigued and went to check it out for himself.
GORDY SHEER: It was truly amazing to see. First of all, the engineering and the thought that went into it, but also the length of the thing. I mean, it was, you know, 800 feet, something like that. It was a big track.
LEMOULT: Sheer invited Brett and Tucker up to Lake Placid, New York to try out a real Olympic luge track, and the two of them were hooked. They started making the five-hour drive every week. By the time he got to high school, Tucker switched to a boarding school in Lake Placid. Since ninth grade, his family has only gotten to see Tucker for a few weeks at a time.
WEST: But now that he's achieved his goal, you know, all the questions that we had, did we do the right thing for him, allowing him to go off at such a young age, that, you know, that question has been answered.
LEMOULT: That goal, of course, was the Olympics. In December, Tucker West qualified to be the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic luge team ever. They've sadly decided his mother and sisters won't make it to Sochi because of security concerns, but Brett says he just has to be there.
WEST: It will, without a doubt, be the most emotional thing that I've experienced.
LEMOULT: Tucker says if it wasn't for his dad, he'd never be going to the Olympics.
WEST: He gave me the opportunities to do what I do.
WEST: All I did was what any dad would do and, you know, try to plant some seeds in their young children and throw some water on it. And then once it's sprouted, you know, he grew it himself.
LEMOULT: You threw some water on it and then you froze that water, actually.
WEST: And then I froze the water. Right.
(LAUGHTER)
WEST: That's correct.
LEMOULT: For NPR News, I'm Craig LeMoult in Connecticut.
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Our next story takes us inside an Israeli interrogation room. Thirty-year-old Ala'a Miqbel went for an interview with Israeli security for a permit to travel from Gaza to the West Bank, the U.S. consulate had invited him to a conference there. But instead of getting permission to go, Miqbel was arrested and stunned to discover an Israeli interrogation technique that mixes Big Brother with Shakespeare.
NPR's Emily Harris reports.
EMILY HARRIS, BYLINE: The first clue that something was going wrong in his interview for a travel permit was the down-to-his-underwear search, says Ala'a Miqbel.
ALA ALA'A MIQBEL: (Through Translator) At first, I refused to take off my pants. But the soldier said this is normal procedure. I didn't have a choice. So I said OK.
HARRIS: Pants back on, Miqbel was questioned about his family, then about his politics. An Israeli officer said somebody told them that Miqbel was associated with a militant group called Islamic Jihad. At the end of the day, Miqbel was handcuffed, blindfolded and taken to prison.
MIQBEL: (Through Translator) It was an enormous shock for me. I thought I'd be gone half an hour. Now I didn't know when I'd be back. I thought of my kids, my wife, my parents, my future.
HARRIS: This was the first time Miqbel had been arrested, but lawyers and human rights organizations say his experience is actually pretty standard. A prison doctor weighed him. He was issued orange clothing and left alone in a small, dirty cell between interrogation sessions.
MIQBEL: (Through Translator) In interrogation, there is a chair so low it breaks your back. They cuff your hands to it. Your feet are cuffed so it's very painful. And it's on a jack, so the interrogator can jerk you back and forth. Plus, behind me, an air conditioner was on and set to freezing.
HARRIS: No shower, no toothbrush, inedible food. After four or five days, someone joined Miqbel in his cell. This man seemed to be another prisoner and he gave Miqbel a tip. After the Israelis take your DNA sample and fingerprints, he told Miqbel, they'll release you from interrogation and put you in a regular cell with other regular Palestinian prisoners. And that is just what happened. When he reached his new cell, Miqbel was happy.
MIQBEL: (Through Translator) I cried. I couldn't believe it. I was in normal prison. The guys welcomed me, they brought me new clothes, I took a shower. They gave me coffee and a pack of cigarettes. When it was time we prayed together.
HARRIS: They also warned him not to talk about his situation to anyone but the room leader. That was an older man named Abu Bahar. Abu Bahar won Miqbel's trust by sharing stories about mutual acquaintances in Gaza. He urged Miqbel to tell him everything.
MIQBEL: (Through Translator) He asked me: didn't you do any activity against Israel in the 2008 War? I told him no, I was home with my new wife, who was just pregnant. He asked so many questions, like where do the militants launch rockets. I said how am I supposed to know.
HARRIS: Miqbel was being fooled. Abu Bahar and all the people in that cell were collaborating with Israeli intelligence. Miqbel learned this two days later, when he was summoned by an Israeli intelligence officer, who repeated every detail he'd shared with Abu Bahar.
When Miqbel finally met a lawyer, after 10 days in prison, he learned that these fake cells are a routine part of the Israeli intelligence system. And the fake prisoners are called al-asafeer - the Arabic word for the sparrows. It's sort of like a big play.
SMADAR BEN-NATAN: It is a play. It is a play.
HARRIS: Smadar Ben-Natan is an Israeli human rights and criminal defense lawyer. She says the birds give prisoners different rationales to get information.
BEN-NATAN: We need to know what you told the authorities so we can protect people outside. The other option is: We suspect that you are a collaborator; we want to know what did you do for the Palestinian people, for the Palestinian struggle, so we are sure that you are on the right side.
HARRIS: She says the system takes advantage of mistrust among Palestinians built up over years, and despair developed over even a few days in solitary confinement. Former Israeli Colonel Yonathan Fighel says it's just another version of good cop, bad cop - and results vary.
COLONEL YONATHAN FIGHEL: In some cases it can be very unique and very valuable. In some cases, it's just another piece of information. There is also a difference between a need to incriminate someone so he can face trial, or you are doing intelligence gathering.
HARRIS: Ala'a Miqbel told his sparrows that he had had coffee with a neighbor who was part of Islamic Jihad and that he'd played on a soccer team associated with the group. He was released without charges after almost four weeks in prison. Israel security sources say they were done with the interview.
Emily Harris, NPR News.
CORNISH: Back announce: Tomorrow, becoming a sparrow, the story of one Palestinian man who worked in Israeli prison as an informant and why he's proud of his work.
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Here's a role reversal, a growing number of Chinese companies are now bringing manufacturing to the United States. For years, of course, American cities such as Dayton, Ohio, have watched factories pack up and head overseas. Well, now a Chinese auto glass maker plans to open up shop in Dayton. They'll move into an old General Motors truck plant.
From member station WYSO, Lewis Wallace reports that that is a very big deal for a former factory town.
LEWIS WALLACE, BYLINE: Death knell, nail in the coffin, final blow; these phrases are often used to describe GM's decision to close the Moraine Assembly plant here in 2008. Former GM employee Kate Geiger describes what followed.
KATE GEIGER: Buildings closed down, parking lots growing up with weeds, for sale signs. You know there's a McDonald's that been closed for 20 years and they've never done anything with it.
WALLACE: Geiger works as a graphic designer now. And here in her office, you can actually see the corner of the mostly-empty GM plant through the window.
GOVERNOR JOHN KASICH: We're now beginning to see some really good news for the Dayton area.
WALLACE: That's Ohio Governor John Kasich at a recent press conference introducing Fuyao Auto Glass, China's biggest windshield maker.
DAVID BURROWS: Fuyao glass announced that they were going to purchase approximately 1.4 million square feet of the former General Motor facility.
WALLACE: David Burrows with the Dayton Development Coalition says the deal brings with it at least 800 jobs. That makes it the biggest Chinese investment ever in Ohio, though it took millions in subsidies to attract it here. State officials hope this becomes a trend.
GIORGIO RIZZONI: What has happened in the last five or six years is actually marking a profound change.
WALLACE: Giorgio Rizzoni is with the Center for Automotive Research in Columbus.
RIZZONI: Every two or three months or so, there is an announcement of company X is reopening manufacturing plant A in Michigan or in Ohio.
WALLACE: It's simple math, really: production costs are going up in China and down here. That's in part because U.S. workers are more productive and because auto industry wages have dropped since the recession. But Ohio's still playing catch-up. In the last decade the Dayton area alone lost 40 thousand manufacturing jobs. So there are workers to spare here and a lot of nostalgia for building cars.
Again, former GM worker Kate Geiger.
GEIGER: I was actually thinking about applying for a job there, because I love - I love being a forklift operator and I miss that work.
WALLACE: Geiger knows she'd take a pay cut. But she says making cars is in her genes, and when she heard about the glass factory...
GEIGER: I think inside I secretly did a little happy dance, you know. I hate seeing the building deteriorate. So I'm really glad that somebody is going to move in and take care of it. I thought they were going to bulldoze it.
WALLACE: She can just see the shiny new windshields rolling out of Fuyao, shipped off to assembly lines for Honda, Kia and, who else, General Motors.
For NPR news, I'm Lewis Wallace in Dayton.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. China's new moon rover, the Jade Rabbit, may be dead. It had been having mechanical problems and that may have exposed the rabbit to the moon's evening chill. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel reports, during its brief life, the rover became a celebrity.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: China made headlines when its lander reached the moon in December, but hours later, the lander lowered Jade Rabbit onto the lunar surface and the rover stole the show.
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BRUMFIEL: On the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, an unofficial first-person account began chronicling the its adventures, as it drove in a circle around the lander and used instruments to study the lunar soil. Then late last week, the little rabbit got into trouble.
EMILY LAKDAWALLA: Well, we don't exactly know what happened, there's not a lot of detail.
BRUMFIEL: Emily Lakdawalla is a blogger with the Planetary Society, a nonprofit that supports space exploration. The rover was preparing for the lunar night time, which lasts for two weeks. It was supposed to fold up to shield its delicate electronics from the cold. That didn't happen and now, Lakdawalla says, exposed, its circuitry is done for.
LAKDAWALLA: It'll just break, it will physically break because of the incredibly cold temperature, and there's no way to fix that.
BRUMFIEL: The rover's untimely demise is making a lot of people sad inside China and out. But Lakdawalla says it doesn't diminish the huge success of the mission and she thinks the Jade Rabbit's life, however brief, has energized the Chinese.
LAKDAWALLA: The Chinese public, you know, rather than being disappointed by this are emboldened by it. Once you've tasted a little bit of success in space exploration you want to do more, you want to achieve greater things. And it's nice to see that spirit taking off.
BRUMFIEL: The rover's last, unofficial words translated "Goodnight Earth". Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. President Obama heads to Capitol Hill tonight for his fifth official State of the Union address. After a challenging year, it's a chance for Obama to turn the page and lay out his priorities for 2014 ahead of this fall's midterm elections. We'll bring you full coverage of the speech later tonight. First, a preview of what the president is expected to say.
SIEGEL: Joining us now, White House press secretary Jay Carney. Welcome to the program.
JAY CARNEY: Thank you for having me.
SIEGEL: We expect the president to be talking a good deal about inequality in this State of the Union, inequality meaning that both the poor are making too little and the very rich too much or just that there should be more opportunity for the poor?
CARNEY: You're right in the second part, Robert. He's going to talk a lot about the need to expand opportunity for everyone in America. The focus that many have had on income inequality in this country is really a focus on a symptom, a part of a broader problem, part of a stress that we've seen develop on the middle class over the course of three decades or more.
And what the president's going to focus on tonight is not just one of the symptoms of the problem, but on the solutions to the problem, on the cures to the problem. And, you know, he's going to really lay out three key principles, opportunity, action and optimism and he believes that we should all be focused in Washington on everything we can do to expand opportunity.
SIEGEL: What about the - what I believe the president would see as the disproportionate opportunities that the very rich have had over the past three decades, I guess, in America. Will he once again call for raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans?
CARNEY: No. Robert, as you know, he succeeded last year in fulfilling his promise to lock in tax cuts for middle class Americans for the vast majority of the American people and also to return the marginal tax rates at the very high end for millionaires and billionaires to what they were under President Clinton.
Now, he's going to focus on expanding opportunity and rewarding hard work. You saw this morning that he will be announcing tonight that, using an executive order, he is going to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors under new contracts to $10.10 an hour. That's a significant raise to the minimum wage.
And he's doing that because last year he called on Congress to raise the minimum wage across the country. Congress has, thus far, refused to act and he is determined to use the authority he has where he can to expand opportunity. It's very much his firm belief that in the United States of America if you're working full time, you're working hard, that you should not be paid a wage that still keeps you in poverty.
And that's why we ought to move - lift the minimum wage. He will, in addition to taking executive action, call again on Congress to pass a law to raise the minimum wage.
SIEGEL: The Republicans in the House now appear, at least Speaker Boehner appears ready, to propose some kind of immigration reform. Is what people at the White House hear something that the president thinks could, indeed, lead to agreement on a change of immigration law?
CARNEY: Well, while many people have understandably focused on the obstructionism we saw last year in Congress, one important thing to remember is that the Senate passed a strong comprehensive immigration reform bill with a bipartisan majority, with Republicans and Democrats. And that bill meets the principles the president laid out. He's hoping that the House will follow suit, that the House will, too, pass comprehensive immigration reform and that the result will be a bill landing on his desk that he can sign. I think and he thinks that the prospects are better for comprehensive immigration reform this year than they've ever been.
SIEGEL: A much reported on difference between what House Republicans want and what Democrats and what the president wants is over a pathway to citizenship for people who are now here illegally. Is it your impression that a Republican bill that didn't provide any path to citizenship for immigrants who get legal would not be signed by the president?
CARNEY: Well, we haven't seen anything from the Republicans yet so I don't want to comment on a bill or a proposal that doesn't yet exist. What I can tell you is that the president believes and he's said this many times that a part of comprehensive immigration reform should include, as the Senate bill does, a pathway to citizenship. It's a long pathway. It's one that puts a lot of requirements on those who want to travel to it and want to get the citizenship that it would provide at the end, but he thinks that's an important element. And he's very hopeful that that is what ultimately we will see emerge from the House and from the Congress.
SIEGEL: White House press secretary Jay Carney, thank you very much, Jay.
CARNEY: Thank you.
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Now, for more on the president's speech, we're joined by NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Hi, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hello, Audie.
CORNISH: So listening to Jay Carney just now, what do you think is the president's overriding goal tonight?
LIASSON: Well, I think his overriding goal is really to communicate a tone and an attitude. You heard Jay say that the three kind of watch words are opportunity, action and optimism. The president knows that the American people are in a very sour mood about the economy and about him. His numbers have slumped over the last year. His Democrats are in danger of losing the Senate. So he wants to push against this idea that nothing can get done this year. He wants to communicate the notion that he's fully engaged, energized and that this is going to be, as the White House says, a year of action.
I also think one of the most important things he can do tonight is to shape the conversation. Presidents have a unique opportunity to do that in the State of the Union and he's going to try.
CORNISH: Now, arguably, he's done that with the income inequality issue. Even Republicans agree on the problem, if not the solutions. How do you think the president will handle that tonight?
LIASSON: Well, I think, as you heard Jay Carney say, he is going to focus on the growth and opportunity and of the income inequality puzzle, not on the redistribution side. In other words, he's already taxed the rich, the wealthy. He's not going to do that again. He's going to focus on expanding the pie, not just on slicing up a shrinking pie more equitably and, as he puts it, he's going to focus on ladders of opportunity into the middle class. And that actually is an area where he might find some agreement with Republicans.
CORNISH: Let's talk about some of the things that the president wants to do that Republicans don't, frankly. Raise the minimum wage, fund universal pre-kindergarten, extend unemployment insurance.
LIASSON: Well, that's where the pen and the phone come in and the new focus on unilateral action. As Jay Carney just said, if he can't get a minimum wage through Congress, he's going to chip away at the problem by himself by, like he did today, raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10. The federal government is, after all, the country's biggest employer.
But all of these issues, raising the minimum wage, extending unemployment insurance, universal pre-K, they are very popular and as a matter of fact, almost all the issues that the president is going to stress tonight poll over 50 percent, including keeping and fixing rather than repealing the healthcare law, as unpopular as that law might be.
So these are issues that Democrats can unify around, run on in the midterm elections, independent voters like these issues, even if Republicans in Congress don't want to pass them.
CORNISH: And then, there's the issue that people are talking about, immigration, something that may have a chance of passing this year in some form. Tell us what the president can do there.
LIASSON: Well, we are in a new chapter on the immigration reform debate. After writing off the chances of anything happening, all of the sudden, optimism is busting out all over Washington. People feel now that 2014 could actually be the year that the House would pass something. The Senate already has. And Republicans are thinking maybe they need to get something done this year, before the presidential primary season starts in 2015.
I think tonight you're going to hear the president tread very carefully on this issue. He might push off against Congress on the minimum wage or other issues, but on immigration, he doesn't want to antagonize Republicans. He wants to keep the possibility of bipartisan progress on this issue open so that means he won't be firing up the partisan rhetoric on immigration.
He wants to try as much as he can to help John Boehner in any way he can and that may mean, as you saw him do during the budget negotiations, staying out of it as much as possible and just working behind the scenes. His goal is to get the House Republicans to pass a bill this year or a bunch of bills, and then see how they can deal with the Senate version.
CORNISH: That's NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Mara, thank you.
LIASSON: Thank you.
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The Deep South is in a deep freeze. Snow, sleet and freezing rain have gripped a region more accustomed to sun and surf. As a result, roads are a mess and from South Louisiana to the Carolina coast, classes are cancelled, airplanes are grounded, and businesses and government offices are closed.
NPR's Debbie Elliott reports.
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DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: In Birmingham, Alabama today, just getting around town is practically impossible.
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ELLIOTT: As more snow than expected came down mid-morning, the traffic pileups started. Cars and trucks are skidding and sliding along the slick roads, triggering a tangle of fender benders.
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ELLIOTT: In what is developing into somewhat of a crisis, Central Alabama is now under a civil emergency warning because of the hazardous driving conditions.
Kim Harris got stuck trying to leave downtown when her office closed early.
KIM HARRIS: The thing for me is the traffic. Like, I know everyone wants to get their kids. I know everyone wants to get home. I do too.
ELLIOTT: This is just the kind of problem that Governor Robert Bentley had hoped to avoid.
GOVERNOR ROBERT BENTLEY: The biggest risk is ice accumulation in South Alabama. And for that reason we are urging motorists to limit travel to necessary or emergency travel only.
ELLIOTT: Bentley has asked the Alabama National Guard to help rescue stranded motorists. The state's transportation director, John Cooper, says this storm is a logistical challenge.
JOHN COOPER: This is not a normal event for us. Most of our sanding and salting equipment is located in the northern part of the state. We have been in the process of moving as much of that as we can to the southern parts of the state.
ELLIOTT: Snow and ice are rare, in typically balmy places, like Mobile, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It's also a region with a lot of bridges. Sections of several major interstates are closed. And thousands of flights have been cancelled. Mississippi Emergency Management Director Robert Latham is concerned about ice building on pine trees and knocking out power lines.
ROBERT LATHAM: This is a significant weather event. It's nothing to take lightly especially given the area of the state that's going to be impacted, part of the state that's not used to seeing winter weather.
ELLIOTT: In New Orleans, Mayor Mitch Landrieu had this warning.
MAYOR MITCH LANDRIEU: It is very dangerous and the dangers are real.
ELLIOTT: He wants residents to stay off the road and be ready for possible power outages.
In Baton Rouge, shelves were cleared out at a Walmart where Connie Reese works in the produce department.
CONNIE REESE: Ooh, yesterday, it was pretty busy up in here. Customers just shopping, you know, basically just water, getting bread and juice and bananas.
ELLIOTT: Forecasters say a thaw won't come until Thursday, so southerners should hunker down for at least another day of ice, snow and bitter cold.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Orange Beach, Alabama.
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Now to a debate in Europe over something called poverty migration. Recently, some countries in the European Union lifted work restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians. As a result, factions in Britain and Germany worry that poor and unskilled immigrants will flood in and collect welfare payments.
But Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports, this debate isn't being driven by new arrivals from Romania and Bulgaria. Instead, she says, it may involve prejudice against one particular group, the long-oppressed Roma.
SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON, BYLINE: A group of Roma youth are learning to work with wood here at the Bridging Foundation in Berlin.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken)
NELSON: A German engineer helps the young men build a birdhouse and foot stool during the afternoon class. One of the students is 18-year-old Nicolae Caraian. He's a Romanian who came to Germany three years ago, with his parents and seven siblings, from a small village outside Bucharest.
The shy Roma teen says his goal is to become a salesman. He rolls his eyes when asked about the critics who say Romanians and Bulgarians are here to tap into Germany's generous welfare system.
NICOLAE CARAIAN: (Foreign language spoken)
NELSON: Caraian says: My dad works full-time as a construction worker. We didn't come here to collect benefits. We came here for jobs, because there are more of them here than in Romania.
Boslijka Schedlich heads the Bridging Foundation that helps immigrants from Southeastern Europe acclimate to German life.
BOSLIJKA SCHEDLICH: (Foreign language spoken)
NELSON: She says contrary to alarmist predictions, there has been no sudden influx of Romanians and Bulgarians since restrictions on their working in some EU countries were lifted on January 1st. Schedlich says they've been arriving in Germany gradually since those countries joined the EU in 2007.
SCHEDLICH: (Foreign language spoken)
NELSON: She calls poverty migration warnings by some German politicians a sham debate, to rekindle long-standing, anti-Roma sentiment in Germany.
Those mainstream politicians deny it has anything to do with the Roma or discrimination. Thomas Silberhorn is the vice-chairman of the parliamentary Christian Social Union faction.
THOMAS SILBERHORN: We don't want restrictions of the free movement for the workers and the self-employed. But we want to stop the abuse of this free movement. We really have to discuss at which point European Union members can get social allowances, social benefits in another member country.
NELSON: He says one in five Romanians and Bulgarians in Germany is collecting some type of welfare benefit.
Other German leaders are more subtle. German President Joachim Gauck told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper that it is wrong and dangerous to say immigrants are damaging Germany. But he added immigration can cause problems and that quote, "political correctness cannot stop Germans from pointing them out."
Activists are trying to counter the anti-immigration rhetoric with studies that show the benefits of welcoming citizens from Romania and Bulgaria. For example, a recent study by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research found that every fourth immigrant from those countries has a university degree. And a survey this month in the German, Zeit magazine revealed that most foreign doctors in Germany are from Romania.
One of them is Ionel Toma, who is finishing his training in orthopedics and traumatology at a hospital outside Berlin. He says he's wanted to live in Germany since he was a kid and arrived here when Romanian passport holders became EU citizens seven years ago. Toma says he's heard the German outcry about Romanian and Bulgarian arrivals oftentimes before.
DR. IONEL TOMA: It used to make me angry a few years ago when the people only seeing this, like, Romanian poverty and Roma nothing good.
NELSON: But he says the Germans he encounters nowadays hold the opposite view.
TOMA: They get more close to the reality. They see Romania as a beautiful country, friendly people and other things that are good. I think now it's a majority of those kinds of people in Germany.
NELSON: Toma says he expects more Romanians and Bulgarians will come to Germany in the coming months now that work restrictions are lifted. But the doctor says he doubts it will be any wave like some politicians are predicting. Soraya Sarhaddi-Nelson, NPR News, Berlin.
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Our 44th president is giving the annual State of the Union address today, one man with great responsibility. Now, Chaz Rorick, a high school junior in Rochester, New York, has comparatively little responsibility and yet he has stepped into the shoes of all 44 presidents of the United States.
He's elevated the much overused selfie - self portraits taken with a smartphone - to the level of presidential portraiture. His Instagram account is filled with pictures of himself matching the poses of each occupant of the Oval Office. And Chaz Rorick joins us now from his school. Hello, Chaz.
CHAZ RORICK: Hello.
CORNISH: So how do you get this idea? I'm sure there's better things to do in Rochester in winter.
RORICK: Well, there might not be. It is very cold here. But the inspiration started out as just a project I began on a whim. I saw President Truman on television and I was wearing a tuxedo that night and I thought, hey, it might be fun to take a picture next to Truman because we were wearing similar outfits. And I got a picture that looked very similar to Truman so I put them together for my comparison selfie and the feedback was pretty good when I uploaded it to Instagram.
I didn't think I'd be doing more, but the next day I tried Teddy Roosevelt because he's a personal favorite of mine and the feedback was also good. People thought it was a bit, you know, different, but they liked it.
CORNISH: Let's talk about that one so we can walk through how you do it. First, you have to find a picture. So take Roosevelt, how did you find the picture and then how do you go about finding your costume?
RORICK: I look and see what I think I can handle. The picture of Roosevelt I chose where he's wearing an old pair of glasses and he has his bushy mustache, I realized I had old glasses. For his mustache, I merely cut out a piece of paper, colored it in with a Sharpie and taped it right above my mouth.
CORNISH: So which presidents were the easiest?
RORICK: I think Bill Clinton was pretty easy because the picture I chose of him was him playing the saxophone in a pair of sunglasses. I play saxophone myself and I had sunglasses so each one posed its own challenges.
CORNISH: Okay. But then who was the most difficult.
RORICK: Most difficult. Martin Van Buren was quite tough, due to his outrageous fluffy, white hair. I...
CORNISH: You do a lot with hair, actually.
RORICK: Um-hum. And what I would do is I'd slick down or up my hair with water and it would actually turn out close enough where it was both funny and similar to the president. I think part of the fun of these pictures is not having them exactly correct. They're close, but not completely close.
CORNISH: No, not completely close and we should note, of course, you managed to pull off Barack Obama as well. In that picture the president is sort of throwing his head back in a big broad smile and you do the same. And we should mention you are white so this is actually one of your more convincing comparative selfies, actually.
RORICK: I know. I found this picture and it was light-hearted and it was fun and I thought that would be a really good end to this trend of pictures.
CORNISH: Well, Chaz Rorick, thank you so much for talking with us.
RORICK: Oh, you're very welcome. Thank you for having me.
CORNISH: Chaz Rorick, he's the Rochester, New York, high school student who posed in online selfies as every American president.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. In his State of the Union address tonight, President Obama is expected to renew his call for Congress to raise the federal minimum wage. If he's successful, that would eventually boost the paychecks of some 27 million people.
In the meantime, the president will announce that he's taking immediate action to help a small fraction of those low-wage workers, the ones employed by federal contractors. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: President Obama's State of the Union speech last year ran almost exactly one hour, during which time, a minimum wage worker would earn $7.25. In 2013, the president said that's not enough.
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HORSLEY: Congress didn't act on that request last year so tonight, the president will repeat it. He'll also order that, from now on, companies signing new contracts with the federal government will have to pay their workers at least $10.10 an hour. White House adviser John Podesta told NPR's MORNING EDITION the order is part of a broad strategy to make greater use of the president's executive powers when Congress refuses to act.
JOHN PODESTA: We'll also work with mayors and governors who are trying to raise the minimum wages in their states and cities. But if we do - all do our job, I think that Congress could get around to raising the minimum wage for every American worker. And it's long overdue, and it's the fair thing to do.
HORSLEY: Twenty-one states already have minimum wages higher than the federal government's. And this year, more than a dozen state and local governments will consider additional increases. Christine Owens of the National Employment Law Project says, in some cases, state and local lawmakers will decide whether to raise the wage. In other places, it will be up to the voters.
CHRISTINE OWENS: We traditionally win these ballot measures because the public strongly supports raising the minimum wage.
HORSLEY: Owens argues the increased cost to employers of having to pay workers more is partly offset by reduced turnover, and improvements in morale and productivity. She notes when the state of Maryland required its contractors to pay a higher wage, more companies actually started bidding on government work.
OWENS: Low-ball employers were no longer able to compete by driving wages down, and so some of the better employers who pay better wages were more eager to compete for public contracts. So it actually increased the number of bidders, and increased the quality of bids.
HORSLEY: The president's executive order applies only to new government service contracts. The workers affected include contractors washing dishes or doing laundry on U.S. military bases. Critics argue raising the minimum wage will simply force employers to hire fewer workers or shorten their hours. David Neumark is an economist who studies the issue at the University of California at Irvine.
DAVID NEUMARK: The minimum wage creates winners and losers. Obviously, if you keep your job and/or you don't have your hours reduced, you're obviously making more money. And that's a good thing. But there is some job loss associated with minimum wage increases. And it falls on, of course, the people we are trying to help, these skilled low-wage workers.
HORSLEY: Supporters of a higher minimum wage say those warnings are overblown. Economist Jared Bernstein of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says, in the past, modest wage hikes have not taken a big toll on employment.
JARED BERNSTEIN: That doesn't mean that no one ever loses a job or has their hours cut back. But what it does mean is that the beneficiaries far, far outweigh anyone who's hurt by the policy.
HORSLEY: The federal minimum hasn't increased in four and a half years. The president would also like lawmakers to OK an automatic cost of living adjustment so future wage hikes aren't stymied by a political standoff in Congress. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
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Another priority of the president's that's likely to come up tonight is an immigration overhaul. The Senate last year passed a comprehensive bipartisan bill that promise eventual citizenship for millions currently in the country without legal status. While House leaders don't appear ready to go that far, they do seem ready to start a conversation.
And joining me from the Capitol is NPR congressional correspondent David Welna. And, David, a lot of people thought revamping immigration wasn't going to happen at all, especially during this election year with a Republican-run House. What's happened to change that?
DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Well, Audie, I think with House Republicans, it's really been more a matter of when, not if they're going to do something on immigration. Their biggest concern is not hurting their members by bringing up this divisive issue and seeing it used by primary challengers against them. So last year was not a good time to do this. But this year, especially once the primaries have taken place, might be a safer bet because I think House Speaker John Boehner truly does want to do something on immigration.
He's well aware that his party has turned off most Latino voters, and Boehner recently hired an immigration expert as a top adviser. And this week, he plans to present some ideas about what to do on immigration at a House Republican retreat on Maryland's eastern shore. Here's what Boehner had to say about that today when asked by reporters.
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: We're going to outline our standards, principles of immigration reform and have a conversation with our members. And once that conversation is over, we've got a better feel for what members have in mind.
WELNA: Boehner also said he'll have more to say on how House Republicans might be moving forward on immigration once those conversations do take place. I think he's kind of testing the political waters here before jumping in.
CORNISH: And the House Speaker referred to immigration principles being presented to the House Republicans. What exactly are those principles?
WELNA: Well, they haven't yet been made public. But according to those who've seen them, they boil down to four areas: securing the border more effectively, expanding the number of visas for skilled and unskilled foreign workers, better enforcement of the E-Verify screening system that checks to see if job applicants have legal status to work. And finally, and probably most importantly, what to do about the 11 million immigrants who are in the country now with no legal status.
Republican leaders seem to be leaning now towards some path to legalization for these people but not the citizenship approved by the Senate. But House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has also been working with Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte on a measure that would allow children brought here illegally by their parents to attain citizenship. I talked with Cantor this afternoon.
REPRESENTATIVE ERIC CANTOR: Our country has never held kids liable for the illegal acts of their parents. And I've been working with Chairman Goodlatte to see how we can craft a measure that really speaks to that issue.
WELNA: But Cantor did not offer any details about when or how citizenship might become available to those who came as children.
CORNISH: David, how is this all being received by long-time opponents of more lenient immigration rules?
WELNA: Well, Audie, they are not at all happy about this. I think they see it as a capitulation to pressure from outside groups and Democrats, and a lot of them see it as just another form of amnesty. Here's what Louie Gohmert, a conservative from East Texas, said to me today about all the talk of taking up an immigration overhaul.
REPRESENTATIVE LOUIE GOHMERT: We need to wait for the president to secure the border as confirmed by the border states. And as soon as he'll do that, I guarantee you, we will get a deal worked out very quickly. But until he does that, we shouldn't even talk about it.
WELNA: And it's talk like that that makes a lot of Republicans wary about even trying to do immigration this year lest it splinter the party before the midterm elections.
CORNISH: So what are the prospects, really, that they'll act this year?
WELNA: Well, I'd say the prospects are good that the House will try to act. The big question is whether Republican leaders can find enough Democrats to make up for members of their own party who aren't onboard like Louie Gohmert.
CORNISH: That's NPR congressional correspondent David Welna. David, thank you.
WELNA: You're welcome, Audie.
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Apple's share price has tumbled since the company's announcement yesterday that it didn't sell as many iPhones as expected. Now, Apple is by no means in trouble. They had recorded more than $13 billion in profits last quarter. It has more than $160 billion in cash and is still setting new sales records.
But as NPR's Steve Henn reports, Apple's fans and investors have been waiting for the next big thing for years.
STEVE HENN, BYLINE: Apple wasn't the first computer company to introduce a mouse, and it wasn't the first tech company to use a touch-screen. But for millions - actually, for more than a billion people now, the Mac and then the iPhone and the iPad have transformed how we interact with machines.
TIM COOK: This is still alive and kicking here in a big way - to create the next product and to see around the next corner.
HENN: For Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, talking about the future of computing is a tricky business. Anything he says, any hint of interest in a new kind of device or service can set off a flurry of speculation. But let's leave behind whether or not Apple is going to release a smart watch or a new flat-screen TV, or revolutionize mobile payments. Because when I think about how this company has changed computing, I think the really big innovations have all centered around how people interact with the devices Apple makes.
So when I interviewed Cook about the 30th anniversary of the Mac, I asked him how he thought people would interact with computers and devices 30 years from now, what role would the person play?
COOK: There are things going on now in the labs that I can't talk about, but input is a huge, huge area for innovation, and it's not stopping in 2014.
BUD TRIBBLE: We have tens of thousands times as much computing power today as we did 30 years ago.
HENN: Bud Tribble is Apple's vice president of software technology and one of the original designers of the Macintosh.
TRIBBLE: Apple's point of view is that one of the best uses of that computing power is to use that to adapt the computer to the person using it, not the other way around.
COOK: A lot of what we do is explore things and keep pulling the string. And if you do that long enough and you have faith that it will lead you somewhere because your gut tells you so strongly this is unbelievable, that it's great, that's exactly what created the iPhone, was that kind of thinking.
HENN: What is Tim Cook's team at Apple thinking about now? What strings are they pulling? Well, probably lots of them. And they aren't going to talk about it too much. But there are some intriguing clues about what they're up to. And for me, one of the most intriguing is Apple's recent purchase of PrimseSense.
PrimeSense is a little Israeli company that makes a couple killer 3-D sensors. A year ago, I met a little robot named Turtle that was using a PrimeSense chip to see.
ANDREA TUNBRIDGE: And when you turn it on, you just need to walk right in front of it and then it will follow you around.
HENN: That's Andrea Tunbridge.
So it's sort of like a little baby gosling that imprints, or a puppy dog?
I turn it on, take a few steps. And when I stop, Turtle lightly nudges my shoe.
Oh, my God. So now, it's following me. Now, if I just walk away, do I get to keep the robot?
The same technology that allows Turtle to navigate through the world can also help a machine recognize gestures or someone's gait or an individual member of a family. These chips can be attached to a projector and transform a wall into a touch-screen. They're now small enough to be built into a tablet and used to map the world in three dimensions.
Yaniv Vakrat was a VP at PrimeSense before Apple bought the company.
YANIV VAKRAT: We believe that it's as revolutionary as anything that you've seen because it really is changing the way machines perceive their environment.
HENN: Machines that can really see the world around them will be able to interact with people in all sorts of new ways. So does Apple have a plan to build these chips, these little sensors into its devices anytime soon? Frankly, I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure that inside Apple's labs right now, they're pulling on this string.
Steve Henn, NPR News, Silicon Valley.
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In Cairo today, former President Mohammed Morsi appeared in court for the second time since he was ousted in a military coup last July. The Islamist leader wore a white prison uniform and stood in a glass-enclosed cage. As NPR's Leila Fadel reports, Morsi faces charges that could lead to the death penalty.
LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: It was another day of drama and chaos in a makeshift courtroom, where Morsi and 21 co-defendants railed against the proceedings and insisted that Morsi is still the legitimate president of Egypt.
MOHAMMED MORSI: (Foreign language spoken)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken)
FADEL: Who are you? Do know who I am? Morsi asked the judge from inside his glass cage. The judge responded: I'm the head of this criminal court. The trial was only partially aired on state television. It was the first time Egyptians heard Morsi speak, albeit briefly, since his overthrow. He also appeared in court in a separate case in November. But only brief, muted footage was aired on television.
In the current trial, Morsi is facing charges of collusion with Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups to break out of prison in 2011. The prison breaks occurred at the height of the uprising against the Mubarak regime. Some 20,000 people escaped from jail, including Morsi and other senior figures in the Muslim Brotherhood.
Human rights groups have called the charges against Morsi politicized and absurd. He is also facing trial in three separate cases ;on charges of inciting violence, espionage and insulting the judiciary. Michael Wahid Hanna is an Egypt expert at the Century Foundation. He says the fact that the trial was not aired live - as promised - shows that the military-backed government is intent on controlling what the public sees.
MICHAEL WAHID HANNA: There's a great deal of concern about not wanting the trial to be a pedestal for Morsi and the other brothers to grandstand and to get their own message across.
FADEL: The heightened political atmosphere, he says, means getting a fair trial is impossible.
HANNA: Everything is part of this nearly existential struggle between the interim authorities backed by the military and the Muslin Brotherhood and their supporters. So it's very difficult to imagine free and fair elections. It's very difficult to imagine free and fair trials.
FADEL: As the trial got underway, tensions continued to mount in a divided and increasingly violent Egypt. A top police general was shot outside his home this morning. His funeral was aired on local and state television. The interim president issued a statement saying the attack was aimed at disrupting Egypt's transition to a peaceful democracy.
The assassination follows on the heels of a spate of attacks in Cairo and elsewhere last week that targeted Egypt's security forces. An extremist militant group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, claimed responsibility. But Egypt's military-backed government and the local media blame Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood for the violence. Leila Fadel, NPR News, Cairo.
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Former President Mohammed Morsi is just one of many Egyptians facing charges for opposing the country's military-led government. Another is former lawmaker and political scientist Amr Hamzawy. He's been charged with insulting the judiciary in a tweet that he sent back in June. In it, he criticized a ruling in which a judge convicted several dozen nonprofit workers for plotting to destabilize Egypt. And Amr Hamzawy joins us now from Cairo. Welcome to the program.
AMR HAMZAWY: Thank you very much, Robert.
SIEGEL: And in the past, you've been critical both of the Morsi government and the Mubarak government. How does the current government's response to your criticism compare with those governments? Is this worse than before?
HAMZAWY: Well, it's, to an extent, quite similar, in the sense of I continue to face ongoing defamation campaigns for my liberal views, which I did face before under Mubarak and under Morsi. Secondly, it's similar in the sense of attempts to restrict my capacity to reach out to Egyptians using media channels, using the press. So there are attempts to restrict freedom of expression as well. And add to that, that we are facing outright buildup of ultra-nationalistic ideas and views, which tend to suppress views which are different from what is being put forward.
So if you say: Well, guys, we really have to get along, all of us, they will accuse you of treason. If you say it's not the right thing to get a constitution out, which continues to place the military establishment above the state, they will tell you you are a traitor and you are looking for a way to defend the interests of foreign countries. And so nonsensical arguments are being circulated, and that is a new quality.
SIEGEL: While we in the West do get to hear from and read the thoughts of people like yourself, the real pro-democracy camp in Egypt is rather small, not very influential. Another military leader appears destined to become president of Egypt and, perhaps, hopes for a more democratic Egypt were misplaced a couple of years ago. What do you make of that reading?
HAMZAWY: Well, I mean, realistically, we have to come to an understanding of where our opportunities and entry points are. Yes, we are facing a public space which is putting and investing trust in the military establishment and in the military leader. And someone like me can continue saying but, well, guys, you are militarizing the state. You are pushing us away from democracy, but no one is listening. So I have to figure out where my entry points are. As a formal politics, should I run again for parliament or should I focus on informal politics: building grassroots activities and grassroots movements and initiatives.
But here, too, Robert, we have to realize that people are increasingly impatient. You get out to the streets and you participate in a peaceful march and people will scream at you. They are fed up to an extent. They mistrust politicians. They mistrust politics. And they tend to invest hopes in the one man, in the one hero, and in the one establishment which is a military establishment.
SIEGEL: Just one other question. Over the past several years, I've heard various Egyptians accuse the United States of keeping Hosni Mubarak in power and throwing Hosni Mubarak under the bus, supporting the military takeover from Mubarak and then supporting Mohammed Morsi, and then overthrowing Mohammed Morsi and supporting the military. I mean, first of all, what is - as you would perceive it - what is the United States doing right now in Egypt, and what should it do?
HAMZAWY: You know, the U.S. is not doing much in Egypt as of now. And let me tell you, by design, what we are looking at is bound to be a homegrown issue where external forces, be it international or regional, can only play limited roles. And instead of flip-flopping or promising much and not delivering, I believe more of a modest policy, more of a realistic policy, understanding that this is a local issue, a homegrown process, and then designing your entry points in a realistic sense. That is what the U.S. needs to do. The U.S. also has to mind the very fact that there is much negative press against the U.S. It's part of the hysteric media landscape we are facing.
SIEGEL: That's Egyptian political scientist, a former lawmaker, Amr Hamzawy, speaking with us from Cairo. Thanks a lot for talking with us once again.
HAMZAWY: Thank you very much, Robert.
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French police raided the Paris offices and home of a controversial comedian today. The comedian is known by his stage name of Dieudonne, he's been accused of making anti-Semitic remarks during his performances, although he denies that. The French government has banned his current show, sparking a debate in France about the limits of free speech.
More from Paris and from NPR's Eleanor Beardsley.
DIEUDONNE M'BALA M'BALA: (Foreign language spoken)
(LAUGHTER)
M'BALA: (Foreign language spoken)
(LAUGHTER)
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Forty-seven-year-old Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala, who goes by the stage name of Dieudonne, has been performing since the 1990s. When he began, his posture was largely anti-racist and left wing, until around 2002.
JEAN-YVES CAMUS: And then, very slowly, he started to drift.
BEARDSLEY: That's Jean-Yves Camus, an expert on the far right. He says Dieudonne, whose mother is white and French and whose father is from Cameroon and black, never explained the change.
National Front Party founder Jean Marie Le Pen is his child's godfather. And Dieudonne ran unsuccessfully for a parliament seat on a right wing ticket. His crude, stand-up comedy shows focus overwhelmingly now on Jews, says Jean-Yves Camus.
CAMUS: He believes in a world Jewish conspiracy. And he says that the Jews control the media, the economy and the political party. And also, he became a Holocaust denier.
BEARDSLEY: Dieudonne has been fined several times over the last few years for hate speech, which is illegal in France. He's never paid the fines, always claiming bankruptcy. The comedian says he is anti-Zionist and anti-establishment, but not anti-Semitic. His shows say otherwise.
M'BALA: (Singing in foreign language)
(LAUGHTER)
BEARDSLEY: He regularly performs a song called "Shoahnanas," which combines the word Shoah, or Holocaust, with the French word for pineapple - annanas. Last week, YouTube banned the song. He also invented an arm gesture which has gone viral on the Internet and looks like an inverted Nazi salute. Dieudonne says the gesture simply rejects authority.
The tipping point came in December when Dieudonne laughingly evoked to the gas chambers when talking about a French Jewish journalist he despised. Interior Minister Manuel Valls went after the comic with a vengeance.
MANUEL VALLS: (Through translator) I know how to distinguish between a genius of humor and a purveyor of hate. The words used by Mr. Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala are clearly words of hate and it's not the first time. We must react.
BEARDSLEY: France's highest court has banned Dieudonne's current show. That has set off a debate about censorship and free speech. Outside Dieudonne's tiny Paris theatre, fans such as 28-year-old Abdel Benhada, were furious.
ABDEL BENHADA: (Through translator) He doesn't incite people to hatred. It's just humor. He makes jokes about everybody. It's not a problem for other groups.
BEARDSLEY: Lawyer Arnaud Klarsfeld, whose parents helped track down Nazis after the war, says he doesn't believe France is anti-Semitic, but he says there are small groups who incite people to hate Jews.
ARNAUD KLARSFELD: Those are not shows. Those are political meetings comparable to the meetings held by the Hamas or by the Hezbollah. So you have to act. You have to act because things have already happened in France.
BEARDSLEY: Klarsfeld is referring to the killing of three Jewish schoolchildren and their teacher in the city of Toulouse, two years ago, by a young radical Islamist.
CAMUS: (Foreign language spoken)
BEARDSLEY: Jean-Yves Camus says Dieudonne's biggest audience is young males of Arab and African descent. They don't necessarily have the same cultural references about what happened in Europe during the Second World War. And he says, for some of them, laughing at Jews or the Holocaust is not a taboo.
Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.
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The death of folk singer Pete Seeger yesterday at the age of 94 has fans, friends, and family reconnecting to his memory.
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CORNISH: Among those remembering Seeger, his goddaughter, singer and activist Toshi Reagon.
TOSHI REAGON: "Turn, Turn, Turn," I just thank him so much for that song.
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REAGON: "Turn, Turn, Turn" is so special. It's such a great gift to all of us.
CORNISH: Toshi Reagon is named after Pete Seeger's late wife, Toshi Seeger. She told us today of her family's relationship with Seeger. In 1962, Toshi Reagon's parents were part of the civil rights group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Seeger thought they should use music to help the cause. And the group they created, The Freedom Singers, went on to spread a musical message of racial desegregation.
REAGON: This music traveled across the country and it helped broaden the message. It also was able to fundraise for the movement which was really important. My mother was the connection with Toshi Seeger. And my mother passed down that legacy of organization from Toshi to me.
The idea of Pete showing up and being a part of so many different movements is an incredible line. I've always admired him for that. He did it his entire life.
CORNISH: Now there's a generation of people who grew up with Pete Seeger's music and books for children. And I wonder what it's like for you, somebody who probably got to experience him - as you were a child, with him being a godfather - what kind of godfather was he?
REAGON: Well, he's cool. I loved his music. I love his songs, as a kid. And then, when one of my favorite bands - Earth, Wind and Fire - recorded "Where Have All The Flowers Gone," I was so shocked to find out Pete wrote that song. And so many of the songs we had to sing in school. You know, they're part of the American Songbook.
CORNISH: What kind of lessons did he give you in terms of sharing music with the crowd? I mean, his performances were so evocative and kind of about call and response, what did he teach you about music?
REAGON: You know, Pete was a musician - a traveling musician. He showed up everywhere and he always had a song. And if he didn't have a song, he'd write one for whatever the particular need was. And my mom, me, Pete, we're congregational singers. Even when we're singing by ourselves, we want to be singing in a congregation. So a lot of our music, we end up teaching audiences to sing so we're not singing by ourselves, which we can't really stand.
(LAUGHTER)
REAGON: So, you know, you will Google Pete today. I'm sure a lot of your listeners will Google him. You will not find many pictures of him without a banjo or a 12-string guitar in his hand. That's just the kind of dude he was. And I think leading by example just very, very strong and showing up in the simplest and purest way.
CORNISH: As you came to know your godfather as an adult, are there aspects of Pete Seeger's legacy that you want people to remember; things may be that people take for granted?
REAGON: You know, Pete lived so simply and was so generous, I would say his legacy would be his incredible love for Toshi. And the other would be to let things pass through you, that to take them in and give them away. Pete won a Lillian Gish Prize. I sang at that award ceremony. The check never touched his hands. I can't remember how much it was for, like $195,000...
(LAUGHTER)
REAGON: ...or something like that. He didn't take one penny. So that is his legacy. I think that is his lesson. We have to be connected and really feel like we can make a contribution past our own existence.
CORNISH: Musician Toshi Reagon, thank you so much for speaking with us.
REAGON: Thank you so much.
CORNISH: Toshi Reagon, she was talking with us about her godfather, Pete Seeger, who died yesterday at the age of 94.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WELL MAY THE WORLD GO")
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After losing a lot of ground, stock prices were back up a bit today. Investor anxiety about the state of the world's currency markets seemed to ease. The current turmoil is reminiscent of the 1997 currency crisis in Asia, which hurt economies all over the world.
As NPR's Jim Zarroli reports, there are also some big differences.
JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: This crisis got underway when Argentina decided to devalue its peso earlier this month. But soon, doubts were being raised about just how safe it was to invest in emerging markets in general.
DR. JERRY WEBMAN: Buying the bonds of a sovereign country is like, you know, making a loan to your neighbor. You're constantly evaluating whether you think he or she is going to be able to pay you back.
ZARROLI: Jerry Webman, chief economist at OppenheimerFunds says that as doubts have spread, people have been pulling their money out of countries like Turkey and Ukraine, driving down the value of their currency.
WEBMAN: We've recognized that there are some of these emerging economies that face some serious problems, more serious than we thought they were.
ZARROLI: On the surface, this downturn brings to mind the infamous Asian currency crisis of 1997. For years before that crisis, investors had been pouring money into Asian countries. Then, for reasons that are still being debated, the flow of money stopped, and countries all over the region, starting with Thailand, saw their currencies plummet. The International Monetary Fund tried to come to the rescue, but the damage had been done and growth slowed sharply throughout emerging markets. Could the same thing happen again? Economist Nariman Behravesh of IHS doesn't think so.
NARIMAN BEHRAVESH: While there are some similarities, I think we're not going to go through quite the crisis that we did in that '97, '98 period.
ZARROLI: Behravesh says, for one thing, there aren't the huge levels of debt in the emerging markets that there were in 1997. And countries tend to have more currency reserves on hand. And there's another difference, he says.
BEHRAVESH: In those days, before the Asia crisis, exchange rates were largely fixed, and that created big problems for these countries.
ZARROLI: Behravesh says that in the 1990s, countries like Thailand and Russia pegged their currencies to the dollar. That meant that when the crisis happened, they had to spend a lot of money propping them up. Behravesh says most countries now let their currencies float on the open market. That can cause problems, too, among other things that makes imports like oil a lot more expensive. But countries no longer have to exhaust their reserves in a vain attempt to save their currencies.
Hung Tran of the Institute of International Finance says there are countries with real problems out there. Some emerging markets have saddled themselves with too much debt and bad loans.
HUNG TRAN: Those issues need to be dealt with very clearly, very firmly, so that investors have a feeling that the country is really under good management and on the road of recovery.
ZARROLI: That may be why the countries that have suffered the most in the current downturn are politically turbulent places, like Turkey and Ukraine, and countries with a history of mismanagement like Argentina. But many other emerging markets have made important changes since 1997, and that could make this crisis end a lot differently than the other one. Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
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This week, we're taking a close look at the oil rush in North Dakota. The state is pumping out more than 10 times as much oil as it was a decade ago. That makes it the number two state in crude production, behind Texas. Despite that growth, North Dakota's top industry is still agriculture. Many farmers and ranchers have benefited from the oil boom, some are even getting rich.
But as NPR's Jeff Brady reports, the boom has also created plenty of tension.
JEFF BRADY, BYLINE: We're on a ranch in western North Dakota, where a blue tractor is lifting a big, round bale of hay. This is the heart of the North Dakota oil boom. Deep below in the Bakken shale formation there are billions of barrels of oil, much of it now recoverable because of technologies like fracking. But above the ground, you'll often find cattle or durum wheat.
We're here to talk with Donny Nelson. He's a third-generation farmer and rancher. He says oil booms come with the territory, but usually they're not this intense.
DONNY NELSON: Oh yeah, this is a completely different animal than we've seen before. I've seen about three oil boom-busts.
BRADY: This is the third and now it's clear the boom is real and there's no sign of a bust yet. We leave the horses and drive about two-and-a-half miles to snow-covered fields. There, huge drilling rigs rise up as tall as grain elevators.
NELSON: Six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 in a row here.
BRADY: All those wells mean a lot more activity in a place that used to be very quiet. Nelson says this has hurt a key indicator for his cattle business: pregnancy rates. Most of his herd came in at 96 percent this year, except one field where there was construction and the number was much lower.
NELSON: I think it was because they run a pipeline straight, dead through the middle of the pasture. And they were young cows, should have been fine, and we only got about 55 percent on them. And they looked horrible when we brought them out of the pasture. They were skinny.
BRADY: Farmers learned of another downside to the oil boom this past harvest season: When space on railroads was at a premium. The state's rail system was built for agriculture, but now it's also hauling oil - a lot of oil. On top of that, the boom is transforming rural towns.
Marilyn Hudson has lived most of her 77 years in Parshall, North Dakota, on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
MARILYN HUDSON: Sometimes you drive through a small town in North Dakota, especially western North Dakota, and all you find is a bar and a senior center.
BRADY: Hudson says Parshall was headed that direction but now the two-lane highway nearby has a lot more traffic. And there's plans for a big new hotel. Hudson says that's prompting some longtime residents to move away.
HUDSON: They say we just don't want to put up with the dust, the traffic, the people, you know. And so, it has definitely changed the lifestyle.
BRADY: North Dakota's Republican governor, Jack Dalrymple, is a focus for many concerned about the effects of the drilling boom. Last year, some political opponents tried to launch a criminal investigation because of oil industry contributions his campaign received. But a judge dismissed their petition. And Dalrymple, who is a farmer himself, contends the oil boom also is helping agriculture.
GOVERNOR JACK DALRYMPLE: We're in the process of developing two huge nitrogen fertilizer plants in North Dakota.
BRADY: Along with oil, drillers are producing a lot of natural gas and that can be turned into fertilizer.
DALRYMPLE: That is nothing but great news. That means more nitrogen fertilizer available locally to our people.
BRADY: And Dalrymple points out that North Dakotans are becoming a lot richer. Per capita personal income in the state has more than doubled in the past decade to almost $55,000 a year. That's $10,000 more than the national average. Even farmers who don't own the rights to the oil under their land can earn extra money by charging drillers for using the surface.
NELSON: On the whole, I think most people have made adjustments and are taking advantage of the situation.
BRADY: Back on Donny Nelson's ranch, his family is earning royalties on the oil extracted from their land. But the extra money doesn't replace what's lost.
NELSON: I just think that if people had ever came here and looked at it, what it was before and what it is now, they'd be concerned. It's a unique area, changed forever now probably.
BRADY: Nelson says there's no sense in wishing the oil boom gone though, it's here and apparently won't be going bust anytime soon.
Jeff Brady, NPR News.
CORNISH: Our Oil Rush series continues on MORNING EDITION tomorrow with a look at the practice of burning off excess natural gas that's produced in the oil fields.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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From Africa to France to America, Angelique Kidjo has a singing career that has bridged three continents. She began in her native Benin in West Africa, then moved to Paris and finally, Brooklyn. Kidjo's 13th album "Eve," is dedicated to the women of Africa. Our reviewer, Banning Eyre, has been listening.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BANNING EYRE, BYLINE: That's Yvonne Kidjo, Eve for short, singing a song she taught her daughter Angelique years ago in Benin. Kidjo named this album for her mother got her to sing on this song, "Bana," which says value people over money. If you don't have money, Kidjo told me, you still have your life. Be somebody. Do something.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
EYRE: Song after song, this CD offers encouragement to the women of Africa. Lift yourselves up. Marry who you love. Fight oppression. When Kidjo sings about these things, she does it with fire in her belly and funk in the groove.
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EYRE: This album started when Kidjo was swept into a group of singing women in Kenya. She worked a phone recording of that moment into a song, and then decided that women and women's voices should define the whole CD.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
EYRE: Later, she took her basic tracks to Benin, traveling its width and breadth, and recording nine different choral groups to back up her own lead vocals. On "Eve," Kidjo sings in four different Beninese languages, Fon, Gur, Mina and on this song, Yoruba.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
EYRE: Kidjo told me it wasn't always easy fitting these women's choirs into her sophisticated pop sound. "Are you kidding?" one group asked after hearing the track. "Do you really think we are going to sing that?" "I'll teach you," Kidjo replied. She also put a few non-African musical guests through their paces.
This song, "Ebile" celebrates the pride parents take in their children. It's built around a tricky percussion groove from Benin and those strings you hear working to keep up, that's the Kronos Quartet.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
EYRE: The women of Africa endure sometimes brutal conditions and face huge challenges. But Angelique Kidjo believes with a passion that a better future awaits them. Kidjo's great gift is to pour what could so easily be anger and frustration into songs that uplift and inspire us and she's done that again with "Eve."
SIEGEL: Banning Eyre is senior editor at AfroPop.org. He reviewed "Eve" by Angelique Kidjo. All this week, you can listen to her new album at NPRMusic.org.
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Here's some worrying news for parents. The risk of becoming obese seems to start even earlier than we thought. By kindergarten, many kids look like they're already well on their way to obesity. That's according to a big new study released today by the New England Journal of Medicine. NPR's Rob Stein reports.
ROB STEIN, BYLINE: Everyone knows the childhood obesity epidemic is a problem, but Solveig Cunningham of Emory University wanted to see just how early in a child's life the warning signs emerge.
SOLVEIG CUNNINGHAM: This would be a really important thing to focus on and to understand because it lets us know about the ages of vulnerability, when does obesity occur, and who might be at greatest risk.
STEIN: So Cunningham and her colleagues followed more than 7,000 kids when they started kindergarten. They wanted to see who ended up becoming obese by the time they got to middle school. And they found something really disturbing.
CUNNINGHAM: Kids who started off kindergarten overweight actually had about four times greater risks of becoming obese by eighth grade compared with normal-weight kindergartners.
STEIN: A lot of parents like to think their kids will just grow out of their baby fat. But this says that's often not the case. In fact, almost half of all the kids who had become obese by eighth grade were the ones who already were considered overweight in kindergarten.
CUNNINGHAM: One major implication is that the risks for obesity are in part set fairly early in life. So as parents, as a society, as clinicians, we need to think about healthy weight really early on.
STEIN: Really early on meaning even during when a woman is pregnant. The same study found one-third of the kids who ended up being obese by eighth grade were the ones who were on the large side at birth. David Ludwig is a childhood obesity expert at Boston Children's Hospital.
DR. DAVID LUDWIG: A key time period appears to be both pregnancy - a time when the fetus is growing and developing and biological pathways are being established - and also the first few years of life. So maternal diet, maternal weight gain and the infant's diet during the first few years may have an outsized influence on long-term risk for obesity and related diseases.
STEIN: So Ludwig says women have to be careful not to gain too much weight while they're pregnant and do commonsense things during their kids' first few years of life. Make sure their kids don't sit around too much watching TV and playing video games, get them plenty of exercise, and watch what they eat.
LUDWIG: Importantly, avoiding excess consumption of all of the refined carbohydrates that have snuck in our diet over the last few decades - the sugary beverages, too much fruit juice, and all of the processed, packaged snack foods.
STEIN: But some experts worry the new research will cause some parents to overreact at any sign their babies or toddlers are getting a little chubby. Joanne Ikeda is a nutritionist at the University of California, Berkeley.
JOANNE IKEDA: Putting them on a calorie-restricted diet can stunt their growth in height. So you don't want to put children on a calorie-restricted diet. What you want to do is help them have healthier lifestyle habits and they will grow into their weight.
STEIN: Others worry the research will add more fuel to what they think is a kind of hysteria around childhood weight. Linda Bacon of the University of California, Davis says kids are already suffering.
LINDA BACON: What this is going to do to kids is it's going to cause more bullying and teasing of the larger kids. It's going to cause them to feel bad about their bodies. It's going to make the thinner kids really scared of getting fatter.
STEIN: The researchers behind the new study are not advocating putting young children on diets or making them feel bad about their weight. They just hope their work will help discourage the bad habits that are driving the childhood obesity epidemic. Rob Stein, NPR News.
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Informants have played a role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for many years. Yesterday, we told you about a Palestinian man from the Gaza Strip who was arrested by Israel when he applied for permission to travel last summer. And after a week of interrogation in an Israeli prison, he was put in a cell with people he thought were other Palestinian prisoners but they were actually working for Israeli intelligence.
Well, today, NPR's Emily Harris has the story of one of these pretend prisoners. He's says he did that work for years and that he's proud of it.
EMILY HARRIS, BYLINE: Abdel Hamid el-Rajoub is in his 60s now. He grew up in a Palestinian village near Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He says he was 19 when he got involved in fighting Israel.
ABDEL HAMID EL-RAJOUB: (Through Translator) It was my right to fight the existence of Israel and against the occupation.
HARRIS: Rajoub tells his story at a busy coffee shop in Israel, where he now lives. He says he joined the military branch of the Palestinian political group Fatah and took part in an attack on Israelis in the mid-1970s that landed him in Israeli prison.
EL-RAJOUB: (Through Translator) Prison oppresses your feelings, your mind and your freedom.
HARRIS: But not only Israelis oppressed him in prison. Rajoub says that fellow Palestinians - Fatah members - accused him of passing information to Israeli intelligence. He says those accusations were wrong. But being fingered as an informant was so dangerous that he was moved from the general prison population into a solitary cell.
EL-RAJOUB: (Through Translator) I was in the Israeli cell alone for four years, waiting for Fatah to realize I was not an informant. But an apology never came. I thought a lot during those four years. Then I realized that my problem was with Fatah, not with Israel.
HARRIS: So the man once wrongly accused as an informant became one. He chokes up remembering.
EL-RAJOUB: (Through Translator) It was a personal decision, a painful decision.
(SOUNDBITE OF WEEPING)
EL-RAJOUB: (Through Translator) Whenever I remember that moment, I cry.
HARRIS: Rajoub stayed in prison, but in special cells full of other informants like him. Their job was to put on a show of being real prisoners, to fool other Palestinians into revealing information that Israeli intelligence couldn't get.
CHAIM NATIV: It was a part of the interrogation.
HARRIS: Former Israeli intelligence officer Chaim Nativ worked in the Arab section of Israel's Shin Bet service for 30 years. The cells of collaborators, he says, were useful.
NATIV: Sometimes when you are stuck in the interrogation and the case is on the border. I mean, you don't know if he's white or black or sometimes. So you send him to the asafeer.
HARRIS: Asafeer means sparrows in Arabic. It's what Palestinians call the collaborators in this theatre of entrapment, which is still used today.
Abdel Sattar Kassem, a Palestinian professor and former prisoner, says he met Rajoub in a cell full of sparrows in 1981. After nine days of solitary confinement and Israeli interrogation, the sparrows welcomed him.
ABDEL SATTAR KASEEM: I ate and had very full stomach. And somebody then said, Doctor, I want to talk to you. He told me that he was the head of that room and he was very pleased to see me.
HARRIS: Kassem says he confessed nothing because he had heard about this trick. In fact, he'd heard that Rajoub help start the sparrows interrogations, a claim Rajoub also makes. Israeli security sources won't confirm that or anything about Rajoub, but a relative will. Nayef Rajoub is a Palestinian politician in the West Bank.
NAYEF RAJOUB: (Through Translator) It's shameful for me, shameful for all the Palestinian people. But yes, he is the one.
HARRIS: Nayef Rajoug doesn't even like Fatah, the political party his relative betrayed. But Rajoub the sparrow is proud of whatever he did against the organization that he feels betrayed him.
EL-RAJOUB: (Through Translator) I uprooted their movement. I cancelled them. I don't care if I helped put people in prison. My work was to persuade them to talk. It wasn't up to me what happened after that.
HARRIS: Rajoub is no longer a prison informant, but says he's still working for an independent state of Palestine.
Emily Harris, NPR News.
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Morrie Turner, the first African-American cartoonist to be syndicated, has died of natural causes. He was 90 years old. His "Wee Pals" comic strip has run for nearly half a century. NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates has this appreciation.
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES, BYLINE: Morrie Turner could hardly remember a time when he wasn't drawing. Born in 1923, Turner grew up in Oakland, California. He drew through elementary school and high school and into the Army Air Force, where he contributed to the military daily Stars and Stripes during World War II. After the Army, Turner worked as a clerk for the Oakland Police Department and kept drawing. His cartoons began to show up in mainstream magazines and in the Black Press. Turner told KCRA-TV a few years ago that he wanted to avoid being dismissed because of his race.
MORRIE TURNER: One of the things I had to do was to keep it a big secret, who I was.
BATES: Eventually, he earned enough from his art that he quit his day job and cartooned full time. His comic strip "Wee Pals" debuted in 1965. It featured a posse of youngsters in all colors, sizes, genders, and abilities, whose sharp social observations were tempered with humor. At first, it was slow going. Turner showed up in just a few newspapers. But the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 changed everything, something Turner remained ambivalent about for life.
TURNER: Suddenly, everybody was interested in me and you can imagine how I felt. I mean, I'm benefiting by a hero of mine. It's kind of a bittersweet experience.
BATES: Rick Newcombe, Turner's syndicator, said Turner's "Wee Pals" was exactly in sync with Dr. King's message of racial tolerance.
RICK NEWCOMBE: In his personality, which came through in the comic strip, he was just a warm and loving human being. And he really did not understand hatred or racial prejudice. It just made no sense to him.
BATES: Morrie Turner continued to preach his message of inclusiveness through his strip, which he inked seven days a week until his death on Saturday.
Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News.
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Neanderthals died out long ago, but their genes live on in us. In fact, scientists studying human chromosomes say they've discovered a surprising amount of Neanderthal DNA in our genes. And these aren't just random fragments. These are genes that shape what we look like today. NPR's Richard Harris reports on a pair of new and surprising studies.
RICHARD HARRIS, BYLINE: Tens of thousands of years ago, Neanderthals lived side by side with humans who had migrated from Africa to Europe. And sometimes they shared more than territory. They also swapped genetic material, to put it delicately.
JOSH AKEY: Whenever you juxtapose Neanderthal and sex, people get interested.
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: Josh Akey at the University of Washington has been fielding a lot of reporters' phone calls this week. He says there's no question that Neanderthals occasionally crossbred with their close relatives: early humans in Europe. And while the Neanderthals died out, their genes live on in modern humans. A few years ago, scientists actually decoded the Neanderthal DNA from old bones, so today we can compare Neanderthal genes with our own.
AKEY: We previously knew that about 1 to 3 percent of all non-African genomes were inherited from Neanderthal ancestors, but the key point is that my 1 percent might be different than the 1 percent of Neanderthal sequence that you carry.
HARRIS: So Akey and his colleagues combed through the genes of more than 600 people living today to look for scraps of Neanderthal genes. And they report in Science magazine that about 20 percent of the Neanderthal genes live on in us. In fact, it seems that some of the Neanderthal genes were better-suited for our fully human ancestors than they genes they had. Those genes came to dominate certain traits. One example is genes related to a protein that affects our appearance: keratin.
AKEY: We don't know exactly what the Neanderthal versions of those genes, which trait they were influencing. But they have something to do likely with skin or hair biology.
HARRIS: Africans didn't pick up those traits since Neanderthals appeared in Europe. But maybe this crossbreeding affects how Europeans and Asians look today. As it happens, a research group at Harvard has also been combing through human genes, looking for Neanderthal leftovers. Sriram Sankararaman is lead author of a Nature paper. He says the genes give us some clues about what happened between Neanderthals and human ancestors way back when.
SRIRAM SANKARARAMAN: My guess is there must have been a small population of Neanderthals with which modern humans would have interbred.
HARRIS: And while human ancestors benefitted from some of the Neanderthal genes they picked up, they also rejected a whole bunch of Neanderthal genes. For example, our X chromosome has very little Neanderthal DNA on it. Svante Paabo at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig says that suggests that Neanderthals and our human ancestors were barely compatible and many of their offspring ended up being sterile hybrids, like mules.
SVANTE PAABO: So this suggests that the male hybrids might not have been fertile whereas females might have been fully fertile. So it might have been passed on particularly through females, the Neanderthal contribution.
HARRIS: The story is still hazy, but very provocative.
PAABO: I think it's fascinating that the Neanderthals live on to day, so to say, in a little bit in us. And not just in the form of anonymous DNA fragments that we pass on to the next generation, but also in the part of our genome that actually influences how we look or how we behave or what diseases we have.
HARRIS: Reading these genes tells us more about our mysterious Neanderthal relatives. But Josh Akey says they also can tell us a lot about ourselves.
AKEY: Maybe we can use our map of Neanderthal sequences to pinpoint in on regions of the genome that confer unique human phenotypes.
HARRIS: That is the traits that set us apart as human beings. Both research groups are eagerly continuing to mine human DNA for more surprising clues. Richard Harris, NPR News.
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First, he's Time Magazine's Person of the Year. Then he's Rolling Stone's cover story on "The Times they are A-Changin'" in the Catholic Church. And now, he is super-pope. NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports on the latest incarnation of one of the most popular leaders on the planet.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: The street is named after the Roman comic playwright Plautus. But it's just an ordinary street corner like many in Rome - no notable fountain, sculpture or building to gaze at. This morning, however, crowds gathered, aiming their cameras at a new piece of street art. It's a wall painting showing the Argentine-born pope airborne, his right fist clenched ahead of him, his white cape and pectoral cross fluttering in the breeze. And in his left hand, a brief-case with the words valores - Latin for values.
Peeking out of the bag, a scarf in the blue and red stripes of San Lorenzo - the pope's favorite soccer team.
Unlike Clark Kent, however, the white caped crusader is clearly identifiable by his thick spectacles. The artist signed himself Maupal. That's short for Mauro Palotta, who lives in the hood, just under the shadow of St Peter's dome. He says Pope Francis is the only world leader who stands on the side of the people.
MAURO PALOTTA: (Through translator) I tried to make him into a divinity by depicting him like Marvel comics super heroes, who essentially are the modern metaphor for Greek mythology. Our pop icons are today's version of the ancient gods.
POGGIOLI: Passersby were enchanted by the graffiti. Rebecca Ruedas Segura, a teenager from Spain, said the wall painting represents Francis perfectly.
REBECCA RUEDAS: (Through translator) He's very modern. He shows concern for the young and for the poor. The previous popes didn't really understand people. But Francis does because he's humble.
POGGIOLI: Carlo Romano, an elderly man visiting from the southern city of Taranto, loves it.
CARLO ROMANO: (Through translator) Stupendous, very beautiful. This is a revolutionary pope. He mesmerizes people.
POGGIOLI: Benni Castellano, a middle-aged Roman, is convinced no one at the Vatican could be offended by the graffiti.
BENNI CASTELLANO: He is a hero, modern hero for the church. He is doing very, very good things for the church, for the people, for the world. We need him.
POGGIOLI: And, in fact, the Vatican communications department showed its approval by tweeting a photo of the pop-art pope.
Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Rome.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. President Obama is on the road today. He's busy making the case for some of the ideas he rolled out last night in his State of the Union address. First stop, a warehouse store in Maryland. There, the president made a multipronged pitch around raising the minimum wage. NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith begins our coverage.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Expect to hear this a lot in the coming weeks and months.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It's time to give America a raise.
KEITH: President Obama said it twice in his remarks at that Costco warehouse store in Lanham, Maryland this morning with employees who all make more than the minimum wage standing behind him. He said Costco's CEO is onto something paying entry-level employees $11.50 an hour and long time workers even more.
OBAMA: He's sees that if he's doing right by Costco's workers, then they can buy that 80 inch TV, too.
KEITH: In his State of the Union address last night, President Obama announced he would sign an executive order setting a minimum wage for future federal contract workers at $10.10 an hour. It's still not clear how many people that would help or how quickly, but he took that step because his calls for Congress to raise the federal minimum wage have gone nowhere.
REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN: It's bad economics. It actually costs jobs.
KEITH: House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan shot down an increase in the federal minimum wage on MSNBC this morning.
RYAN: If you raise the price of these entry level jobs, there will be fewer of them and we want to put people into the workforce so they can work their way up.
KEITH: Many economists argue that the impact on hiring is offset by other economic benefits. But that congressional resistance leads to the final part of President Obama's pitch.
OBAMA: And as I said last night to every governor, mayor, state legislator out there, if you want to take the initiative to raise your minimum wage laws to help more hardworking Americans make ends meet, then I'm going to be right there at your side. While Congress decides whether it's going to raise the minimum wage or not, people outside of Washington are not waiting for Congress and I'm not either.
KEITH: For progressive Democrats like Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva, the fact that the president is talking about raising the minimum wage, even just for new federal contracts, is a victory on its own.
REPRESENTATIVE RAUL GRIJALVA: Maybe it is not as the breadth of what we want done, but it's that step. We consider it a building block and a momentum builder.
KEITH: For Democrats, talking about giving Americans a raise is something to rally around in what is going to be a tough election year. Tamara Keith, NPR News.
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Economic inequality was a key theme of the president's State of the Union address. Clearly, it's a subject that he is determined to get the country talking about and talking about in a different way; more broadening of opportunity, less talk of raising taxes on the rich. Here's part of what he said last night.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Today, after four years of economic growth, corporate profits and stock prices have rarely been higher and those at the top have never done better, but average wages have barely budged. Inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has stalled.
SIEGEL: Well, joining us now are two economists with very different approaches to economic problems. Paul Krugman is liberal, a columnist for the New York Times and a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University. Welcome to the program.
PAUL KRUGMAN: Hi there.
SIEGEL: And Douglas Holtz-Eakin is president of the American Action Forum, which he describes as a center-right policy institute. Holtz-Eakin is former chief economist of the president's Council of Economic Advisors under President George W. Bush. Good to see you again.
DOUG HOLTZ-EAKIN: Thanks for having me.
SIEGEL: Let's start with the facts here. And Paul Krugman, let's begin. Has inequality in America, whether over the past four years as the president said or over a longer period, has it deepened and didn't a Harvard study just say that social mobility, in fact, hasn't changed all that much?
KRUGMAN: Those are different questions. So they basically - the Harvard study said that your chance of moving from, you know, middle class to upper middle class or whatever hasn't changed, at least as far as I can tell, statistically, significantly. But the gap between those classes has widened enormously. I just had my favorite statistic of this morning. The top 40 hedge fund managers in America earned as much as 300,000 schoolteachers in 2012. So that gives you an idea of how unequal a society we've become.
SIEGEL: Doug Holtz-Eakin, do you agree with that description of what's happened to the economy and wealth?
HOLTZ-EAKIN: Yeah. The facts, I think, are pretty clear now and one of the things that I thought was nice about the president's remarks last night is he took the time to point out that this has been going on for decades. You know, three decades at least and these are deep economic forces that are driving the widening wage gaps.
SIEGEL: So we have some agreement on what the facts are, to begin with.
KRUGMAN: Yeah, which actually, by the way, I mean, the substantial part of Washington does not agree on these facts so I'm glad that Doug and I are - we're in the same universe of reality. That's good to note.
SIEGEL: But to what degree is economic equality desirable? I think most of us would like to feel that people who work harder should make more than people who don't work hard, and education is virtually marketed as an increase-your-wealth scheme in our country, that you should be rewarded more for acquiring very useful skills. To what extent should there be some degree of economic inequality?
KRUGMAN: Well, for sure, there are no Cuban Communists in American political life, right? Nobody thinks that we should be a society without monetary incentives. No one thinks that we should have exact equality or even anything close to that. The point, however, is that our notion of what kind of society we should be, I think, is something like the kind of society we actually were 30, 40 years ago where we had a broad middleclass, where the gap between people at the top and the average or the median American was not that large.
When it gets this extreme, a couple things happen. There's a disconnect. You know, we've had several decades when productivity of workers had been rising, but the wages of the typical worker really barely have. We have a feeling that socially we're ceasing to be an integrated society. This is not the kind of country we want to be and so it is a problem when inequality gets to this extreme.
SIEGEL: Well, Doug Holtz-Eakin, one solution, raise marginal tax rates sharply so that people, at some point, start giving back into the public domain and money is redistributed.
HOLTZ-EAKIN: I don't think that's going to be the answer. I mean, we already have the wealthy paying the vast majority of the taxes and you could raise marginal taxes more, but at some point, you have to recognize that the forces dwarf any of these tiny policies, for instance, like tax rates or minimum wages and go back to what the president was actually quite careful about in the speech he gave a while back on - when he defined this as the compelling issue of our time.
He talked about opportunity and social mobility and not just inequality. And I think that's the key. We know that the dividing line between being poor and non-poor in the United States is having a job. We've had poor job performance recently. And we also know that the dividing line between success in the labor market once you have a job and less success is skills and education. We need to really focus on and get serious about that, not just talk about it.
SIEGEL: What about that, Paul? What about all this focus on the bottom of the scale and not so much at the top?
KRUGMAN: No, I think both matter. There is still a substantial amount of money at the top and you don't want to punish the rich. But there is money there and it can be used to help people in need. It can be used for a stronger social safety net. And I will say I think Doug is exactly wrong here, about saying that taxes and government policies that do some, you know, shuffling of income around can't make a big difference. On the contrary, the one thing that we actually know works to limit inequality is exactly taxing and strengthening the social safety net.
SIEGEL: Doug Holtz-Eakin?
HOLTZ-EAKIN: Well, I think it has worked in the U.S., and one of the frustrations I think many people who look at these data carefully suffer from is that the usual measures of poverty exclude most of the social safety net. They don't count the transfers that we give to the low-income Americans to try to support them in their need. And so, if you look at more broad measures of income that include food stamps and the kinds of support programs we have, you don't get near the same pictures you do by just looking at money income earned in markets.
And so, our safety net does need to be strengthened because it's under a huge financial stress: Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, all have financial problems that need to be fixed. But it's not that it's failed to address the problem.
SIEGEL: Just like to hear from both of you what you make of the current level of discussion in Washington about income or wealth inequality, whichever. Paul Ryan, the vice presidential candidate last time out, gave a speech about it. There seems to be some consensus now that this is a problem - some degree of consensus. On the other hand, the solutions are the same solutions that we've heard in the past.
The Democratic solutions tend to be to support social programs more and Republican solution is to cut taxes and have people create more jobs. What do you make of this discussion, Paul Krugman first?
KRUGMAN: Oh, it's a pretty pathetic discussion. Objectively, Paul Ryan's policies are anti-poor. His policies are all about slashing the social safety net and cutting taxes on the rich. But he's decided, I think this is maybe significant, that his rhetoric has to be: But I really care about the poor and this is going to help them.
Democrats I think are actually - they're saying the kinds of things Democrats have already said but they're actually saying them with a little bit more conviction now. In some ways, Democrats have recaptured their mojo. They're no longer ashamed of standing up for New Deal-type liberalism.
SIEGEL: Doug Holtz-Eakin, what do you make of the discourse over this?
HOLTZ-EAKIN: I think the most significant change is the agreement on the facts that opportunity in the United States is not what it once was; that there are significant challenges that have to be addressed. That's no longer a one-party discussion. You're hearing it from both sides.
In terms of policy proposals, I don't think there's been a tremendous (unintelligible) new approach on either side. I, at least, was pleased to hear the president talk last night about expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit to single parents who aren't custodians of children. That's the biggest gap in what has been one of the most successful anti-poverty tools we have.
SIEGEL: This is in effect a negative income tax...
HOLTZ-EAKIN: Yeah, and it's worked.
SIEGEL: ...for people below a certain level get money back.
HOLTZ-EAKIN: It's worked for everyone else quite well. If you want to be serious about tax reform, and you want to be serious about the kinds of things that Republicans want to accomplish, I think that should be in the mix.
KRUGMAN: This is something where you are, in fact, hearing Republicans say some good things about. And this was originally a very bipartisan policy. On the other hand, question: Can we actually do this extension of the EITC to help people who do not have children with new money, or are we just going to rob Peter to pay Paul? Are we going to take away from the people who are now benefiting to give to some other group of people? And that...
SIEGEL: You mean if you cut food stamps in order to increase the Earned Income Tax Credit.
KRUGMAN: Well, or actually even just reallocate, reduce the rates of payment for parents of children. And that's, right now, everything we've really heard from the Republican side is, is basically no new money. And that means that we're not anywhere close to a consensus on what we should actually do.
SIEGEL: Do you think part of what's happened here is that we're seeing the economy recover from the Great Recession and people are saying: Oh my, this is what normal could be and it's not just that we were laid low by the collapse?
HOLTZ-EAKIN: It's not what we call recover. I mean but, you know, if you measure the recovery by corporate profits or measure recovery by GDP or the kinds of things we look at, yeah, there's been a recovery. If you just looked at the labor market there's no recovery.
SIEGEL: We haven't recovered yet.
HOLTZ-EAKIN: We have a smaller fraction of people working today than we did before the recession. It's not a recovery yet. And the pain is real and you're seeing people say this pain has got to be changed. Now there's got to be a debate about how to fix it, but the pain is real.
KRUGMAN: In fact, I think it's almost exactly the opposite. I think what's actually happened is that the social safety net has better support among the general public because more people realize that it might be something that matters for them. In a peculiar way, the persistence of a weak economy has made it more possible to do things that will in the end alleviate inequality.
SIEGEL: Paul Krugman of The New York Times and Princeton and Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum, thanks to both of you.
KRUGMAN: Thank you.
HOLTZ-EAKIN: Thank you.
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Now, reaction to President Obama's State of the Union address last night from a prominent progressive Democrat. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio is very much of the liberal wing of his party and he joins us now from Capitol Hill.
Hi, welcome to the program once again.
SENATOR SHERROD BROWN: Yes, Robert, thank you. That would be the mainstream of the Democratic Party...
(LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: OK...
BROWN: ...which is the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, but thank you.
SIEGEL: You have been a champion and sponsor of raising the minimum wage. The president spoke in favor of that and promised to do what he can by executive order for federal contract employees. Was that speech sufficiently strong on issues of social and economic justice for you, or could you have stood some more?
BROWN: Oh, I could have stood some more but I think it was strong. I think the president made the case that minimum wage, it's - over the years, it's been generally done bipartisan and last time, 2007, with President Bush signing the bill. And the minimum wage - purchasing power of minimum wage has declined by a third since 1968. The president used a bit more recent statistic. But he also made the case that increasing the minimum wage helps the economy writ large, and that's the case we make. It's right for those families and it's right for our economy.
SIEGEL: On trade policy, President Obama said when 98 percent of our exporters are small businesses, new trade partnerships with Europe and the Asia-Pacific will help them create more jobs. And he spoke of a bipartisan trade promotion authority to protect American workers. But are you hearing from the White House a trade policy that's too pro-business for your liking?
BROWN: I'm hearing from the White House a trade policy that's shown itself to have failed. I think our trade policy has been anti-business. It's hurt small companies. It's hurt communities. It's curious about our trade policy. We've passed NAFTA. Congress passes PNTR with China passes CAFTA. Our trade deficit grows and our policymakers, unfortunately presidents in both parties say: Well, let's do more trade agreements - as if each time you do a trade agreement it doesn't make things worse.
This president, I give credit for good trade enforcement. We've grown jobs in places like Finley, in Cleveland, Ohio, and Youngstown, Ohio, because of the president and a bunch of us have fought for enforcing trade rules. But these new trade agreements - whether it's the Asia-Pacific, whether it's starting with fast-track - they don't serve our country well. And I think more and more Americans - the Congress is starting to catch up with the American people that these trade agreements really do undercut the middle-class and undercut American workers and small businesses.
SIEGEL: One other issue, on immigration, the president did not set out any red lines that would describe a bill as unacceptable, if it actually comes out of the House of Representatives. If an immigration bill does come out of the House that does not offer a path to citizenship, but rather a path to a legalized non-citizen status for workers who are undocumented, is that a nonstarter for you? Will Senate Democrats block such a bill?
BROWN: I don't know. I think we are all incur - I mean I want to a path to citizenship, for sure, as I think most Senate Democrats overwhelming number do. I also am encouraged by speaker Boehner saying he wants to move on immigration. As you know, in the legislative process, when the waters are roiled and you end up working through things, we can see a conference committee where I think path the citizenship could actually be a reality.
And the question ultimately is does John Boehner want to be speaker of the Tea Party or does he want to be speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and bring Democrats and Republicans together - together - and fight for an immigration policy that works for Americans. And ultimately I hope ends up with a path to citizenship.
SIEGEL: When I said you're of the progressive wing, the liberal wing, you said that is the mainstream wing of the Democratic Party. On issues like trade or like surveillance, are there sufficiently big fissures that we could see, you know, an important intra-party debated before 2016 before a presidential candidate is nominated by the Democrats?
BROWN: Yeah, I may have erred in that first statement when I said that I'm from the mainstream of the Democratic Party. I think I'm from the mainstream of the country when you look at what America wants to do on minimum wage, on extension of unemployment, on a more prudent foreign policy, on trade agreements that work for the middle-class and working-class. So I don't see major divisions in the Democratic Party.
I think Democrats are pretty much in the same place on all these issues from immigration to minimum wage to foreign policy. So I look forward in making that contrast between progressives, where most Democrats in the Senate and in the country are, and of far right policy that seems to have kind of captured the imagination and the day-to-day machinations of the Republican Party.
SIEGEL: Senator Brown, thanks for talking with us today.
BROWN: Always. Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: That's Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio.
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Ben Bernanke steps down this week as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The new chair, Janet Yellen, will take over on Saturday. After a two-day meeting, the message today from Fed policymakers was simple: Stay the course. The Fed released a statement saying it will continue dialing-back its stimulus.
NPR's John Ydstie has more on that decision and Bernanke's legacy.
JOHN YDSTIE, BYLINE: Fed policymakers said they will reduce their monthly stimulus by another $10 billion. And they justified the move by noting that the economy is growing moderately and the job market is improving. But they indicated again that they'll keep short-term interest rates near zero, at least until the unemployment rate falls below six and a half percent.
It was Ben Bernanke's final meeting as chairman, and in assessing his legacy, it's useful to divide his tumultuous tenure into three periods, starting with the pre-crisis days of 2006 and 2007. During that period, the Bernanke Fed took a hands-off approach, says Princeton economist and former Fed vice chairman Alan Blinder.
ALAN BLINDER: The Fed basically did nothing in the early Bernanke days, just as it has done nothing in the Greenspan days, to curtail the crazy mortgage lending that was going on all over the country.
YDSTIE: And it was slow to reduce interest rates as the housing bubble burst. But, says Harvard economist Ken Rogoff, in the second act, Bernanke's response was masterful, as the financial system melted down in 2008.
KEN ROGOFF: Overwhelmingly, Ben Bernanke's most importance contribution is he steered us through the depths of the financial crisis, when it could have been really awful. It was bad but we could have experienced the Second Great Depression. There's no doubt about it.
YDSTIE: Rogoff says the creative ways Bernanke saved Wall Street banks, money market funds, and the commercial paper market that provides critical daily funding for U.S. companies, will be studied by economists for 100 years.
Blinder agrees Bernanke was very skillful during the crisis, with one exception. He says the Fed chairman should have done more to keep the big Wall Street bank Lehman Brothers from failing. Bernanke has been countering that criticism since Lehman's collapse, including in this "60 Minutes" interview from back in March of 2009.
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YDSTIE: Bernanke said the Fed could only lend to firms that put up solid collateral and Lehman didn't have enough.
The Bernanke Fed's policies ultimately stabilized the financial system, but getting the basic economy back to normal remains a challenge. The Fed has tried to help stimulate the economy with its quantitative easing aimed at lowering long-term interest rates. Rogoff says the jury is still out on how successful that's been.
ROGOFF: You can certainly debate the quantitative easing. I mean I'm sort of the school they actually should have done more.
YDSTIE: Others say the Fed's stimulus efforts are dangerous and could produce financial bubbles and inflation. Bernanke responds that the policy has lowered interest rates and helped the housing and auto sectors recover. Meanwhile, inflation remains historically low and Bernanke says he doesn't see any bubbles developing.
In a public appearance recently at the Brookings Institution, Bernanke said his goal was to help Main Street, not Wall Street.
: We hope that as the economy improves, and as we tell our story, that people will appreciate and understand that what we did was necessary; that it was in the interest of the broader public. It was aimed at helping the average American.
YDSTIE: Given the challenges that Bernanke faced and the extraordinary policies he employed, it's likely his legacy will remain a topic of debate for years to come.
John Ydstie, NPR News, Washington.
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Offensive lineman John Moffitt played pro football for the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos. Those are the teams playing in this Sunday's Super Bowl. In fact, Moffitt was on Denver's roster this year until he decided to walk away mid season. Unhappy with football, the 27-year-old turned his back on more than a million dollars in salary.
NPR's Mike Pesca talked to John Moffitt and to his former teammates about his decision to leave the game.
MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: The phrase not supposed to usually found its way somewhere between the words football and John Moffitt. Without much natural skill, he was not supposed to be drafted in the third round. As such, Moffitt was not supposed to become a starter for the Seahawks and an obscure offensive lineman isn't supposed to be the breakout star of a series of videos his teammate Michael Robinson posted on YouTube called the "Real Rob Report."
But John Moffitt's engaging and funny as can be seen when he gave teammate Golden Tate naming advice.
JOHN MOFFITT: I told him that he should name his son Silver so his son always knows he won't be as good as him. You know what I mean? Just to put that line across. So his son's Silver. The next son is Bronze. And you go from there. Wood, Wooden Tate, Plastic Tate.
PESCA: At points in these videos, Moffitt discussed the "Twilight" series, engaged in an investigation answering the question is Seahawk's quarterback Russell Wilson a robot and was once even caught meditating, which led to a discussion with defensive back Richard Sherman about Buddhism. John Moffitt clearly contained multitudes.
But after he suffered some injuries, the Seahawks tried to trade Moffitt. He eventually wound up in Denver. Even though the team was setting offensive records, he just found himself disillusioned, worried about his long-term health, wondering who was the person he was becoming and thinking...
MOFFITT: I want to leave on my own terms. I'm unhappy. I want to change, like, instantly. I got to change right now.
PESCA: So he quit. He told the Seattle-based podcast TBTL that his move puzzled even some members of his family like his cousin Andrea, who texted...
MOFFITT: Like, how dare you? Like, I work so hard for my job and I don't get paid, like, nearly as much as you and to take that for granted and blah, blah, blah, and like, just read me the riot act, like, over a text message. And I'm kind of - and then after, I just responded with, like, Andrea, I'm not happy and I'm sorry that that's your, you know, where you're at, but I'm - this is where I'm at.
PESCA: Cousin Andrea eventually came around. Moffitt's teammates, at least the teammates he was close to, were instantly supportive. Yesterday, Seahawks Max Unger and Breno Giacomini both said they respected their friend's decision to leave the game. They, like Bronco's lineman Zane Beadles, had nothing but kind things to say about Moffitt.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: John was a great teammate, brought a lot of fun to the room and has a different outlook on life and, you know, it's a refreshing thing.
PESCA: Moffitt did originally say fears of brain injury played a role in his decision, but since he's quit, he's looked into the issue and now finds the risk of long-term brain trauma far scarier than he ever did as a player. In fact, Moffitt is hosting a podcast with the director of "The United States of Football," a documentary about brain injuries in the NFL.
Moffitt wants to be clear. He doesn't hate football. He'll be watching his former teams this Sunday and he says he misses the feeling of exhaustion after working hard and just the sensation of contact.
MOFFITT: You don't want to always, like, just say to people because you hope they take it the right way, but it's like, you, to a little bit of extent, miss some, like, physical violence because it's been a part of your life for so long. You know what I mean? Like, I, to an extent, miss, like, just exerting all of my energy onto another person.
PESCA: Moffitt says he wants to write a graphic novel about his journey out of football and he recently tried standup comedy, which went pretty well. He's been much happier since he left the game, saying his decision seems to have cured what ailed him. Most people don't like change, Moffitt says, but I think it's one of the best things in life. Mike Pesca, NPR News.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. Now, a tale from another era, the Cold War. It was 1984. A Soviet defector dashed across the Korean border chased by North Korean troops. American troops shielded him and opened fire at the North Koreans. There were dead and wounded on both sides. Now, 30 years later, one of those Americans is finally receiving his medal for bravery.
NPR's Tom Bowman reports.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Mark Deville was just 19 on that November day in 1984, part of an American Army unit patrolling the tense border between North and South Korea.
MARK DEVILLE: I remember, this is for real. You know, load trucks, this is for real.
BOWMAN: Deville didn't know what he was facing. The only message was: Shots fired. Deville and his squad spilled out of their truck, formed a line and starting moving through some scrub trees.
DEVILLE: Then I started hearing the cracking, the sonic booms of the rounds coming by us, you know. At first, I'm like, what the...
BOWMAN: His squad leader, Sgt. Rick Lamb, found the defector cowering under a bush. North Korean soldiers were after him, the rounds from their assault rifles ripping through the leaves. And what was running through your mind when this was going on?
DEVILLE: To tell you the truth, the first thing, I was born and raised Catholic and it was thou shalt not kill, but...
BOWMAN: Deville's voice trails off. He remembers a message squawked over the radio, two soldiers, an American and a South Korean were wounded.
DEVILLE: We just knew that they went down. They were shot. They were down. And that's whenever thou shalt not kill went out the window. And I was just taking all commands from (unintelligible).
BOWMAN: The squad dashed forward, flanking the enemy force. They could see shadows of the North Korean troops in the trees. The two sides were just 15 feet apart when the North Koreans surrendered and started recovering their dead. Squad Leader Sgt. Rick Lamb recalled the moment with Deville.
RICK LAMB: We saw at least five to six bodies.
BOWMAN: How long did this last?
DEVILLE: What do you think, 45 minutes?
LAMB: Yeah. It felt like four hours, but, yeah, it was probably about 45 minutes.
BOWMAN: A 45-minute firefight that was front page news in the New York Times and a lead story on NPR.
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BOWMAN: President Ronald Reagan wrote about the firefight in his diary, and was surprised that the Soviet Union didn't react. They haven't mentioned it, Reagan wrote. The Soviets must be serious about their decision to meet with us. It was one of the earliest hints of a thaw in the Cold War.
But for Deville and his squad, the incident seemed to just fade away. Still, after years of prodding by Congress, they were awarded Silver Stars, the third highest award for valor, in the summer of 2000. One of those medals was set aside for Mark Deville. The problem was none of his old comrades could find him until last year. Deville was working as a prison guard down in Florida.
DEVILLE: I was talking with a buddy of mine at work about the unit. And I always referred to it as the unrecognized ranger battalion.
BOWMAN: Two guys just trading war stories.
DEVILLE: He said, did you ever Google yourself. So I Googled myself and that's how I found it. It said, Mark A. Deville, recipient of the Silver Star. And I said, well, that ain't me.
BOWMAN: That Google search helped lead to yesterday's Pentagon ceremony. Deville was fidgeting in his black suit. His old squad was seated in a row with him. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey was there to pin on the Silver Star.
GENERAL MARTIN DEMPSEY: You are gathered together again as a group as you were nearly 30 years ago in support of your country so congratulations, Mark, I'm really honored to be part of this.
BOWMAN: Deville stood and looked at his fellow soldiers.
DEVILLE: It was a special unit. You said band of brothers, sir. And that's exactly what...
BOWMAN: Deville couldn't continue. The old soldier-turned-prison-guard looked away. Tears filled his eyes.
DEVILLE: I hope the inmates don't see that.
BOWMAN: Tom Bowman, NPR News, Washington.
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Some people in the Deep South still haven't made it home after a huge winter storm that trapped travelers on the road. The storm was expected, but the heavy amount of snow and ice was a big surprise. In Atlanta, it got to be so bad people abandoned their cars and walked miles along hilly, icy roads. Residents are demanding answers about why the region wasn't better prepared. We hear now from reporter Rose Scott of member station WABE.
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ROSE SCOTT, BYLINE: In Atlanta today, this was the sound of progress, people helping vehicles up a hill.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Hey, it's kind of melting now. Hey, you're doing good though. You're melting this ice.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Yeah, melting (unintelligible)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Yeah.
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SCOTT: This icy road is causing havoc for motorists trying to get to one of Atlanta's most famous streets. Peachtree Street is typically bustling with cars going to and from downtown. But yesterday's storm turned this road into a mess of abandoned cars after they collided into each other. Meanwhile, across the street, a coffee shop called The Cookie Studio is serving lattes, and that was a welcome sight for Nina Cuther-Kelly.
NINA CUTHER-KELLY: We slept in our car last night. Well, what happened is, is that the cops waved us this way on like a detour because we couldn't hit the road, and we got down here, found out it was a dead end and couldn't get back up.
SCOTT: Cuther-Kelly and her passenger were stopping overnight in Atlanta while driving to Texas. The stop turned into a lot longer than they planned. Nearly all of Atlanta's major roads were clogged with drivers trying to get somewhere. For people like Rickman Brown, he's wondering if the city could have been better prepared for the storm, which surprised forecasters by the amount of snow and ice.
RICKMAN BROWN: I thought it was ironic that the mayor was bragging about how Atlanta was prepared 20 hours before the city was shut down.
SCOTT: But in a morning press conference, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed defended his city's response.
MAYOR KASIM REED: We fully mobilized all of our equipment and we started partnering with the state by 10, 11 a.m. Now, I understand that people are frustrated and angry.
SCOTT: Reed says gridlock is bound to happen when nearly a million people hit the roads at the same time. Meanwhile, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal was taking heat about declaring a state of emergency after the storm had paralyzed most of the state.
GOVERNOR NATHAN DEAL: So it's easy to say in hindsight, yeah, maybe you should have made the call differently on the front end. We made the call on the front end based on the best evidence that we thought we had at the time.
SCOTT: Today, sunshine helped melt some of the snow. But as temperatures drop tonight, more ice will form. That will mean another messy morning commute tomorrow. For now, officials are pleading with residents, please stay off the streets if at all possible. For NPR News, I'm Rose Scott in Atlanta.
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While people were stranded on the highways, thousands of students were stuck in schools around Atlanta overnight. Reed Christian, an English teacher at River Ridge High School, worked well into the night taking care of the students there, and she joins us from here home in Atlanta. Of course, school is now closed. Reed Christian, welcome to the program.
REED CHRISTIAN: Thanks.
CORNISH: So, first of all, how are you feeling? When did you get a chance to sleep?
(LAUGHTER)
CHRISTIAN: I'm feeling a little tired, a little run-down. But it's a great day here in Atlanta. I got home, I guess, about 3:45 this morning.
CORNISH: Wow.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah. It was a late night. We had kids clear up until about 11:00 today, so I was one of the lucky ones, once our ratios got down within a manageable area that I was able to get home.
CORNISH: So let's talk a little bit more about yesterday morning. Walk us through the day. When did it become clear that it was not a normal school day? I don't know if it was calls from parents or what kind of clued you in.
CHRISTIAN: Sometime - I think it was around 10:30 yesterday morning, we got the message that we would be closing two hours early. And so we started getting the kids ready to go and getting our student drivers home so that they could get off of the road before the snow really moved in.
CORNISH: I understand you had upwards of 500 kids still there after school let out. I mean, how were parents trying to get to them? And how many ended up spending the whole night?
CHRISTIAN: What happened was, once the snow and ice really moved in and had hit pretty hard, the buses just couldn't continue to run. Some of the buses had to turn around and come back. A couple of buses skid in the county, and they just weren't willing to take that risk. And that's how we ended up with 500 of our students still there. The parents were trapped maybe in Atlanta. They were having trouble to get to their kids from their job, and so they were as frustrated as the students were to still be there.
And so a lot of parents parked at a church and a gas station up the hill from us and hiked in, some of them as far as a mile. And that went on late into the evening, and we just hunkered down and made the best of it until they could get there.
CORNISH: Now, by the evening, you still had about 250 teens, something like 30 teachers at the school. But I imagine you had to entertain them, feed them. You know, where do they sleep? How did you guys figure out what to do?
CHRISTIAN: We have amazing administrators at River Ridge and they had started really getting their thinking caps on, and what are we going to do with all these kids. But pretty soon into it, we moved them into our theater and started showing them a movie. We fed them some supper in our cafeteria. We went in and teachers and administration, you know, put on gloves and jumped behind the counter and we made pizza.
CORNISH: You just kind of came up with the recipe.
CHRISTIAN: We did. We figured it out. We pulled out cookies. We made hot chocolate chip cookies and cold milk and let them socialize a little bit more. And about that time, we were ready to put them to bed. We put the girls in the gym on our cheerleading tumbling mats with sheets and blankets. And we put the boys down in the wrestling room on mats. Luckily, we have a really great nursing program, and so we had all of the supplies right there on our property.
CORNISH: It sounds fun, frankly, between the cookies and the sleepover and the texting and the movies. At a certain point, did you get the sense from the students of the gravity of the situation?
CHRISTIAN: Some of the kids really started to get frustrated at a couple of points in the evening. You know, they were tired and they were out of their routine and they wanted to be home. But they were so well behaved and they understood. My husband teaches at a middle school. He was there all evening with his middle schoolers and his staff as well. High schoolers and middle schoolers understand that it's not the teacher's first choice to be there either. And so you can reason with that.
CORNISH: Reed Christian, thanks so much for speaking with us.
CHRISTIAN: Thank you.
CORNISH: Reed Christian is an English teacher at River Ridge High School. She helped keep more than 250 students safe overnight in Atlanta.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
If you think that nothings adds panache or gusto or some je ne sais quoi to your writing or speech like soupcon of another language, then this next item may not be your cup of chai.
Ralph Keyes, who writes about words for The American Scholar magazine, has run a contest. He asked his readers to create English words to replace certain foreignisms that, as he wrote, tend not be used at all outside urban centers and cultural oases.
Keyes nominated four words for retirement from American usage: mensch, frisson, schadenfreude and sympathique or simpatico, depending on how pseudo-Gallic or pseudo-Hispanic you want to be.
Ralph Keyes, welcome to the program.
RALPH KEYES: Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: All right. Let's hear about the words that you've proposed for elimination and some of the more interesting finalists to Americanize them. And let's start with a word central to my lifelong sense of virtuous behavior, mensch.
KEYES: Mensch proved to be tough. Somehow just capturing the warmth and the amiability, but the upstanding quality of a mensch in Yiddish proved to hard. So I went with what a couple of people proposed, which was names of existing people: a Mandela or a Truman. Now, the person proposed Truman as a portmanteau or a fusion of true and man, but it also has the advantage of being the name of our menschy 33rd president, Harry S. Truman.
(LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: OK.
KEYES: He's a real Truman, or she's a real Mandela.
SIEGEL: Next right up for demolition is a word I don't use a lot, frisson.
KEYES: We got spine-tinglet or just plain tinglet, but I went with zing. I like the simplicity, the directness. We all get that, to say nothing of which there was a song in 1934, "Zing Went the Strings of My Heart."
SIEGEL: "Frisson Went the Strings of My Heart" would be the other version, I guess. Zing.
The next one is a German word, schadenfreude, whose virtue is that it has the benefit of implying that people who speak another language actually feel this sort of thing.
KEYES: Yes. Well, who doesn't feel this sort of thing? Politico recently coined Rom-denfreude for backers of Mitt Romney who were enjoying Chris Christie's travail. But as far as the general term schadenfreude, my favorite was sad and joy. I thought this was a very nice suggestion because it captures not only the guilty pleasure of enjoying somebody else's misfortune but the mixed feelings that we experience, the sad and joy.
SIEGEL: And lastly, either sympathique or simpatico.
KEYES: I kind of went like the slang suggestion doughnuts.
SIEGEL: Doughnuts?
KEYES: Doughnuts for the kind of warm, sweet feeling that simpatico suggests. So you might say that person's really doughnuts, in a slangy way.
SIEGEL: Well, we'll see if any of these catch on.
KEYES: Well, and the contest is still open. And if we get some more and some better submissions, who knows, one of them might suit to the top.
SIEGEL: Ralph Keyes writes about words for The American Scholar. Can I just call you a word guru?
KEYES: Fair enough.
SIEGEL: And thank you for talking with us.
KEYES: Or a wordy.
SIEGEL: A wordy. OK.
KEYES: A wordy.
SIEGEL: Thanks for talking with us about the search for some new American words that might lay to rest some old borrowed ones.
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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
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And I'm Audie Cornish.
Last night, President Obama laid out his agenda for the coming year and there was no shortage of Republican responses.
SIEGEL: Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers gave the official rebuttal. Senator Mike Lee spoke for the Tea Party. And then, there was an online response from Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. And Senator Paul spoke to Audie today.
CORNISH: Senator Paul, welcome to the program.
SENATOR RAND PAUL: Glad to be with you.
CORNISH: Now, you've said that you don't consider your State of the Union Response to be competing with other GOP voices. But how do you convince the independent voter out there who sees this kind of mishmash of responses from various Republicans and no definitive agenda?
PAUL: Well, you know, I think the competition for those voters who seem to hold sway over who wins elections, you know, the ones who sometimes will vote Republican, sometimes Democrat, who consider themselves to be independent. I think the real question is what policies are working and what aren't working. I think these are people who aren't necessarily partisan. They want to know how you're going to fix a problem. Right now, we have about 20 million people out of work - either out of work, working part time or given up looking - 20 million people. The...
CORNISH: But do you think there's a real sense of what those policies actually area?
PAUL: Yeah. If you measure unemployment the way we measured unemployment in the 1970s, we'd have double digit or probably 13 percent unemployment. So the question is, are the current policies that President Obama is talking about, policies that take money from the private sector, give it to the public sector, Washington, and then expect it to come back and create jobs, is it working?
We have 18 percent unemployment in Detroit. I would say there's an argument it's not working and that we ought to look for other policies. Our policies are we would lower taxes for business that are in existence and employing people and see if they'll hire more people.
CORNISH: Now, President Obama also last night put some focus on your state of Kentucky. The governor, Steve Beshear, was there. And that's because Kentucky's online health insurance exchange, Kynect, is considered to be doing quite well. Given how well Kentucky has done running this online exchange, should more states have agreed to participate?
PAUL: I would say alleged to be running well. I'm from Kentucky, and I think it's a disaster. Two-hundred-and-fifty thousand people have been cancelled from their insurance and about 60,000 have been signed up. Of the 60,000 people who signed up, 85 percent of them were signed up for Medicaid. I know this 'cause I tried to sign my son up and they put him automatically into Medicaid.
CORNISH: Now, if Republicans eventually succeed in gaining control and having the votes to repeal and replace Obamacare, what is the plan to do with all of the people who will inevitably be taking insurance away from who could number in the millions in that point?
PAUL: Yeah, I don't think any Republicans were taking away insurance. What we work for is providing more choices and less expensive healthcare. I practiced medicine for 20 years, and the biggest complaint I got was that health insurance cost too much. And so what we need is more competition but more choices.
So the president has mandated that you have to buy the insurance that he dictates. And when he's narrowed these choices and he's said that you have mandates that have to be covered, then it makes your insurance more expensive. Republicans would do the opposite. We'd have more competition, more kinds of insurance and lesser premiums or lower costs for the consumer.
CORNISH: Another issue the president spoke about was women and workplace equality. Democrats have been campaigning on this pitch for quite sometime that there's a Republican war on women. But you've said if there's a war on women, women are winning it. How do you respond to the criticism that this is dismissive of real concerns some women votes have?
PAUL: What I can say is that when you look at the marketplace, young women are doing fabulously well. So I think the people who are talking about this war on women really aren't actually looking at the facts. When you look at the facts, young women are out-competing young men in school, graduate schools. So, really, I think that you can stay stuck in the past or you can look at how things have greatly improved. I tend to look and see that glass half-full, and it is so much better than it used to be that I think people are missing the future by complaining so much.
CORNISH: And you write that especially for millennial women, they're making 93 percent of what men make. But, you know, for the average woman, it's still 77 cents for every man's dollar. And for black women, that's 64 cents.
PAUL: Yeah. And if you - if you equal...
CORNISH: I mean, what does that mean (unintelligible)?
PAUL: If you equalize people based on exact professions and exact time spent and time spent away, they're virtually the same. So the thing is it's not perfect yet. It's heading in the right direction. And so for people to concoct something and say, oh, one party doesn't like women, it's the farthest thing from the truth. And, really, it's just partisan gamesmanship is what it is from the other side.
CORNISH: Senator Rand Paul, Republican from Kentucky, thanks for speaking with us.
PAUL: All right. Thanks.
CORNISH: Senator Paul gave his own response to the president's State of the Union Address last night.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
The Republican-run House of Representatives accomplished a feat of across-the-aisle cooperation today. A minority of House Democrats joined a majority of Republicans to pass a five-year renewal of the Farm Bill. The bill had been mired in partisan disputes for nearly two years. The most divisive issue was the food stamp program. It is by far the Farm Bill's biggest expenditure, and Republicans wanted to shrink it. As NPR's David Welna reports, the bill that passed does include some cuts but they'll be much smaller than many had sought.
DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Last fall, House Republicans passed a measure slashing $40 billion from the food stamp program over the next decade. That's nearly five times the amount that ended up getting cut in the Farm Bill the House passed today in a 251-166 vote. Agricultural Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, who negotiated the final deal with his Democratic counterpart in the Senate, portrayed the food stamps cut as a trade-off for bolstering the food supply.
REPRESENTATIVE FRANK LUCAS: No matter how much money we spend on supplemental programs to make sure our fellow citizens have enough to eat - and that's important - never forget, if there's not a product on the shelf, if there's not meat in the case, if there's not vegetables or fruit available, it doesn't matter how much you subsidize. The food has to be there.
WELNA: The fight over food stamps pitted rural lawmakers looking to help farmers against urban members with constituents going through hard times. Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern said the bill makes hunger worse in America, not better.
REPRESENTATIVE JIM MCGOVERN: Thousands and thousands of low-income Americans will see their already meager food benefits shrink. And for what? Why? To meet some arbitrary deficit reduction goal, to pay the cost of the giveaways and the crop insurance program, to pay for the sweetheart deals for the sushi rice growers and the peanut farmers and God knows who else?
WELNA: McGovern and more than a hundred other Democrats voted against the farm bill, as did 63 Republicans. One of them was Tim Huelskamp, a farmer from western Kansas, who sought deeper cuts to the food stamp program.
REPRESENTATIVE TIM HUELSKAMP: We have massive growth. This is the fastest growing welfare program in the entire federal government. And today's actions, if approved, would lock in record-high levels of spending for food stamps.
WELNA: But others pointed out that the bill ends the practice of paying farmers nearly $5 billion a year in subsidies whether or not they grow crops on their land. For Minnesota Democrat Tim Walz, the bill could have been worse.
REPRESENTATIVE TIM WALZ: Of course, it's not perfect. If you want perfect, you'll get that in heaven. And at times, this place is closer to hell. So this is a pretty good compromise that we've come up with.
WELNA: The Farm Bill now heads to the Senate, where a vote is expected within days. David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.
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The ongoing Syrian peace talks in Geneva have raised hopes for humanitarian relief in cities, towns, and villages across the country that are under siege by government or rebel forces. And no place is more in need than the central city of Homs, whose residents were among the first to rise up against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Assad's forces control most of Homs now but rebels entrenched in the old part of the city are continuing to fight, despite the increasingly desperate circumstances for the two-to-3,000 civilians trapped in the district.
NPR's Alice Fordham joins us now from Beirut. And, Alice, first give us the update on the ongoing siege. What's been happening in the city?
ALICE FORDHAM, BYLINE: Well, soldiers from the Syrian army have dug in there. They're surrounding a big chunk of central Homs, it's the oldest part of the city and there are reckoned to be two to 3,000 people in there - most of whom are civilians, among them are some rebel fighters.
There have been sporadic bursts of fighting. But in general, the soldiers just seem to be not letting anyone or anything out of the area. And the people in there say this has been the case for about 600 days now. The people inside the besieged neighborhood say that gradually they've been reduced to starvation, and that sick and injured people are now dying for lack of medicine and care.
CORNISH: But help us understand how people have been able to hold out for so long. I mean, if they've been trapped there for two years, what has been the state of aid?
FORDHAM: This is actually quite a big neighborhood. It's more like actually about a dozen neighborhoods, sort of which are close together and tens of thousands of people used to live there. Now there's only two or 3,000 people there and they've been scavenging food from abandoned houses over the last two years.
Also, there used to be tunnels into this besieged area which were used for smuggling food and ammunition for the fighters. But people there say that the army blew up the last of them about six months ago. And now there's no way in or out.
CORNISH: Alice, give us a sense of the attitude, the perception of people in the besieged area toward the political opposition, those who are tasked with negotiating on their behalf in Geneva?
FORDHAM: Well, there's a lot of skepticism, to put it mildly. These people were a huge part of the beginning in the uprising in Syria. And now they're hungry and they're sick and they've run out of cigarettes. They don't feel like they've got a lot out of the political opposition. One guy that we spoke to said he felt like their suffering has become an international commodity. And another one said that when the opposition delegation went to Geneva, they didn't know anything about what was happening in Homs.
And they had to scramble and ask these guys a lot of questions, while the meetings in Switzerland were ongoing. But they are talking to them. They are coordinating via them with the U.N. and with the Red Cross. So the channels of communication are open, although the outcome is very far from clear.
CORNISH: Now, we have heard about other cities under siege in Syria. How unique is the situation in Homs?
FORDHAM: There are certainly a lot of similar instances, although I think that probably the situation in Homs is the most acute at the moment. The U.N. says that it has its convoy ready to go into Homs within hours notice, and this has been the case for really quite some time. It's made a number of attempts to go in and it has never been able to.
Over the last couple of years, they have been able to make similar trips to 18 other areas that they describe as under siege. There is also an area of Damascus, known as Yarmouk - which is largely populated by Palestinians - where we've heard very similar stories of extreme hunger, starvation, inability of convoys to reach this area for months now. So starvation, lack of medical care, blocking of convoys has been a constant complaint by aid agencies and by Syrians against the regime there.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Alice Fordham in Beirut. Alice, thank you.
FORDHAM: Thank you.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
President Obama has already made good on one of the promises in his State of the Union speech last night. Today, he directed the Treasury Department to create a new retirement plan called myRA. The idea is to make it easier for people who don't have retirement plans to start putting something away. NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports the program's success depends on whether it can move beyond the limitations of existing retirement plans.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: Speaking today at a steel plant near Pittsburgh, the president touted his new plan, saying it would make saving easier and more attractive to the half of working Americans who do not have employer-sponsored retirement plans.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It's a new type of savings bond that we can set up without legislation that encourages Americans to begin to build a nest egg. And it's simple.
NOGUCHI: The myRA is a play on the IRA, an individual retirement account. It functions like a Roth IRA but costs less to start - $25. Workers will then sign up for automatic payroll deductions of as little as $5 of each paycheck to go towards a savings program that invests in government bonds. It's risk free, in that the government guarantees the principal. And the program pledges to help small businesses with the administrative set-up.
OBAMA: And what I'm hoping is that working Americans will take a look because I want more people to have the chance to save for retirement through their hard work. And this is just one step that we can take to help more people do that.
GREG MCBRIDE: Conceptually, it's a good idea. But, you know, the devil's ultimately in the details.
NOGUCHI: Greg McBride is senior analyst with the consumer finance website Bankrate.com. Because the president wanted to set up the program without going through Congress, the program is voluntary. Meaning, people will still have to sign up. And McBride says history shows that often doesn't happen.
MCBRIDE: If you wait for people to sign up on their own volition and check the box as to how much money of their own pay they're going to contribute, guess what, they don't do it.
NOGUCHI: But many workers never get the chance. Their employers don't offer a retirement plan. Dallas Salisbury, the president and CEO of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, says the proposal will encourage many small businesses that have never offered a plan to do so.
DALLAS SALISBURY: What this approach does is it provides for that automatic payroll deduction with great ease to the employer. And it does it at dollar levels that our retirement confidence surveys over the years indicate would fall into an area that the vast majority say they could afford to be saving.
NOGUCHI: But, Salisbury says, any new retirement savings plan will depend heavily on marketing because socking away money is a tough sell even for the programs that any working American is eligible for today.
SALISBURY: The challenge is that IRAs have been out there since 1974. They still are used by only about 8 percent of taxpayers every year that are eligible for them. So one big question is: Is it likely this would be broadly used where the others haven't?
NOGUCHI: Separately, a Senate bill introduced today also proposed to encourage savings by reducing costs for small businesses to offer retirement plans, among other things. The Obama administration says it will set up a pilot of the myRA program with businesses later this year. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, Washington.
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This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
And I'm Audie Cornish.
And we are ready for some football and a party.
SUNNY ANDERSON: I have done a Super Bowl party every year.
CORNISH: That's the Food Network's Sunny Anderson. She's a veteran of the gridiron grill and oven. We invited her back to share a Found Recipe today and to help plan our Super Bowl shindig. Her number one piece of advice: serve the snacks in stages.
ANDERSON: Yeah, you got to space it out. You can't just slam your guests with food in the beginning. They won't be able to make it to halftime. They're going to fall asleep.
CORNISH: Hey, and there is no sleeping in football. So, first quarter, it's finger food.
ANDERSON: Give them some dips. Give them some chips.
CORNISH: Second quarter, wings.
ANDERSON: Different types of wings so people can, like, have a conversation. I like this one better. I like that one better.
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CORNISH: Halftime means show time, so bring out the main meal.
ANDERSON: It's the chili. It's the pizza. It's the everything, whatever you're planning.
CORNISH: And by the third quarter, it's pick-me-up time.
ANDERSON: You don't want these people driving home drunk and you really don't want them spending the night on your couch, so let's start with that coffee.
CORNISH: The fourth quarter, that's the sweet so long, baby.
ANDERSON: Bring it home with that dessert. You know, a big tray of brownies. That's been fun. But I also love the novelty of an ice cream sandwich during cold weather.
CORNISH: Oh, yeah. That'll wake them up and get them out the door. Now, if you take Sunny Anderson's next suggestion, today's Found Recipe, your guests will talk about your halftime main meal all the way home.
ANDERSON: It's a big pot of beefy, meaty chili studded with butternut squash, and I want you to go with me on this.
CORNISH: That's right. Butternut squash in your chili, swimming around with diced sweet onion and bell pepper and, of course, juicy chunks of beef.
ANDERSON: So the first time I made this chili, it was a little bit salty. I know what you're supposed to do when a big pot of soup is salty. You add some potatoes. But I didn't have any potatoes, but I did have a butternut squash. It's the same idea. It's ready to soak up flavor, so I said I'll break this behemoth down and I'll put it into my chili. And I got to tell you, it's probably one of the smartest things I've done for chili. First of all, it bulks it up, so now you go from feeding just a few to feeding, you know, more than a few.
I think it's perfect for a big pot of something that's spicy to add something that's starchy because we all know starch is what mellows out spice. And this isn't chili for the weak.
(LAUGHTER)
ANDERSON: That's for sure. Now, my second surprising ingredient in my chili: pumpkin pie spice. Oh, yeah. Just a hint of it will really add a nice kind of, I like to say, hum. Just going to hum under there. Beefy butternut squash chili. It's going to make the people that like butternut squash happy, and the people that have never seen it before say, huh, and then pour themselves a bowl.
(LAUGHTER)
CORNISH: That's Sunny Anderson of the Food Network. You can get the recipe for that memorable halftime meal - beefy butternut squash chili - at our Found Recipe page at npr.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
The cost of housing inmates is huge. Within just a few years, federal prisons could take up a third of the Justice Department's budget. But state prison populations are declining. States are closing empty prisons and saving millions.
How did state and the federal government wind up in such different places? Well, NPR's Laura Sullivan examines the history.
LAURA SULLIVAN, BYLINE: The federal Bureau of Prisons spends about $30,000 a year to house an inmate. That's low by prison standards. But the bureau's got more than 200,000 inmates. So that's more than $6 billion a year and every year, there are more inmates. At this rate, according to a study by the non-partisan Urban Institute, the Bureau of Prisons is going to suck up a third of the Justice Department's entire budget by 2020.
NANCY LA VIGNE: That is at great expense to other fiscal priorities.
SULLIVAN: Nancy La Vigne is director of the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute.
VIGNE: That affects the DEA, the FBI, grants to states and localities for policing, for crime prevention, for reducing gang violence.
SULLIVAN: Not to mention all those U.S. attorney's offices, civil rights work, and antitrust cases. The federal prison population has grown eight-fold since 1980. The bureau's prisons are over capacity by 35 to 40 percent. There's little money or space for rehabilitation programs.
VIGNE: Everybody wants to blame the jailer for the population. They're not the ones making the decisions about who goes behind bars - that's judges, that's prosecutors. That's Congress.
SULLIVAN: To understand how we got here, you have to go back to 1988.
(SOUNDBITE OF A POLITICAL AD)
SULLIVAN: The Willie Horton Campaign ad.
(SOUNDBITE OF A POLITICAL AD)
SULLIVAN: Crime was at historic highs. George Bush and Michael Dukakis were battling it out for president. Bush's team put this ad on the air.
(SOUNDBITE OF A POLITICAL AD)
SULLIVAN: And Dukakis never recovered. It was a seminal moment that experts say ushered in two decades of tough on crime policies: mandatory minimums, three strikes you're out, truth in sentencing. No politician wanted to seem soft on crime. The prison population went up, way up and the crime rate went down. But now crime rates are at historic lows. Violent offenders were locked up, but also the crack wars subsided, data driven policing emerged. And now all those prisons are costing a fortune.
Adam Gelb is the director of the Public Safety Performance Project for the Pew Charitable Trusts.
ADAM GELB: There's been this assumption that if you wanted to reduce crime you had to lock up more and more people.
SULLIVAN: But in a recent report, Pew found that crime rates fell more in states that had actually cut their prison populations, than it did in states that had increased their populations. In recent years, 29 states have turned to programs like drug treatment, ankle bracelets, supervised probation for low level offenders.
GELB: It appears that we have passed a point of diminishing returns to where more and more prisons are not effective at reducing crime. At least not anywhere near as effective as a lots of other strategies that cost a whole heck of a lot less than prison cells.
SULLIVAN: And Gelb says money is critical here because states have to balance their budgets. The federal government, for the most part, does not.
GELB: People are sick and tired of this revolving door. They say we've tried this experiment. We quadrupled our prison population yet we still are seeing these people coming back and back, over and over again. There's got to be a better way.
SULLIVAN: Just three percent of the 200,000 federal inmates are there for murder, assault or kidnapping. More than half of them are there for drug crimes. Today's move by the Senate Judiciary Committee to move a bill to the Senate floor, reducing some drug penalties, could shrink the federal prison population in the future. As debate on the bill begins, Congress may want to borrow the notes of state lawmakers.
Laura Sullivan. NPR News, Washington.
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Right now, as I'm speaking, your brain is transforming this stream of sounds into meaningful words and sentences. It's a remarkable achievement and scientists are just beginning to understand how it happens.
NPR's Jon Hamilton reports on a study that let researchers watch brain cells performing one of the earliest steps in processing speech.
JON HAMILTON, BYLINE: Understanding spoken language is something we're so good at we don't think it's much of an accomplishment. But David Poeppel of New York University says it is.
DAVID POEPPEL: Imagine for yourself how many different things have to happen for you just to understand the sentence: I need a cup of coffee. First of all you have to identify all the different sounds in the background that you don't want, or the competing speakers. And you have to break it into units. You have to look up the words. You have to combine the words and generate the correct meaning. And each of those parts has its own subroutines.
HAILTON: Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, set out to understand just one part of the process. Edward Chang, a brain surgeon at UCSF, says they wanted to know how the brain recognizes the individual sounds that we combine to form words.
EDWARD CHANG: These are what we would consider the building blocks for speech and language.
HAILTON: So Chang and a team of researchers studied the brains of six people who were in the hospital being evaluated for epilepsy surgery. The team placed electrodes on the surface of each patient's brain, which allowed monitoring of an area that processes speech. Then Chang says they exposed the volunteers to lots and lots of words.
CHANG: What it involves is actually just listening to a long series of sounds, a lot of them just sound like they are clips from movies.
HAILTON: All kinds of voices saying phrases like...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: And what eyes they were.
HAILTON: Eventually, the scientists had a record of each volunteer's brain responding to every sound used in the English language. Then, they studied the data using a sort of slow-motion replay.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: And what eyes they were.
HAILTON: This let them see precisely what different brain cells, or neurons, were doing as each bit of sound passed by. And Chang says they realized that some were responding specifically to plosives, like the initial puh-sounds in Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers. Meanwhile, other neurons were responding to a particular type of vowel sound.
CHANG: We were shocked to see the kind of selectivity. Those sets of neurons were highly responsive to particular speech sounds.
HAILTON: Chang says these sounds are what linguists call phonemic features, the most basic components of speech. There are about a dozen of these features. And they can be combined to make phonemes, the sounds that allow us to tell the difference between words like dad and words like bad.
Chang says the finding helps explain how we can process speech so quickly and accurately, even in a noisy place, or when the speaker has an unfamiliar accent.
CHANG: It's the starting point of thinking about how to build up some better understanding of how language occurs in the brain. And that's certainly been a long-term passion and interest of mine.
HAILTON: The result also could have practical applications.
Nima Mesgarani worked in Chang's lab before moving to Columbia University. He says an impaired ability to process speech sounds seems to be a part of many disorders, including dyslexia.
NIMA MESGARANI: In order to help people who are suffering from various speech and communication disorders, we need to first understand how these processes become impaired. And the first step toward that goal is to understand how they work normally.
HAILTON: Mesgarani says knowing how the brain identifies speech sounds also could lead to better conversations with machines, like ATMs and Smartphones. He says artificial speech processing systems, like Apple's Siri, were actually inspired by research on the brain.
MESGARANI: We've always dreamed of artificial systems that are able to communicate with us, the same way that we communicate with other humans.
HAILTON: By speaking and listening. He says knowing precisely how the brain does this should eventually make Siri and her cousins better listeners.
The new research appears in the online version of the journal Science.
Jon Hamilton, NPR News.
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The recent movie "The Wolf of Wall Street" has earned five Oscar nominations and some rave reviews. But lots of movie theaters won't be screening it because they can't. Paramount pictures is the first big studio to distribute a major release entirely on digital; in other words, no film. And other studios are likely to follow.
As NPR's Laura Sydell reports, most big theaters have already installed fancy new digital projectors. But for smaller cinemas the price tag is a real challenge.
LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: For a lot of neighborhood movie houses it's go digital or...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I think we're finally going dark.
SYDELL: This was a Kickstarter video to help raise $30,000 for the Tampa Pitcher Show. A group of regulars who dress up and perform at screenings of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" are making the plate.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: We've got to start showing our movies digitally otherwise we're not going to be able to show them at all...
SYDELL: So far, the Kickstarter campaign, which ends on Friday, is not going well. but fans of neighborhood cinemas like the Tampa Pitcher show say these small cinemas offer more than a big multiplex; they are community centers where people can act out "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," see locally made films and live events.
But first-run movies pay the bills and Tampa Picture Show owner, Wayne Valenti, says he was taken by surprise when he got a letter in early December from Paramount announcing it would cease distributing most of its first-run movies on film by Dec. 31.
WAYNE VALENTI: They just really gave a short straw notice on the thing and we either had to convert or close the doors basically.
SYDELL: It's not as if Valenti didn't know this day would come. The movie studios have all been giving warnings for years that the end of film is nigh.
ISABEL FONDEVILA: They keep sending us letters, distributors, like, Heads up. We're not going to have anything else but DCP so get ready.
SYDELL: DCP stands for Digital Cinema Package, which is what the studios are calling the new digital equipment and that's Isabel Fondevila, the director of the Roxie Theater in San Francisco.
FONDEVILA: The Roxie is the oldest continuously running theater in the country.
SYDELL: Fondevila and I climb a narrow staircase to the projection booth. Yeah, it's a bit of a ways up here, isn't it? The Roxie has two big, hulky 35-millimeter projectors screwed down to the floor. So you want to show me how this thing works here? I'm talking to Jim Lung. He's been a projectionist at the Roxie for over 30 years.
Lung threads the film, lights the lamps and finally flips the switch. Oh, that familiar sound soon to be gone. Lung is not looking forward to the change because he doesn't like the look of digital.
JIM LUNG: When you can actually sit there and you can see pores on people's skin, it's like, What happened here? You can actually see some makeup on them sometimes. Have you seen that yourself? In the old days, you would never see that.
SYDELL: Lung's not alone in his love of film. Quentin Tarantino says he'll quit before he makes his movies on digital and Christopher Nolan demanded that his next film "Interstellar" also be available in film. But the change to digital distribution is inevitable. It's cheaper for the studios and easier to make digital copies than film prints.
Fortunately, the Roxie can take more time converting because it's a nonprofit that runs mostly art house films. But it will need over $100,000 to outfit both its screens. To get that money, Roxie director Fondevila says she needs...
FONDEVILA: A miracle. No, not really a miracle, but something like it.
SYDELL: Fondevila can find some hope across town.
ADAM BERGERON: My name is Adam Bergeron and I'm the owner of the Balboa Theatre and today we are showing "The Princess Bride, which we were unable to get until we converted to digital.
SYDELL: Bergeron did a Kickstarter campaign to update his small theater in a neighborhood on the edge of San Francisco. The Kickstarter for the Balboa raised over $100,000, enough to update both of the Balboa's screens. Bergeron has some nostalgia for film. But he says, as a small theater, it's really important to have the right movie at the right time. Studios make a limited number of film prints; making digital copies is a lot easier.
BERGERON: It's not as huge of a process as striking a 35-millimeter print is so it's made it easier to get movies.
SYDELL: Though Bergeron has had success, a quick look at Kickstarter shows many campaigns by small neighborhood theaters have failed. The National Association of Theatre Owners says of the nation's 40,000 screens about 37,000 have gone digital, but it seems likely that at least a few may end up going dark instead. Laura Sydell, NPR News.
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After serving eight years as a celebratory representative for Oxfam International, the actress Scarlett Johansson has parted ways with the global aid organization over soda.
NPR's Emily Harris explains.
EMILY HARRIS, BYLINE: SodaStream makes machines for making your own soda at home. As many as half a million of those machines a month are made in a factory in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.
DANIEL BIRNBAUM: I don't like the settlements.
HARRIS: That's Daniel Birnbaum, CEO of SodaStream. But he doesn't want to close his factory in the settlement either. The factory employs 500 Palestinian workers and the company estimates that many more people would be affected economically if those workers lost their jobs.
BIRNBAUM: I don't want to send 5,000 people into hunger because some activist group thinks that that's going to promote peace. I just don't see how that will serve any good purpose.
HARRIS: Some activist group in this case means Oxfam International. Oxfam is against doing business of any kind with Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which many countries including the U.S. view as illegal under international law.
The actress Scarlett Johansson stepped into this controversy when she, an Oxfam celebrity ambassador, signed on as a spokesperson for SodaStream.
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HARRIS: That's Johansson in a SodaStream Super Bowl ad scheduled to run Sunday. Fighting criticism for her endorsement of the company, she released a statement late last week calling SodaStream a bridge of peace between Israel and Palestine, a place where neighbors working alongside each other get equal pay and equal rights.
So, is it?
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HARRIS: In the factory, line workers on 12-hour shifts make about $7 an hour, a hair above Israel's minimum wage and three times higher than the average Palestinian salary. We didn't want to quiz employees under the boss's eye but in a mini mart in the nearby Eizariyah, we met a three-year SodaStream employee who showed us his ID but he didn't want his name used.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Through Translator) I would say it's an excellent place to work. It provides a good salary and they treat us very well. At SodaStream, they do not discriminate between Arabs, Jews or any ethnic group.
HARRIS: As we wrap up, another man wants to talk. He works for the Palestinian Authority and hates the Israeli homes and factories in the West Bank.
MOHAMMAD: (Through Translator) Having Israeli factories on Palestinian land helps the Israeli economy and consolidates settler presence on our land. When they provide work for the Palestinians, it's a way of beautifying the image of the occupation.
HARRIS: It seems everyone in this town knows someone who works at SodaStream. While it's seen as a good job, college senior Fadi Abu Nemeh says after Israel built its separation barrier in and around the West Bank, people here have few real choices.
FADI ABU NEMEH: A lot of people had their jobs in Jerusalem, like in Arab companies or at like Arab businesses in East Jerusalem. And after the wall, they lost their jobs, so they had to work in places like SodaStream.
HARRIS: Johansson will keep promoting the company. Oxfam will keep opposing made-in-settlement products.
Hubert Murray, the grandson of an Oxfam founder, says Oxfam should have let Johansson go before she resigned.
HUBERT MURRAY: This is a very subtle and complex ethical issue. That's why it is so important for organizations like Oxfam to have paid very clear adherence to principle, and not shilly-shally and prevaricate.
HARRIS: If SodaStream's Super Bowl ad helps market shares significantly, U.S. consumers may be drawn more in to the political fray over made in settlement products.
Emily Harris, NPR News, Jerusalem.
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In a rare display of bipartisanship, the House of Representatives approved a massive five-year farm bill yesterday, costing nearly half a trillion dollars. The Senate is expected to pass it next week. The bill includes some reductions in food stamps, nearly a billion dollars a year. That's far less than many Republicans had wanted. But as NPR's Richard Gonzales reports, it's enough to worry some Democrats and many food stamp recipients.
RICHARD GONZALES, BYLINE: At the Downs Memorial United Methodist Church in north Oakland, Wednesdays are reserved for anyone who needs a free lunch and a bag of produce. About 250 hot lunches are being served by smiling volunteers before the afternoon is over. The recipients are poor, unemployed, people on the margins like Raymond Garza.
RAYMOND GARZA: I'm an ex-plumber. I'm actually disabled and I'm homeless.
GONZALES: At 52, Garza is a fireplug of a man. He says when times were good, he earned $80,000 a year. But a few years back, he suffered a stroke and life has never been the same. Today, he lives in a trailer anywhere he can park on the street, and he's here because he's used up his $176 allotment in food stamps for January.
GARZA: Man, it's terrible. Every day I wake up, I'm struggling to eat. Now, I got my food stamps on the 10th. Today is the 29th. I got another 10 days before I can go buy some food again.
GONZALES: Garza saw his benefits cut back in November by about $30 a month when the food stamp program was reduced nationwide by $11 billion. Now, he may face another cut. The farm bill will reduce benefits for 850,000 households across the country, costing them about $90 a month. More than a third of those households are here in California. The cuts will come from closing a loophole used in 16 states and the District of Columbia known as Heat and Eat. Recipients get a token amount of federal heating help that they can turn into additional food stamp benefits. Allison Pratt at the Alameda County Community Food Bank says the impact is real.
ALLISON PRATT: So this is really a layering on of one cut after the other, and we really are concerned about how families are going to cope with these cuts.
GONZALES: Some advocates of the poor say the proposed cuts could have been worse. But a group of Democratic lawmakers say any cuts are inflicting pain on working families in favor of preserving some major subsidies to farmers. Here's Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat.
REP. ROSA DELAURO: And if you vote for this bill, you will have to look them in the eye and tell them to go without food, that they have to endure hunger because we had to give more handouts to millionaires and to billionaires.
GONZALES: House Republicans originally wanted to cut food stamps by $40 billion over a decade, throwing almost 4 million people out of the program. As part of the compromise, the Department of Agriculture will be barred from advertising the availability of benefits. Pennsylvania Republican Frank Thompson supported the measure. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: The congressman's name is Glenn - not Frank - Thompson.]
GLENN THOMPSON: We reform food stamps, and we do so through thoughtful, targeted changes, ensuring that those who truly need the assistance will receive it.
GONZALES: The food stamp cuts would take effect for new applicants in March pending Senate approval, and current recipients would see the reductions phased in between the summers of 2014 and 2015. Richard Gonzales, NPR News, San Francisco.
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Forty years ago in 1974, the country was reeling from the Watergate scandals and the resignation of President Nixon. The Democratic Party, which already held a strong majority in the House of Representatives, picked up almost 50 more seats. In January 1975, when the new House was sworn in, the so-called Watergate class was full of young reformers who brought new energy to Washington.
And one of them was Henry Waxman. He was 35 years old. And today at a still very young age of 74, Congressman Waxman announced that after 20 terms in the House, he will call it a career at the end of this year. Welcome to the program, Congressman.
REP. HENRY WAXMAN: Thank you.
SIEGEL: Why quit so soon?
(LAUGHTER)
WAXMAN: Forty years went by so quickly. I thought perhaps maybe I would be in Congress for 20 years and I thought that was a long time. But after 40 years, I think it's time for somebody new, somebody younger to come in and take on the fight here in Congress. And if I'm going to transition to a life outside of Congress, I think this is a good time to do it.
SIEGEL: I'm going to remind people listening that during this biblical span of time that you've been in the House, you're the man who made the tobacco company CEOs swear under oath that nicotine was not addictive. You championed labels that tell us what the nutritional value of food is, clean water, clean air, Medicare, Medicaid, treatment for people with HIV/AIDS. And you also investigated performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. For you, if you had to be remembered for one achievement in Congress, what would it be?
WAXMAN: I don't want to be remembered for any one achievement. They all are so important. High-profile issues have been the Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking Water law. In the health area, we've expanded health care for low-income people and the Affordable Care Act, which, for the first time, will mean that millions can get health insurance, notwithstanding the fact they have pre-existing medical conditions or can't afford it because will get some tax subsidies to help them pay for it. Those are the major ones.
But when people can control their diet and see the nutritional label before they purchase a product, that's important. People take it for granted but that resulted from a long fight. And the HIV/AIDS bill took us over a decade because Senator Jesse Helms kept on trying to stop it. He said if we pass something to help people with HIV/AIDS, we're going to only encourage more gay sex and intravenous drug use, which, of course, was absurd.
SIEGEL: Thinking back on all these years in the House, what for you is the biggest piece of unfinished business? What's the legislation that you most would've wanted to see that you haven't seen?
WAXMAN: I regret that we have not passed legislation to deal with the climate change and the energy policy that would lead to lower greenhouse gas pollution. This is a genuine threat and yet, the Republicans in the House refuse to hear from the scientists, deny the science, and go to bat for the oil, gas, and coal industry as if it didn't make any difference. If there's a 10 percent chance that the scientists are right, why would take the risk that we're going to pollute the only atmosphere that we share on this planet to the point where we're going to face terrible catastrophic consequences? And we're seeing it now with all these climate problems.
SIEGEL: Congressman Waxman, I want to ask you a little bit about life in the House. For your first 10 terms, the Democrats were the majority, then the Republicans took over. It swung back a couple of times since. How different is it to be a member of the House in the majority party and a member of the House, as you are now, in the minority?
WAXMAN: I've been in the House in the majority and in the minority, and I could tell you without question it's better to be in the majority.
SIEGEL: How much better?
(LAUGHTER)
WAXMAN: A lot better because you can initiate the agenda. You can focus on the issues that you want to highlight and try to rally support for legislation or at least hold hearings to focus attention on a problem, which that in and of itself helps resolve some of these problems that you bring out. So there are opportunities to work in the minority, and I've always seized them. But there are, of course, even more when you can say I want to talk about AIDS, I want to talk about climate change, or I want to see what we can do to make sure that children get health care. Those are issues that I've always fought for in the past and if you can call the hearings or focus the attention on it, you can move that agenda.
SIEGEL: Congressman Henry Waxman of California, thanks for talking with us.
WAXMAN: Thank you.
SIEGEL: Congressman Waxman, after 20 terms - 40 years - in the House of Representatives, will retire at the end of this year.
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SpaceX has its eye on Texas. The space company would like to build a commercial orbital launch site at a remote spot on the state's southern tip. The prospect of a space port has stirred quite a buzz in the border city of Brownsville. As NPR's John Burnett reports, locals wonder if this depressed area will be home to the world's newest aerospace hub.
JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: This really is the end of the road. Texas Highway 4 abruptly ends at the warm waves of the Gulf surrounded by cactus, Spanish dagger and sand dunes.
GILBERTO SALINAS: Welcome to Boca Chica beach, Brownsville, Texas. It's where the United States really begins.
BURNETT: Or ends, depending on your perspective. This is Gil Salinas, executive vice president of the Brownsville Economic Development Council. He's spent three years toiling to get SpaceX to build its first launch facility out here, which would include a hangar, fuel storage, payload processing facility, and launch control center.
SALINAS: Right there you would have the actual launchpad itself where the rocket would - they would erect it and then off into space it goes.
BURNETT: SpaceX has been sending up its rockets at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral in Florida.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Four, three, two, one, zero.
BURNETT: Now they want a place to call their own, and it turns out that this lonely patch of coastal prairie only three miles north of Mexico is a sweet spot for orbital spacecraft launches. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told South by Southwest in Austin last year that Texas is his leading candidate.
ELON MUSK: It makes sense to have a commercial space port. We need to be able to launch eastward, and we want to be close to the equator.
BURNETT: Eager to make the deal work, Texas has offered SpaceX a $15 million incentive package, and passed a special law that would close the public beach during launches. The FAA is now in its final fact-finding and public-comment phase to decide whether or not to grant a launch license to Space Exploration Technologies Corp, the formal name for SpaceX.
Other federal agencies have weighed in. The National Park Service is concerned that rocket launches will disturb the view of nearby Palmito Ranch Battlefield, the site of the last land battle of the Civil War. And the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has a wildlife refuge on the fence line of the proposed launch site.
Spokesperson Lesli Gray says the tidal flats, thorn scrub and adjacent Gulf waters are home to 10 endangered species.
LESLI GRAY: Including the ocelot and the aplomado falcon and Kemp's Ridley sea turtle. We obviously are looking at what the potential impacts are, and we've been working with SpaceX to minimize any impact from the SpaceX facility being there.
BURNETT: Fish & Wildlife is concerned that increased noise, traffic, light, storm water runoff will disturb the wild things in the neighborhood. But it concludes SpaceX is "not likely to threaten their continued existence." Other curious species down here that will be affected by the nighttime launches can speak for themselves.
JIM WORKMAN: We liked it down here, but now it's going to be a lot busier, a lot more loud, a lot more, you know, congestion. I guess it's something that Texas wants and Brownsville wants, so we'll have to go along with it.
BURNETT: Jim Workman is a winter Texan who lives in a village across the road from the SpaceX site. He's a retired truck driver from Minnesota who escapes subzero weather every year here in his little brick house in balmy Bock Chica. His neighbor, Ed Schumann, is also a retired Minnesota trucker and has a different opinion.
ED SCHUMANN: I like rockets. I watch them on TV when they shoot off and go to the moon and wherever. That'd be fine with me, I mean, I got nothing against that. That's good.
BURNETT: The lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas is known for sprawling citrus orchards, car parts factories across the river in Mexico, and farmworkers living in substandard housing. SpaceX could represent hundreds of good-paying full- and part-time jobs. Again, local business booster Gil Salinas.
SALINAS: A project of this magnitude and of this significance is a game changer for - especially for a region like ours. Brownsville, Texas, is one of the poorest regions in the United States.
BURNETT: The SpaceX project has raised hopes for young people like Louis Dartez, a 22-year-old physics grad student at the University of Texas, Brownsville. Dartez says growing up in the tip of Texas, ambitious students like him learn a hard lesson.
LOUIS DARTEZ: And that's quite simply put as get the heck out of Brownsville. Whatever you do, if you don't leave the first time an opportunity presents itself, you never will. All of this and much more could change with SpaceX having a presence down here.
BURNETT: Louis Dartez, for one, has already submitted his resume to SpaceX. The FAA's final decision on the company's proposed launch site is expected later this year. John Burnett, NPR News.
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Hundreds of thousands of penguins make their home on a patch of seashore along the coast of Argentina. It's called Punta Tombo. Science correspondent Christopher Joyce went there in 2003 for NPR's Radio Expeditions program. He visited a biologist who's been studying the penguins who now says our changing climate is threatening the colony.
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE, BYLINE: When I visited Dee Boersma in 2003, she was living in the midst of the world's largest colony of magellanic penguins. And she was worried. Their numbers were dropping by 20 percent that year. You wouldn't have known it, though, on the beach at Punta Tombo. Once you walked over a big dune, it was all penguins.
(SOUNDBITE OF PENGUINS)
JOYCE: A stunning army of fluffy, two-foot-tall birds. They're also called jackass penguins, for obvious reasons.
(SOUNDBITE OF PENGUINS)
JOYCE: Nearby was a ragged, double-wide trailer, at the time, Boersma's temporary home away from the University of Washington.
DEE BOERSMA: We get to live really close to the penguins. See right here, right underneath the trailer?
JOYCE: Oh, there's, there's a penguin right under the trailer.
BOERSMA: That's right. And, in fact, last night, there were fights under the trailers.
JOYCE: That was Boersma's 20th year at Punta Tombo.
BOERSMA: One of the things that I certainly didn't anticipate when I started this is that these penguins could tell us as much as I think they are starting to tell us about the environment.
JOYCE: What they were saying was things weren't going well. The colony had shrunk and Boersma didn't know why. She had electronic tags on some penguins, and she knew they were swimming farther than normal to find food. She suspected that something in the environment was changing.
BOERSMA: It could well have something to do with the long-term climate changes or the variation in climate changes.
JOYCE: It wasn't until around 2010 that Boersma figured it out: bigger, stronger, wetter rainstorms.
BOERSMA: When you get three years in a row where lots of chicks die because they get wet, it hits you pretty hard.
JOYCE: Now, wait a minute. Penguins swim. They live in cold places. And they were dying from hypothermia after a heavy rain? How can that be?
BOERSMA: Chicks are covered in down and they don't get their juvenile plumage. It doesn't even really, you know, come in to protect them at all until they're older than 40 days. So until they get some of their juvenile plumage, they're not waterproof at all.
JOYCE: And local weather records showed that things had been changing for years.
BOERSMA: There's more rainfall and more of these severe storms. And that's what can kill penguin chicks, if the storm comes when they're vulnerable.
JOYCE: And they are more vulnerable. Here's why. Usually, the penguins hatch their young at the same time - over about two weeks in December. But now, for some reason, they're hatching over a six-week period. So the period of time when chicks are vulnerable to storms has increased. Moreover, the hatch is now later in the year, when there are more storms. The penguins are struggling with this new climate. In one year, half the chicks born died in storms. On a few occasions, chicks have also died from heat waves.
BOERSMA: It's these climate change events that penguins didn't have in the past, and it's not like penguins can adapt.
JOYCE: Boersma published her findings in the journal PLOS One. She got research funding from the Wildlife Conservation Society. The society's South American expert, Martin Mendez, says when things go wrong with wildlife, it's hard to track down the cause. There are so many potential culprits.
MARTIN MENDEZ: This show you the value of being on the ground for a long time, especially as it relates to climate change.
JOYCE: Boersma has 30 years of data on her colony. Mendez says one other project in the region has that kind of history - in the Patagonian Mountains. There, there's less rainfall on average now. And that's changing the mountain lakes, where Argentina's flamingos live.
MENDEZ: And the less water, they become more salty and more suitable for flamingos.
JOYCE: For wildlife, a changing climate is a crap shoot. Christopher Joyce, NPR News.
CORNISH: And those penguin recordings you heard came from the Radio Expeditions archive at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. Today is the first official "Fred Korematsu Day," in the state of Illinois. It's the fourth state to honor Korematsu as the Japanese-American civil rights hero by recognizing his birthday. NPR's Shereen Marisol Meraji has more.
SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI, BYLINE: Today would've been Fred Korematsu's 95th birthday. He died in 2005, but if he were still here, his daughter Karen Korematsu says they'd probably...
KAREN KOREMATSU: Go out for dinner to eat in a nice restaurant.
MERAJI: She says going out to eat meant something to her father, that one of his earliest memories of discrimination was being turned away from a local diner.
KOREMATSU: This cook behind the counter said, hey boy, what do you want? And my father said, well, I want to get something to eat. No, you don't belong here and called him a lot of racist names. Go down to Chinatown. Just get out of here.
MERAJI: Fred Korematsu was a Japanese American born in Oakland, California. In just a handful of years after that diner incident, he was arrested and convicted for failing to report for relocation. Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor six months earlier.
FRED KOREMATSU: I thought the exclusion order would be only for aliens and those that were born in Japan. I didn't think that a government would go as far as to include American citizens.
MERAJI: That's Korematsu from the documentary "Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: the Fred Korematsu Story." He found internment all the way to the Supreme Court, but it ruled against him with six of the nine justices saying protecting the U.S. against spying during World War II outweighed the rights of Japanese Americans. Korematsu waited for that verdict at a prison camp in the middle of the Utah desert, a decision many have called one of the worst in the Supreme Court's history.
Theresa Mah first heard about him in an Asian American history class as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley.
THERESA MAH: When I first learned about it, it was really important because, you know, there were questions about whether - well, you know, just the idea of whether Asian Americans fight back, you know, fight for civil rights because the stories aren't out there.
MERAJI: A quarter of a century later, she's the director of Asian-American outreach for the governor of Illinois and it was her idea to have the state recognize Fred Korematsu Day along with California, Utah and Hawaii. Fred Korematsu's daughter, Karen, hopes that it will become a federal holiday so more people will know her father's story.
KOREMATSU: Yes. And if he were here, he would say, don't be afraid to speak up.
MERAJI: And that one person can make a difference, even if it takes 40 years. Korematsu's case was reopened in 1983 and his conviction overturned in federal court. But that 1944 Supreme Court ruling, it still stands. Shereen Marisol Meraji, NPR News.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. In this part of the program, we're going to address a question that keeps bubbling up in news stories and commentary from the Middle East. It's a question President Obama addressed indirectly in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: In a world of complex threats, our security, our leadership, depends on all elements of our power, including strong and principled diplomacy.
SIEGEL: The president was answering complaints from the Middle East that the U.S. has left a power vacuum, a void in the region, a void that might be filled by Iran. There's no question the U.S. military presence is smaller. Back in 2011, President Obama remarked on the end of the U.S. military role in Iraq.
OBAMA: The end of war in Iraq reflects a larger transition. The tide of war is receding.
SIEGEL: And some players in the region see something else receding: American power and American influence. For example, in Iraq, the deputy prime minister, Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni Muslim, says the U.S. should've done more to create a government that Sunnis could trust. He told me Washington should have and could have.
SALEH AL-MUTLAQ: America is America. America is the biggest and most important country in the world. If they are really serious in trying to enforce reconstruction of the country, they will be able to do that.
SIEGEL: Another example, Syria. Saudi Arabia's ambassador to London wrote an op-ed article about what he called his country's responsibilities in Syria and he wrote: We will act to fulfill these responsibilities with or without the support of our Western partners. The op-ed was in the New York Times. The intended readership was clearly American.
There's enough talk about a void created by American disengagement from the Middle East that Secretary of State John Kerry felt obliged to rebut the notion in a speech last week in Davos, Switzerland.
SECRETARY JOHN KERRY: You cannot find another country, not one country, that is as proactively engaged, that is partnering with so many Middle Eastern countries as constructively as we are on so many high stake fronts.
SIEGEL: NPR's State Department correspondent Michele Kelemen has followed the back and forth on the question of U.S. engagement in the Middle East. Hi, Michele.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Hi.
SIEGEL: When Secretary Kerry speaks of high stake fronts, I assume he means Iran's nuclear weapons, Israel, Palestine, Syria. How high a priority is the region for the U.S. these days?
KELEMEN: Well, for Kerry personally it's a high priority, and that's one of the reasons why he says he's so perplexed by this argument that the U.S. is disengaging. I mean he's there constantly. He's meeting with officials constantly. He's pushing hard for the Israelis and Palestinians to reach what he's calling a framework agreement to try to keep the hope of a two-state solution alive.
But you know, all this frenetic diplomacy doesn't really make up for what people see as a lack of strategy for the region and at times it looks like Kerry's sort of winging it when he's out there in the region.
SIEGEL: What does the administration make of statements like those by the Saudi ambassador to London, say, that it's time to go it alone without the U.S.?
KELEMEN: They've certainly been trying to downplay this rift with Saudi Arabia, but it is hard to hide, particularly when it comes to dealing with Iran. You know, Kerry talks a lot about how diplomats need room to reach a compromise with Iran on the nuclear issue, but he's been much more careful when it comes to Iran's regional ambitions.
So you saw him kind of holding out the possibility of Iran taking part in the Syrian peace conference, but ultimately urging the UN to rescind Iran's invitation at the end.
SIEGEL: Is that what you mean by a lack of strategy?
KELEMEN: Yeah. I mean you see him kind of going - taking opportunities where he can, dealing with all the players as best he can, but you don't get the sense that he's really tethered to an overall strategic vision for the region.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's Michele Kelemen. Thank you, Michele.
KELEMEN: Thank you.
SIEGEL: And now to the case of Egypt, where U.S. engagement includes a big military relationship and a history of having negotiated the Egyptian/Israeli peace back in the 1970s. Emad Shahin is a political scientist. He's based at American University in Cairo. Professor Shahin has been named, preposterously, he says, in an espionage case linked to ousted President Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
He's in Washington this week. Welcome to the program.
EMAD SHAHIN: Thank you.
SIEGEL: And I gather you are not affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
SHAHIN: No, I'm not a member of...
SIEGEL: You're not a spy.
SHAHIN: I'm not a spy.
SIEGEL: Egyptians routinely fault Washington for all sorts of sins of omission and commission in their national affairs. Today, is the U.S. deeply engaged in Egypt or has Washington decided to back off?
SHAHIN: Just to answer, let's recall President Obama's speech in Cairo, 2009, and they promise and the hope that it gave to millions of Egyptians. To many, they thought that there would be a drastic change in U.S. policy, more involvement to the side of principles and values that can actually address many crises in the region.
One of them, of course, the issue of democracy, the right of self determination, and other issues. Now, if you compare 2009 to 2014, I think many Egyptians are viewing this as some kind of a void that has been created by a disengagement on the part of the United States.
SIEGEL: What do you say to the argument that a very vocal U.S. role could have a perverse effect - that is, people in Egypt could receive it as an intrusive America that's trying to throw its weight around and interfere in domestic affairs?
SHAHIN: I realize, of course, this is a tough position because it is exactly what the military-backed government is trying to play and is trying to project to the Egyptian people, this idea of ultra-nationalist, anti-Americanist, so of course the United States has to be careful about this. But I think there are many ways and channels through which an explicit message could be conveyed to the military-backed government.
SIEGEL: Are you confident that the U.S. actually has the power, has the influence to make Egypt more democratic, or that at this stage beyond the limits of American power?
SHAHIN: I believe so. Egypt has very strong ties with the military institution. I think this is the only institution has the strongest ties with the United States. The United States also gives $1.5 billion a year of aid to Egypt, so there is leverage. And also there is this idea of standing up by the democratic values and by principled foreign policy.
And I think, you know, this is a lot of leverage that could be exercised in this case.
SIEGEL: Emad Shahin, thank you very much for talking with us.
SHAHIN: Thank you.
SIEGEL: And we're going to turn now to NPR's Middle East correspondent, Deborah Amos, who joins us from Beirut. Deborah, do you hear these complaints often about the U.S. playing too modest a role in the Middle East these days?
DEBORAH AMOS, BYLINE: You hear it all the time from the Syrian opposition, from Syrian refugees, and it's particularly galling to U.S. officials when they say we spend more - we are the largest single contributor to humanitarian aid for Syrians, $1.7 billion by this January, but you hear it over and over again from Syrians in the same way that you hear Iraqis. If the Americans wanted to, they could move Bashar al-Assad out of office.
But what Syrians see is instead of bombing the government or sending military aid to the rebels, the president turned this issue over to the UN, and what they're talking about is the Geneva talks, the peace talks for Syria.
SIEGEL: Now, you mentioned the Iraqis. I want to play something that Saleh al-Mutlaq, the Iraqi deputy prime minister, told me. He is a Sunni Muslim from Anbar Province and I put it to him that President Obama's harshest critics say that the U.S. is not just leaving behind a void that Iran might be filling, but that the U.S. is about to tilt to Tehran, become friendly with Iran. And here's what the Iraqi deputy prime minister said.
AL-MUTLAQ: Well, I mean this is the question of everybody in the region, that something is happening which is strange, that from all that conflict between Iran and America and after America has given the region, especially Iraq, to the Iranian, now they are getting on in dialogue in order to improve their relation. And this is not only my concern. It's the concern of everybody in the region. And it's the worry of everybody in the region, because if you strengthen Iran to that extent, then Iran is going to be the policeman of the region.
SIEGEL: You feel that Iraq has been handed over to Iran.
AL-MUTLAQ: Definitely.
SIEGEL: Definitely - Deb, there's an interim six-month nuclear agreement with Iran on nuclear issues. And there has been a civil phone call between Iran and President Obama. Do people really feel that the U.S. is about to tilt toward Iran?
AMOS: You have to see if their perspective to understand why they say it. We are in this region and engage in a cold war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It is also a sectarian war. The Saudis are a Sunni power. The Iranians are a Shia power. Those issues are bubbling through Iraq, Syria, Lebanon. And so, when you hear Saleh El-Mutlaq talk about the Americans tilting towards Iran, what he means is in this sectarian war it is a tilt towards Shiites over Sunnis. Americans just don't see it that way.
For America this is an issue about nuclear weapons, more regional stability. But if you're here and the biggest issue is between Saudi Arabia and Iran, you - many, many, many Arabs see the Americans tilting towards Shiite Iran against Sunni Saudi Arabia that has been their ally for years. Listen to his language. Did you hear him say they want to the Iranians to be the policemen of the region?
SIEGEL: Policemen of the region, yes.
AMOS: That's a very old policy of during the shah's time that was American policy that the shah was the policeman. The fact of the matter is now the Americans are the policeman of the Gulf and that is not what this nuclear deal is about. But you are hearing people talking historically rather than rationally.
SIEGEL: Deb, let's go back for a moment to what John Kerry said in Davos last week. He was putting the current U.S. position in the Middle East in terms of how different it is from the 10 years of engagement in Iraq.
KERRY: After a decade that was perhaps uniquely and, in many people's view, unfortunately, excessively defined foremost by force and our use of force, we are entering an era of American diplomatic engagement that is as broad and as deep as any at any time in our history.
SIEGEL: What I hear you saying, Deb, is people in the region might say: we can do diplomacy, from you we want something more.
AMOS: Indeed. You know, the Americans, if they are too engaged, people are angry. If they are not engaged enough, what you see are regional powers stepping into what they perceive as a void. That is what makes people so uncomfortable in this region. In the past, they always felt that if the regional powers got out of line, the adults - the Americans, the Russians - would come and sort things out. They feel that America as a sorting power is absent and that is what they are reacting to.
SIEGEL: Deb Amos in Beirut, thanks.
AMOS: Thank you.
SIEGEL: And we are likely to be hearing a lot more about the U.S. role in the Middle East. Efforts continue to end the war in Syria. Within a couple of months, Secretary Kerry is expected to present the framework of an agreement to the Israelis and the Palestinians. And by the summer, there will either be a deal guaranteeing no Iranian nuclear weapons, or a push for more sanctions - If not the use of force.
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a step today toward major changes at the nation's largest police force. De Blasio says the city will settle a long-running lawsuit against the New York Police Department's over its so-called Stop-and-Frisk tactics. A federal judge had ruled that the department civil rights of blacks and Latinos.
Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration appealed that ruling. Now de Blasio says the city will drop the appeal, as NPR's Joel Rose reports.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Candidate Bill de Blasio roll to a landslide win in November, in part by vowing to, quote, "end the era of Stop-and-Frisk." And less than a month into the job, Mayor de Blasio is following through.
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO: We're here today to turn the page on one of the most divisive problems in our city.
ROSE: The legal fight over the Stop-and-Frisk has dragged on for over a decade. Critics charge the NYPD with stopping interesting to many young black and Latino men without a warrant, or even reasonable suspicion that a crime had been committed. The Bloomberg administration defended the practice but de Blasio does not.
BLASIO: We believe in respecting every New Yorker's rights regardless of what neighborhood they live in or the color of their skin. And we believe in ending the overuse of Stop-and-Frisk that has unfairly targeted young African-American and Latino men.
ROSE: De Blasio says his administration is prepared to accept the remedies ordered by federal Judge Shira Scheindlin last year. She found that the NYPD violated the Constitution when it stopped and frisked millions of New Yorkers who had2 committed no crimes. That ruling was on hold pending the former administration's appeal. But today, Mayor de Blasio announced an agreement to drop the appeal.
Vince Warren directs the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented the plaintiffs in the case.
VINCE WARREN: We have a tremendous opportunity to make our city better and safer. We must not squander it. We need to bring all the stakeholders to the table and work on real reforms with real accountability.
ROSE: Under the deal, the NYPD would be overseen by a federal monitor for three years but the reforms still have to be negotiated. Newly appointed Police Commissioner Bill Bratton says he's ready to work with the plaintiffs and community groups on the details.
BILL BRATTON: Constitutional, lawful policing, respectful policing ultimately is effective policing, and that's just not a trite phrase.
ROSE: Today's announcement was made in Brownsville, low-income section of Brooklyn that had one of the highest rates of Stop-and-Frisk in the city. Many Brooklyn residents say today's announcement was long overdue.
Trevor Hansberry(ph) says he's been stop dozens of times and hopes his children will have a very different relationship with the police.
TREVOR HANSBERRY: I have a son. I have an eight-year-old. I have a six-month-old. I think as young, black minorities, you need to be able to trust these authority figures.
ROSE: But other Brooklyn residents are worried that changes will lead to more crime. Regina Walker lives in Bedford Stuyvesant. She also police won't give up on Stop-and-Frisk altogether.
REGINA WALKER: They need to reform and to make it better. 'Cause, don't get me wrong, it works. But they carried away with it also. But it does work - they have a lot of guns off of the street.
ROSE: The police unions are worried, too. The Patrolmen Benevolent Association said in a statement, quote, "serious concerns," unquote, about whether these remedies will make it harder for police to do their jobs. But Mayor de Blasio rejects that argument.
BLASIO: I'd say it to any young person. I said it to any parent. I'd say it any senior citizen in Brownsville and any other community, this will make us safer.
ROSE: Right now, the city's crime rates are at historic lows. But if that changes de Blasio's critics may point back to today's announcement as one of the reasons
Joel Rose, NPR News, New York.
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And I'm Audie Cornish. In this part of the program: America's jam-packed prisons and the push in the United States Senate that could help do something about it. In a moment, we'll hear a bit about why federal prisons house more inmates than they ever have.
And we'll start with news that the Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a bill that would lower mandatory sentences for some drug crimes, and would allow thousands of inmates behind bars for crack cocaine offenses to ask for early release.
NPR's Carrie Johnson was at that Capitol Hill hearing this morning, and she's here now to explain what happened. Hello, Carrie.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Hi, Audie.
CORNISH: So there's not much that Congress can agree on these days. But the committee voted 13-to-5 to clear this bill. How did they come to compromise on drug sentences?
JOHNSON: The short answer, Audie, is a very unusual coalition of liberals and Tea Party favorites. So longtime Democrats like Richard Durbin of Illinois and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, aligned in this case with Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul from Kentucky. They had in essence an agreement about the role of the government and the fact that the federal government is just spending too much on housing inmates in U.S. prisons.
Three years ago, some same the same characters, Audie, got together and lowered the penalties for some crack cocaine offenses, because they cited huge racial disparities. African-American and Latino inmates were serving much longer sentences than white inmates. The goal is to do more of that now.
Here's Senator Durbin talking about his ideas.
SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: When we enacted these penalties we wanted to go after the kingpins. If you look back, as I have, at the debate on mandatory minimums, the goal was to nail the kingpins and to break up these drug cartels. What we've learned is the laws do not sufficiently separate big time career offenders from lower level offenders.
JOHNSON: So this bill sponsored by Senator Durbin would target to non violent offenders in drug cases, people who didn't use firearms when they were committing these crimes, and who have no ties to big gangs or cartels. And Durbin's bill would allow judges to cut mandatory minimum sentences in half for a lot of these drug crimes.
CORNISH: And we should say there definitely has been some push back, right, from prosecutors and also law and order Republicans in Congress. Detail their objection.
JOHNSON: Yeah, the main concern, Audie, seems to be public safety. Violent crime has reached historic lows over the last decade or so and some federal and state prosecutors, as well as some lawmakers on Capitol Hill, are worried that if you cut back on some of these penalties, violent crime could creep back up again.
Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley worried today about where to draw that line.
SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY: The fact is that the number of people in federal prison for simple drug possession is near zero. The supposedly non violent offenders this bill addresses are mostly drug dealers. Maybe they used no violence in committing this particular crime, but maybe their co defendants carried the gun in committing their drug offense.
JOHNSON: Essentially, Audie, with Senator Grassley is saying here is that prosecutors should be the deciders and should continue to hold the reins. And, you know, Senator Grassley did score one victory today, Audie. To the dismay of advocacy groups representing inmates, he actually got the committee to approve two new mandatory minimum sentences for domestic violence and sexual abuse offenders.
CORNISH: Now, this bill still has to pass the full Senate and get through the U.S. House. What are you hearing about the prospects for this moving forward?
JOHNSON: So a leading Republican senator today said that Republicans will not filibuster the bill when it gets to the Senate floor. It's still not going to be easy. There is bipartisan support in House but these days it's hard and can take a while for Congress to move.
There is some action outside Congress though, Audie. Today, the White House and the Justice Department seemed to open the door to entertaining more petitions for clemency and reduce sentences from inmates who are currently behind bars, serving time for drug offenses, if they were nonviolent offenders.
CORNISH: That's NPR's Carrie Johnson. Carrie, thank you.
JOHNSON: You're welcome.
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The United States will seek the death penalty for the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. Attorney General Eric Holder released a written statement today. He said the nature of the conduct at issue and the resultant harm compel this decision. 20-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is accused of killing four people and enduring hundreds. Here's NPR's Tovia Smith in Boston.
TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: Justice officials say they're pursuing the death penalty because of the, quote, "especially heinous, cruel and depraved nature of Tsarnaev's alleged crimes." They also cited Tsarnaev's lack of remorse and that after receiving asylum from Chechnya, Tsarnaev, quote, "Betrayed his allegiance to the U.S. by purposely causing multiple deaths and injuries of innocent people."
LIZ NORDEN: I don't know if the word is satisfying but it does give some relief, like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
SMITH: Liz Norden's two sons each lost a leg in the marathon attack. While some survivors say executing Tsarnaev would do nothing to ease their pain, Norden says a life sentence would not do justice in this case.
NORDEN: I mean, I watch my kids suffer every day. I watch their friends. I just see it destroys families. It's killed people. I just don't foresee what's the sense of letting him rot in jail. I honestly think the death penalty is warranted.
SMITH: Tsarnaev's defense team includes a death penalty specialist who helped both the Unabomber and the 1996 Olympics bomber avert the death penalty. They'll now try and convince a jury that if found guilty, Tsarnaev should be spared because of his young age and because he was under the influence of his older brother. Tsarnaev would need only one juror holdout since the death sentence has to be unanimous.
According to one poll, just 30 percent of Bostonians favor the death penalty for Tsarnaev. And in Massachusetts, there is no death penalty for state crimes. But former U.S. attorney Michael Sullivan says that should have no bearing for a federal defendant.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN: I think it would be unfair that the exact same crime committed, say, in a state like New Hampshire - 40 miles north - would somehow be subject to a much more serious punishment for the same federal offense.
SMITH: Authorities are not supposed to use the death penalty as leverage, but defendants facing execution do frequently plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. As Governor Deval Patrick put it, one way or another, based on the evidence, Tsarnaev will die in prison. Tovia Smith, NPR News, Boston.
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The economy of eastern Montana is surging and oil and gas development is the driver. Last year alone, the oil industry brought in $200 million in tax revenue to state and local governments. Unemployment in counties near the oil fields is well below the state average. This week, we're reporting on effects of the fracking boom in the region known as the Bakken. And today, Montana Public Radio's Dan Boyce tells us that that activity comes with a cost.
DAN BOYCE, BYLINE: Sunny's Family Restaurant, a cozy, corner diner in the heart of Sidney, Montana.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Oh, my God, look.
BOYCE: Customers are reacting to an extra jolt on top of their morning coffee...
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: He just hit the corner of the building.
BOYCE: ...because a truck driver just took a turn too sharp and dragged the side of his trailer across the diner's awning, ripping a gaping hole in the trailer.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: He jackknifed.
BOYCE: The young driver's now got the truck stuck in the middle of the intersection. He's moving it back and forth, trying to get going again. This whole scene is sort of a miniature expression of what's happening here. Small towns are feeling some of the biggest impacts from the boom. Truck traffic down Sidney's Central Avenue is almost constant, big rigs taking equipment to the oil fields, others carting the oil off to market.
MAYOR BRET SMELSER: We see these (unintelligible) every day, day after day after day.
BOYCE: That's outgoing Sidney Mayor Bret Smelser. He's been in the post for the last 12 years. He's standing out on the sidewalk by Central Avenue.
SMELSER: Are you getting cold yet?
(LAUGHTER)
BOYCE: It's a few degrees below zero. Passing semis leave heavy clouds of white exhaust. Smelser says traffic is up as much as 50 percent in the last five or six years, pounding local roads into gravel. And it's not just the roads.
TOM FLATLEY: So this is the project. It's 140 acres. This is Sunrise...
BOYCE: That's real estate developer Tom Flatley at the office of a nearby construction site. He and a colleague are leaning over a colorful scale model of Sunrise Village.
FLATLEY: This is the largest subdivision that's ever been built in the city.
BOYCE: They'll be building nearly 100 single-family homes in the next year. All this new housing and new hotels for the waves of oil industry workers or for the other people supporting them, all of this new construction is straining the city's sewer system to its limit. Mayor Smelser says Sidney brings in about $10 million a year from sources like local property taxes and fees. But Smelser says it has $55 million in infrastructure needs right now.
SMELSER: We do need some help out here. The people in Sidney have suffered enough. We've raised their water and sewer rates. We doubled their water and sewer hookup fees. We've initiated impact fees.
BOYCE: The oil industry, in one way or another, is largely responsible for all of this. But Smelser is not looking to the oil companies for more help. He believes the taxes they pay make sense and the companies give to the community in other ways, like to the local Boys and Girls Club. He's looking squarely at state government and he's not looking happy.
SMELSER: It aggravates me. It's a betrayal.
BOYCE: He's talking about a bill which passed the Montana legislature with huge majorities. It would have provided about $35 million from the state's surplus to eastern Montana oil boomtowns for their infrastructure. Democratic Governor Steve Bullock vetoed it. He says the state couldn't afford it.
GOVERNOR STEVE BULLOCK: At the end of the day, if the legislature blows the budget, they leave town for two years. I'm the one that has to manage it.
BOYCE: Bullock points out the state has invested $68 million in loans or grants for eastern Montana infrastructure since he took office early last year.
BULLOCK: That's new money from roads and bridges to water systems and other things.
BOYCE: The governor says he's actively looking for more ways to address the issue. Back on Sidney's Central Avenue, Mayor Smelser points to another passing truck.
SMELSER: One of our city crew, collecting twice as much garbage as we did two years ago.
BOYCE: In order to help pay for hauling that stuff away, Mayor Smelser also hopes to change how oil and gas production taxes are distributed in Montana.
SMELSER: The state keeps 52 percent, counties get 25 and the school districts get 20 something.
BOYCE: But cities like Sidney in eastern Montana only get about one percent of those funds, and that's not enough to pave the roads, to install the sewers and to take out the trash.
Back at Sunny's Family restaurant, that young truck driver has pulled his damaged semi out of the jackknife. He comes into restaurant, joking he's had better days. Most of the customers have turned back to their coffee. A Sidney police officer outside looks at the damage to the building. He says, last time, it was the movie theatre. For NPR News, I'm Dan Boyce.
SIEGEL: Our Oil Rush series continues on MORNING EDITION with a look at the challenges of commuting 600 miles to work in the oil fields.
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The first round of the Syria peace talks is set to adjourn tomorrow. The opposition delegation is expecting to leave Geneva without progress toward its top goal: a transitional government that ends the tenure of President Bashar al-Assad. The opposition began these talks with a reputation as a fractious and ineffective group.
And NPR's Peter Kenyon reports the delegates have been surprised and pleased to see messages of support beginning to come from inside Syria.
PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Murhaf Jouejati wasn't expecting to be part of the negotiating team for the Syrian National Coalition. He'd already resigned from an earlier opposition group, having found it hopelessly dysfunctional. Back at his job at the National Defense University in Washington, Jouejati received an 11th-hour call to join the coalition's delegation in Geneva. His expectations were low, but he's happy to find that this group is at least mastering the basics.
MURHAF JOUEJATI: The organization is much better. We hold regular meetings and we attend on time and each one speaks in turn. We engage in self-criticism. And we do these sessions, we - sometimes late into the night, and we go back the next morning armed with the experiences of yesterday.
KENYON: Inside Syria, the coalition is still sometimes dismissed as outsiders. But over several days of largely result-free talks, a curious thing has happened: the coalition has begun to grow into the role it has always claimed and people in Syria are beginning to notice.
In a Turkish cafe near the Syrian border, human rights lawyer Mahmoud al-Hadi says he was forced to flee the city of Raqqa, as extreme Islamists took over the area. He says many Syrians, after seeing the coalition members' work in Geneva, are starting to appreciate them.
MAHMOUD AL-HADI: (Through Translator) Before these talks, most people in Syria didn't believe the coalition represented them. But when the people saw the speeches and how the coalition sounded compared with the government, most people are now behind the coalition. They're definitely winning support inside Syria.
KENYON: This shift in opinion seems to be occurring despite the government's best efforts to denigrate and ridicule the opposition. Western officials here say they've been impressed by the coalition's ability to ignore the insults and stay focused on its demand for a transitional government.
Monzer Akbik, chief of staff to coalition President Ahmad Jarba, says they report back contacts in Syria every day, and he's seeing a positive reaction. But he has no illusions about the difficulties ahead.
MONZER AKBIK: We have noticed a lot of support now, much more than before. The world is start to hearing them now. But at the same time, I don't think this will go on for very long time because they want progress, they want something to happen.
FATIMA KHAN: (Foreign language spoken)
KENYON: Syrians have also seen powerful government officials confronted on the streets of Geneva, as with this encounter with the mother of a doctor who died in Syrian custody.
KHAN: Please tell me why you killed my son, please. For God's sake, tell me why you killed my son. He was a humanitarian aid worker. He wasn't a fighter. He was a humanitarian...
KENYON: The Syrian delegation ignored the cries of Fatima Khan, whose 32-year-old son, Abbas, was arrested while trying to provide medical care in Syria. She says after months of seeking his release, she went to his prison only to be told he'd committed suicide. She's convinced he was killed but has no way to prove it. She says he wasn't political, just a doctor moved by the images of suffering inside Syria.
KHAN: Sir, it was only unfortunate that he was found at the rebel area. But he wasn't helping rebels. No, he was my son. I know him. He had nothing to do with the conflict.
KENYON: With this round of talks due to wrap up Friday, opposition member Murhaf Jouejati says it's critical that the forces that helped bring Syria to the table, especially Russia, use their influence to make the next round more productive.
JOUEJATI: There must be from the international community real, tangible, concrete pressure on the Assad regime that they need to get serious about these talks, and not just to paint any opponent of the regime as a terrorist. My big fear is that these talks may raise expectations, only to be - to crash in a week or two if nothing happens.
KENYON: As for the coalition's rising reputation, some analysts wonder if the government will be as willing to sit across the table from these opposition figures in the future.
Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Geneva.
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House Republicans are midway through their annual retreat. The three-day get-together is happening at a waterside hotel on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Lawmakers of both parties hold this kind of annual partisan conference to map out legislative strategy. And as usual, there's some controversy over who's footing the bill for them.
Here's NPR's Peter Overby.
PETER OVERBY, BYLINE: The Republican conference is at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, Maryland. The hotel has a championship golf course and four lighted tennis courts. But the temperature is stuck below freezing and the lawmakers have a busy schedule, including sessions on such tough issues as immigration reform and health care. They're also getting advice from a consultant on how to connect with voters. But it's the financing of the GOP retreat that regularly attracts attention. It's made possible by the Congressional Institute, a tax-exempt social welfare organization run by Republican lobbyists.
MARK STRAND: They've decided, Republicans, that they didn't want to use taxpayer dollars to do these retreats.
OVERBY: Mark Strand, the institute's president, says that was 27 years ago.
STRAND: And the Congressional Institute was formed back then and it's been attempting to help with planning and making these conferences work as effectively as possible.
OVERBY: The institute covers the event itself.
STRAND: But the members of Congress pay their own way.
OVERBY: The Congressional Institute has a board of directors, mostly veteran Republican lobbyists who also have deep experience as congressional staffers. Other lobbyists join the institute as members, and it's their contributions that underwrite the GOP retreat. The institute's lobbyist members aren't allowed in the working sessions, but Strand says they do get to mix with the lawmakers.
STRAND: The reception and the dinner of the first night they attend, which is typical for, you know, most organizations in Washington, D.C., that have support. So they just attend the reception, just the dinner, and then they go home the next morning.
OVERBY: As for the House Democrats, they're booked into the same Hyatt Regency two weeks from now. But for financing the event, they take the opposite approach.
REPRESENTATIVE XAVIER BECERRA: I can speak to what Democrats are doing. We consider this official work.
OVERBY: This is California Congressman Xavier Becerra. He chairs the Democratic caucus, which pays for its retreat out of its regular budget. That is, taxpayer dollars.
BECERRA: We consider this an opportunity to discuss issues and we consider it an opportunity to discuss issues with people who have a vote, who are officially elected to do work. We don't invite lobbyists.
OVERBY: Now, this isn't to say advocates are barred from Democratic retreats. The caucus often hears speakers from liberal think tanks and nonprofit groups. But it doesn't schmooze with lobbyists, at least not at the retreats. Ross Baker is a Rutgers University political scientist and a long-time Congress watcher. He says there are all sorts of congressional retreats.
ROSS BAKER: They're just for a variety of reasons and I think mostly it's just to kind of get out of town.
OVERBY: Not that Washington lacks for conference space.
BAKER: There seems to be a kind of refreshment factor in getting as far away from Washington as possible without going too far.
OVERBY: In fact, starting in the late 1990s, there were a series of retreats aimed at promoting civility in the House. This came after Democrats had lost their 40-year House majority and a new GOP majority had impeached President Bill Clinton. Some prominent Republicans and Democrats organized bipartisan retreats, first in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and later at The Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. The Congressional Institute was involved in the effort. But each year, attendance shrank. Baker's assessment...
BAKER: The people who showed up were people who cared about civility. And the people who probably needed to be there weren't there.
OVERBY: Not like the Republican and Democratic strategy retreats over on the Eastern Shore. These are events where the party leaders are taking roll. Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Well, here's a halftime show we'll never forget.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
CORNISH: Ten years ago, the Super Bowl halftime show featured 12 minutes of early-aughts pop, high-energy choreography and pyrotechnics. But what do we remember? Two words: Wardrobe malfunction.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ROCK YOUR BODY")
CORNISH: Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson's breast on national television, launching parental outcry, lawsuits, an FCC investigation, congressional legislation and so much more. Marin Cogan looks back at how nine-sixteenth of a second on worldwide television changed everything and nothing at the same time. The article is in ESPN The Magazine. It's called "In the Beginning, There Was A Nipple." Marin, hey there.
MARIN COGAN: Hey.
CORNISH: So we sort of know what happened, but can you tell us what you learned about how it happened?
COGAN: Yeah. This is something that the NFL had contracted out to MTV. At the time, MTV was known for putting on these big, amazing performances. And they all swear to this day they had no idea that this wardrobe malfunction was going to happen, that...
CORNISH: The producers, you mean.
COGAN: Right. Everyone at NFL, CBS and MTV sort of swore up and down that they had no idea. That it was a decision that Janet and her choreographer-stylist made after the final rehearsal, and it did not go as they had planned.
CORNISH: No, not at all. So you actually spoke with then FCC chairman Michael Powell, who said his initial reaction was, quote, "My day is going to suck tomorrow." And of course, the FCC got more than half a million indecency complaints. Tell us what happened there. What happened in Washington?
COGAN: Yeah. Just to give you a sense of the scale of this thing, the previous year, the FCC had received something like 111 indecency complaints total. So over Janet...
CORNISH: Total.
COGAN: Total, right. So over Janet Jackson alone, they got half a million. And this was sort of in an era where we were having a national debate about the coarsening of our culture. The previous year, Bono had gone on stage at the Golden Globes and uttered a fleeting indecency. So there was already sort of this political moment brewing on Capitol Hill, and this just sort of hit a perfect storm and really blew up.
CORNISH: And Congress actually took action.
COGAN: Yeah, they did. They did. There were a number of pieces of legislation. Congress eventually chose to raise the fine significantly for indecency on the airwaves. But even before that, there were unanimous consent resolutions and people taking to the House and Senate floors to say the FCC really needs to crackdown on this stuff because it's not being taken seriously enough.
CORNISH: You know, in the end, after all of this outcry, did anyone have to pay a fine or really get in trouble legally?
COGAN: The FCC did go after CBS and CBS-owned stations for fines for fleeting indecency, and that continued to sort of work its way through the courts all the way till 2012, when the Supreme Court decided they were done with this issue, they weren't going to hear the case, and CBS never ended up paying a fine.
CORNISH: Now, interestingly, your article also poses the idea that this essentially birthed the idea for YouTube.
COGAN: Yeah. It wasn't the only event that precipitated YouTube, but one of the founders of YouTube was going online looking for a couple of clips. He was looking for Jon Stewart on "Crossfire," that sort of famous segment on "Crossfire" that he did. He was looking for the wardrobe malfunction. He was reading a lot about the rise of clip culture and this idea that we're not going to just be viewing television online anymore, that the Internet has changed the way we're going to want to view video clips.
And he started thinking there has to be a better way to go online and watch this stuff. A year later, he and two of his friends co-founded YouTube, and now we watch videos so much differently. We watch it on demand. We watch it on our phones. We watch it online. It's really not just a one-time-on-television thing anymore.
CORNISH: In the article, it seems like, you know, there's a little bit of a fatalistic view of the effort of some people who are trying to shelter their kids from very sexualized programming. I mean, at times people are kind of dismissive of it. Wasn't this kind of evidence that there was a bar, there was a threshold that culturally, society said, look, this is not the place for this?
COGAN: There was, and I think there still is. But what this event really highlighted for me, at least, 10 years later, is just how little the government is able to regulate what kinds of things your children see. There's really no way to filter out what they're able to see. And this was sort of the last big national debate we were having about whether or not we could police these kinds of things.
CORNISH: Well, Marin, thanks so much for going back into the history with us.
COGAN: Thanks for having me.
CORNISH: Marin Cogan, she writes about the scandal surrounding the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show for ESPN The Magazine. It's in an article titled "In the Beginning, There Was a Nipple."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALL FOR YOU")
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Filmmaker Jason Reitman has made his reputation with bittersweet comedies, films like "Juno" and "Up in the Air." But today, he's premiering a different kind of film. "Labor Day" is an unabashed romance starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin. Whether or not Reitman had trouble with the shift, our critic Bob Mondello certainly did.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Here's the setup: It's 1987 and Frank, a ruggedly handsome, convicted murderer, has escaped from prison and is holding Adele, a fragile divorcee, and her 13-year-old son, Henry, captive in their own house until they eat his chili. It's good chili - so good that it inspires Adele, who the ruggedly handsome convict has tied up, to reminisce about a conversation she had with her son about his sex education class. Seriously, the chili is that good - or maybe Frank is just that ruggedly handsome. Anyway, later, Adele frees herself.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "LABOR DAY")
JOSH BROLIN: (As Frank) When you have to say I tied you up, you won't be lying.
MONDELLO: And Frank, who must've been really handy to have around in the prison...
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "LABOR DAY")
BROLIN: (As Frank) I could try to help out.
MONDELLO: ...starts angling for the title of dreamiest kidnapper ever. He changes the oil in Adele's car, replaces the filter on her furnace, washes and waxes her floors and even takes Henry, who he calls Hank - because remember, he's rugged - out into the yard and teaches him to play baseball.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "LABOR DAY")
BROLIN: (As Frank) Choke up on the bat, hands together.
MONDELLO: All of which is nothing next to what happens when a neighbor leaves a bushel of peaches at their door.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "LABOR DAY")
KATE WINSLET: (As Adele) You should throw most of them away before they rot.
BROLIN: (As Frank) I have another idea.
MONDELLO: Soon, Frank, joined by Henry and Adele, are all plunging their hands into a big bowl of cut peaches - massaging them into submission, I guess - at which point, Frank says, what I want to talk about is crust. And there's another montage of hands smooshing flour and butter; dough rolled and piled high with filling, with half the dough reserved for the moment when Frank guides Adele's hands toward the pie plate and together they, in his words, put the roof on this house.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "LABOR DAY")
TOBEY MAGUIRE: (As Henry) Her hands started shaking beyond her control.
MONDELLO: And who could blame them? Hilarious, right? Except the movie is entirely straight-faced. I kept thinking, the guy who made "Juno" made this? It's the sort of over-baked melodrama that used to be called a woman's picture, though no one would call it that now for fear of insulting women.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "LABOR DAY")
BROLIN: (As Frank) I should go.
WINSLET: (As Adele) You should stay.
MONDELLO: Kate Winslet trembles vulnerably in the presence of Josh Brolin's manly perfection, making it seem as if all any woman really needs around the house is a convicted murderer. The filming is as polished as you'd expect from Jason Reitman, and parts of the picture are decently suspenseful, mostly because the music keeps turning ominous every time Brolin comes into a room; also maybe because convict kidnapping stories rarely work out very well, even when they're filled with warmth and autumn's falling leaves.
"Labor Day" was originally scheduled to open on Christmas Day, which made no sense. Then someone thought better of that and held it until now so it could be a prelude to Valentine's Day, I suppose. Might be best to just consider it an early harbinger of spring. For sure, the sap is rising. I'm Bob Mondello.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
And I'm Audie Cornish. The lunar New Year kicks off today and this weekend, traditional lion and dragon dancers will parade down Chinatown Streets around the country. We go now to Boston where NPR's Hansi Lo Wang introduces us to one dance troop that's redefining the Lunar New Year tradition.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: A frustrated cry cuts short the count in Mandarin of a swinging jump rope and two exhausted dancers emerge from underneath a golden fur-rimmed lion's costume. It takes a whole lot of practice to perform in lion dance.
(SOUNDBITE OF RHYTHM)
WANG: Troops like these are the ones you've seen in Lunar New Year parades performing gymnastic feats papier-mâché lion's heads, and swaying cloth dragons aloft on poles, all to the pounding rhythms of cymbals and drums amidst a flurry of crimson firecrackers.
Reverend Cheng Imm Tan formed a troupe in Boston almost 16 years ago under the name Gund Kwok, Cantonese for heroine.
CHENG IMM TAN: I think everybody thought, Oh. What a cute idea. Let's give it a try. I don't know that anybody expected us to last this long.
WANG: So you're still turning heads.
TAN: We're still turning heads. People are like, Wow. They're women.
WANG: All women of Asian ancestry performing a Chinese martial art traditionally reserved for men.
TAN: That's absolutely correct.
WANG: Why is that?
TAN: Well, unfortunately, long ago, women in China used to be seen as not strong enough, not fit, not clean even. And so I decided that it's a new day and age, and we will model a different world. Let's so some hill kicks, OK? And make sure you have the huh all right? From your (foreign language spoken), from your stomach. Ready, hie, hie, hie.
WANG: It's crunch time for Gund Kwok's troupe members in the days leading up to Lunar New Year. More than two dozen women from their mid teens to their late 50s make up their ranks. Their weekly rehearsals are a combination of exercise class and acrobatic circus. Kind of bent halfway, crouching down.
JENNY GUAN: Yeah, yeah. So that's why my back, it's stiff.
WANG: Jenny Guan has performed with the lion dance troupe for about eight years, which would probably surprise most of her high school math students.
GUAN: They have no clue. They think we have no life.
WANG: Growing up in her southern Chinese village, Guan says she dreamed of putting on the lion costume. Now she's 42 and lives in Boston's northern suburbs, and her childhood wish comes true every Thursday night.
GUAN: My students don't know what I do on Thursdays. This is kind of a secret life.
WANG: A secret life that Guan says her father wasn't very supportive of at first. And her mother?
GUAN: She told me I'm crazy. And then I asked her, and I say, Well, mom, if you had the chance to do it, would you do it? Hello? (Speaking foreign language)
XIU QIONG GUAN: (Speaking foreign language)
WANG: Jenny Guan's mother, Xiu Qiong Guan, says if she had the chance to do the lion dance when she was younger, she would've absolutely done it. But back in China, she says, women were seen as less than. Now, as women living in America...
GUAN: (Speaking foreign language)
WANG: We do, she says, whatever we want.
GUAN: (Unintelligible) two, three, four.
WANG: What the Gund Kwok troupe really wants is to finally master their latest move. The move requires two members, one stands in front, the other crouches behind. Together, they have to keep to a beat and jump rope, in synch, under an eight-foot-long lion's costume. Reverend Cheng Imm Tan says there's a trick to performing the illusion of rollicking lions and menacing dragons: perseverance.
TAN: Together. Turn, turn, turn, beautiful. Woo-hoo.
WANG: Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News.
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From NPR News this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
And I'm Robert Siegel. On Sunday, when the Broncos and Seahawks face off in the Super Bowl there will, no doubt, be gorgeous precision passes and wily running moves. There will also be massive hits - tackles and collisions that can have the same punishing force as a car crash. And the effects of those hits are now well-known. Hundreds of players who suffered head trauma in the NFL have been diagnosed with dementia, ALS, Parkinson's and severe cognitive decline. On autopsy, the brains of more than 50 players who have died show clear signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
Our co-host Melissa Block spent time this week with one retired player who is struggling with post-concussion syndrome. Melissa visited former NFL special teams player Sean Morey.
MELISSA BLOCK, BYLINE: Sean Morey is now 37. He ended his career in 2010, on the advice of doctors. Morey was the rare Ivy League player who made it to the NFL. He was a star player at Brown - scrappy and tenacious; and small by NFL standards, just 5-10, 190 pounds. But he was fast and played smart. And he made it not just to the NFL but to the Super Bowl twice, the first time in 2006 with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
(SOUNDBITE OF 2006 SUPER BOWL)
JOHN MADDEN: ...say who has the advantage in special teams? I think it's the Pittsburgh Steelers.
BLOCK: Sean Morey was special teams captain.
(SOUNDBITE OF 2006 SUPER BOWL)
AL MICHAELS: ...and Super Bowl XL underway in Detroit...
BLOCK: The Steelers would go on to win the Super Bowl that year. Morey made it to the Super Bowl again with the Arizona Cardinals and the Pro Bowl. And in 2008, his Cardinals became the only team in NFL history to win a game in overtime with a blocked punt when Morey launched himself like a missile at the punter.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED FOOTBALL BROADCAST)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: ...will punt from his goal line. He's got it. Here they come! Cardinals blocked it! It's picked up! It's a touchdown! Cardinals win. Monty Beisel with a touchdown, Sean Morey with the block. How about them Cardinals?
BLOCK: By the end of his career, Morey was considered one of the best special teams players in the league. Special teams. They're they guys who sprint down the field to block and tackle on kickoffs and punts. Because of the speed and the explosive collisions that result, the kickoff return has been considered one of the most dangerous plays in football. Sean Morey was what's called a wedge breaker, fast and relentless.
SEAN MOREY: I basically hit and blocked everything I could, as hard as I could - anything that moved.
BLOCK: And over his career, he suffered dozens of concussions.
SEAN MOREY: Somewhere in the high 20s. You know, I was pretty reluctant to admit how many I'd had.
BLOCK: But he can remember them in photographic detail.
SEAN MOREY: I can rattle off a ton of them...
BLOCK: In 2006, the Super Bowl against Seattle.
SEAN MOREY: ...so somebody had peeled back, and they just crack-back blocked and hit me right in the side of the temple. And I was - that was - that was - that was a rough one.
BLOCK: In 2007, against Carolina.
SEAN MOREY: And I hit with the crown of my head and I was asleep. You feel like you're waking up from a dream. But you see the grass, you see the - you hear the noise and you realize, oh I'm in a football game. So then you get up and I'd start walking, but I'm walking sideways.
BLOCK: And in 2009, his final season, against Detroit.
SEAN MOREY: I literally had four concussions in that game. Every time I hit somebody, it was like getting Tasered.
BLOCK: What did the doctors tell you when they told you, you need to retire? What did they tell you about what would happen if you didn't?
SEAN MOREY: Well, they said that there's a chance you'll never get over these headaches. You've been symptomatic for too long; and I just can't, with a clear conscience, let you play football anymore. You've got to retire.
(SOUNDBITE OF MEDICINE BOTTLES OPENING, PILLS RATTLING)
BLOCK: These days, Sean Morey has a sizeable pharmacy in his medicine cabinet at his home in Princeton, N.J.
SEAN MOREY: So Trazodone for sleep; Propranolol for - you know, it's a beta blocker, to help headaches; Lexapro, an antidepressant, to lengthen my fuse; Ritalin - extended-release Ritalin. Oh, and then there's also Methylphenidate, which is 5 milligrams...
BLOCK: Morey gets crushing headaches that incapacitate him for days at a time. He has trouble focusing. He forgets things, loses his train of thought. Sometimes, he explodes in rage.
Is there any question for you that what you've been experiencing, and all the symptoms you've had - that that's connected to football and to concussion?
SEAN MOREY: Do I question whether my symptoms were or were not related to brain trauma? No, there's no question whatsoever. (Laughter) Like, you cannot feel that kind of pain and have it not be related to brain damage. The way I felt, the dysfunction, the pain, the misery, the confusion, the desperation, the depression, the - it's completely - like, there were instances in my life that they would never have existed had I not damaged my brain.
BLOCK: Let me ask you what you do hear from people - which is, they knew what they were getting into, that there...
SEAN MOREY: (Laughter) Oh, that kills me. Don't even start.
BLOCK: ...was no secret that this is a dangerous, violent sport.
SEAN MOREY: Nobody has a crystal ball. Nobody can anticipate this. Like, I can sit here, and I can explain it; and I can tell you it's going to be a hell of a lot different if you're the one experiencing it. It is completely unraveling - there's no other way to put it. Like, oh, well, they knew what they were getting themselves into. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Let's be real. I mean, the NFL purported that there was no long-term issues to suffering concussions. And in fact, they said that you could go back into the same game with a concussion, with no issues.
CARA MOREY: There's a lot of denial. And it's a very scary injury and a scary disease for - well, for any family because you can't see it.
BLOCK: This is Sean Morey's wife, Cara Gardner Morey. They met at Brown, where she was a star hockey player. She's had concussions herself.
CARA MOREY: When it started, I mean, you ask yourself all the things that everybody's asking - how did we not know? I was a human biology major at Brown, so I remember saying to Sean, of course we knew there would be damage if you smash your head all the time. Like, of course we knew. We knew it from boxers. I just didn't know that's what he was doing every day.
BLOCK: As I talk with Cara and Sean Morey, I find myself noticing every time he veers off course, he'll lose himself on a verbal tangent and then wonder aloud where he's ended up.
SEAN MOREY: And, um - what was the question?
BLOCK: Cara Morey is left to wonder about her husband, is this normal?
CARA MOREY: I didn't think he was making up the pain and stuff. But when he would talk about memory issues - that he would go to the fridge and open it, and not know what he was getting - to me, that was normal. I had three young kids. I never knew what I was doing in the fridge. So you just brush it off, like, you're fine. I can't remember so-and-so's phone number. Well, who remembers a phone number, you know?
The hardest thing about this is, you don't know what is normal coping mechanisms with young kids or, you know, what are normal stressors that are going to make you react different. What is brain trauma? I don't know what is what. But he used to be very outgoing and funny. And it's hard to laugh around him now. Probably in four years, we don't really laugh.
BLOCK: But the worst is the rage, when he loses control, shouting at his wife and three young daughters.
CARA MOREY: He gets a look in his eyes that you're pretty sure you've never met this person in your life before - because he doesn't look anything like the person you know. It's very scary. And his voice is really scary. It's a type of rage that I had never seen, and I don't think anyone should ever see. And I don't think my girls should ever have seen it.
BLOCK: But they have seen it, like the major blow-up one day last spring. Sean winces as Cara recalls what happened.
CARA MOREY: Very bad, like ripped the car speakers out of the car and slammed the doors, and started walking in the middle of nowhere. And then the kids are crying, where's Daddy going? Just like, very traumatic. And they know a lot. They - I hear them talking. They say, well Daddy played football, and it really injured his brain so...
BLOCK: They say that?
CARA MOREY: Yep.
BLOCK: Is it scary for you, Sean - that rage part?
SEAN MOREY: You know, I know that there's years in my life - but more importantly, there's years in my daughters' life that I wish I could re-script, that I wish I could do over. And no kid should ever have to go through that. But sometimes, the thing that would scare me is sometimes I thought, like, when am I going to get better? And, you know, sometimes I would have really good days and I'm thinking, oh, I'm clear. And then, wham, it would hit me. And I'd be shut down for two or three days. I basically had a headache for like, two and a half years. It was just...
CARA MOREY: It's been four years.
SEAN MOREY: Yeah, but I mean, the ones that were so - and yet I know...
CARA MOREY: You just had them last week.
SEAN MOREY: I know but...
CARA MOREY: You've always - when we have these things, though, you always act like it's over. And I don't think it is. I don't even think it's close to over.
BLOCK: You said something earlier, Cara, about being in denial. And I wonder if you're still in some kind of denial. Like, do you accept that Sean has a brain injury?
CARA MOREY: No, probably not. I'm sure I'm in some denial because I think it would be really hard to accept, is this what's it's going to be like forever - or is it going to be progressively worse? I don't want to ask myself that question because I'm scared of what the answer would be; as in, I think he did a lot of damage to his brain. I think optimistically and hope - and really hope - that it can heal.
BLOCK: Sean Morey is among dozens of retired NFL players who have agreed to donate their brains for medical research when they die. He hopes his brain might provide some answers. For now, he accepts that the damage he sustained is permanent. He doesn't think it's getting worse. So he tries to adapt. He writes a lot of reminder notes, sets alerts on his phone, stays on top of his meds. And he's devoted himself obsessively to learning about concussions and helping other players who are suffering - first, as founder of the Players' Union Committee on Traumatic Brain Injury; now, as an independent advocate for players' health.
SEAN MOREY: Hey, how's it going? This is Sean.
BLOCK: On a commuter train to New York, Morey spends a lot of time on his cellphone, talking with other retired players.
SEAN MOREY: It's kind of sobering that people are struggling but they're just grinding it out.
BLOCK: He's trying to persuade them to join him and intervene in these $765 million concussion settlement that's now being reviewed by a federal judge. The deal was reached between the NFL and thousands of retired players. But Morey's concerned that a lot of players are left out; players who may not have Parkinson's or ALS, but are still suffering the consequences of brain injury in the NFL.
SEAN MOREY: One of my old teammates I talked with the other day, he has a friend that is, you know, early onset dementia and because he's not showing enough of a decline, he doesn't qualify. And that's a thing that I find, you know, unconscionable.
BLOCK: The deal is so bad, Morey feels no one should accept it. And he tells the players there's strength in numbers.
SEAN MOREY: OK. So you're on board? OK. Thank God. All right. Thanks, buddy. I appreciate it.
BLOCK: This Sunday, Sean Morey will be watching the Super Bowl from his living room couch.
BLOCK: When you watch it, knowing what you know now, will you be watching that game in a different way?
SEAN MOREY: Not really. I mean, I'll just watch the game - you know, that's a lie. That's a lie. I mean, I watch and every time someone gets concussed, I'll rewind it and basically, I'm looking at did they even evaluate him? Did anybody look at him? Did they shrug it off? What's the report back? Well, they're saying, oh, he got shaken up on the field. The first thing is, oh, he got shaken up. They won't use the word concussion.
BLOCK: So you are watching it differently.
SEAN MOREY: I'm watching it - I'm like an educated, informed spectator. I watch it more closely.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIEGEL: That's former NFL player Sean Morey, talking with our co-host Melissa Block.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
There seems to be a rift between Tea Party activists and other Republicans over health care. As Eric Whitney reports, some influential conservatives are now saying, like it or not, the health care law is here to stay.
ERIC WHITNEY, BYLINE: When the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, the U.S. Chamber Of Commerce, an influential business lobbying group in Washington, immediately got behind the lawsuit to fight it at the U.S. Supreme Court. Here's Chamber President Tom Donahue speaking out against the law in January of 2011.
TOM DONAHUE: It's time in my opinion to go back to the drawing board. And thus, we support legislation in the House to repeal it.
WHITNEY: But this year, the Chamber's Donahue is no longer calling for Obamacare's repeal.
DONAHUE: We're not going to get rid of that bill, and so we're going to have to devise ways to make it work.
WHITNEY: Business news writers called that a striking about-face and a Nixon-goes-to-China moment." But Avik Roy, opinion editor at Forbes, says not so fast.
AVIK ROY: He didn't say that he opposes repeal. He just didn't think repeal was realistic in the next several years.
WHITNEY: Roy, a health policy advisor to Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign, says business groups, like the chamber, have to be pragmatic and deal with the world as it is, not as they'd like it to be. That's why, he says, the chamber is now focusing on changing specific parts of the health care law they don't like, rather than repealing it.
Roy thinks Republicans missed their chance to repeal the law in 2012. They won't get another chance until after the 2016 elections, he says. And by then, it will only be a small chance.
ROY: It's very difficult once a law that transformative has been in effect for seven years to repeal it. I think there are more attractive ways to achieve the goals of conservatives than repeal and replace.
WHITNEY: That doesn't sound attractive or pragmatic to conservative talk show host Erick Erickson, who runs the Red State blog. In a recent podcast of his show, he says it sounds more like capitulation.
ERICK ERICKSON: The lobbying groups who have open access to Republican leaders are abandoning repeal. The wonks the GOP leaders listen to are abandoning repeal. They're laying the groundwork to bail on fighting Obamacare.
WHITNEY: But the Chamber of Commerce and Roy say they remain committed to fighting Obamacare. The chamber wants specific items thrown out, like requiring businesses to provide health care. Roy says conservatives can accomplish more by using Obamacare to push for transformation of all government-funded health care.
ROY: The ACA is really an important, but smaller, portion of the overall reform picture. And I think what's happened with a lot of the more populist conservatives is that there's not necessarily that appreciation for how much the government is already involved in the health care system through programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
WHITNEY: Conservative activist Erickson says the traditional GOP doesn't like its populist wing and that it needs to be taught a lesson in the 2014 primary elections.
ERIK ERICKSON: The single, biggest thing you can do to get the Republicans back on the right and straight path is to support Matt Bevin against Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.
WHITNEY: Erickson also urges financial contributions to conservative primary challengers in Georgia, Mississippi, Nebraska, and other states. That means some Republican candidates will face heat for not doing more to repeal Obamacare. At the same time, they're fighting Democrats who say they aren't doing enough to help implement the health care law. For NPR News, I'm Eric Whitney.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIEGEL: Eric Whitney's story is part of a collaboration between NPR and Kaiser Health News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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Atlanta usually doesn't get much snow, but it got a couple of inches this week and there was havoc. People were stranded at schools and on highways. There was also plenty of finger pointing. Well, here to bring a literary perspective to the situation is author Lev Grossman.
LEV GROSSMAN: I'm from New England so I'm always a little gleeful when other people feel the winter misery I grew up with, but it also reminds me of a work of literature which is the utmost authority on unexpected precipitation. I speak, of course, of "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" by Dr. Seuss. The book is set in the Kingdom of Didd, where King Derwin is bored with the available weather options.
He wants something new. So he summons his magicians, who offer to call down from the sky something called oobleck: Won't look like rain. Won't look like snow. Won't look like fog. That's all we know. We just can't tell you anymore. We've never made oobleck before.
Oobleck turns out to be a sticky green goo. It gums up the bell in the bell tower and the birds, and the royal trumpet. It's gross. So Bartholomew, the wise page boy, tells everybody to go back to bed, which is always good advice, but nobody listens, and the citizens of Didd end up getting covered in oobleck.
King Derwin even gets stuck to his own throne. Bartholomew tells him that in order to fix things, he just has to say I'm sorry, which he eventually does. And then, Seuss writes, all the oobleck that was stuck on all the people and on all the animals of the Kingdom of Didd just simply, quietly melted away.
Unfortunately in the kingdom of Atlanta, no one could agree on who should apologize and the snow probably wouldn't have just disappeared the way oobleck does. Life isn't always as simple as it is in Dr. Seuss. But they might try saying sorry anyway. It couldn't hurt and you never know.
SIEGEL: This week's must-read is "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" by Dr. Seuss. It was recommended by Lev Grossman. His new novel, "The Magician's Land," comes out in August.
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The nation's central bank comes under new management today. Ben Bernanke hands over the reins of the Federal Reserve to Janet Yellen. It's a position that many call the second most powerful in the country. Yellen will be the first woman ever to chair the Fed. NPR's John Ydstie reports on how she's likely to lead.
JOHN YDSTIE, BYLINE: The world of central banking is largely a man's world. But Janet Yellen has been undeterred by such barriers since she was in high school in Brooklyn. Charlie Saydah, a former classmate, says she was probably the smartest kid in the class.
CHARLIE SAYDAH: Clearly smart and she was smart among a lot of smart kids.
YDSTIE: But she couldn't attend Stuyvesant, the competitive public school for Brooklyn's best and brightest.
SAYDAH: She didn't go because, you know, she was a girl.
YDSTIE: And back then, in the early 1960s, Stuyvesant only admitted boys. Saydah, a retired journalist, said that meant girls dominated the regular public schools, like Fort Hamilton High in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn.
SAYDAH: I graduated 26th out of the class. Everybody ahead of me was a girl.
YDSTIE: Janet Yellen graduated first.
SAYDAH: I would have expected her to not only succeed but excel in anything she did.
YDSTIE: Yellen studied economics at Brown University and got her doctorate at Yale. She was deeply influenced by Professor James Tobin, who had lived through the Depression and impressed upon her the toll inflicted by unemployment and the government's responsibility to fight it. Yellen voiced that concern during a speech before the AFL-CIO about a year ago.
JANET YELLEN: These are not just statistics to me. We know that long-term unemployment is devastating to workers and their families.
YDSTIE: Yellen certainly knows her way around the Fed. After teaching at Harvard, she went to the Fed as a staff economist back in 1977. She met her husband, Nobel Prize-winning economist George Akerlof, in the Fed cafeteria. After another stint in academia at UC Berkeley, Bill Clinton named Yellen a Federal Reserve Board governor.
Brookings economist Alice Rivlin was a vice chair of the Fed during that period.
ALICE RIVLIN: She was an extraordinarily effective board member and she's been chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. She's been the president of the San Francisco Fed. And for the last several years, she's been vice chair at the Fed.
YDSTIE: Another former Fed vice chair, Alan Blinder, now an economist at Princeton, says even Ben Bernanke didn't have a better resume than Yellen. And, Blinder says, she understood the threat of the housing bust early on.
ALAN BLINDER: Seeing much earlier than most - I think even a bit earlier than Ben Bernanke - that what was happening in the mortgage market was posing a grave peril to the economy.
YDSTIE: But there are those who are concerned that Yellen is a dove on inflation. That is, willing to tolerate more inflation to get the unemployment rate down. Harvard economist Ken Rogoff thinks that's true.
KEN ROGOFF: I think it is a fair assessment that she's perhaps even more dovish than Ben Bernanke, more concerned about unemployment, more willing to take some risks on inflation.
YDSTIE: Rogoff thinks that's the right position under the current circumstances when inflation is historically low and unemployment is high. But Laurence Meyer, another former Fed governor, says he witnessed Yellen's commitment to keeping inflation low when they were both Fed governors back in the mid-1990s on the Greenspan Fed. Meyer says both he and Yellen were concerned that with the economy strong and the unemployment rate low, there was a growing threat of inflation and that the Fed should raise interest rates to head it off.
LAURENCE MEYER: We went to the chairman with that concern. Of course, I'll say that the response was, nice to see you. Have a good day. But the important point was that, at that point, like myself, Janet was concerned about inflation and perhaps more concerned than most other members on the committee.
YDSTIE: Right now, with unemployment still high and U.S. growth still slower than desired, Yellen is likely to continue to keep interest rates low for some time. She suggested that at her confirmation hearing late last year.
YELLEN: We've made good progress, but we have further to go to regain the ground lost in the crisis and the recession.
YDSTIE: Given that Yellen worked with Bernanke to develop the Fed's current policies, it's widely expected the transition will be smooth. As the Fed vice chair, Yellen takes over operationally when Bernanke leaves today. She will be officially sworn in as the new Fed leader on Monday morning. John Ydstie, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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House Republicans wrapped up a retreat today at a resort along the frozen waters of the Chesapeake Bay. The annual meeting is supposed to help the party map out legislative strategy, but it ended with no clear consensus. This is a midterm election year, and the issues on the table are divisive ones, such as the debt ceiling and immigration. NPR's David Welna was at the retreat.
DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Lest there were any appetite among House Republicans for tacking a list of demands onto a raise in the statutory borrowing limit, Speaker John Boehner made clear at the GOP retreat that, this time, threatening default was not in his playbook.
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: We know what the obstacles are that we face. But, listen, we believe that defaulting on our debt is the wrong thing. We don't want to do that.
WELNA: That marked a stark departure from what became known three years ago as the Boehner rule, which was the speaker's insistence that a dollar be cut from the federal budget for every dollar the debt ceiling is raised. That rule prevailed in a debt ceiling deal three years ago when huge deficits loomed. But deficits are no longer the talk of Washington. And President Obama says, this time, he wants the debt ceiling raised with no conditions attached. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp acknowledged the weak hand his party is playing this time.
REPRESENTATIVE DAVE CAMP: The debt's going up, and we have, I think, a greater obligation than simply just to pass it along. But there is a political reality that the administration, and particularly the president, doesn't see it that way.
WELNA: Even debt hardliners seem ready to toss in the towel. Congressman Marlin Stutzman of northern Indiana has Tea Party ties.
REPRESENTATIVE MARLIN STUTZMAN: I think we'd be glad to set terms. But as we saw through the shutdown, they were not interested in talking about anything.
WELNA: Meanwhile, House Republicans were presented at the retreat with a two-page list of principles their leaders say will shape a long-awaited immigration bill. Heading the list is tougher border enforcement, something immigration overhaul skeptics have been demanding and which Speaker Boehner endorsed.
BOEHNER: Well, listen, you can't begin the process of immigration reform without securing our borders and the ability to enforce our laws. Everyone in our conference understands that's the first step in terms of meaningful reform of this problem.
WELNA: Unlike the sweeping immigration bill the Senate passed last year, there is no path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants laid out in the House GOP principles. Only those brought by their parents might acquire expedited citizenship under the House plan. Wisconsin's Paul Ryan is a leading voice in the House GOP on immigration.
REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN: I do not think you should have a special path to citizenship for the undocumented immigrant. I've been pretty clear about that. This is why we're not going to take the Senate bill, and we're not going to engage in a process that could result in the Senate bill.
WELNA: The principles do call for giving legal status to unauthorized immigrants who meet a series of conditions. That strikes Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger as problematic.
REPRESENTATIVE ADAM KINZINGER: If you legalize somebody without a pathway to citizenship, you're creating, in essence, a class of people that have no chance of becoming citizens.
WELNA: But many House Republicans don't even want legalization of those immigrants. One of them is North Carolina's Patrick McHenry.
REPRESENTATIVE PATRICK MCHENRY: Those that willfully broke the law should not be allowed to just continue to break the law. So for me, as a matter of principle, I don't think that legalization of those that willfully broke the law should be a part of our agenda.
WELNA: And Idaho Republican Raul Labrador questions the timing of tackling immigration during an election year.
REPRESENTATIVE RAUL LABRADOR: It's a great issue for Republicans to resolve. It's a bad issue for us to resolve this year.
WELNA: Oregon's Greg Walden, who heads the House GOP re-election effort, foresees an immigration bill only after most primaries are over.
REPRESENTATIVE GREG WALDEN: When you lay out a major policy initiative like immigration, I don't know when it's going to appear on the schedule. My hunch is it doesn't come up, you know, tomorrow. It's probably months out.
WELNA: If the retreat aimed to reach a consensus on these divisive issues, none emerged. A closing press conference was cancelled. David Welna, NPR News.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. President Obama summoned business leaders to the White House today. His message: Hire people who've been out of work for a long time. It's just the latest example of the president trying to get things done without having to turn to Congress. So far, more than 300 companies have promised to re-examine their hiring practices to make sure that they are not discriminating against the long-term unemployed.
NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Unemployment has been coming down as more help-wanted signs are going up, but those who have been out of work for an extended period still face a very difficult job market. President Obama says all too often, even the most dedicated job seekers fail to get a second look.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: It's a cruel Catch-22. The longer you're unemployed, the more unemployable you may seem.
HORSLEY: The president says it's an illusion that there's something wrong with people just because they've been out of work for a long time. Often, they're just victims of the severe economic downturn. But that's little comfort to those like Erick Varela, who introduced the president today. When he left the Army six years ago, Varela applied for all kinds of jobs but couldn't find any offers.
ERICK VARELA: I knew I could contribute to society like I had in my military service. But I felt helpless, lost and more importantly, a disappointment and a failure to my family.
HORSLEY: Varela eventually found work, thanks to a training program sponsored by a California utility. And the White House wants to encourage that. But Obama says it's also important to remove obstacles such as screening programs that weed out job applicants who have a pockmarked credit history.
OBAMA: If you've been out of work for 18 months, you may have missed some bills. That can't be a barrier, then, for you getting the work so you can pay your bills.
HORSLEY: In the past, the administration's tried to make it illegal for employers to discriminate against the long-term unemployed, but aides says such measures have no chance of passing Congress. Instead, Obama is simply jawboning employers and he says hundreds, including some of the nation's biggest companies, are getting the message.
OBAMA: In some cases, what I heard from the CEOs is, it was just a matter of let's pay attention to this.
HORSLEY: As he's done in other areas this week, the president also wants the federal government to lead by example. He signed a memo directing federal agencies to give all job applicants a fair shake, no matter how long they've been out of work.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, the White House.
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And with that, we turn to our regular Friday commentators - E.J. Dionne, of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution; and David Brooks, of the New York Times. Good to see you both.
E.J. DIONNE: Good to see you.
DAVID BROOKS: Good to see you.
CORNISH: So we start with a little bit of developing news. From the New York Times, an update to the story about lane closures on the George Washington Bridge. According to the story, a high school friend of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie - who had been appointed to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey - claims to have evidence that the governor may have, in fact, known about the closures as they were happening. This runs counter to what the governor has stated.
We've talked about this in past weeks, and I want to get your reaction to it because I know one of the concerns you guys have brought up is what happens when little bits of information start to trickle out in the aftermath of this. I don't know who wants to start. E.J.?
DIONNE: Yeah. I mean, we still will learn more about this but David Wildstein, a high school friend of Christie's, saying that Christie knew more than he did. A, I'm not shocked by this because Christie was unusually disrespectful to Wildstein when he spoke. He talked about, I barely knew him in high school; and Christie emphasized he was a big guy on campus and Wildstein wasn't, so I'm not surprised by this.
But it was always hard to believe that a hands-on governor like Christie knew as little as he said he did about what was going on at the George Washington Bridge when it was clearly big news. And I always thought that at that news conference, that was the thing he never adequately explained. I guess he'll have to do some more of it.
BROOKS: Yeah, we in the commentariat are quick to say someone's career is over, something's ultimately going to end them; stick a fork in them, they're done. Nonetheless, if it does turn out to be true that he did know about the lane closing, it is actually kind of hard for me to see Christie running for president.
He was OK that he's a bit of a bully. It's OK because people wanted, maybe, to send a message to Washington that we need to send a bully to Washington. But a duplicitous bully who lied, really, about the central claim of that news conference, that's tough to run on, especially with so many other candidates in the field.
CORNISH: And, of course, we're waiting more on the veracity of this story but in the meantime, it reminds us that this week was a week of sort of re-evaluation of the 2016 prospects that are out there on the Republican side. Of course, with the State of the Union address, you have this kind of direct comparison because there were not one, not two, but three responses from Republican potentials out there.
You had Cathy McMorris Rogers, from the House, giving the official response; Sen. Rand Paul giving his own response; and Sen. Mike Lee giving a response on behalf of the Tea Party - all names people toss around in one way or another. Anyone impress you this week? Anyone send a signal that you think is worth noticing?
DIONNE: I mean, I didn't think there was much in the post State of the Union speeches. I mean, Rand Paul has a libertarian constituency. He kept that. Mike Lee is not running for president. He's been more adventurous than most conservatives in actually saying they need new ideas. And Congresswoman Rogers spoke a lot about herself. I'm sure some people were very compelled by her story about her Down syndrome child. She didn't really have that much to say about policy.
BROOKS: And in Republican circles, I was having a conversation with somebody a couple hours ago; saying, who can really stand up, stature to stature, with Hillary Clinton? And the only name that was coming to mind was Gov. Christie. And so after him, you know, I think there's a good chance - maybe a 20 percent chance - that Rand Paul does get the nomination because that is where the heart of the party is.
And if that happens, the Republicans will win several important counties in Mississippi in the fall and - but the one person whose name I would throw in there is John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, who is a very smart guy, energetic to a fault and somebody who - it's going to be a governor. It's not going to be a senator. And so he is someone, if he does choose to run, at least has run a major state, would have some stature vis-a-vis Hillary.
DIONNE: And I think that if Christie is sort of pushed back, the biggest openings are probably for Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan, if Paul Ryan wants to run.
CORNISH: Lots of writing this week about Paul Ryan, actually, and where he goes next.
DIONNE: And I think that's the space that's left, if Christie leaves.
CORNISH: Now, I want to stay with House Republicans for a minute because of the group gathered at a retreat on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Top of the agenda is immigration. If any of you have deja vu, that's because we've been talking about this for many months. Here's Speaker John Boehner earlier this week on this issue.
REP. JOHN BOEHNER: You know, it's one thing to pass a law. It another thing to have the confidence of the American people behind that law as you're passing it. That's why doing immigration reform in a commonsense step by step manner helps our members understand the bite-sized pieces and helps our constituents build more confidence that what we're doing makes sense.
CORNISH: David, it's reported that Speaker Boehner himself presented the outline of these ideas to the group. What do you make of this?
BROOKS: Yeah, I thought when I heard he was presenting that he'd reached an agreement with all the dissidents who don't like the idea of immigration reform and that it was a step forward. From what I understand, that agreement does not exist. There's still going to be a significant minority or a significant maybe even majority in the caucus who do not want immigration reform.
They do not want to run it before a primary when they might get challenged from the right. They don't want to have anything to do with the Senate bill. So I think it's still extremely unlikely that they're going to pass anything this year, especially since they think there's a decent chance they can win the Senate this election and have a much better chance of an all Republican Congress to do something next time.
CORNISH: Although, E.J., I noticed in the speech President Obama, more or less, stayed out of the way, devoted roughly a paragraph to it.
DIONNE: Right, because he knew where Boehner was going and where a lot of Republicans, including the aforementioned Paul Ryan, are going. The key statement there is that the Republicans said they were against a special path to citizenship. That's quite different from saying they'd be opposed to many of the people here illegally becoming citizens eventually.
And there are a lot of other ways to citizenship besides the Senate path so I think they opened a big opportunity for negotiation and we'll see how far the caucus lets Boehner go on this.
CORNISH: I'm going to say just the last minute signaling the end of an era, California Congressman Henry Waxman spent nearly 40 years in office. He's retiring. He's the last of the so-called Watergate babies, that freshman class from 1974. E.J., end of something for liberals?
DIONNE: Well, liberals have lost two real giants in recent weeks. They lost Henry Waxman, who is an extraordinary legislative craftsman and was involved in so many issues from health care to the environment; and then George Miller, who retired a couple of weeks ago, who was sort of the quintessential tough labor liberal, and again he was somebody who had very strong convictions but could also deal with the other side. This leaves a huge hole on the Democratic side.
BROOKS: Waxman extremely intelligent. I would say my problem with - he sort of pioneered the art of the histrionic committee hearing, where you beat up on the witness.
(LAUGHTER)
BROOKS: I wasn't always a fan of that. George Miller I'm a tremendous fan of. On education policy he was the A to Z of House expertise on education policy and did not toe any line. He was sort of a model legislator on that.
CORNISH: David Brooks of The New York Times; E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution. Good to see you both.
DIONNE: Good to see you.
BROOKS: Good to see you.
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Kim Alexander got a message in the mail this week from Pete Seeger, the day after he died.
KIM ALEXANDER: I screamed. (Laughter) It was really a magical moment but in some ways, it was not entirely surprising because of the kind of person that Pete Seeger was, and what he meant to all of us.
SIEGEL: The letter she received had been posted just a few days before the folk singer and activist died on Monday at the age of 94. Alexander runs a nonprofit in Sacramento, Calif., and in her spare time, she coordinates a weekly music jam there. And she'd written Seeger in August.
ALEXANDER: I wrote to him because I wanted to tell him while he was still with us what an impact he'd had on me, and how I had used that inspiration to impact others.
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Kim Alexander, a self-described jamvangelist, also shared with Seeger an article about how to get people to relax and join in with these kinds of public music jams.
ALEXANDER: And so he wrote back a note to me, in the margins - as he was known to do in his letter-writing - and he wrote: (Reading) Dear Kim, I've read this article several times. I think your article on jamming is wonderful and should be printed not just in Sing Out but in other magazines as well, and issued as a lovely pamphlet on good paper with good drawings on the cover. But I'm now 94, and I can't help much. My health is not good. You stay well. Keep on, 94-year-old Pete.
With a little drawing of a banjo, and then it says January 2014.
SIEGEL: Kim Alexander, reading a note she received from Pete Seeger. It arrived in her mailbox Tuesday of this week, the day after Seeger died.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, ''SO LONG, IT'S BEEN GOOD TO KNOW YOU")
PETE SEEGER: (Singing) So long, it's been good to know you. So long, it's been good to know you. So long, been good to know you. This dusty old dust is getting my home. And I got to be drifting along now it's so long, been good to know you. So long, it's been good to know you. So long, been good to know you. The dusty old dust is getting my home. And I got to be drifting along.
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And now, a musical lift for all our listeners who were hit maybe a little too hard this week by old man winter.
(SOUNDBITE FROM SONG "STAYING ALIVE")
BARRY GIBB: (Singing) Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk, I'm a woman's man, no time to talk...
CORNISH: It's a taste of the ALL THINGS CONSIDERED Cabin Fever Playlist. Earlier this month, we asked you to tell us about the songs that make you move and groove despite the cold weather. Here's one of them.
(SOUNDBITE FROM SONG "STAYING ALIVE")
GIBB: (Singing) Feel the city breaking and everybody shaking, staying alive, staying alive. Ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive...
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
This, of course, is "Staying Alive" by The BeeGees, one of the hundreds of suggestions for our Cabin Fever Playlist and we are just days away from the public reveal.
CORNISH: But Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, places unaccustomed to winter weather, we felt your pain this week. You need a pick-me-up. Here, shake your bon-bon.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CORNISH: Ricky Martin might make it better.
(SOUNDBITE FROM SONG "SHAKE YOUR BON-BON")
RICKY MARTIN: (Singing) I'm a desperado underneath your window. I see a silhouette. Are you my Juliette? I feel imagination with your body. Shake your bon-bon. Shake your bon-bon. Shake your bon-bon.
SIEGEL: So if you were stuck in your car on the interstate...
CORNISH: And if now that car is stuck in an impound lot because you had to abandon it on the highway...
SIEGEL: And if you're a teenager traumatized by a night sleeping in the gym on those smelly wrestling mats, well, this next song is for you.
(SOUNDBITE FROM SONG "WAKE ME UP")
AVICII: (Singing) So wake me up when it's all over, when I'm wiser and I'm older. All this time I was finding myself and I didn't know I was lost.
CORNISH: That was Avicii with "Wake Me Up." And we'll have more of our Cabin Fever Playlist next week. You're listening - hey, go ahead. You can dance, too. ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
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And I'm Robert Siegel.
No tangible results, that verdict today from Syria's foreign minister as peace talks wrapped up in Geneva. Despite the lack of progress, opposition delegates say they gained new support by standing face to face with representatives of Bashar al-Assad. The U.N. mediator is asking both sides to return to talks on February 10th. NPR's Peter Kenyon is in Geneva and begins our coverage.
PETER KENYON, BYLINE: Veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi set unassuming goals for this first round of talks, keeping the two sides in the same room, for instance, and getting them talking on the same subject from time to time. He calls these talks a modest beginning that can be built on, but he has no illusions about how short a distance the two sides have come.
LAKHDAR BRAHIMI: They gap between the sides remain wide. There is no use pretending otherwise. Nevertheless, during our discussions, I observed a little bit of common ground, perhaps more than the two sides themselves realize or recognize.
KENYON: Brahimi ticked off 10 areas of potential common ground, including the need to discuss a transitional governing body, the need to fight terrorism and the need to rapidly address humanitarian needs before noting that no actual agreement was reached on any of those areas. The opposition accepted Brahimi's invitation to return in 10 days, but Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moualem says his side must consult with Damascus first.
Mouallem also called the opposition immature and accused Washington of undermining the talks, a reference to the U.S. supplying arms to the moderate opposition. He's heard here through an interpreter.
WALID AL-MOUALLEM: (Through interpreter) They know that there is no moderate opposition. There are only terrorist organizations.
KENYON: A senior U.S. official says Mouallem's name calling is, quote, "the mark of genuine immaturity." Ahmad Jarba, president of the Syrian National Coalition, says the opposition achieved its objective at Geneva.
AHMAD JARBA: (Through interpreter) Today, the world is more convinced of the justice of our revolution than ever before. Now, the regime is walking in its own funeral procession. Its acceptance of the Geneva One principles is the beginning of the end. It is the beginning of handing over power from the dictator to the people.
KENYON: If it is the beginning of a peaceful solution to the Syrian conflict, though, it's a particularly bloody one. The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that while the Geneva talks were going on, another 1900 people were killed in what the U.S. official calls Syria's nasty war of attrition. Hundreds of rebels killed by loyalist soldiers and militias, hundreds of soldiers killed by rebels or car bombs, al-Qaida-linked rebels killed by other rebels and hundreds of civilians killed by a barrage of shells, barrel bombs, missiles and snipers.
Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Geneva.
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The Syrian government is also supposed to be surrendering its lethal chemical arsenal. But the handover of toxic chemicals to an international coalition is way behind schedule. As NPR's Geoff Brumfiel reports, that's causing real concern.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Under an agreed plan, hundreds of tons of toxic chemicals were supposed to be moved to a Syrian port by the end of December and loaded onto international ships. That plan is now a month behind schedule and the U.S. is not happy. State Department spokesperson, Jennifer Psaki.
JENNIFER PSAKI: This not rocket science here. They're dragging their feet. We need them to pick up those feet and run with this and move forward in moving the chemical weapons stockpile to the port.
BRUMFIEL: This week, U.S. officials said only about 4 percent of the most dangerous chemicals had arrived so far. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad recently said that he needed more equipment and protection for the shipments to go ahead. The U.S. and the United Nations reject those claims. Countries have already supplied tracking devices, specialized containers, and armored trucks for moving the chemicals.
Security along the highway to the port is a problem, says Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. But Tabler says there may be another reason for Assad to stall.
ANDREW TABLER: I think he knows that his usefulness to the international community, particularly the West, drops off as soon as those chemical agents are delivered to the international community.
BRUMFIEL: Once the chemicals are out, the U.S. and its allies might step up pressure for Assad to give up power.
TABLER: President Assad doesn't want to go, so therefore dragging his feet on the chemical weapons could lead to the international community tolerating his existence even longer.
BRUMFIEL: Whatever the real reason for the delay, observers agree that Syria needs to speed things up. Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.
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And I'm Robert Siegel. In Afghanistan, the U.S. is in a political standoff with the government of President Hamid Karzai. At issue is what's called a bilateral security agreement that would govern U.S. troops if they stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014. President Obama addressed the issue earlier this week in his State of the Union speech.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: If the Afghan government signs a security agreement that we have negotiated, a small force of Americans could remain in Afghanistan with NATO allies to carry out two narrow missions: training and assisting Afghan forces; and counterterrorism operations to pursue any remnants of al-Qaida.
SIEGEL: Here's the problem. That if the president started with, it's a very big if. Karzai has so far refused to sign this agreement, despite U.S. threats to pull out entirely without a deal, and for more on what is happening here or not happening, we're joined by NPR's correspondent in Kabul, Sean Carberry. Hello, Sean.
SEAN CARBERRY, BYLINE: Hi Robert.
SIEGEL: And our Pentagon correspondent, Tom Bowman.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hello Robert.
SIEGEL: Let's start with Sean Carberry. Many U.S. and Afghan officials say that this agreement is critical to the long-term stability of Afghanistan. Why won't President Karzai sign it?
CARBERRY: Well, that's the question at every dinner table conversation over the last few weeks here, and there are a lot of theories. They seem to be boiling down to two main lines of thought here. One is that he's trying to hold on to power in the waning days of his presidency. There are elections scheduled for April to elect his successor, and as soon as he signs this deal he effectively becomes a lame duck. And people also think he wants to hold this over the election process, to manipulate it so that his favorite successor gets elected.
The second thing is that he's saying he will sign this when a peace process begins with the Taliban, demanding the U.S. start that process. So he appears to think that in his waning days, he can get a peace deal that hasn't happened for the last 12 years, and there's several flaws to this thinking. And the first is that the Taliban have said for years they're not going to talk to Karzai. They don't recognize him as a legitimate ruler.
And secondly, the Taliban oppose this bilateral security agreement. So they have no incentive to talk. They can prevent it from happening by not talking. So Karzai seems to be ceding the power in this situation to the Taliban.
SIEGEL: Well, let's turn from Kabul to here in Washington. Tom Bowman, the U.S. has set several deadlines for Karzai to sign this bilateral security agreement. He's ignored those deadlines. Why is it so important for the U.S. to maintain a force in Afghanistan? Why is it so important that it's led all these deadlines slip?
BOWMAN: Well, the Pentagon will tell you, and commanders in Afghanistan will say the same thing, that, listen, the Afghan forces have come a long way. They still need a lot of help. General Joe Dunford, the top American commander in Afghanistan, will meet with the president on Tuesday. And his argument is going to be listen, you gave me a mission, to train the Afghans, assist the Afghans and to mount a counter-terror mission to go after the remnants of al-Qaida and some Taliban leaders.
If you want me to do that mission, I need 10,000 troops to do that. That's the number. And if you don't want to do that, well maybe we should start pulling out. But there are clearly some within the administration, mainly in the White House, and Vice President Joe Biden for years has basically been saying listen, we've done a lot in Afghanistan, it's time to get out of there.
Members of Congress, some of them are saying the same thing. So that's basically the argument we have now.
SIEGEL: Well, is the U.S. position that they could exercise a zero-option and that if Karzai won't agree to a deal that the U.S. would pull out completely? Is he effectively calling Washington's bluff on this?
BOWMAN: I think he is calling Washington's bluff. There are some who are calling for the zero-option. Some White House officials have basically leaked that over the past year, that we could go down to zero. And I've been told interestingly that American defense contractors over there like DynCorp, who have 10,000 employees in Afghanistan doing everything from feeding soldiers to fixing radar dishes, they've been told just within the last few weeks to at least plan for having no U.S. troops in the country by the end of the year.
Most people don't think it'll happen, but it's still, you know, a possibility, most would say a remote possibility.
SIEGEL: Sean Carberry in Kabul, former U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in an interview here on MORNING EDITION on Thursday said that Karzai, President Karzai, this is a quote, "has been despondent about the situation with Pakistan." I've heard senior U.S. officials say that Karzai blames all of his problems on Pakistan. How does Pakistan figure into his suspicions about the U.S.?
CARBERRY: Well, he believes that Pakistan controls the Taliban. And he believes the U.S. has significant leverage over Pakistan. So all along he's felt that the U.S. could bring this thing to a close by pressuring Pakistan to basically shut down the Taliban. And so this feeds into his belief that the U.S. is not interested in peace here, that it doesn't have, you know, genuine interests in finishing the war. He essentially says, and his security advisor yesterday said, that the U.S. has to choose between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
One thing, if I can, I just want to jump back to a point that Tom just made about the issue of whether or not the BSA will be signed, whether it was calling Karzai's bluff, one thing people here say is that the uncertainty of this period, of not knowing if there will be a post-2015 mission, is doing horrible damage to the economy here, and it's feeding the Taliban, allowing them to get stronger in this period of uncertainty.
And so that's what Western officials here say is most damaging is that as long as this is not signed, money is leaving the country, and the Taliban are getting bolder.
SIEGEL: I just have a question for both of you. We'll start with Sean Carberry. Would some residual U.S. presence, as it's understood there, spell the difference between an Afghan security force that can defend the country and maintain a stable government, and almost certain defeat at the hands of the Taliban?
CARBERRY: Essentially yes. I've talked to some U.S. military commanders here who are very much convinced that the Afghan forces need the continued support and training and that without that, certainly the Taliban wouldn't overrun or come rolling into Kabul, but they could certainly chip away and start turning the balance against the Afghan forces here.
SIEGEL: Tom Bowman?
BOWMAN: And I would agree with that. I was talking with a general when I was over in Afghanistan back in May and June, and I was asking him about the Afghan forces. He said, well, basically the glass is half-full. They need a lot more support. They have problems with attrition, with illiteracy. There's still a lack of good officers and sergeants in the Afghan forces. But most people think they do need the U.S. forces there not only to train them but almost to steel their spine, too, in the next couple of years.
SIEGEL: Tom, is there some obvious timeline to all this? I mean, is there some point at which it's too late to sign a bilateral security agreement?
BOWMAN: Well, one would think once Karzai leaves after the election, it's in April, if the new president doesn't sign the agreement, that probably is the drop-dead time.
SIEGEL: NPR's Tom Bowman, who covers the Pentagon, who was with us here in Washington; and Sean Carberry in Kabul. Thanks to both of you.
BOWMAN: You're welcome, Robert.
CARBERRY: You're welcome.
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The proposed Keystone XL pipeline cleared another hurdle today with this assessment: There are a lot of environmental impacts associated with the crude oil from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, but the pipeline would not necessarily make them worse. That's the conclusion of the State Department's final report on the environmental impact of the proposed pipeline. The Keystone would carry crude from Alberta to refineries in Texas. NPR's Elizabeth Shogren has been looking at the report.
ELIZABETH SHOGREN, BYLINE: The Keystone XL has been so contentious because the kind of oil it would carry has a significantly bigger greenhouse gas footprint. To produce it, companies scrape the tarry stuff out of the Earth with huge machines or inject steam under ground to force it out. The State Department says because it take so much energy to produce the stuff, in the end, this fuel releases 17 percent more greenhouse gases than the average crude. Still, Assistant Secretary of State Kerri-Ann Jones says rejecting the pipeline won't stop the oil from getting to market.
KERRI-ANN JONES: Approval of any single project is unlikely to significantly affect the rate of extraction of the oil from the oil sands or the refining of heavy crude oil on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
SHOGREN: That's because the oil could travel by rail or through another pipeline. This key conclusion is part of an environmental assessment that fills 11 volumes. There are other environmental impacts. The assessment says this heavy oil is harder to clean up when it spills. The Kalamazoo River in Michigan is still being dredged three and a half years after a big pipeline spill of this heavy crude.
But the big issue is greenhouse gases. President Obama has said the project won't go ahead if it significantly exacerbates the problem of carbon pollution. The assessment ends more than five years of environmental research. But Jones says it leaves many questions unanswered.
JONES: The broader question about how the decision on this pipeline would fit with our broader national and international efforts to address climate change.
SHOGREN: Environmental groups are scrambling to review the assessment. But they were encouraged by changes from previous ones.
MICHAEL BRUNE: The State Department is saying that the oil is both more toxic and more corrosive, as well as more carbon intensive than conventional oil.
SHOGREN: Michael Brune is the executive director of the Sierra Club.
BRUNE: And so this is a document that actually gives Secretary Kerry complete latitude.
SHOGREN: Secretary Kerry will also weigh other factors such as energy needs and national security to determine if the pipeline is in the country's interest. There's no deadline for Kerry's decision. Elizabeth Shogren, NPR News, Washington.
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The lure of high-paying oil-related jobs in western North Dakota has drawn thousands of people to the region. Many find work, but some of those who don't find despair. There's a dramatic rise in homelessness and sky-high housing cost are partly to blame. This year's Arctic temperatures are causing a second migration to cities farther east.
We're covering the Great Plains oil rush in a series of stories. And today, a report on those eastern towns struggling to cope with their new homeless populations. Here's Meg Luther Lindholm in Fargo.
HY LITTLE: What's going on, brother? How are you doing?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Doing fine, bro.
LITTLE: All right.
MEG LUTHER LINDHOLM, BYLINE: It's early evening and Hy Little is walking around the Churches United homeless shelter chatting with people before dinner. He's grateful to be warm today with a roof over his head in Moorhead, Minnesota. Little is some 400 miles from western North Dakota where he went months ago seeking an oil job. But he feels a world away from the fear he had of dying in the subzero cold.
LITTLE: Fear is a word that best describes how you feel when you know it's cold and all you have is a jacket and a suitcase.
LINDHOLM: When he set out from California last November, being homeless was the last thing that came to mind.
LITTLE: I literally took a leap of faith, spending every dime I had to get to North Dakota.
LINDHOLM: His goal was to find a welding job, but he couldn't get hired. So he started applying for retail and fast food jobs. But by then, it was too late and he found himself preoccupied with just trying to survive in the worsening climate. Feelings of desperation took hold.
LITTLE: You can't just walk to another town. You can't just camp out anywhere without the fear of freezing to death. And you literally can't seem to think straight.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: All righty. You are all set then.
LINDHOLM: Over in Fargo, a supervisor is handing out bed assignments at the New Life Center for men. Gary Copass is there because he also tried and failed to find housing out west.
GARY COPASS: What motels I did find were, like, really outrageous, $200 a night and more.
LINDHOLM: Without a homeless shelter in Williston, Copass soon felt his only option was to leave.
COPASS: I'm a quick learner. If I see something that is not going to work, I walk away from it.
LINDHOLM: Homelessness in the center of the oil boom isn't a small problem. A census last year found almost a thousand people living either in their vehicles or wherever they could find refuge from the bone-chilling cold. While many try to tough it out, others look for a way to get out. And that often means heading east. In fact, agencies like the Salvation Army in Williston are helping people buy bus tickets. Joshua Stansbury says his priority is to get people to safety.
JOSHUA STANSBURY: It's an extremely valuable service that we offer. They may not have the money to buy the ticket themselves, and so we're here to be able to help out.
LINDHOLM: But many homeless people who head east also have other problems, like substance abuse or mental illness. And Michael Carbone, who heads the state's homeless coalition, says treatment out west is nearly impossible to find.
MICHAEL CARBONE: You're hard-pressed to find a psychiatrist out there. And so, that puts a great deal of burden on the health services that exist in the eastern part of the state.
LINDHOLM: There's also the burden of severe overcrowding at area shelters.
CARBONE: What we're seeing in Fargo-Moorhead now is shelters are pretty much always above 100 percent capacity.
LINDHOLM: The Churches United shelter has 65 beds. But more than a hundred people show up most nights in winter.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Gary, Daryl, Brett. OK. You guys can go out to the bus.
LINDHOLM: People who can't get a spot at local shelters are sent by bus to a local church for the night. No one is sent back out into the cold.
Where does the money come from?
Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker says his city shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of housing and feeding the homeless who have come from the oil fields.
MAYOR DENNIS WALAKER: People have to understand there's a problem and unless we address it as a statewide community and the sooner the better or this will continue to grow.
LINDHOLM: Out in western North Dakota, the city of Williston does plan to open its first homeless shelter soon. As for Fargo's ambitious 10-year plan to end homelessness, that's a goal that has faded into the vast North Dakota horizon, at least for now. For NPR news, I'm Meg Luther Lindholm in Fargo.
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SIEGEL: Our Oil Rush series continues on WEEKEND EDITION SATURDAY with the story on the rise in prostitution in the new oil-rich region.
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Four years ago, the National Football League made a bold decision. It would stage its biggest game outdoors in a northern climate. Well, that chilly Super Bowl arrives on Sunday, and it pits the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Sportswriter Stefan Fatsis joins us now. And, Stefan, first question: Any chance of snow?
STEFAN FATSIS: Sadly, it looks like no snow, Robert. And not only does it look like no snow, it looks like the temperature at kickoff might not even be the coldest for a Super Bowl. It was 39 degrees in New Orleans in 1972. So in the end, it looks like perfect football weather, actually, and the NFL's decision to break its 50-degree average temperature minimum rule for the Super Bowl looks like a good one. But I'd like to see them put a game in Green Bay now.
SIEGEL: OK. Great matchup. Denver had the league's best offense, averaging 38 points a game. Seattle had the best defense, allowing just 14. So who has the advantage?
FATSIS: Well, if the weather does turn a little bit, if it's especially windy in what is a very windy stadium, conventional wisdom says Seattle benefits because severe weather tends to limit high-scoring, pass-first teams like Denver at least a little bit. Weather aside though, when the league's top offense has faced the top defense in the Super Bowl, defense has won four out of five times. But that hasn't happened since 1991, and Peyton Manning wasn't playing for the offensive losers there.
SIEGEL: So what would you say, then, are the keys to this game?
FATSIS: Oh, I read a bunch of previews by quantitative smart guys at websites like Football Outsiders and Football Perspective and Grantland, and all of the numbers point to a stunning conclusion. This should be a fantastic game. Manning's offense is historically good. Denver scored an all-time NFL record - 606 points this season - and no one was close. Seattle's defense, led by the now-famous Stanford graduate Richard Sherman, also is historically good. Football is so much strategy and response. How the obsessively focused and prepared Peyton Manning has adjusted Denver's offense would be a critical factor as will Seattle's response to that.
SIEGEL: But there will be at times, of course, when Seattle has the ball and Denver's on defense.
FATSIS: Right. And Seattle's very good at running at the ball, especially Marshawn Lynch, their running back. Seattle's offense chews up the clock, which it's going to need to do to keep Peyton Manning off the field and which Denver's defense is going to need to do to mitigate that so Manning can get back on the field.
Everybody loves second-year quarterback Russell Wilson of Seattle. He's smart. His game-management skills are great, but his performance the last six games has been significantly worse than the first 12 of the season. More tentative decision making, more inaccurate passes. He was sacked a lot during the season, so maybe pressure or the state of his body is catching up with him. On the plus side for Russell Wilson, though, Denver's defense has also had a lot of injuries and it's inexperienced.
SIEGEL: Officials have come under a lot of scrutiny in the NFL of late. Could the referees be a factor in this game?
FATSIS: Yes. And that's because Seattle and Denver were number one and number two in the NFL this season in penalties. The website Football Perspective noted that refs tend to swallow their whistles in the playoffs. That reduces the risk of a game turning on a referee's call. They also tend to call fewer penalties in cold weather. Now, whether Denver and Seattle's coaches try to take advantage of those factors, whether the officials toss their yellow flags in response, it could be important.
SIEGEL: Any other factors that might come into play that we've missed?
FATSIS: Well, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that both teams have excellent kickers: Matt Prater for Denver, Steven Hauschka for Seattle. They've made 69 of 73 field goal attempts so far this season. Prater broke the NFL record with a 64 yarder. And, finally, so that we're not left out of the pre-Super Bowl media (unintelligible), Robert, I want to note that Denver's 330-pound defensive lineman Terrance Knighton is nicknamed Pot Roast. And I just read that his favorite movie is "Matilda," the adaptation of the Roald Dahl children's book.
SIEGEL: OK. Have a great weekend, Stefan.
FATSIS: You too, Robert.
SIEGEL: Stefan Fatsis is the author of "A Few Seconds of Panic: A Sportswriter Plays in the NFL," and he joins us most Fridays to talk about sports and the business of sports.
AUDIE CORNISH, BYLINE: In the run up to the Super Bowl, demand for former players and coaches to interview is high. Dozens of sports radio stations have set up camp in New York City's Radio Row. Many interviewees have leveraged that demand into short-term celebrity endorsements. NPR's Mike Pesca caught the pitches.
MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: Radio Row, Sheraton Hotel, New York City. A station that called itself The Team is here. So is The Ticket. There are a few fans, a sports animal and a sports carnivore. They're talking gap responsibility, debating how often to put eight men in the box. In other words, the raison d'etre of being a sports carnivore. But on occasion, other topics seep in.
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UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Now you're here obviously with the NFL Network and also with Verizon today and...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Tell us about the bowling event...
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Tell us about promote53.com, Chris.
DAN MARINO: Do you get more questions about being on CBS pregame, being a hall of fame quarterback or Nutrisystem?
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: I think Denver is going to run away with it.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: All right. Now this week - tell me what you're plugging this week. Www...
DAN PATRICK: You brought in bags of M&M'S here. Thank you.
ED JONES: GoBowling.com.
PESCA: The sport is football, but the pitch is omnipresent. Paulie Pabst has been to 10 Super Bowls as a producer for "The Dan Patrick Radio Show."
PAULIE PABST: If I ever see a guest without a sponsor, I'm wondering how it happened.
PESCA: Talk shows need guests. Guests found a way to be paid. No one in the circle seems to be complaining. Pabst says when he started, a quarter of his show's guests had a product to plug whereas now it's the norm.
PABST: Sometimes you'll be like, what is this product here? Like, Emmitt Smith today, it was a product about gout, and I don't know much about gout. I do now after having Emmitt Smith on.
PESCA: Hall of fame running back Emmitt Smith. Companies figure might as well get the most qualified pro to slide between the quid and quo. The guest Dan Patrick was talking M&M'S with in that montage was Joe Montana. Dan Marino was talking Nutrisystem. The bowling enthusiast you heard was Ed "Too Tall" Jones. One year, former bears coach Mike Ditka endorsed toilet paper.
Jimmy Shapiro who links companies to celebrities wouldn't be surprised if Ditka netted upwards of $100,000 for that endorsement. Even non-athletes get in on the action. One year, Shapiro tried to pair Xbox with the actor Jerry Ferrara. But Ferrara's agent asked for the moon.
JIMMY SHAPIRO: And I don't think Ferrara ever saw it because the price that he quoted me at was $150,000 for, like, three hours on Radio Row, which is ridiculous for a frigging turtle from "Entourage."
PESCA: Bob Broderick, strategic media consultant with RBT(sic) Media, represents athletes and coaches. He says clients can get between five and $20,000 for a week's work. This week, Broderick's client, Super Bowl-winning coach Brian Billick, is plugging SeatGeek.com
BOB BRODERICK: He's probably done 40-plus radio shows. We also did some TV. We did live CNBC yesterday. And an executive from SeatGeek said yesterday that the CNBC segment alone was worth it. They saw traffic almost four times their normal average.
PESCA: Broderick says years ago, producers would chafe at allowing B- or C-list players to shill on their air. He hasn't heard an objection for a few years. To understand the demand, look at Bill Romanowski, former player in five Super Bowls, current owner of a nutrition company and partner to Smoothie King. I talked to him on Tuesday.
BILL ROMANOWSKI: I did 20 interviews yesterday. I'll do probably 20 today, 20 or 30 tomorrow, 20 or 30 the next day.
PESCA: Where does he get the energy?
ROMANOWSKI: The Lean1 Smoothie. It's a fat-burning meal replacement. Seventeen...
PESCA: To get Romanowski to talk to me, I promised to let him get a plug in, but I still reserved the right to fade out in the interest of keeping one radio network relatively non-commercial. Mike Pesca, NPR News, New York.
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We begin this hour with a letter that may shed new light on the recent George Washington Bridge scandal. In the letter, a former ally of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, through his lawyer, says: The governor knew of traffic tie ups that his staff allegedly ordered at the bridge. David Wildstein resigned from the Port Authority which operates the bridge after the scandal broke.
Member station WNYC's Matt Katz joins us now to talk about this letter that came out this afternoon. And, Matt, this isn't a smoking gun, but it does say something about Governor Christie. What's the letter and what's alleged in it?
MATT KATZ, BYLINE: The letter is regarding - from David Wildstein's attorney, angry that this bridge agency isn't paying his legal bills. But more importantly, it alleges that Wildstein has evidence that would indicate that the governor possibly lied when he said that these lanes were - that he didn't know anything about these lanes being closed and the subsequent traffic jam.
So it falls short of saying the governor ordered the lanes or that he did so out of some sort of political revenge. But it does accuse the governor of lying at this marathon two-hour news conference he held a few weeks ago.
SIEGEL: Well, what has Governor Christie said in response to this letter today?
KATZ: His spokesman released a statement that said that the letter failed to refute in any way what the governor himself had said three weeks ago. And what he said at the time was that he only found out about these lane closures from the press, and then he only found out about these alleged political motivations behind the lane closures from the press. And he said the letter just failed to refute any of that.
SIEGEL: The Christie administration faces quite a few investigations, really, into the George Washington Bridge traffic and also to the use of funds earmarked for recovery from Superstorm Sandy. How do you think this letter and the allegations in it might fit into those proceedings?
KATZ: Well, it's certainly heightened the interest of legislators. There are now more legislators starting to use the word impeachment. And that might be a possibility. And now, we also have new subpoenas related to Sandy aid. There's an allegation that the mayor of the city of Hoboken - she says that Christie officials tried to shake her down over a development deal they wanted and they were threatening to take away her city's Sandy aid if she didn't approve this redevelopment deal. So this is another little piece in a larger abuse of power allegations that are really just piling up against this governor.
SIEGEL: Tell us a bit about David Wildstein. It's always said that he went to high school with the governor. Are they really friends?
KATZ: Christie says they're not friends. He's described them as acquaintances. He says he was an athlete and president of his class every year. And he wasn't even sure what Wildstein was up during high school. Wildstein has been portrayed as something of a nerd and a number's guy. But both were interested in politics. Wildstein became a local mayor, and then he founded a political blog. He was an anonymous blogger for many years. The people who works for him didn't know who he was. And then he was outed when Christie hired him to work at this bridge agency as his sort of eyes and ears.
He was Christie's political man at this bridge agency until everything sort of exploded with these allegations over the last few months.
SIEGEL: OK. Thanks for talking with us, Matt.
KATZ: Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: That's political reporter Matt Katz of member station WNYC.