RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
If your New Year's resolutions include eating better, you might want to consider the following advice. It comes from Michael Pollan, author of a book called "In Defense of Food." When he spoke with Steve Inskeep, he was able to summarize his advice in seven words.
MICHAEL POLLAN: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
That's it?
POLLAN: That's it. That is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.
INSKEEP: Now, wait a minute. If your advice is eat food, the implication of that is that whatever we're eating now is not food.
POLLAN: Very often it isn't. We are eating a lot of edible food-like substances, which is to say highly processed things that might be called yogurt, might be called cereals, whatever, but in fact are very intricate products of food science that are really imitations of food.
INSKEEP: How can I tell the difference between food and fake food?
POLLAN: Well, that's where it gets challenging. That's why I needed a whole book and not that one sense. Distinguishing between food and food products takes a little bit of work. So I came up with a couple rules of thumb. They're kind of like algorithms to help you sort it out. One, and the simplest, is don't eat anything that your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. So if you're wheeling down the aisles of your grocery store and you pick up a box of, let's say, Go-Gurt, portable yogurt tubes...
INSKEEP: Would you explain that for people who maybe haven't had Go-Gurt lately?
POLLAN: But is it food? And that's the question. And the way you answer that question is do that mental test. You know, imagine your grandmother, your great-grandmother picking up this tube, holding it up to the light, trying to figure out how to administer it to her body, if indeed it is something that goes in your body. And then imagine her reading the ingredients, which, you know, yogurt is a very simple food. It's milk inoculated with a bacterial culture. But Go-Gurt has dozens of ingredients.
INSKEEP: So eat food. You go onto say not too much, which is easy to say and hard to do.
POLLAN: Now, that sounds like a kind of bizarre idea. How would you know when you're 80 percent full? Well, you might not know exactly, but you do know when you are full and the idea of stopping eating before you reach that moment is, you know, if you do that you will actually reduce your caloric intake quite a bit.
INSKEEP: So eat food. Not too much. And then you say mostly plants. I want to ask about mostly. You don't say only plants. You don't say try to include a few plants. Mostly plants.
POLLAN: But must you not eat meat? No. I think meat is very nutritious food. I think the problem with meat is we eat way too much of it. If you look at studies of people who are vegetarians, they're healthier than the rest of us and they live longer. But if you look at studies of flexitarians - people who are nearly vegetarians - eat a little bit of meat, use meat as a flavoring, have a meat, you know, dish a couple of times a week, they're just as healthy as the vegetarians. So there's nothing magic about ruling meat out of your diet. But I would argue, though, if you are going to eat meat, eat animals that have eaten mostly plants.
INSKEEP: You want a grass-fed cow, not, well...
POLLAN: Corn and - I mean, corn is a plant, obviously, but when I say eat mostly plants, I'm saying we're better off with leaves than seeds. One of the big problems in our diet - one of the big changes over the last couple of hundred years is we have a heavy-seed diet. We're eating refined grain. Everything from, you know, high-fructose corn syrup to white flour. And among the plants, it's the leaves that really have the interesting and most valuable nutrients.
INSKEEP: You know, I want to ask you a question before we go any further here. You've given us advice, it's seems very simple. I'm sure that you can avoid processed foods if you take the time and you have the resources, but can you do that affordably without spending tons and tons of time?
POLLAN: And if we don't, by the way, we're going to suffer from this - you know, we hear this phrase so many times, this epidemic of chronic disease. But the fact is we are at a fork in a road. We're either going to get used to chronic disease and be, you know, in an age of Lipitor and dialysis centers on every corner in the city, or we're going to change the way we eat. I mean, it's really that simple. Most of the things that are killing us these days, whether it's heart disease, diabetes, obesity, many, many cancers are directly attributed to the way we're eating.
INSKEEP: Thanks very much. Good talking with you.
POLLAN: Thanks, Steve. It's a pleasure.
MONTAGNE: Speaking with Steve is Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food." You can hear more from Michael Pollan and read an excerpt from "In Defense of Food" at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
But in the first of two reports, NPR senior correspondent Ketzel Levine discovers that while Kaua'i's native flora continue to be lost, they are also sometimes found.
KETZEL LEVINE: And mints, violets, hollies, primrose - common names, but uncommon plants whose seed miraculously took root here on this island millions of years before people arrived. In the hierarchy of native flora, these are the ancients, overhead and under foot, everywhere I turn, flourishing in a terrarium of a habitat where rain is measured in feet and where the plump ohia blooms.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRUMS)
LEVINE: Unidentified Man: (Singing in Foreign Language)
(SOUNDBITE OF CHANT)
LEVINE: Plants are inseparable from the Hawaiian language. Ohana, the word for family, is rooted in the taro's bulb.
SABRA KAUKA: We come from plants. Our whole philosophy of explaining how we end up on earth comes from plants. We're descendants of plants.
LEVINE: The voice of Sabra Kauka is a familiar one on Kaua'i. She's a champion of Hawaiian language, culture and the traditionally uses of native plants.
KAUKA: So if we see them thriving, we know that we, too, as a people, will thrive. We see them disappear, we, too, disappear.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
LEVINE: And so the need for today's journey with field botanist from the National Tropical Botanical Garden here on Kaua'i, Steve Perlman, who, over the decades - along with a handful of other adventurers - has quite literally risk his life to save endangered plants.
STEVE PERLMAN: We are going to try and collect some seeds from the rarest of the Hawaiian orchids, platanthera holochila, because we're down to only, as far as I know, one plant left on Kaua'i.
LEVINE: Goats, rats, sheep - they're also invasive species. But trumping them all for sheer destructive power is the wild pig.
PERLMAN: In fact, we're going to be tracking our way across the Alakai Swamp using some old hunter trails.
LEVINE: Man, all these gorgeous flowering ginger, and I can't even enjoy it because it's an invasive plant.
DAVID BENDER: Yeah, it's hard to enjoy when you know what it's doing to the ecosystem.
LEVINE: So what is it doing to the ecosystem?
BENDER: Well, as you can see, just...
LEVINE: Also on staff of the botanical garden is restoration ecologist David Bender.
BENDER: Nothing can germinate and grow underneath the shade of this ginger. So the more it spreads - and it spreads really vigorously - the more area it takes over.
LEVINE: When Hurricane Iniki ravaged Kaua'i in 1992, some of the rare species Steve Perlman had been monitoring disappeared. He's not going to let that happen this morning, as we step through spongy bog and close in on the green fringed orchid, the last of its kind on Kaua'i.
PERLMAN: You know, we look under here, just three tiny, little plantlets.
LEVINE: And he scores.
PERLMAN: It's - just going to work my way along the stem.
LEVINE: Wow, it's tiny.
PERLMAN: Fully ripe. Yeah, hundreds of seeds in each pod. So...
LEVINE: Unidentified Child #1: Right there. Right there's the flower.
LEVINE: A child's wonder is part of the payoff for botanists like Steve Perlman, who's talking with kids at a native plant farm.
PERLMAN: This is cyda falleks(ph), and the Malavasi(ph) or...
LEVINE: Plants he's helped rescue now thrive here in cultivated fields under the watch of these second graders and their Hawaiian studies teacher, Sabra Kauka.
KAUKA: Unidentified Group: (Foreign Language spoken)
KAUKA: Unidentified Group: (Foreign Language spoken)
LEVINE: It takes a village and its children to save a native plant.
KAUKA: Unidentified Group: (Foreign Language spoken)
KAUKA: (Foreign Language spoken)
MONTAGNE: To see photos from Ketzel's adventure and follow the fate of the rare fringed orchid, stop by Ketzel's blog, where it's all Kaua'i all week at npr.org/talkingplants.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Ryan Crocker had served for three decades in and around the Middle East. He has been the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon. Now he's in the midst of his toughest assignment. As he looks back at the year just ended, Ryan Crocker says that some signs of progress in 2007 could make for new challenges in 2008.
RYAN CROCKER: You can consider some of them both gains and challenges. The reduction in violence has led to refugee and displaced persons returns. This is clearly a good thing, but it is also a process that has to be carefully managed. Now, as young men get out of the militia business, as they have been doing, they need to have another business to get into. There will be a need for further efforts at political reconciliation, all things that leads to a national level of reconciliation.
MONTAGNE: Let's break down those positives and those challenges, starting with political reconciliation. Is the U.S. government looking at an alternative way to achieve what one might call political reconciliation that doesn't depend on this particular central government?
CROCKER: First, it's not really realistic to expect instant national reconciliation. When you remember how this year began and really how much violence there was, reconciliation under those circumstances just wasn't a possibility. And the dust and the smoke are just clearing from those levels of violence. That said, we are pushing on different fronts on this. We are clearly keeping up the pressure on the national government and the national leadership. But we're also assisting at other levels. There's been a lot of talk about grassroots reconciliation. What happens in the provinces, as we saw in the west in Anbar, and in the predominantly Shia southern provinces, where there has been a popular reaction against extremism, is extremely encouraging. And what is equally encouraging is that as populations, both Sunni and Shia, have rejected violent extremism, they've reached out to each other.
MONTAGNE: Now, they're credited with calming some of the move violent areas in Iraq, and it's a growing movement, up to 80,000 armed men. But it has Shiites worried because it's mostly Sunni and potentially a threat. Could this Sunni movement be a threat to reconciliation itself?
CROCKER: It has been a firm condition of ours that these groups, as they form, commit themselves to support of the new Iraqi state, and everything we do in connection with these groups we do in full coordination with the Iraqi central government. It is key - it is absolutely key to future stability that these groups be linked to the central government, as they have been in Anbar. There are now roughly 24,000 young men in Anbar province wearing the uniform of the Iraqi police and getting their salaries paid by the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad that started out in these awakening or concerned local citizens movements.
MONTAGNE: Right. But in other places, especially in Baghdad, the government has really dragged its feet on bringing these ad hoc forces into the national police or the army, and partly because they say there's just absolutely no way, when you get out of tribal areas, to really check out who's in them.
CROCKER: It is clearly a more sensitive issue as you move into mixed areas. But in our discussions with the Iraqi government, one important point we've agreed on is that not all of these people should or can be accommodated in the security services, the forces. Nor...
MONTAGNE: Right. Because there's just too many of them.
CROCKER: There's too many of them. What I foresee here is probably a situation in which maybe 20 percent will go into security forces and the other 80 percent more or less will need to move into other forms of civilian employment.
MONTAGNE: Ambassador Crocker, all last year the political talk seemed to be about benchmarks - benchmarks that Iraq has to meet, of an oil law, and the return of some Baathists to the government. Some of that is in process. But you were one voice that would have said last year that benchmarks were overrated. Have they now quietly in a way gone by the wayside?
CROCKER: This will continue to be very difficult because it gets at existential issues here. It has to wrestle with, again, the relationship between the center and the provinces or regions, who controls what, who can sign a contract. And it also gets at a very basic issue: what is the role of the private sector or the international private sector in Iraq's oil sector?
MONTAGNE: It sounds like Iraq does need to get an oil law in place, complicated as it may be, or regions of the country than operate on their own, which will make it a lot more complicated.
CROCKER: Absolutely right. I mean, these things are all important. They all need to be done. But I don't think it's correct to say that, well, the fact that they didn't get an oil law in 2007 means that the country has just fallen off the edge.
MONTAGNE: Wouldn't - last question - what signs would you be looking for that would point an arrow towards ultimately a peaceful Iraq?
CROCKER: None of these are tremendously flashy. They are all extremely important, and that's what we'll be working for as we move through 2008. And as we enter the new year I'm cautiously optimistic on the prospects in all of those categories.
MONTAGNE: Ambassador Crocker, thank you for joining us and Happy New Year to you.
CROCKER: Renee, thank you very much and Happy New Year to you, to all of your listeners, and the best for 2008.
MONTAGNE: Ryan Crocker is the U.S. ambassador to Iraq speaking to us from the American embassy in Baghdad.
: quitting smoking, actually going to the gym you joined last year. British researchers have some gender-specific tips on how to follow through with those plans. They say men should set specific goals. Women increase their odds of staying on track when they share their resolutions. The study showed they benefit from the encouragement of others. Both sexes need all the help they can get when it comes to keeping their New Year's promises. Researchers found that at the end of the year, roughly one in 10 people actually manage to fulfill their resolutions.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Commentator John Feinstein joins us now. Good morning. Happy New Year.
JOHN FEINSTEIN: Good morning, Renee. Happy New Year.
MONTAGNE: And was there not a time when New Year's Day marked the end of the college football season?
FEINSTEIN: And as you mentioned, even though there are six games today, it won't be until the 7th of January that the college football season finally ends, and we'll have a bunch of sort of meaningless games in between today and that championship game.
MONTAGNE: Today's games - which though are actually worth turning on the TV for?
FEINSTEIN: So I want to see Hawaii play with their quarterback Colt Brennan against Georgia. And then, of course, the Rose Bowl always has the most tradition, even though it's not a particularly great match-up, because Illinois is a three-loss team playing Southern California, but it's still the Rose Bowl.
MONTAGNE: It's a little remarkable, though, that already 21 bowl games have been played. Look back for us, please.
FEINSTEIN: They need to centralize officiating and make it more professional and make officials accountable, for the sake of the players and the coaches.
MONTAGNE: Any one of those games stand out for you?
FEINSTEIN: Yeah, Penn State/Texas A&M in the Alamo Bowl, because Joe Paterno coached these 500th college football game. Imagine that, Renee. They only played 12, 13 games a year, and he's coached 500 games. And it was nice to see Penn State with Paterno, who turned 81 last week, still bouncing up and down on the sidelines, winning that game.
MONTAGNE: Now, just got a few seconds. The championship, let's get back to that, between Ohio State and LSU.
FEINSTEIN: Yeah, they both sort of got there by default because everybody else lost. A lot of people think LSU is going to win the game easily, but I think Ohio State, which got embarrassed by Florida in the national championship game last year, will really come ready to play, and this will be a very close, competitive game.
MONTAGNE: Close, competitive - any predictions who will win?
FEINSTEIN: Well, I'm going to go with Ohio State, just because I like to pick upsets. Everybody is picking LSU. So you know me, Renee, I'll pick Ohio State.
MONTAGNE: All right. Well, thanks, John.
FEINSTEIN: Thanks, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Talk to you a lot in the New Year. The comments of John Feinstein, whose latest book is "Cover-up: Mystery at the Super Bowl."
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Carrie Kahn went looking for some answers.
BILL MIDDLETON: Go on.
CARRIE KAHN: Bill Middleton calls out to his three cows resting alongside...
MIDDLETON: Come on, girl.
KAHN: ...his 20-acre home in rural San Diego County. His small herd keeps the grass and flammable chaparral low to the ground.
MIDDLETON: It's part of our effort just to try and make our house defensible. That paid its dividends this year when the fire came through.
KAHN: Last October's wildfire literally roared through this picturesque valley just outside the town of Ramona, burning dozens of homes. Middleton, a retired firefighter, says his house is still standing because of its preventative measures and because he stayed by his barn all night to put out half a dozen small fires that erupted from flying embers.
MIDDLETON: If you look at awful lot of the homes that burned out here, they burned right after the fires went over the top. Some of them even the next day. So that meant that there was a small fire hidden some place that people either didn't see or there was nobody there to see it.
KAHN: During congressional hearings held this fall in San Diego, state and federal lawmakers like California's U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein chastised the county for its lack of resources.
DIANNE FEINSTEIN: I deeply believe that San Diego has to increase the size of its fire services. This means eventually a loss of life of a major scale if nothing happens.
KAHN: The county has just two water-dropping helicopters; the city has one. That leaves the state to provide the bulk of crucial aerial assets. And during the October wildfires, state officials refused to let their pilots fly during the first three days of the fires because of safety concerns. Lately there's been growing pressure on San Diego to take responsibility for its own fire protection and unify the region's resources into one agency, even if it costs taxpayers money.
RON ROBERTS: You know, I think a lot of people come in and try to understand San Diego after they've spent five minutes here without realizing that it's distinctly different than some of the other counties in California.
KAHN: Ron Roberts is the chairman of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.
ROBERTS: Distinctly different in that over 51 percent of the county is owned by the state and the federal government. And it necessitates a whole series of different solutions, if you will, because of that.
KAHN: Cary Coleman, chief of the Volunteer Intermountain Fire Department agrees. He says his station operates on an $80,000 a year budget and is adequately staffed to answer the one emergency call a day he averages.
CARY COLEMAN: Professionalism is not defined by a paycheck. It's a standard of performance. And you can do it with volunteers and reserves. There's no reason you can't.
KAHN: Former San Diego City Fire Chief Jeff Bowman calls the current system short-sighted and says it's costs the county 23 lives and more than 4,000 homes in the past four years.
JEFF BOWMAN: It's a great system if you can get away with that.
KAHN: Bowman quit his post after the deadly 2003 Cedar Fire, when officials balked at his calls to fund 22 new fire stations and hire hundreds of new firefighters.
BOWMAN: They just claimed that this region is different. I think it's different as well, but different in a bad way. They just have failed to recognize their responsibility.
KAHN: Carrie Kahn, NPR News, San Diego.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
As NPR's Ted Robbins reports, the measure was having an effect even before it became official.
TED ROBBINS: A few workers and one Chihuahua are sitting around the lobby of the laborers union, Local 383 in Tucson. Things are slow. It's the holiday season. The construction industry is in a slump. But it's Arizona's new law that's sending Salvador Barreras back to Mexico for good. For years he has been going back and forth, crossing legally on a tourist visa, then working illegally - no more.
SALVADOR BARRERAS: (Speaking Spanish)
ROBBINS: The new law, they say, simply imposes state sanctions for what is already a federal violation.
TIM NELSON: Keep in mind, the basic offense of not - of hiring illegal or undocumented aliens has been an offense in federal law since 1996, or longer than that.
ROBBINS: But it's been rarely enforced. Tim Nelson is general counsel for Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, who signed the law last July.
NELSON: The basic conduct of business really isn't any different under this law. This law does impose licensing sanctions. And some other states have started to do that, and we think that more states are going to do that until the Congress enacts comprehensive immigration reform.
ROBBINS: The Arizona law requires employers to check a worker's documents by enrolling in a federal online database called E-Verify. As of yesterday, only about 10,000 of the state's 150,000 employers had signed up. Immigration and employment attorney Julie Pace says she's not surprised by the low number.
JULIE PACE: A lot of companies are deciding that they're going to wait till this plays out in court. It's not that far into January to wait it out. They also are doing hiring freezes in January, in the beginning in particular, and they just won't hire anybody, because if you don't hire anybody you don't have to sign up for E-Verify.
ROBBINS: In the meantime, says David Jones, it's not just illegal workers who are leaving. Jones is president of the Arizona Contractors Association.
DAVID JONES: We're seeing companies right now who are losing employees that are legal, but feeling uncomfortable living in this state and going to Nevada or New Mexico or other states that they feel the environment is more friendly.
ROBBINS: Ted Robbins, NPR News, Tucson.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
And speaking of momentum, some companies offer discounts on employee health care premiums if diet and exercise show results.
ADRIENE HILL: Bottled water industry groups say the tax is the first of its kind in the country - they're considering a lawsuit. Tim Bramlet heads the Illinois Beverage Association and says the city is just looking for a way to fill its coffers.
TIMOTHY BRAMLET: This really isn't an environmental issue. I think that was a subterfuge to try to sell this.
HILL: Outside a gym on Chicago's north side, a number of people support the tax and think the environmental argument's a good one. But Jason Hill, who buys bottled water twice a day, is not a fan. He says the tax has him making other shopping plans.
JASON HILL: I think just like my gas, I'll probably go out of the city to buy water.
HILL: For NPR News, I'm Adrienne Hill in Chicago.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Lucy Craft has the story.
LUCY CRAFT: The sleepy streets of this Tokyo suburb haven't been the same since Ivan Orkin hung out a shingle. It's a few hours before the dinner rush and Orkin is checking his vats of soup and supervising his two assistants. The aromas of garlic and chicken suffuse the tiny kitchen.
IVAN ORKIN: I use whole chickens. It's really just mom's Jewish penicillin, although I don't put any vegetables in it.
CRAFT: Orkin set up shop last June, and he chose this ordinary suburb so he could cater to ordinary Japanese.
ORKIN: You can have a woman come in a beautiful Channel outfit and she will just take off her glasses and slurp like you've never seen anything before. And she's covered in fat, her dress is stained, and she doesn't think a thing of it. She daintily wipes her mouth and she thanks me and she walks out the door.
CRAFT: But Orkin is on a mission, to make the perfect bowl of ramen. His hunger for all things Japanese started when he was a 16-year-old dishwasher at a sushi restaurant. He moved to Japan to teach English, and that's when he discovered ramen. His love for the noodle evokes soliloquies others might reserve for foie gras.
ORKIN: You need the right flavor of egg or pork topping to match with the soup and the noodle. And you need all those things to sort of marry together. And when they marry together, it's a very magical experience. And the noodle is just supposed to be quite al dente. And you make a terrible amount of noise eating it because you have to eat the noodles while the soup is still hot; otherwise the noodles get soft, and that's a fate worse than death.
CRAFT: To Orkin's astonishment, the reception from locals has been as warm as the pork slices he lovingly places on his mounds of noodles.
ORKIN: I had one guy come in with his girlfriend. And they walked in and they reluctantly sat because they were already sort of in the restaurant. But the funny part of the story is they ate the ramen and they both apologized, and then said how wonderful it was. And I haven't seen them recently, but they came in like every week for a month or two. And they just said, oh, you're the best and we love your food, and they just raved about it. And you know, they said we came here, we were shocked, but this is wonderful.
CRAFT: Unidentified Man: (Speaking Japanese)
CRAFT: He compliments the texture of the noodles, saying they're nice and firm. Orkin schmoozes with his customers, and he's learned to wisecrack in Japanese as well as he does in English. He's even become the subject of online conspiracy theories. Some Japanese bloggers rant that Orkin's shop is really a front for a Japanese cook. Others suspect Ivan is not really from Syosset, Long Island, but is actually a Japanese in disguise. To Orkin, this is the highest honor anyone can give him.
ORKIN: I have managed to live a dream. I never thought I would come this far.
CRAFT: For NPR News, this is Lucy Craft in Tokyo.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Happy New Year. I'm Renee Montagne.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Hello, Don.
DON GONYEA: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: How did the various candidates bring in the new year?
GONYEA: Well, let's start with one of the big events in Des Moines last night. It was a Hillary Clinton rally, where she was joined by her husband Bill and her daughter Chelsea. She came out at about 10 p.m., and she told the crowd that her new year's resolution was to run a winning campaign this year.
MONTAGNE: Oh, oh, surprise.
GONYEA: No big surprise there. But then the former president spoke.
BILL CLINTON: My new year's resolution is to never let an opportunity to go by without telling you that she is the best candidate I have ever had a chance to support for president. I hope you'll elect her. God bless you, and Happy New Year.
GONYEA: So that's the former president. As for the other leading Democrats in Iowa, Barack Obama, he held a big rally up in Ames - that's a college town. John Edwards, meanwhile, was bit farther north. He was up in Mason City, meeting with supporters.
MONTAGNE: Okay. Let's turn to the Republicans. And how did they bring in the new year?
GONYEA: Well, Mitt Romney, he did not attend a party. He ended his public schedule right around eight o'clock or so with a walk through a family festival at a local convention center in Des Moines. But there was one moment for Romney to mix it up a little bit when he walked pass a stand where a DJ was playing. In fact, here's a little sound from that scene.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MACARENA")
LOS DEL RIO: (Singing in Spanish)
GONYEA: Okay, we all know that song.
MONTAGNE: "Macarena."
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
GONYEA: Exactly. And for the record, Renee, Mitt Romney did not dance the "Macarena." He stood. He watched. I can tell you, he did tap his toe, but only just a bit.
MONTAGNE: And the current frontrunner, Mike Huckabee, was he tucked in early or out there celebrating?
GONYEA: He was tucked in pretty early as well. I can tell you, midday yesterday, he held a big news conference where he made a big announcement that he would not run a very tough attack ad that his campaign had put together just the day before, really going after Mitt Romney. At this conference, he told more than a hundred reporters there that he would run a positive campaign. But then, he turned around and played the attack ad anyway for the media, just to prove that they actually had one. Later, at his New Year's Eve party, it was about 6 p.m. in Des Moines at a Country Club, he talked to supporters there again about the decision not to run the ad.
MIKE HUCKABEE: I'll tell you why, because tonight when I put my head on the pillow in 2007 and I plan not to wake until 2008...
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
HUCKABEE: ...I'll be able to sleep with peace in my heart that I know I've done the right thing, even if it's not the most politically conventional thing.
MONTAGNE: Although, Don, sounds like he got it both ways.
GONYEA: That's certainly what it appears. He says that's a cynical interpretation of it.
MONTAGNE: The Des Moines Register release it's final a pre-caucus poll. Tell us about that?
GONYEA: Well, the number show something very interesting, that there are a lot of people hugely enthused about these caucuses this year. Of course, they're wide open on both sides. And 60 percent of the Democratic caucus goers, those who are expected to participate, say it will be their first ever. On the Republican side, it's also a big number, 40 percent, and there are still enough undecideds out there to make it very fluid. As for who's ahead on the Democratic side, Barack Obama has a seven point lead. Then bunched together behind him are Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Mike Huckabee's still ahead of Mitt Romney on the Republican side.
MONTAGNE: And what will the candidates be doing on this New Year's Day? Is it actually a campaign day?
GONYEA: Oh, it's a campaign day. Now Mitt Romney has set up a day-long series of football watching parties. The others will all be attending rallies and town hall meeting and going door to door, and it's really all about turnout now.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Don Gonyea in Des Moines, Iowa. And Don, Happy New Year.
GONYEA: And to you. Thank you.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's David Welna followed John Edwards on the campaign trail this week as he tried to nail down support.
DAVID WELNA: It was icy with dense fog the other night in Sioux City. Still, 69-year-old Joy Thompson, who's never attended a caucus before, showed up for John Edwards rally because, like many other Iowans, she decided that this year she will caucus. But she's still shopping for a candidate.
JOY THOMPSON: I don't know. See, I'm right at the cut point where I just don't know.
WELNA: And what could Edwards say to make the sale for you tonight?
THOMPSON: Well, he's - they've been calling, and so I just decided to come and listen. You have to start at some place.
WELNA: But the jury is still out.
THOMPSON: It is out.
WELNA: There were others who showed up at the Sioux City rally, it seems, just to show up, like Eric Newhouse, who admits Edwards is not his preferred candidate.
ERIC NEWHOUSE: It's Obama.
WELNA: Obama? But you came here to hear Edwards, anyway.
NEWHOUSE: Absolutely. Well, if nothing else, if he's going to come all this way - because so many millions of dollars and jobs and whatnot go into making these caucuses happen, this may be the last time we get to do this. I know a lot of the rest of country would may be we - rather we do this some other way, so, you know, it's the least we could do to show up and support anybody who comes out here.
WELNA: And there were others at this same rally who, too, backed another candidate. Sixty-eight year old Mara Sylvester was one of them.
MARA SYLVESTER: I'm going to caucus for Hillary.
WELNA: Really? And you're here to hear John Edwards a few days before the caucus.
SYLVESTER: Well, yeah.
WELNA: Why is that? Do you still have some doubts?
SYLVESTER: No, because he's my second choice.
WELNA: And Edwards himself nearly pleaded later with the crowd to seal the deal with him.
JOHN EDWARDS: I'm asking everyone who can hear the sound of my voice to go to the caucuses to caucus for me. Please take five of your friends with you if you can. And I'll tell you this: If you're willing to caucus for me, this is what I'll do for you. I will fight for you with every fiber of my being.
WELNA: That populous appeal from Edwards resonated with Kevin Pate(ph), a 47- year-old independent.
KEVIN PATE: It's between Barack Obama and John Edwards at this point. But I like John Edwards' enthusiasm and passion. I really do. That comes through it. Being here tonight, it really comes through.
WELNA: So you think it's possible you could caucus for him on Thursday?
PATE: Oh, yeah. Definitely.
WELNA: Fifty-nine-year-old artist Paul Chelstad is also an independent. For him, Edwards did seal the deal.
PAUL CHELSTAD: Should I say who I was for? I was for Biden. And I really like Biden, but I think Edwards would probably be more effective as an out - as more of an outsider. And after tonight, I think I'm for Edwards.
WELNA: At another Edwards stop in Storm Lake yesterday, as the candidate pushed through the crowd, he got buttonholed by retired farmwife Edna Grow(ph).
EDNA GROW: I wouldn't mind to hear your thoughts on what we can do about Pakistan.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
GROW: It's dangerous.
EDWARDS: Yeah, I'll tell you real quick. How about that? I talked to President Musharraf on Thursday. I put a call in, and he called me back. I've known him for years. I met him in Islamabad a few years ago.
WELNA: Still, that was not enough to sway Grow into making Edwards her first choice at the caucuses.
GROW: I am still starting out with Biden. He seems to have a little more foreign experience than John Edwards. But I'm sure I will end up with John Edwards.
WELNA: Less sure about that was 20-year-old college student Andy Berkler(ph), who, too, was at the Storm Lake rally.
ANDY BERKLER: And mostly just Obama and Edwards are the two that I can't decide between.
WELNA: Why can't you decide between them?
BERKLER: I'm just trying to find out what's going to put one over the top.
WELNA: David Welna, NPR News, Des Moines, Iowa.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
As NPR's Philip Reeves reports, this is a contentious issue among those vying for power in Pakistan.
PHILIP REEVES: Pakistan's pro-government Election Commission was supposed to announce its decision today. The country's in crisis, uncertainties only feeding instability. The commission met, yet afterwards, Secretary Kanwar Dilshad revealed it still hadn't made up its mind.
KANWAR DILSHAD: The political party's nearly (unintelligible).
REEVES: But what happens if the elections are held sometime soon and the PPP does, as expected, emerge the winner? The PPP would then get to choose the prime minister who'd have to work with Musharraf. Many within the party believe that elements of Musharraf's government and the intelligence agencies are complicit in Bhutto's killing, and trying to cover up the details.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHATTER)
REEVES: Unidentified Group: (Chanting in Foreign Language)
REEVES: Here, they don't believe the government's claim that Bhutto wasn't shot, but died after she hit her head on her car roof because of the shockwaves from a suicide bombing. And, says one of the mourners, Annan Raman Jowbani(ph), they also don't believe the government when it says Bhutto was killed by al- Qaida.
ANNAN RAMAN JOWBANI: I don't believe in them. The majority of Pakistan people, they don't believe this (unintelligible) these stories.
REEVES: It is hard to imagine, in this atmosphere, how the party of Benazir Bhutto could ever govern the country alongside Musharraf. Some observers believe this means Musharraf will have to go sooner or later. Not all, however. Javed Jabar(ph) served in Benazir Bhutto's cabinet in the late '80s. It was a decade after Bhutto's father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed by the military government of Zia-ul-Haq. The party was still boiling with resentment, but Jabar says Benazir Bhutto took a flexible approach when she came to power in late 1988.
JAVED JABAR: She was pragmatic enough to deal with elements who had publicly been identified as being associated with those who had supported Mr. Bhutto's execution.
REEVES: Philip Reeves, NPR News, Karachi.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
And voters help us ring in the new year today. We're talking to people living and working along Interstate 10 - or The 10, as it's known here on the West Coast. Steve continues our journey.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Welcome to the program.
LOU ANN HUSKISON: Thank you.
INSKEEP: Why's it called Peoria?
ANN HUSKISON: Some of the settlers actually did come from Peoria, Illinois, and for some weird reason, they just named it Peoria.
INSKEEP: And let's introduce the second person here, and then we'll begin our conversation. Rocky McDonald is in Hachita, New Mexico. Am I - Hachita, am I pronouncing that correctly?
ROCKY MCDONALD: Hachita, yes, sir. Hachita's actually an old mining camp.
INSKEEP: What do you do for a living?
MCDONALD: I ride bulls, actually, and I've got a ranch here in Hachita.
INSKEEP: You ride bulls?
MCDONALD: Yes, sir.
INSKEEP: When they open the gate at the rodeo and the bull comes storming out, you're the guy on the bull.
MCDONALD: Yes, sir.
INSKEEP: Lou Ann Huskison, what kind of a place is Peoria? It looks from the map like you're outside of Phoenix, Arizona.
ANN HUSKISON: Yes. It's a suburb of Phoenix along with Glendale, Mesa, Chandler - we just surround Phoenix.
INSKEEP: And what do you do there?
ANN HUSKISON: I have several jobs. I do volunteer works for veterans groups, and I also work for the U.S. Post Office.
INSKEEP: I guess we actually found you at a VFW today.
ANN HUSKISON: Yes, you did.
INSKEEP: Well, now as you think about life in Peoria, Arizona and what's going on in your community or in the country, what's on your mind?
ANN HUSKISON: I feel we're just not doing enough for the veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. They're having lots of different problems, and they just don't go to the people that they're supposed to go to. You know, we've got plenty of people out there to help them. We need them to contact us so that we can help them and get them to the right people.
INSKEEP: You have conversations with Iraq veterans from time to time, and they say, I'm okay.
ANN HUSKISON: Yeah.
INSKEEP: Do you have family in the military?
ANN HUSKISON: I had family in the military. My father was in the Air Force and my brother was in the Army, and my husband was in the Navy, and I was in the Navy.
INSKEEP: You were in the Navy. When were you in the Navy?
ANN HUSKISON: I was in the Navy in '74 through '76.
INSKEEP: Now before we turn to Rocky McDonald and some of other guests here, I just want to mention you're in the state of Arizona, and one of your senators is running president - John McCain.
ANN HUSKISON: Yes.
INSKEEP: What do you think of McCain or any of the other candidates?
ANN HUSKISON: Sometimes I wonder. They say they're going to do something and then other people come back and say, well, wait a minute. I just don't know who to trust anymore.
INSKEEP: Do you remember who you voted for the last couple of elections?
ANN HUSKISON: Yes. George Bush.
INSKEEP: Well, Rocky McDonald in Hachita, New Mexico, did you vote for President Bush in 2004?
MCDONALD: Yes, sir. I sure did.
INSKEEP: And do you still support him?
MCDONALD: I do.
INSKEEP: Now as I look on the map here of Interstate 10 across the country, I see that Hachita is a little south of Interstate 10, and it would be hard to get much further south without being in Mexico.
MCDONALD: It is. I believe my house is about five miles off the Mexican border.
INSKEEP: Is immigration a big deal where you are?
MCDONALD: It is. Everything here on the news, it's right down where we live. I got a ranch down there, and at times would - you'll see a few of them walking across or trying to get across.
INSKEEP: Does this issue concern you?
MCDONALD: You know, it's pretty tough for me. I mean, everyone should come across legal. But, I mean, living down there by the border, you got to realize those people are coming across. They have nothing to lose.
INSKEEP: Welcome to the program.
REGINA BLANKENSHIP: Thank you.
INSKEEP: And you're a little bit to the northeast of Hachita. What's in Deming?
BLANKENSHIP: Deming is a community, pretty much farming right now. Growing the chili and just about anything that'll grow in the soil down here.
INSKEEP: Well, now, we were just talking about immigrants. Are there a lot of immigrant workers who work those other crops?
BLANKENSHIP: Sure. There's a lot of immigrant workers here. It's pretty positive. The community supports people that come in and want to work. The negative stuff is the amount of drug trafficking that happens.
INSKEEP: What are the drugs?
BLANKENSHIP: Right now, we're having a big issue with meth.
INSKEEP: Oh, methamphetamines.
BLANKENSHIP: But I believe that they're coming across with just about anything you can think of. We just - our proximity to the border is what brings that through, I'm sure.
INSKEEP: And I hate to mention, you've also got an interstate there, which means you get across the border, you get on that interstate, you can go straight to Los Angeles. You can go straight to El Paso, where we're going next.
BLANKENSHIP: Mm-hmm.
INSKEEP: Welcome to the program, sir.
MIKE TISDALE: Thank you.
INSKEEP: What do you do for a living in El Paso?
TISTLE: I'm the family ministries pastor at First Baptist Church.
INSKEEP: And you're right there on the Rio Grande River.
TISTLE: We are.
INSKEEP: Looking across at Mexico.
TISTLE: Exactly.
INSKEEP: You've heard some folks mention some other concerns ranging from the war to immigration to drug trafficking. Any of those issues on your mind in El Paso?
TISTLE: Of course, the immigration issue. We have a sister city right here on the border.
INSKEEP: Ciudad Juarez?
TISTLE: Yes.
INSKEEP: I'm just looking at the map here.
TISTLE: Over three million people in this area. I'm a bike rider. I go out into New Mexico up to towards Los Cruces. And a lot of times, you know, we see the border, and all it is is nothing but, you know, a barbed wire. There is no fence. And I think that's something that is a concern here.
INSKEEP: Are there other big national issues that seem to make themselves felt in that large metropolitan area?
TISTLE: Well, of course, we have Fort Bliss here, which we're expecting 30,000 troops over the next five years, coming in. So the military is a huge portion of the El Paso economy and community.
INSKEEP: And the war in Iraq or the war the Afghanistan, are they felt directly there?
TISTLE: Absolutely. I just was at Cracker Barrel yesterday and saw one of the main man in the 401 Brigade that just flew in an evening before about midnight, and they were having breakfast together as a family for the first time in around 15 months. And we've lost around 32, 33 men in the last 15 months. So we are trying to do support groups for our troops, to help them get back into civilian life here in the United States when they get back.
INSKEEP: Mike Tisdale in El Paso, you're talking about people reaching out in the community. There seems to be a lot of inclination for people to try to tackle problems on their own in this group.
BLANKENSHIP: Well, this is Regina. I think that's kind of a trend in our society right now. Individuals are more important than the whole.
INSKEEP: Sounds like you think there's a little too much individualism out there.
BLANKENSHIP: I think there's a little too much. I think we still - I mean, there's a lot of people that feel like our country is important. But we can't seem to pull it all together and make a difference as a group when we have so many folks that are thinking, well, yeah, maybe the environment is important, but for right now I want to have that big vehicle, that big home. You know, I want have it all.
INSKEEP: Rocky McDonald, I'm sure there's no individualism at all in the bull riding business, right?
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
MCDONALD: If I do good, I can blame it on myself. And if I do bad, I can blame it on myself as well. You know, I, definitely, you know, which president get elected, it's going to affect everybody's life and how it goes. No matter who it is, you've got to back him, whether you like it or not. And I think that's one of the things that people from the country don't do.
INSKEEP: Has anybody on the line here - in this stretch of Interstate 10 from near Phoenix all the way to El Paso, Texas - anybody on the line here feel excited about any of their choices at this early stage in the presidential campaign?
BLANKENSHIP: No.
ANN HUSKISON: No.
INSKEEP: Well, in that cheerful note...
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: ...thank you all. I've enjoyed learning what's - a little bit of what's going on in your communities.
BLANKENSHIP: No problem.
ANN HUSKISON: Thank you.
MCDONALD: It's good to be here.
TISTLE: Thank you.
INSKEEP: And we're going to continue this journey on Interstate 10 tomorrow going right across the State of Texas, which will take forever, and then getting into Louisiana.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Lynn Neary spent time with Geraldine Brooks at her home on Martha's Vineyard.
LYNN NEARY: Growing up in Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks yearned to see the world. So she began corresponding with pen pals in the some of the places she hoped to visit someday: France, Israel, the United States. One of Brooks' pen pals lived in the village of Menemsha on Martha's Vineyard. She has since died, but her family's cottage - tiny, but perfect - still sits where it always has, overlooking a small harbor.
GERALDINE BROOKS: Back here - back in - after this little field...
NEARY: Brooks wrote about tracking down her pen pals as adults in her book "Foreign Correspondence."
BROOKS: It was funny how, that if you like foreign correspondences of the pen pal letters lead me into the career being a foreign correspondent for a newspaper.
NEARY: And now full circle.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
NEARY: Here you are living on this very quiet island, away from all the turmoil of the world that you covered.
BROOKS: Unidentified Woman: There you go.
BROOKS: Thank you. Well, I think we're good to go.
NEARY: Brooks pursues domesticity as avidly as she once traveled the world covering wars. And her partner in both adventures is her husband, Tony Horowitz.
TONY HOROWITZ: One, two, three, four, five, six. Okay.
NEARY: They share their home in the town of Vineyard Haven with their 11-year- old son Nathaniel, Brooks' mother and a nephew. Horowitz is also a writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. But Horowitz insists without Brooks, he would never have become a foreign correspondent. He vividly remembers the first time they covered combat together. They were on a helicopter, flying to the front of the Iran-Iraq war.
HOROWITZ: And because of the desert wind and the ground fire below, this helicopter was shaking and bucking. And, you know, I'm looking out the open hatch, you know, just puking with terror, and I look over and Geraldine has nodded it off. Turbulence relaxes her, and she'd gone to sleep on the way to our first battle.
NEARY: In the old days, Horowitz says, they often shared a byline. And even after they gave up their lives as foreign correspondents, they would edit each other non-fiction works.
HOROWITZ: And then Geraldine went to the dark side and started making stuff up. And I have no idea how to create a character or a plot, so she's all on her own now.
NEARY: Though Brooks has left non-fiction behind, she still likes to hang her novels on what she calls the scaffold of history. Her new novel, "People of the Book," also draws on her experience as a foreign correspondent. It's a fictional account of a real book, a 15th century Jewish manuscript known as the Sarajevo Haggadah. A Haggadah is used in the Jewish Passover service, and Brooks says this one looked perfectly ordinary from the outside.
BROOKS: Because it was rebound in Vienna in the 1890s, and it was kind of shoddily done. And then you open it, and boom. It's just this flare of color and brightness. So it's quite a magic contrast between the closed book and the open book.
NEARY: The book's illustrations were not only beautiful, but rare. Until it was discovered, no one knew such artwork existed in Jewish texts of that time. The manuscript was the treasure of the Bosnian Museum's library. Brooks first heard of it when she was covering the siege to Sarajevo. Rumors were flying about its whereabouts. Some thought the manuscript was lost.
BROOKS: And then somebody else said, no, no, no. It wasn't lost. It was sold by the Muslim government to buy arms. And somebody else said no, no, no. That's not true. The Israelis sent the Mossad in, and they took it out through the tunnel under the airport. And then I heard later that the Haggadah had been brought out and that it had been brought out and that it had been saved by a Muslim librarian.
NEARY: These stories emerge trough the character of Hannah, a young Australian book conservator who is working on the manuscript. Hannah uncovers the series of clues in its parchment pages, as in this excerpt, read by Brooks.
BROOKS: (Reading) "A tiny speck of something fluttered from the binding. Carefully, with a sable brush, I moved it onto a slide and passed it under the microscope. Eureka. I was a tiny fragment of insect wing - translucent, veined. We live in a world of arthropods, and maybe the wing came from a common insect and wouldn't tell us anything. But maybe it was a rarity with a limited geographic range, or maybe it was from a species now extinct. Either would add knowledge to the history of the book."
NEARY: Brooks also set out to learn the history of the book. Over the centuries, it had survived despite the horrors of the inquisition, the rise of Nazism, the holocaust, and finally, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Brooks knew she had to tell its story when she learned the manuscript have been created in Spain during a time when Christians, Jews and Muslims had lived in peace.
BROOKS: And then all of that had been torn apart by the inquisition and the expulsion from Spain of Muslims and Jews. And the book had somehow found its way to Sarajevo, where exactly the same story was being enacted again, this kind of bastion of multicultural acceptance and celebration was being torn apart by this fear of the other. And I thought how strange this little book's made that journey and found itself in the same place.
NEARY: Lynn Neary, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MONTAGNE: Happy New Year. I'm Renee Montagne.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
In China, a giant reservoir behind a huge dam on the Yangtze River will reach its maximum height next year. The Three Gorges Dam is the biggest hydroelectric plant in the world. For years, China has touted the dam as a way to stop flooding, increase river shipping and generate clean power. But last September, officials in China publicly admitted that the project could lead to environmental disasters. This prompted speculation that China's leaders wanted to distance themselves from the project.
NPR's Beijing correspondent Anthony Kuhn recently traveled the length of the reservoir, speaking to residents about how it's affecting them.
Today, we begin a three-part series, looking at the Three Gorges Dam and its impact on the Yangtze, the world's third longest river.
ANTHONY KUHN: I'm now standing on a bluff overlooking the Three Gorges Dam. The scale of the thing is absolutely amazing. It's 600 feet high and nearly a mile and a half across. It's still under construction and there are cranes all over the thing, and visitors are not yet allowed on it.
In 2009, when the dam is completed, it will have taken 17 years to build, at an estimated cost of around $24 billion. About half-century ago, Chairman Mao wrote a poem envisioning how the dam would conquer the river. The dam will cut through the clouds and rain of the Wuxia Gorge, he wrote, and a smooth lake will appear amid the deep canyons.
That's pretty much what it looks like now. The river's once fierce current has been turned into a placid lake, extending for about 370 miles upstream from the dam.
(Soundbite of hammering)
KUHN: Carpenter Ran Yunnong has witnessed the changes. He's working on his boat with a hammer and chisel next to the reservoir. Ran used to work for a shipping company. It went bankrupt when one of its boats capsized in a whirlpool, drowning 30 people.
Mr. RAN YUNNONG (Resident, China): (Through translator) The whirlpools were big back then. If your boat got caught in one, it would spin you around. Now the river's easy to navigate. Honestly, a 15-year-old kid could steer a boat up with no problem. There are no big waves anymore.
(Soundbite of running water)
KUHN: Across the river, fisherman Wang Zaiguo is tidying up his boat. He says that the rising waters have dramatically changed the river's ecology and affected his livelihood.
Mr. WANG ZAIGUO (Resident, China): (Through translator) The rising waters have made it hard for us to catch fish. The fish hide in the middle of the reservoir where the water is deepest and dense water plants prevent our nets from catching them.
KUHN: At a September 25th meeting, top officials in charge of the Three Gorges Project warned that without preventive measures, the dam could cause an ecological catastrophe. This admission came as a major surprise to critics of the dam, who were used to having their views steamrolled by the government.
Wu Dengming is head of the Green Volunteer League of Chongqing.
Mr. WU DENGMING (President, Green Volunteer League of Chongqing): (Through translator) In the past, these problems were taboo. NGOs and experts have raised them for a long time, but this is the first time the government has done so. This was a great encouragement to us environmental activists.
KUHN: Deng says that the administration of President Hu Jintao has begun to face up to the environmental costs of development. It's taken a cautious attitude towards mega-construction projects. And observers noticed when no central government leader showed up for the ceremony last year marking the official completion of the dam.
At a press conference in November, the government appeared to backpedal hard from its warnings.
Wang Xiaofeng, a top cabinet official in charge of the Three Gorges Project, cited an official 1991 environmental impact assessment. He said its conclusions were still valid.
Mr. WANG XIAOFENG (Deputy Director, Three Gorges Dam Project): (Through translator) The conclusion was that environmental issues will not affect the feasibility of the project. On the whole, the impact of the Three Gorges Project on the environment will have more upside than downside.
KUHN: One concern about the Three Gorges is the issue of silt. Here on the banks of the Yangtze, you often see large shoals of big, flat river rocks. These rocks make a heavy sort of silt, and it takes a strong current to wash it downstream.
Wu Dengming says that 600 million tons of silt enter the reservoir each year. Meanwhile, the dam has slowed the river's flow from its original maximum speed of 13 feet a second.
Mr. DENGMING: (Through translator) The speed on the surface is about one foot a second. And at the middle and lower depths of the reservoir, the speed is about zero. This will cause large quantities of silt to accumulate in the Three Gorges.
KUHN: At the November press conference, government expert Pan Jiazheng rebutted this criticism.
Mr. PAN JIAZHENG (Water Conservation Expert): (Through translator) The amount of silt entering the reservoir is less than 40 percent of what we had estimated. And the amount of silt discharged downriver through the dam is greater than we had predicted. So everything is under control.
KUHN: The government also insists that pollution in the reservoir is under control. They point to newly built sewage treatment plants, and sanitation workers who skim thousands of tons of floating rubbish off the reservoir each year.
(Soundbite of footsteps)
KUHN: But problems remain. Residents on the Jialing River, a tributary of the Yangtze River near the city of Chongqing, have been campaigning for years against a local chemical plant that they say is illegally polluting.
Qu Guoxiao says he has watched many co-workers die of cancer in the 30 years he has worked at, and lived near, the plant. He adds that the pollution aggravates his own asthma.
Mr. QU GUOXIAO (Resident, China): (Through translator) Every night, the factory emits dust and smoke from those chimneys. It settles on our homes and on the ground, which turns yellow when it rains. It contains acid, mercury and other chemicals and has a great impact on residents' health.
KUHN: Residents point to a spot where they say the factory dumps polluted water at night, which flows into the Three Gorges Reservoir.
(Soundbite of dog barking)
KUHN: About 20 miles upstream from the dam, residents of Miaohe village are being resettled following a major landslide in April. In September, officials warned that the dam is causing more frequent geological disasters.
(Soundbite of noise)
KUHN: As his wife cooks sweet potatoes, one local farmer recalls the April landslide. He says officials have warned them not to talk to reporters, and he asks that his name not be used.
Unidentified Man: (Through translator) A big crack suddenly appeared in our wall, this wide, stretching from the ceiling almost to the floor. We reported it, local officials came over. They moved us to shelter in a tunnel, where we lived for several months.
KUHN: Environmental activists concede that the Three Gorges Dam is already a reality, and no amount of criticism will make it go away.
Activist Wu Dengming says that all that can be done now is to keep the threat of environmental catastrophe to a minimum. If there is an environmental disaster, he warns, it won't just be China's problem. It will be the world's.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, on the Three Gorges Reservoir.
MONTAGNE: And tomorrow, we'll hear about the problems involved in resettling more than one million people affected by the Three Gorges Project. You can read more at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Okay, beyond the bowls, if there is one thing commentator Frank DeFord could add to the world of college football, it would be paychecks.
FRANK DeFORD: Some things in sport, as some things in life, never really get changed, even when they are indefensible. We say life is unfair and move on. Sports, though, are supposed to be altogether fair. Ha-ha. The level playing field. But alas, that's only so when referees are around.
Still, every now and then it's worth bringing up some glaring inequity, even if it's pointless to do so. So now, when college basketball is in full swing and college football is at its climax, with bowls jammed with high-paying customers, with television revenue pouring in - not to mention all the money that hotels and airlines and restaurants and souvenir salesmen and announcers and sportswriters and coaches and athletic directors are raking in - now is a good time to lament anew that, my gracious, isn't it interesting that the only people not making money are the people actually playing the games.
Yes, it is perfectly unconscionable that big-time college football and basketball players go unpaid. They are employees and deserve to be paid based on the National Labor Relations Act.
First of all, a little history is in order. When college football became a popular sensation more than a hundred years ago, the concept of amateurism was in full sway. Okay. All Olympic athletes, for example, had to live by what was always called the amateur ideal.
But all that has changed. The most popular Olympic sports have all gone pro. Today, in all the world amongst big-ticket spectator sports virtually the only athletes who are not paid are our college football and basketball players - whose numbers, ironically, include so many poor African-Americans.
That this should be so in the United States, bastion of both freedom and capitalism, makes it even worse. That this should remain the case when college sports charge Broadway ticket prices and pay their coaches literally millions of dollars makes it even more shameful.
Moreover, colleges always emphasize that football and basketball make so much money that they pay for the entire athletic program. To me, this only adds to the cynicism. Not only do poor black kids get no remuneration for their work, they are expected to carry all these other coaches and players and teams on their backs with their unpaid labor.
Basically, a scholarship boils down to a device to keep the players on the premises where they can perform their services for free. Okay, they get a lot of perks. They live well. They're the equivalent of what we used to call kept women.
Besides, why is it that only athletes must perform for the so-called love of the game? Nobody cares if college kids who are actors or musicians or writers or dancers can make a buck using their talent. Why is an athlete any different?
But at the end of the day it isn't an economic issue so much as a moral one. It's absolutely evil that only here in the United States do we allow this unscrupulous 19th century arrangement to continue to exist - and nobody anymore hardly even bothers to bring up this awful injustice.
(Soundbite of music)
MONTAGNE: Frank DeFord joins us each Wednesday from member station WFHU in Fairfield, Connecticut.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
During the first week of 1946, Alabama beat USC in the Rose Bowl. Emperor Hirohito announced he was not a god, after all. And the first baby boomers were born. Nearly 80 million more arrived before the end of 1964, the last year of the baby boom. Their influence has rippled through the culture. And in the past couple of decades, their looming retirement has buffeted American politics.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): We've got 78 million baby boomers who are going to be retiring over the next couple of decades.
Mr FRED THOMPSON (Actor, Presidential Candidate): In 2017, Social Security will be in the red.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: We must pass reforms that solve the financial problems of Social Security once and for all.
MONTAGNE: Well, folks, the baby boom's retirement is no longer looming; it's here. This year, the first baby boomers will turn 62, making them eligible to claim early Social Security retirement benefits.
NPR's John Ydstie has more in this milestone for the baby boom and the implications for the nation's retirement program.
JOHN YDSTIE: America's baby boomers have often felt they were something special. They were, after all, a bumper crop of children that symbolized the hope of America, an America that had regained its footing after years of economic depression and war. They were celebrated by their parents, studied by demographers and targeted by advertisers. And the culture of their youth still lingers in the air.
(Soundbite of news broadcast)
Unidentified Man #2: President Johnson's unilateral move toward the escalation of the Vietnamese war…
(Soundbite of song, "The Times They Are A-Changing")
Mr. ROBERT ALLEN ZIMMERMAN, aka BOB DYLAN (Songwriter): (Singing)…the loser now will be later to win, for the times, they are a-changing…
(Soundbite of Song, "The Ballad of Jed Clampett")
FLATT and SCRUGGS (Bluegrass duo): (singing) Come and listen to a story 'bout a man named Jed. The poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed.
(Soundbite of movie, "The Graduate")
Mr. DUSTIN HOFFMAN (Actor): (As Benjamin Braddock) Oh, my god.
Ms. ANNE BANCROFT (Actress): (As Mrs. Robinson) Pardon?
Mr. HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) Oh, no, Mrs. Robinson. Oh, no.
Ms. BANCROFT: (As Mrs. Robinson) What's wrong?
Mr. HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. HOFFMAN: (As Benjamin Braddock) Aren't you?
YDSTIE: That was Dustin Hoffman, of course, struggling with generational issues in the movie "The Graduate."
Baby boomers have always lived in denial about growing old. Hey, 62 is the new 50, right? Except that, now, you're eligible for a Social Security check.
Ms. BETSY RASHANG (Middle School Teacher): See you, good luck.
YDSTIE: Betsy Rashang(ph), a middle school teacher from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, is engaging in a very baby boom activity: trying to fend off the effects of aging in the school gym.
Ms. RASHANG: If I go and consistently go to the workout room, I might - I just feel better. I just feel better - that's all.
YDSTIE: Rashang will turn 62 this year and she has decided to retire. It's not because she's tired of her students, she says, but she'd like more time with her family and for reading and volunteering.
Ms. RASHANG: Sometimes working gets in the way of life - not always, but sometimes.
YDSTIE: Like other people who retire at 62, Rashang will get about 25 percent less in her monthly Social Security check than if she had waited until her full retirement age of 66.
Ms. RASHANG: I know that, you know, you'll receive less - that's true. But then again, life is a gamble and you don't know how long you're going to live. So…
YDSTIE: Long-term trends predict that, like the generation before them, more than a third of baby boomers will retire at age 62. But some studies suggest baby boomers might stay in the workforce longer. That makes sense since they'll remain healthier and live longer.
Steve Goss, Social Security's chief actuary, says if they did put off retirement, it could help solve the program's financial problems.
Mr. STEPHEN GOSS (Chief Actuary, Social Security Administration): From the point of view of financing of Social Security - and then, actually, even everybody's well-being, we actually would, if anything - probably encourage people, if they're able to continue working, to work a little bit longer and not retire at 62.
YDSTIE: That's because the problem for Social Security, as we've all heard before, is that the number of workers supporting each retiree will fall from a little over three to about two as the baby boom retires. Actually, that problem arises less from the baby boom than from the baby bust, says Goss. In fact, he says birthrates during the baby boom - a little over three children per woman - worth much above the historical average.
Mr. GOSS: The real change was after the baby boom - sometimes referred to as the baby bust. The birthrate drops down to a level more in the order of two children per woman. We actually reach an all-time low within the one year in 1976 of 1.7 children per woman. And that's what's really causing a big shift in the financing of Social Security and Medicare.
YDSTIE: Of course, that's the baby boom's fault. They had fewer children. But they had some help too.
(Soundbite of song, "The Pill")
Ms. LORETTA LYNN (Singer): (Singing) There's a gonna be some changes made right here on nursery hill. You've set this chicken your last time 'cause now I've got the pill.
YDSTIE: If you're a baby boomer, you might remember Loretta Lynn's controversial song. The result of the pill and the lower birthrate is that the ratio of workers to retirees will drop over the next couple of decades. In just 10 years, there won't be enough payroll taxes coming in to cover all the promised benefits. Social Security will tap its trust fund to make up the short fall. But by 2041, the trust fund will be tapped out and incoming payroll taxes will cover just 75 percent of promised benefits.
This scenario has been described as catastrophic by some politicians and critics of Social Security. Economist Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution argues the rhetoric overstates the problem.
Mr. HENRY AARON (Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution): I think it's a mistake to focus what, in some quarters, is almost a hysterical sense of urgency on the Social Security problem and not spend as much time on the other problem.
YDSTIE: The other problem is federal health care spending. Future increases in Medicare and Medicaid dwarf the Social Security problem. Their cost will rise 300 percent over the next four decades, while Social Securities rises by 40 percent. In fact, Aaron points out, Social Security could be made installment for 75 years by increasing the payroll tax by one percentage point for workers and one percentage point for employers. That two percent solution isn't necessarily Aaron's preferred fix but it's one indication of the size of the problem.
Mr. ALAN VIARD (Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute): Some people probably are overstating and that's certainly not something I want to do.
YDSTIE: That's Alan Viard of the American Enterprise Institute. He aggress Social Security's problem has been overstated by some.
Mr. VIARD: It's absolutely true that Social Security has a less serious problem than Medicare, but I think it's also somewhat misleading to treat to them as completely separate. They're both going on at the same time and they both pose the same kind of challenges to us, which is that we're going to have an increasing amount of money paid in by workers and going to retirees on a pay-as-you-go basis.
YDSTIE: Viard's fix involves cutting promised benefits for everyone but the least affluent 30 percent of future retirees. He would do that by linking their initial benefit to increases in prices rather than increases in wages, as is now the case. Overtime, that would cut promised benefits dramatically, some say too dramatically.
In any case, Viard says fixing Social Security's problems are better done sooner than later.
Mr. VIARD: The longer we wait, the more likely an extreme solution becomes. I think that if we want to preserve Social Security and restore public confidence that we really do need to act quickly.
YDSTIE: For his part, Henry Aaron of Brookings agrees the sooner adjustments are made to Social Security the better. But he argues Medicare and Medicaid and the nation's health care system should be tackled first.
John Ydstie, NPR News, Washington.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And let's move to another country that has the United States concerned. The many opponents of the U.S. in Iraq include an anti-American leader who is nearly always identified in news reports as a radical Shiite cleric. In 2008, he may focus a little less on the radical part and a little more on being a cleric. Muqtada al-Sadr heads Iraq's biggest Shiite militia movement. His followers have many votes in Iraq's parliament. But this year, his aides say Sadr will launch himself into serious religious studies.
NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson has the story.
SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON: This Shiite seminary or Hausa in Najaf is the most famous in the world. It's here where aides of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr say he is resuming his studies. His goal was to become an ayatollah like his famous and revered father before him. But given he's now the Shiite equivalent of a parish priest trying to become a cardinal, it will take years of study.
Sheik SALAH AL-UBAIDY (Spokesman of Muqtada al-Sadr): (Arabic spoken)
NELSON: Spokesman Sheik Salah al-Ubaidy says Sadr decided to take a break from his political responsibilities to speed up the process. That's welcome news to American military commanders who are hoping Sadr's decision means the cleric's Mahdi Army militia will continue their break from violence.
Lieutenant General Ray Odierno, the second highest American commander on the ground in Iraq, says it also shows Sadr is maturing as a leader.
Lieutenant General RAYMOND ODIERNO (Commanding General, Multinational Corps-Iraq): I think that would just legitimize the work that he's tried that didn't work to a more peaceful solution, I think, by becoming ayatollah overtime. So I see that as a peaceful way to go back doing business.
NELSON: There's no doubt Sadr would have more sway as an ayatollah than he does as a low-level cleric. Among observant Shiites, ayatollahs reign supreme. Their fatwas or religious edicts are used by Shiites to guide personal and financial decisions in their lives. Even their political choices are generally governed by ayatollahs. For example, the ruling Shiite alliance used Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's picture on ballots rather than those of its candidates. Even Sadr uses his father's image on posters and flyers not his own.
Mohammad Ibadi(ph), a Hausa or seminary student in Najaf.
Mr. MOHAMMAD IBADI (Seminary Student, Najaf Mosque): (Through translator) When we have religious questions, we go back to the sayings of Muqtada al-Sadr's late father. It may take him almost six years to complete the requirements to reach a level at which he could issue those sorts of religious rulings.
NELSON: But becoming an ayatollah could give Sadr a long-term influence over Iraqi political and financial affairs, especially as the United States scales back its involvement in Iraq. It could also escalate Sadr's rivalry with Sistani, the Grand Ayatollah who is the most powerful religious leader in Iraq.
Sadr has made no secret of his distain for the Iranian-born Sistani and other clerics here who've trained or lived in Iran. That despite U.S. claims that Sadr's Mahdi Army militia receives money and arms from the Iranian government.
Sadr's aides say he will study in Najaf, not in the Iranian holy city of Qom, where his movement's main spiritual adviser lives, and will be tutored by Arab religious teachers. That choice in his Arab heritage will appeal to many Iraqi Shiites should Sadr succeed in becoming an ayatollah, says Ali al-Yassari(ph), a former Sadr bloc parliament member.
Mr. ALI AL-YASSARI: (Through translator) Our religious scholar should be Iraqi and not connected to some place outside Iraq. So it's good he's doing this as long as it's to benefit Iraq.
NELSON: Still, Yassari says he believe Sadr has another motive for focusing on his religious studies - escape. He says Sadr is worn down by political squabbles and by splinter groups that use his name while terrorizing Iraqis.
(Soundbite of noise)
NELSON: As to where Sadr will pursue his studies, his spokesman says it won't likely be in traditional settings like this Najaf Mosque. Instead, he will mostly use CDs and books in his office or at home. The aide says that's because of his high profile and threats to his life.
Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR News, Baghdad.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
No matter if you rent or own, the state of New Jersey is one of the most expensive places in this country to live. Every town in the Garden State is supposed to build affordable housing for its residents, but not all do. Instead, some of the state's wealthiest areas pay poor cities to take on their affordable housing obligations.
This arrangement is legal, but some lawmakers want to change that, as Joel Rose reports.
JOEL ROSE: Hopewell Township - population 18,000 - is where the suburbs of Trenton end and the rolling hills of western New Jersey begin. When officials in this bucolic town say they don't have a sewerage system, you get the sense they don't really want one either.
Mr. DAVID SANDAHL (Deputy Mayor, Hopewell Township): If you want water here, you drill a well. If you want sewerage service, you have a septic system.
ROSE: Deputy Mayor David Sandahl says Hopewell would like to build affordable housing, but the costs would be enormous. And Sandahl says any new development would create more sprawl, which is a four-letter word to state planners.
Mr. SANDAHL: Nobody would argue with the social mission in providing affordable housing. The question is how to get it done. And then you get the state of environmental protection saying basically - stop sprawl, don't spread the housing all over the place, don't build new infrastructure, concentrate.
ROSE: So, for years, Hopewell Township has done what a lot of New Jersey towns do: it paid the nearest city - in this case, Trenton - to build affordable housing instead. The money comes from fees paid by developers. Over the years, suburban towns have sent more than $200 million to urban areas through so-called Regional Contribution Agreements or RCAs.
General Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts of Kempton says that's missing the point of the state's affordable housing law.
Mr. JOSEPH ROBERTS (Democrat; Assembly Speaker, New Jersey General Assembly): The suburban town isn't shouldering its fair share. It isn't creating a kind of diversity that's necessary for any vibrant community. And then you're also ending up with the concentration of poverty in urban areas in New Jersey.
Mayor DOUG PALMER (Trenton, New Jersey): You know, if you put the equation like that, obviously we'd say yes, it is. But it's not that simple.
ROSE: That's Doug Palmer, the mayor of Trenton, one of the poorest cities in the state. He says Trenton has gotten millions of dollars from Hopewell and other towns, and has used those dollars to redevelop entire neighborhoods, including one called Battle Monument.
Mayor PALMER: It was seedy buildings that were boarded up on the lot where the houses are. It was one little restaurant - soul food restaurant. It was a city garage and the rest of it was just open land.
ROSE: Today, many of those empty lots are occupied by low and mixed income housing.
Ms. LORETA WASHINGTON(ph): I've been here seven years. I love my house.
ROSE: Loreta Washington and her husband John own this two-story brick row house.
Mr. JOHN WASHINGTON: Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dining room and a living room and a kitchen. The grand kids can come over and you got to have a place to stay at.
ROSE: Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer says the city would have had a hard time finding the money to do this on its own.
Mayor PALMER: I'm for getting rid of RCAs although they were a tremendous help for us in Trenton. But we need a stable, consistent pot of money so that we can utilize moneys like we have RCAs, and build housing for working-class people in the city of Trenton, and provide homeownership opportunities.
ROSE: Even Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, who is trying to get RCAs, concedes the state has to find a way of replacing them.
Assembly Speaker ROBERTS: The mayors who say, I'm open to eliminating RCAs, but show me the money, they're making a very clear point. So we really and truly need to put our money where mouth is.
ROSE: Roberts wants a total overhaul of affordable housing in New Jersey. He's planning to schedule the come-up for debate in the General Assembly early this year.
For NPR News, I'm Joel Rose.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Right now, many boomers are just trying to tackle the question of where to retire. Many are passing up Hilton Head or Florida in favor of the West.
Demographers are noting a flow of older people toward the Rocky Mountains. Places like Wyoming or Montana promise low crime, and fresh air, and low traffic.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And now you can add fresh powder to that list. A program in Aspen is called Bumps for Boomers. If you made it to a certain age without becoming an expert skier, this program is for you. It claims to teach baby boomers how to handle skiing on fresh powder. It also covers mogul skiing. Not sure…
(Soundbite of laughter)
MONTAGNE: …what that is but navigating steep slopes and hard bumps, I guess. Forget the beaches. Future Social Security recipients may spend their time swishing, swishing down Black Diamond Trails.
INSKEEP: That's what the mogul skiing is, is navigating the steep slopes and the hard bumps.
(Sound bit of song "My Generation")
Mr. ROGER DALTRY (Singer, The Who): (singing) People try to put us down. Just because we get around. Things they do look awful cold. Hope I die before I get old.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
In today's business news. Hey, you want to buy a mortgage company?
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: The big private buyout firm Blackstone does not want to buy. One of the country's big mortgage providers has announced that efforts to sell itself have failed because PHH, formerly known as Cendant, one of the country's top home loan companies, is worth less than it seemed. And the big private buyout firm Blackstone has backed out of plans to buy it. According to one report, financiers say the company's mortgage business is not worth as much as it seemed last year when this deal got started and when mortgage markets seemed more stable.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
You can bet real estate agents are - weren't throwing confetti or tooting their horns to celebrate 2008 - lots of homes remain on the market. And this coming year, prices in most areas are expected to keep falling.
NPR's Chris Arnold reports.
CHRIS ARNOLD: Sales are still basically at their lowest point in 10 years. The latest monthly data from the National Association of Realtor shows that median home prices are down 9 percent since their peak in the summer of '06.
Looking ahead, Mark Zandi heads up Moody's Economy.com.
Mr. MARK ZANDI (Chief Economist, Moody's Economy.com): Certainly another tough year, particularly the first half of the year. I think home sales will continue to fall of, constructional decline, and we've got a lot more house price declines to come.
ARNOLD: How steep a decline depends on where you are. There are cities and towns in states like Florida and Nevada that saw huge price increases and lots of overbuilding during the boom. So forecasters say in those places, prices will plunge 20 or 30 percent or more from their peaks. Other areas will see more modest declines. And on the bright side, Zandi says, a third of the nation's metropolitan areas will hold up better in the coming year, some may even see slight price gains. But the huge supply of unsold homes out there, will on average, keep things slumped.
Mr. ZANDI: The housing market's awash in unsold inventory and that's fundamentally the most significant weight on the market. Not until we start to see these inventories come down will the market begin to stabilize. And I think inventories are likely to rise more before they begin to fall this spring.
ARNOLD: Meanwhile, the ongoing foreclosure crisis is putting hundreds of thousands of more homes on the market so the coming year is likely to see further cuts in home construction and layoffs in related industries. And many economists think it will be 2009 before prices recover nationally.
Chris Arnold, NPR News, Boston.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Let's talk about housing of a different kind.
On Wednesdays, we look at the workplace. And today, we go to West Virginia to see where some railroad workers call home.
The people who maintain railroad tracks often do their jobs in isolated parts of the country. And one of the nation's biggest railroads, Norfolk Southern, still houses some workers in so called camp cars. Those are converted sleeper cars, instead of motels. They live on the rails. The worker's union has condemned the living conditions and Congress is considering a ban.
Scott Finn of West Virginia Public Broadcasting reports.
(Soundbite of machine)
Mr. SCOTT FINN (Reporter, West Virginia Public Broadcasting): Deep in the Appalachian mountain, workers with Norfolk Southern replace the wooden ties on the station of railroad near to Kentucky, Virginia border. This group was in a 10-hour day in subzero cold. Home for most of these guys is far away, and the nearest motel that's big enough for the entire crew is a two-hour drive over winding roads. So instead, they head to their 10 camp cars parked on a railroad spur.
These cars are like campers on rails. Each worker gets a bunk, and for every two workers, there's shower and toilet. James Flannigan(ph) says he is happy with his setup.
Mr. JAMES FLANNIGAN (Norfolk Southern Railroad Worker): I've got my storage up here, and all this. And here I put my clothes, I mean, it's just like home. And it's good.
(Soundbite of people chatting)
Mr. FINN: In the kitchen car, the cooks are making green bean casserole, ham and cheesy biscuits.
After dinner, Mitchell Copley(ph) and Rick Johnson(ph) sits in one of the camp cars watching the movie "Braveheart" on satellite TV. They talk abut the old days when they slept in uninsulated box cars with propane stoves and bunk beds.
Unidentified Man #1: Bunk beds, top-bottom. Guys on top got comfortable, guys on the bottom froze.
Unidentified Man #2: The man on top got drunk, you got to wet.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Unidentified Man #2: I've seen it happen.
Mr. FINN: These cars have just been renovated. But union officials say not all 500 maintenance workers stay in cars this nice.
Mr. DANNY GATES (Teamsters Union): The very first furnace the guy opened up rats ran out of it.
Mr. FINN: Danny Gates of the Teamsters Union wants to outlaw camp cars. In October, the House of Representatives passed a railroad safety bill that would do just that. Other major railroads have eliminated camp cars. Gates says he can't understand why Norfolk Southern, also known as NS, refuses to go along.
Mr. GATES: So NS is kind of standing out in the cold out here and they're just being defiant on this issue.
(Soundbite of chatting)
Mr. FINN: Back in the camp cars and under the watchful eyes of his bosses, worker James Flannigan says he prefers things the way they are.
Mr. FLANNIGAN: I don't know why Congress has got anything to with it. It should be the railroads men's decision - it should be. I mean, they are the one's who lives here, Congress don't live here.
Mr. FINN: For some of these old-timers, this camp car debate isn't about safety or convenience. Norfolk Southern supervisor Chris Warren says it's about a sense of brotherhood.
Mr. CHRIS WARREN (Supervisor, Norfolk Southern): And everybody's right here, look after each other as if you put (unintelligible) in a different environment around motels and stuff for you that lose track of somebody. And it's a little more. It's a little deeper than just the convenience. It means a lot to some of these guys, you know?
Mr. FINN: The Senate is now considering the railroad safety bill. Both sides agree it's not about the money. It's about the safety of the workers who keep the nation's railroad safe.
For NPR News, I'm Scott Finn in Charleston, West Virginia.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
For our last word in business, we take a final look back to one of the most intoxicating workplace related stories of 2007. The word is beer. And the story comes from the Four Points hotel chain, which is part of Sheraton Hotels.
Last year, the company announced it was looking for a CBO that would be chief beer officer, for its new worldwide beer program. The part-time job attracted more than 5,000 applications from 31 countries. More than 90 percent of the applicants were men. Reportedly, it's the most applications the hotel chain received for any position.
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
On the Republican side, polls show the race in Iowa is coming down to two men - Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney - who are expected to get more than half the support when GOP caucuses meet tomorrow night. Four other candidates are hoping just to get their support into double digits. One big question tomorrow night will be how many Republicans attend the caucuses and how many independents show up to join them.
Joining us now from Des Moines is NPR news analyst Juan Williams.
Good morning, Juan.
JUAN WILLIAMS: Good morning from chilly Des Moines, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Okay. Well, Mike Huckabee there yesterday said he was pleasantly surprised at a new poll from the Des Moines Register showing him, what, six points ahead? A lot of others were apparently surprised at that poll too.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, they sure were. The poll had Mike Huckabee at 32 percent, Mitt Romney at 26, and followed by John McCain at 13, and Ron Paul and Fred Thompson tied at about nine. It was a stunner, Renee, because Romney seemed to have been gaining momentum in recent days. He's been lots of ads, comparing his time as governor of Massachusetts with Huckabee's time as governor of Arkansas and saying that Huckabee raised taxes, was weak on immigration, weak on crime.
Huckabee has said that was dishonest. In fact, he responded the other day with a press conference where he called Romney's attacks really unethical and dishonest and then he said he was not going to run his own ad attacking Romney, but he did play it for reporters, and that lead then the reporters to say, gosh, Huckabee is falling apart because this was a hypocritical act, a bizarre act. David Yepsen, the prominent political writer here in Des Moines, said it was goofy.
So other polls have shown Romney gaining. This one clearly shows Huckabee in the lead. And other thing is to say here, Renee, that a lot of people were surprised that John McCain was third in the poll because John McCain has not spent much time here in Iowa. He's been focused on New Hampshire.
MONTAGNE: Well, you know, that poll showing Huckabee ahead by those points that some observers have taken issue with it, saying they sort of don't believe it. But is it just the people would prefer other results?
WILLIAMS: No, not quite. The reason that people say they don't believe it, Renee, is that the poll included so many independents. There were even Democrats. And the Democrats were counted just because they say they're going to vote on the Republican side of the caucuses on Thursday night. So we haven't seen that much participation by independents, Democrats, on the Republican caucus. Among Republicans alone, Romney is actually ahead.
And I should say here that 46 percent of the people in the polls said that they were open to changing their minds. Forty percent said they would be first-time participants. Again, those are really high numbers, and it's why a lot of the political insiders think that maybe the poll is not to be trusted.
MONTAGNE: Well, that also gets to Rudy Giuliani. Do people believe that he - a guy who's still leading the national polls among Republicans - could fall as low as sixth in Iowa?
WILLIAMS: Well, yeah. The answer there, Renee, is yes because he's not been here much. And unlike McCain, there's been no show of any kind of push among the caucus-goers for Rudy Giuliani. He's - Giuliani's been in New Hampshire, he's been in Florida, states where he's been able to raise some money. A lot of people are writing him off here and I must say in all the states that will go to the polls in some fashion or form in January.
So Giuliani is waiting until Florida on January 29th. But that may be, you know, it may be a long wait because there's going to be momentum for the likes of Huckabee, Romney, et cetera, going into Florida. And it leaves Giuliani oddly really waiting to go to New York on February 5th.
MONTAGNE: Well, this Des Moines Register poll also had candidate Ron Paul ahead of Giuliani in Iowa, but Ron Paul has been left out of a Fox News forum on Sunday.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, that's right. You know, I do some commentary for Fox, but I don't have any inside scoop there, other than to say that Fox says that basically they're going to go with no Ron Paul, no Duncan Hunter. They're going to limit it to Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain, Romney and Thompson. And their standard is you've got to be double digits in the polls.
Now, ABC is also having some sort of debate forums next week going up towards New Hampshire. And their standard is you got to finish one through four in Iowa or have a five percent rating in New Hampshire or nationally. And again, that would knock them out.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Juan Williams in Des Moines. Thanks for joining us. And you are listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Next we're going to rewrite a classic Hollywood plot. The movie starts with a safari of badly dressed scientists. They stumble into a prehistoric jungle where man-eating creatures, supposedly extinct, kill off the minor characters. When the movie in question was "Jurassic Park," some scenes were shot in the Hawaiian island of Kauai. And it turns out that on that same island, real scientists are fighting to save species from extinction. We'll learn more this morning in our series Climate Connections with National Geographic.
In the second of two reports from Hawaii's oldest island, NPR senior correspondent Ketzel Levine meets a husband and wife team recreating a lost world.
KETZEL LEVINE: We're standing at the bottom of a giant terrarium contained by rising cliffs that frames an oval of sky. These cliffs used to support the roof of a massive limestone cave, part of which still exists. And that's how we got in here, by crawling through. In the 10,000 years since the cave collapsed, a museum's worth of ancient creatures have died and decayed in here. Mammals, birds, the trees they perched on, the pollen those trees shed - an endless story for an avid reader like Lida Pigott Burney.
Ms. LIDA PIGOTT BURNEY (Calder Ecology Center): We've been looking for the perfect site for a very long time because many sites preserve bones very well. Many other sites preserve pollen and the seeds very well. This is a site that preserves both. And it also has a complete record for almost 10,000 years.
LEVINE: Now, here's a thrill-seeking scientist who looks the part; hiking shorts with a lot of pockets, off-road sandals, floppy straw hat. Lida met her future husband David Burney over a microscope in a college lab back in the late '60s, pollen twinkling in both their eyes. On their first trip to Kauai in 1992, snooping around as ever for fossil sites, the couple followed a trail of footprints off the beach and into the woods. And just like in the movies, they stumbled onto a lost world entombed in the hidden recesses of this Mokawaii(ph) cave.
Dr. DAVID BURNEY (National Tropical Garden, Kauai): Land crabs, native land snails, flightless birds that were feeding on the ground. Nearly all the things I'm describing, of course, are absent from here now, but they're all present as fossils just under our feet.
LEVINE: So the Burneys came back again and again to dig and to dream of bringing this ancient piece of Kauai back to life.
Dr. BURNEY: So we're going to pump out all these icky water now so that we can get down in the pit to work.
(Soundbite of pump engine)
Dr. BURNEY: We need to keep the pump running until the very minute we go in because once we cut it off, then it's just like a giant toilet bowl that starts to fill up again.
LEVINE: Would you hold that while I strap up?
Dr. BURNEY: All right.
LEVINE: We put on helmets. There could be falling rocks. And climb 14 feet down into a bubble bath of lime green duckweed. David Burney has made this trip at least 5,000 times.
Dr. BURNEY: Here we go down to the netherworld.
LEVINE: All right.
Dr. BURNEY: All right. You're here down in the land of mud and water.
LEVINE: So I might describe the scene a little bit. You're up to your calves in muck, but you're wearing a pair of rubber boots. I'm crouched on a ladder. And you are taking large scoops of dark, dark sulfurous smelling mud and throwing it in the white bucket.
Dr. BURNEY: Mm-hmm. The stuff we're digging right now is just about at the moment in time when people first arrived here. Probably about 1,100 years ago.
LEVINE: Those were the days to be a native plant, before the fall; before people arrived with predators, pests and weeds were scattered and destroyed communities of living things, species that had evolved so perfectly over five million years. Now the last scattered fragments of that world are threatened with extinction by climate change. And that adds a certain urgency to the Burneys' work. Not only do they still have to discover what's been lost, they have to determine what can be saved.
Dr. BURNEY: The big toilet bowl is filling up.
Ms. BURNEY: Let's get you out of there.
Dr. BURNEY: Okay.
LEVINE: David Burney lifts his 70-pound muck bucket out of the pit and hauls it over to his wife, waiting with hoses and screens.
Ms. BURNEY: And what I'm trying to get at right here is a Wikstroemia seed. The Hawaiians used it as fish poisoning.
LEVINE: So you're using tweezers to get in...
Ms. BURNEY: I'm using a pair of tweezers because the seed is so small, I can't pick it out with my hands.
Got it.
LEVINE: Wikstroemia is Akia in Hawaiian, and it's still pretty common on Kauai, unlike a number of the other plants, whose seeds the Burneys have yet to identify. This ain't Jurassic Park. They're not resurrecting extinct species. But they have identified rare plants long gone from Kauai that are still clinging to life on other islands. And they're using them to replant this lost Eden.
Ms. BURNEY: Let's find some seeds here, guys.
LEVINE: Consider the loulu palm, Pritchardia aylmer-robinsonii. After finding and identifying its seed in a bucket of muck, the Burneys learned there are only two of these palms left in the world and they live on a nearby private island. The island's owner gave them viable seed, which they then grew in pots until the plants were strong enough to go back into the ground. And you should see these magnificent specimens. The little palms put in the ground five years ago are now three stories high. And for the first time in at least a thousand years, they are back where they belong.
Dr. BURNEY: So this is a chance in a way to step into the midst of a mass extinction and try to bring it to a halt, at least for some species.
LEVINE: This sunken botanic garden is just one strategy on the frontline of conservation that is the Hawaiian Islands. The Burneys have several tricks up their sleeves, including a native plant farm known as Lida's Field of Dreams, a sort of boot camp where native species bulk up before shipping out to reclaim lost ground.
David Burney's day job is director of Conservation for the National Tropical Botanical Garden here on Kauai. But right now both the cave and farm, which sit on private property, are solely the Burneys'. They lease the land. Their hope is that the botanical garden will someday take that lease over. But right now the couple is working overtime.
Ms. BURNEY: You all knows what extinct means, right?
Unidentified Child: Dead and gone forever.
Ms. BURNEY: That's a great definition. I like that. Dead and gone forever.
LEVINE: Their commitment notwithstanding, the Burneys are no match for climate change or invasive species, tourism, development - all the things that threaten Hawaii's vulnerable native species. That's a job for an army of conservationists, and even then it's an unwinnable war. But this half acre terrarium beneath an oval of sky is all it takes to give those who are willing to look a memory and a moment of primordial green.
Ms. BURNEY: Oh, I think that would be perfect. If they looked at it and thought that a human hand had never touched it, then I think we could really feel like we had done our job.
LEVINE: Ketzel Levine, NPR News.
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: To find Part 1 of Ketzel's series and photos of the people and plants featured, stop by her blog, where it is all Hawaii, all week. It's at npr.org/talkingplants.
This is NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Kenya's president has already been sworn in for a new term, but that has not stopped the violence that followed his reelection. Critics say the contest was rigged and that led to an explosion of tribal violence in which hundreds of people have been killed.
NPR's Gwen Thompkins is in a western Kenyan town that faced an especially stark incident. And Gwen, what happened?
GWEN THOMPKINS: Well, yesterday at about noon, just outside of the town called Eldoret, many people who had been pushed off their land because of ethnic conflict stemming from the election were burned to death in the church - the Assemblies of God Church - by a mob. The church had been burned to the ground and there are about 13 bodies that have been taken out of the church so far. Their bodies that have burned beyond recognition. About four bodies have been found in houses in the surrounding area - people who apparently fled from the church and died in the houses.
INSKEEP: And so where are you right now?
THOMPKINS: I'm at a hospital in Eldoret, actually, where many of the people who were injured in the church fire were taken. And this is a very strange time for western Kenya, a very strange time for Eldoret. When we were out of the church, - I mean this is in the middle of sort of an agricultural area - there are farms everywhere, all sorts of cane fields everywhere. But there are no people. Everyone seems to have evaporated. They've been pushed off their land and they've been clustering at hospitals and at churches and at schools.
I just talked to a woman who refused to give her name, but she told me that at the church where she had gone to look for safety, that the minister actually separated the displaced people by ethnic group. And she's very concerned that her ethnic group, the Kikuyu - this is the group of the president, Mwai Kibaki - will be targeted later on today because they have been singled out.
INSKEEP: And I suppose we should mention we have a president from one ethnic group, a challenger from another ethnic group, and it's the dispute between them that seems to have turned this into ethnic violence. But Gwen, you told us before this election that it's common in Kenya, every five years you have an election and there is sometimes violence associated with it. Has this gone beyond the normal in Kenya?
THOMPKINS: Yes and no. You know, ethnic violence is, you know, a reality here. In 1992 and in the 1997, during the election periods, many, many, many people died and many people were pushed off their land. And the land disputes that stemmed from those spasms of violence are still troubling the waters here among the ethnic groups in Kenya.
So during this recent campaign there are all sorts of difficulties in places like the Rift Valley and places like western Kenya. But somehow, you know, these land disputes are informed by the political rivalry that's going on between the president, Mwai Kibaki, and the challenger, Raila Odinga, who is a very, very popular candidate and whose stronghold is western Kenya.
INSKEEP: But has this gone beyond the violence of previous election cycles?
THOMPKINS: It appears to be on par. Obviously there was a coup attempt in Kenya in the early 1980s. There was the ethnic violence in 1992 and 1997. You know, the numbers are comparable in terms of deaths. But what seems different about this period is that absolutely no one has any idea of what's going to happen next.
Back in 1992 and 1997, people assumed that once these elections were over, then the violence would go away - and it did, Steve. But this time around, this is a totally different situation in the sense that the election has happened, the results announced, the president has taken the oath of office, and yet the country remains at a standstill.
INSKEEP: NPR's Gwen Thompkins is in western Kenya. Thanks very much, Gwen.
THOMPKINS: Thank you, Steve.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
We're hearing from voters this week who live and work along Interstate 10. People here in California call it The 10. And after starting our journey on the Santa Monica Pier, we've moved through New Mexico, Arizona and just barely crossed over into Texas. Today we pick up this telephone road trip farther east across the Lone Star State - in Sonora, Texas.
We have reached Cindy Sanders(ph) there. And Cindy, welcome to the program.
Ms. CINDY SANDERS: Thank you.
MONTAGNE: Now, Cindy Sanders, I know you are manager of Stripes Convenience Store. And how close to the Interstate 10 is that?
Ms. SANDERS: I'm assistant manager. I'm right off of an exit.
MONTAGNE: Assistant manager - sorry there. I've just promoted you.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MONTAGNE: But you're just off an exit. And on a map, Sonora appears to be just about in the middle of Texas. Tell us a little about Sonora. Describe it for someone who hasn't really been there.
Ms. SANDERS: Oh, it's a small town of about 2,700 maybe. It's an oil-field town. My dad was from here and grew up here. So he has been in an oil field his whole life.
MONTAGNE: And as you think about what's going on in your community in Sonora and in the country this New Year, what are you thinking?
Ms. SANDERS: I just go day by day. I take care of my kids. And it don't do me any good to sit and worry about anything else.
MONTAGNE: Do you think about oil, oil prices, since you're in a part of the country that's - oil-field country, as you call it?
Ms. SANDERS: Ridiculous gas prices. All the customers come in, stop at our store and say, well, I should have gotten a hundred miles back, it was cheaper.
MONTAGNE: Though for you, who might work or have relatives who work in the oil business, aren't high price is a good thing?
Ms. SANDERS: I guess. I mean - but, it sucks for the people that are traveling and the people that live in the small towns that have to pay that price.
MONTAGNE: If you had to pick out an issue, and the kind of issues that are floating around out there - the Iraq war, health care - what one sticks for you?
Ms. SANDERS: The immigration, because they make it so hard for a born and raised American that's having trouble, that's struggling to get welfare. And I know this because I have been on welfare before. And...
MONTAGNE: And you felt that you are competing in a sense with the...
Ms. SANDERS: Oh, yeah, you are.
MONTAGNE: Although that is your experience. I mean, there are studies out there that show that illegal immigrants actually don't use those services as much as...
Ms. SANDERS: I'm sure there's some of them that do. You've got all these families driving nice cars, but yet they've always got food and money in their house. I - me, myself - I - I make too much money for my two kids to get them on Medicaid. So my kids have no health insurance right now.
MONTAGNE: Are you supporting your family on your assistant manager salary?
Ms. SANDERS: Yeah, and with the help of my dad.
MONTAGNE: Well, Cindy Sanders, please stay on the line with us, because I'd like to bring in someone else to our conversation. Further east, along Interstate 10 in Beaumont, Texas, we've reached Marie Richard - and I'm pronouncing that correctly. Am I, Marie?
Ms. MARIE RICHARD: You sure are.
MONTAGNE: Now, you are an assistant to the editor of the Beaumont Enterprise, the newspaper there. Am I right?
Ms. RICHARD: That's correct. Forty-eight years this past September.
MONTAGNE: Oh, wow. So you've seen a lot. You've seen a lot in the newspaper and probably a lot going on there in Beaumont.
Ms. RICHARD: Yes, I have. A lot of changes.
MONTAGNE: Looking back, what changes strike you the most?
Ms. RICHARD: Oh, I think what strikes me the most is the changes in families. I'm looking at the paper this morning, this woman shoots her husband. And you know, where I come from, mothers was a backbone of families. I'm really concerned about the women in the world. I know a lot of them have it very hard. I'm just - I'm really, really concerned about the morals in this world today.
MONTAGNE: What else concerns you that in particular you might look to candidates to fix?
Ms. RICHARD: Candidates that are running like maybe for president now?
MONTAGNE: This whole next year.
Ms. RICHARD: Right now I'm not concentrating on it too much. All the people I hang around with, they discuss these things all the time. Sometimes I just ignore it and I figure, well, I'll start catching up later on because I'm sure we're going to be hearing the same thing over and over again.
MONTAGNE: And you are a person who works at a newspaper.
Ms. RICHARD: Yes.
MONTAGNE: You...
Ms. RICHARD: Yeah, we see it all the time.
MONTAGNE: Well, Marie Richard is in Beaumont, Texas. Let's bring in one more voice to our conversation. It's someone I have spoken with before: Shannon Woods(ph). Hello, are you there?
Ms. SHANNON WOODS: I'm here. How are you?
MONTAGNE: Hey. Let me just say a couple of things about you, Shannon Woods. We talked when you were in Baton Rouge. You had left New Orleans - fled New Orleans, really, after Katrina. You're now there in Mobile, Alabama.
Ms. WOODS: Correct.
MONTAGNE: Both cities along Interstate 10. Could you tell us what have you been doing, well, since we last spoke? That was about a year ago.
Ms. WOODS: A year ago I was still in nursing school. And my family, which consists of my husband and my two kids, were in Mobile and I was in Baton Rouge. So...
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. WOODS: Life was kind of hectic when we spoke last.
MONTAGNE: And you're in Mobile now, a nurse.
Ms. WOODS: Yes, but I work in the ward. I work at Tulane.
MONTAGNE: You work - you drive into Tulane.
Ms. WOODS: I do, twice a month.
MONTAGNE: Now, why are you driving into New Orleans for this job?
Ms. WOODS: I drive to New Orleans because I make double what I make in Mobile in New Orleans. And I (unintelligible) and see my family and come home.
MONTAGNE: So New Orleans is still home?
Ms. WOODS: Oh, definitely, always.
MONTAGNE: It's been a couple of years since you really have been able to live there.
Ms. WOODS: Yup, exactly.
MONTAGNE: Well, I don't want to presume that Hurricane Katrina is all that's on your mind, although obviously it's a living and driving experience for you. At the beginning of this new year, what are you thinking about in terms of things that concern you?
Ms. WOODS: I'm thinking about my family and my kids. I have a 13-year-old and seven-year-old, so life with my 13-year-old, which is my daughter, is changing. She is forming her thoughts and opinions that she'll have for the rest of her life. I think about her a lot. And health care is my profession, so I'm always thinking about that.
MONTAGNE: Do you see - does the presidential election look like it's going to matter to the concerns that you've shared with us?
Ms. WOODS: God, I would hate to be negative and say no. It's everyday life for everyone, and unless you're in their circle, I mean maybe your career or whatever, you just don't talk about it or think about it that often. Now, it's going to be at the top of everybody's list closer to the election. But you know, we're worried about our families. We're working. We're taking care of our kids. You know, I was at a huge function with probably (unintelligible) and no one - not one circle of conversation - spoke about the elections. You know, we're talking about family and the holidays. It just wasn't at the top of anybody's list.
MONTAGNE: We thank all three of you for joining us. As we said, we're traveling along Interstate 10, and Shannon Woods is a three-fer for our Interstate 10 conversation - part of our program from Baton Rouge to New Orleans to Mobile, Alabama, all along this highway. Marie Richard is there in Belmont, Texas; Cindy Sanders in Sonora. Thank you all.
Ms. WOODS: You're welcome.
Ms. SANDERS: Quite welcome.
Ms. RICHARD: Thank you. You're welcome.
MONTAGNE: And good luck to all of you in 2008.
Ms. WOODS: Thank you, same to you.
Ms. RICHARD: Thank you.
Ms. SANDERS: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Okay, so the presidential election may not matter as much for some voters living along Interstate 10. But here is someone living where it does matter.
Mayor LARRY MILLESON (Colo, Iowa): It is extremely cold right now in Colo. It's like five degrees out.
INSKEEP: That's Larry Milleson, who lives in Colo, Iowa, a community of about 850 people. Despite its small size, Colo residents have had the opportunity to see half a dozen presidential candidates appearing nearby.
Mayor MILLESON: I notice a small percentage of the community that is involved. I wish there were more. You're bombarded with advertisement on radio and television. And I hear people telling me they'll be glad when the commercials are over. And that seems sad to me, when people only think about when it will be over instead of the issues.
INSKEEP: It will be over tomorrow night, which is when the Iowa caucuses are held, the first state to make presidential selections in the nation in 2008. Larry Milleson says people's ambivalence may be changing; at least he hopes so because he was just elected mayor of Colo, Iowa, in a tightly contested race. He won by just three votes.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And tomorrow we'll hit the road again to hear from potential voters at the eastern end of Interstate 10, ending our journey in Florida.
And you are listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Oh, we are nowhere near the end of the bowl season. College football's Fiesta Bowl is tonight. And the national championship game is just one of several games expected over the coming days and weeks. They include the International Bowl, the Hula Bowl, and even the Senior Bowl, which is a game for graduating pro-football prospects, not baby boomers hoping for one more shot.
ESPN analyst Bill Curry has been tracking many games so far. Bill, good morning once again.
Mr. BILL CURRY (ESPN): Good morning. How are you, Steve?
INSKEEP: Doing fine. Thanks very much. Hawaii was the nation's only unbeaten team but not anymore after playing Georgia.
Mr. CURRY: No, not at all. It would have been a monumental story if they could have pulled off the upset. But Georgia really, really dominated the game from start to finish. I don't think anybody anticipated that the Hawaii offense would not be able to do anything. But it was a game in which there was such a physical mismatch that Hawaii was never really in it.
INSKEEP: And can I mention in this 41-10 bowl game you have a Georgia team that returns, if I'm not mistaken, about 17 of their starters next year?
Mr. CURRY: Yeah. They had an awful lot of use this year but they have a very steady coach and a coaching staff in Mark Richt and his people. And even when he loses a good coach, they don't seem to miss a beat in their expectation and in their talent level. And that's what you have to be able to do.
INSKEEP: So there's one top team, and let's talk about another one - USC, which just destroyed Illinois in the Rose Bowl, embarrassment for Illinois.
Mr. CURRY: There were some early moments when Illinois had a chance to get into the game. But on two occasions the tackling - this is stuff that coaches teach all the time, and for fans who really watch for little things, the second tackler in, one tackler holds the ball carrier up, the other one punches the ball out. There were two key turnovers that turned that game into a rout. It might have been a fairly good game because Illinois was not as bad as a 49-17 score, but USC is that dominating.
INSKEEP: It's all about training, is it, the technique you just described?
Mr. CURRY: It really is, because if you're the first tackler, you better secure the ball carrier or he'll run away from you. You can't be worried about the football. But when the first tackler makes the hit and holds the ball carrier up and you're there almost simultaneously and you can feel that you're the second man, then you punch the ball out. And it was done as if it were perfectly orchestrated. So the SC defense really turned the tide in the game.
INSKEEP: Now, are you getting excited in all about the national championship game coming up next week?
Mr. CURRY: Well, I get excited about a bunch of young people getting a chance to be on the national level that has evolved because of the BCS and because of all the controversy. I get excited about the fact that the guys get a chance to play where it really means something to a lot of people. I think they come away from these experiences changed people, those of them who see the team value to all of this.
INSKEEP: The team value to it.
Mr. CURRY: Nobody gets to the top of the heap in football unless they understand team. Even though you see a lot of individual displays because we're in that kind of culture, you don't get to play in a good bowl game unless you care about your teammates. Football is the only sport that I know of in which every player needs every teammate on every play just to survive in the game. Most people don't see that. But that's what happens when a team trains this hard and long.
INSKEEP: Okay. Bill, thanks very much.
Mr. CURRY: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: Bill Curry is a football analyst for ESPN. He's becoming a regular guest on this program as well. And he's also a former player in the NFL.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
Michigan's Lake Superior State University offered a list of overused words and phrases. According to the list, surge has been used more than enough. Perfect storm should be history, along with Webinar, or online seminar. Post-9/11 should be banned. And then there is blank is the new blank - like chocolate is the new sex. For example, in this post-9/11 world, a perfect storm of Webinar shows that surge is the new light at the end of the tunnel.
It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
The babies ringing in the New Year in Boston turned out to be snakes; 14 in all for proud anaconda momma Ashley of the New England Aquarium. All the little snake babies measured two feet at birth - tiny compared to their 16-foot-long mother. It's a rare birth. Scientists say it's difficult for anacondas to breed in captivity. Of course it might be difficult to tell whether an anaconda is pregnant or just had lunch.
It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Next, let's continue our look at one of the world's most ambitious engineering projects - the Three Gorges Dam in China. Part of the challenge is relocating more than one million people whose homes and fields are being submerged in the reservoir.
In the second of three reports, NPR's Anthony Kuhn says some people have profited while others have suffered.
ANTHONY KUHN: I'm standing on a boat that's speeding through Wu Xia - the second of the Three Gorges upstream from the Three Gorges Dam. On either side the soaring peaks jut into the clouds, their black and beige rocks mottled by the reds and greens of the trees on them. The filling of the reservoir has only somewhat diminished the grandeur of these gorges, as if these were giants now standing in water up to their knees.
China's government says that 1.2 out of an estimated 1.3 million have already moved. Some moved to other provinces, most just moved uphill. Many will tell you it's a funny feeling to float over where your old home used to be. One such person is Ran Hongsheng, a local ferryboat captain in Yunyang County.
Mr. RAN HONGSHENG (Ferryboat Captain, Yunyang County, China): (Through translator) My former home is about 65 feet below where we are right now on the river. It's all under water now. The soil down there was really good. We grew vegetables and took them to the county seat to sell. Our income was pretty good in those days.
KUHN: Ran now lives uphill from his old home. He notes the irony that some folks wanted to move away but couldn't; others didn't want to leave but were forced to.
Mr. RAN: (Through translator) I wanted to move but got no chance. We live on the south side of the Yangtze. Folks on the north side moved to Shanghai where things are much better. All of those families got rich.
(Soundbite of music)
KUHN: The last major county town on the reservoir to be demolished is Kaixian. Musicians are playing traditional music outside a funeral home in the old town as if to mourn the demise of the 1,800-year-old settlement with its tree-lined alleys and weathered wooden houses.
Up the hill, stereo speakers are blasting from a new shop where 23-year-old Yu Haiyang sells down jackets. This is the new county town where high-rise hotels, Internet cafes and fast-food restaurants are springing up. Yu thinks the government is doing a good job of moving the Three Gorges residents, and he doesn't see why Western media are so critical. He picks up a Chinese newspaper with a report about the gorges.
Mr. YU HAIYANG: (Through translator) Look at this headline: "Western Media Ask Pointed Questions; China Refutes Exaggerated Rumors." Many foreigners say that China exerts a bad influence in the world. I don't agree with that.
KUHN: But signs of discontent around the Three Gorges are hard to miss. In the county town of Zhongxian, taxi and bus drivers are on strike. The drivers and police watch each other nervously as they mill around the bus station.
I hop in a van and ride with one of the strike organizers. The streets are filled with stranded residents. The organizer was afraid of being arrested and asked that I not use his name.
Unidentified Man: (Through translator) All of us are laid-off workers or people whose homes were inundated by the Three Gorges reservoir. We bought our vehicles with our relocation subsidies and just started to get some income when a local company tried to grab a controlling stake in our privately owned buses.
KUHN: The creation of the reservoir forced two-thirds of local industries to close. Unemployment in the gorges area stands at 12 percent. The strike organizers say the drivers are desperate.
Unidentified Man: (Through translator) All the money were earned with our sweat and blood, these bosses are trying to take it once and call their own. What are we ordinary folks to eat?
KUHN: In Wushan County, the government arranged for Huang Yihui to move to Guangdong province, one of China's richest. But she says her son face discrimination when he tried to join the army there. The government registered her in Guangdong, but registered her son in another province, splitting up the family. So she moved back to Wushan County. Wang says tearfully that she got no compensation for the family food processing plant she lost in the relocation. She protested to officials who had her thrown in jail. But she says she still supports the Three Gorges project.
Ms. HUANG YIHUI: (Through translator) Our fine family has been bankrupted and split apart. But we don't blame the central government. Perhaps these were errors committed by local officials. We can forgive them, but we want to get our business back and restore our family to the way it was before.
KUHN: The government says that nobody has been forced to move and denies widespread corruption. China's National Audit Bureau said that as of 2006, local officials had embezzled or misused $40 million or less than one percent of the central government's $7 billion in resettlement funds.
Wang Tianmin is a Yunyang County official in charge of relocating residents.
Mr. WANG TIANMIN (Yunyang County Official): (Through translator) The people who relocated up the hillsides and to other towns are basically pretty stable. It's just a minority of people who are having difficulty leaving their old homes because of their desire for personal gain.
KUHN: The central challenge the government faces is how to move its rural poor away from the reservoir and into the cities. The government in Chongqing, the biggest city on the reservoir, wants to create jobs to attract four million country folk into the city in the next 10 to 15 years.
But life for Chongqing's new urbanites is not easy. Thirty-nine-year-old Xiong Yingkui came to Chongqing about five years ago. He became a bang bang man - a porter carrying loads on a bangzi or shoulder pole. You can see the bang bang men all over Chongqing carrying shopping bags, suitcases and live chickens. Xiong says he doesn't feel rooted in the city.
Mr. XIONG YINGKUI: (Through translator) I'm not sure what my next move will be after my child grows up. I'm not really settled here. If this job doesn't work out, I'll try something else.
KUHN: Xiong finally gets some work at the bus station hauling bags for a passenger. He gets paid two yuan or about 25 cents. With luck, he can clear $135 in cash a month, which definitely beats farming.
(Soundbite of dock)
KUHN: Xiong heads over to a dock where the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers meet. Tears well in his eyes as he talks about the discrimination he sometimes faces.
Mr. XIONG: (Through translator) Sometimes I get some boss who looks down on me. He swears at me. He says he won't pay and I can do whatever I like about it. But there's nothing I can do. Who does he think he is? If he doesn't pay, then forget it. I can't fight him.
KUHN: This is just the fate of the bang bang man, Xiong says. Whatever changes, Chongqing will always have bang bang men, he says, because people will always need to carry things uphill from the boats and the river.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News on the Three Gorges Reservoir.
INSKEEP: Tomorrow we'll find out how the Three Gorges Dam is affecting old river towns in China.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The presidential results are a special interest to people we'll hear about next. They're the subject of a book called "Homo Politicus." It's a satirical, anthropological study of the people it rules that govern the place Dana Milbank calls the Potomac Land, also known as Washington, D.C., or the nation's capital.
Dana Milbank is a columnist for the Washington Post. He joined us from Des Moines, Iowa.
Good morning.
Mr. DANA MILBANK (Columnist, Washington Post; Author, "Homo Politicus"): Good morning.
MONTAGNE: So let's begin this conversation by talking about the glossary that's at the back of your book. And I'd like try out a few of the terms or phrases that you include so that you can give us a brief example of what they tell us about Potomac Land and the people who inhabit it. The first one would - might be, quote, "I hope we can work together in a bipartisan way."
Mr. MILBANK: Ah, yes. Bipartisan is - that's a word that is said only to appeal to people outside of the Potomac Land, outside of the homo politicus tribe. What they are really meaning is I need to actually pick off one or two votes from the other side to ram this thing through the Congress.
MONTAGNE: And a one-word expression that I think gets us into the whole, rest of your book: frankly.
Mr. MILBANK: Yes. Frankly means the thing that I am about to say to you is false. That is generally not perceived by people outside of Potomac Land. But sort of the code we use among ourselves in the land of homo politicus.
MONTAGNE: So the premise here is that a homo politicus, the emergence of a group of creatures from the line of homo Neanderthalis(ph), which will led to homo sapiens, which led probably through a few more evolutions, and finally found its way to Potomac Land. You are shining a light on this world as an anthropologist?
Mr. MILBANK: Yes. And I'm not an expert anthropologist, I got my degree from Wikipedia and Google. But I suspect that homo politicus descends more directly from a homo Neanderthalis without so many of those intervening links. But you have to - when you step back and look at people who live in Washington, they steal from other tribes like Jack Abramoff. They hide their treasures in ice boxes like Congressman Jefferson. And, if you follow the Scooter Libby case, that even engage in human sacrifice.
MONTAGNE: And as this - it's so often the case with anthropologists, they discover that tribal structures aren't always what they seem.
Mr. MILBANK: Very much the case. In fact, I dedicated the book to Tom DeLay who was, for many years, the most important person in Potomac Land, even though he was perhaps the number three man in the House of Representatives. But, in fact, the speaker of the house, Denny Hastert, was very much, sort of a puppet, a figure very much controlled by DeLay.
Similarly, many Americans make the mistake of thinking that the president of the United States is actually in charge, very common misconception. In fact, it is people like Karl Rove who are, in fact, the most important people in Potomac Land. And the people whose names we often see on the news or hear about are, in fact, figureheads.
MONTAGNE: Now, you have been leaning towards speaking about one of the tribes, the Republican tribe, there is, of course, another tribe that has rather permanently inhabits this area. What about them?
Mr. MILBANK: Yes, indeed, I've tried to look at both of them in recent years. The Republican tribe has been dominant but more recently we have seen the rise of some of the Democratic tribe.
I wrote about the Amazon warriors such as Barbara Boxer, a senator from California and, indeed, Nancy Pelosi. I took a look at the Senate, now, Majority Leader Harry Reid. I was able to identify him - in him a certain I call it Potomac variety turret syndrome. He frequently blurts out things and, say, calls the president a loser or a liar, calls the chairman of the Federal Reserve a hack. We've also seen, on the Democratic side, Howard Dean who is given all some of the most extraordinary war whoops and the most exotic forms of battle being displayed as chairman of the Democratic Party.
MONTAGNE: Dana, as funny as all of this is and can be when you're reading about it, it's also quite horrifying. You lay out a world in a system that, as you described it using actual examples, is rather pathological, having closely worked with studied and lived, as you would call the barbaric tribes of the beltway, any hopes that they'll evolve?
Mr. MILBANK: Well, it hasn't happened yet, Renee. And the truth is it only seems barbaric to people who are not really of an among Potomac men. It seem perfectly natural to people who live here. And in a way it's a person's belief that the rules do not apply to himself.
And in that sense it's a very happy place. It's a place where almost anything is possible. I remember sitting down to lunch with the great Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, before he was disgraced, and he told me how he was opening up a kosher Jewish deli, but he had located a particular breed of pig from Asia that would be able to follow the Jewish dietary laws, therefore he would be the first person in the world to have actually kosher bacon.
MONTAGNE: Of course the punch line to that is, no such pig.
Mr. MILBANK: Sadly, we have not yet located the kosher pig, and sadder still Jack Abramoff, a great, great, big man in Potomac land now sits in federal penitentiary.
MONTAGNE: You know, in this election, as in the most recent presidential elections, the candidates are all talking about the need to change Washington. And more particularly, how they are the ones to change Washington. But it sounds like you don't think it will ever change.
Mr. MILBANK: Yes, and in fact, I think when you hear a politician say they are going to change Washington they should add the word frankly at the beginning to say they don't mean it at all. Now, that's done entirely for the consumption of people who are not familiar with the ways of homo politicus.
MONTAGNE: Dana, I know you know you have to hop on one of those campaign buses, so we'll let you go for now.
Thank you very much.
Mr. MILBANK: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Dana Milbanks' new book is called "Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes that Run our Government." And for more example of Potomac speak, you can go to npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
Today in Your Health we're going to hear about a science experiment that explores the power of the mind. Thousands of studies have shown that a significant portion of people given a sugar pill will respond to that sham treatment just as if it were actual medication. Their symptoms get better. It's known as the placebo effect. Now, the question is whether a suggestion, just a few words, could have that same effect.
NPR's Alix Spiegel reports on an experiment involving hotel maids that suggests the answer is yes.
ALIX SPIEGEL: There are four flights of stairs at the Adam's Inn in Washington D.C., each with around 14 steps. Mariana Palanca(ph) works at the inn as a housekeeper. And so she knows these steps pretty well. She explains that she climbs the stairs nine or 10 times a day.
Ms. MARIANA PALANCA (Housekeeper): Every day I bring vacuum up there - and wax.
SPIEGEL: Palanca was a smallish woman and the vacuum, a large yellow contraption, is almost half her size. Once at the top of the stairs she wields it into position at the lip of the door and begins her routine.
(Soundbite of vacuum)
SPIEGEL: Palanca first vacuums the rug, then bends to reach the area under the bed. She moves the furniture, vacuums more, then dusts every surface at the room. This is followed by scrubbing the bathtubs, the toilets, the sinks. You get the idea. After 30 or so minutes, her routine is complete and she stands at the top of the stairs, her vacuum in one hand, a sack of dirty bed linens in the other.
Ms. PALANCA: Now we go to laundry.
SPIEGEL: Of course there are thousands of women like Palanca, hotel maids do spend their days lagging heavy equipment around endless hallways, women who literally spend almost every moment of their working lives engaged in some kind of physical activity.
But according to Ellen Langer, a psychologist at Harvard University who decided to use hotel maids to investigate the relationship between weight and mindset, most of these women don't see themselves as physically active people.
Dr. ELLEN LANGER (Harvard University): Sixty-seven percent of them reported that they don't exercise. More than a third of those said that they didn't get any exercise. Now, given that they are exercising all day long, this seemed to be bizarre.
SPIEGEL: What was even more bizarre to Langer was despite the fact that all 84 women in her study far exceeded the surgeon general's recommendation about amount of daily exercise, the bodies of the women didn't seem to benefit from their activity.
Langer and her team measured their body fat, their waist-to-hip ratio, their blood pressure, their weight, their body mass index.
Dr. LANGER: On all of these indicators they matched their perceived amount of exercise rather than their actual amount of exercise.
SPIEGEL: And so Langer wondered what would happen if you changed their perception. To figure this out, she divided the group in two. With half the women the researchers sat down and carefully went through each of the tasks they did each day, explaining how many calories those tasks burned and informing the women that they already met the surgeon general's definition of an active lifestyle. The other half got no information.
One month later, Langer and her team returned to take measurements and were surprised by what they found in the group that had been educated.
Dr. LANGER: A decrease in their systolic blood pressure, a decrease in their weight, a decrease in their body mass index, and a decrease in their waist-to-hip ratio.
SPIEGEL: In fact, blood pressure alone dropped 10 percent on average.
Now, one possible explanation is that the process of learning about the amount of exercise they were already getting somehow changed the behavior of the maids. But Langer says that her team surveyed both the women and their managers and found no indication that the maids had altered their routines in any way, which led Langer to this conclusion.
Dr. LANGER: The only to thing to which we could attribute this improvement was their change of mindset.
SPIEGEL: Essentially, Langer is talking about a placebo effect. She is saying that if you believe you are exercising, your body will respond as if it is, in the same way that if you believe you're getting medication when you're actually getting a sugar pill your body can sometimes respond as if it is.
Now, to be clear, Langer is not arguing that you can sit around eating chocolate all day, believe that the chocolate will lead to weight loss, and end up skinnier.
Dr. LANGER: I'm not saying that the effect we can have over our health and well-being is unlimited. What I'm suggesting is that we don't know what those limits are.
SPIEGEL: In fact, Langer talks about the study as part of a larger body of research which explores the connection between mind and body. For example, research about the effects of emotional stress on physical well-being and health.
But Martin Binks, a director of behavioral health at the Duke Diet and Fitness Center, feels that at least in terms of this particular study, the connection between the mind and the body remains unproven.
Dr. MARTIN BINKS (Duke Diet and Fitness Center): They can't really claim what they're claiming.
SPIEGEL: Binks, who spent most of his professional life at the diet and fitness center trying to track the reasons people do and do not lose weight, says that though he agrees the changes in the women's bodies were real, because Langer only used a questionnaire to track the women's eating and exercise practices during the period of the study, she can't definitively say that the only thing that changed was their mindset.
Dr. BINKS: There's a very high likelihood that those people behaved differently after they received that information and they were being more active or they were eating more healthfully that resulted in their improvements in health.
SPIEGEL: But Binks has a more substantive criticism. He does not believe that placebos are capable of producing the kind of objective change in the physical body that Langer is claiming.
Dr. BINKS: Generally, what placebos work on are subjective types of findings.
SPIEGEL: In other words, placebos can help change something like your perception of pain or perhaps your sense of whether or not you feel depressed, but can't do something objective like shrink a tumor or cut three pounds off your waistline, as the Langer study claims. Or can it?
Dr. HOWARD BRODY (University of Texas): The idea that you see a placebo when it's subjective but you don't to see a placebo effect when it's objective really doesn't hold up.
SPIEGEL: This is Howard Brody, director of the Institute for Medical Humanities at the University of Texas, and author of the book, "The Placebo Response." Brody, who has spent years looking at this issue, says that focused research into the possibilities and limits of the placebo effect is actually relatively new. Apparently placebo research didn't really take off until 2001, when the National Institutes of Health convened the conference on the subject.
Since then, however, our understanding of placebos has advanced significantly, and there are now a number of studies which challenge the old assumption that the effect can only alter subjective perception. Brody points to just one example.
Dr. BRODY: They have given asthmatic patients a drug that tightens up your airways and makes breathing harder - a drug that worsens asthma - and they've given it to asthmatic patients and told them it was a drug that relieves asthma. And a significant number of those patients said my asthma symptoms got better when you gave me the drug, and they measured better when you measure the lung findings. So the idea that the placebo effect is restricted only to subjective states of the brain I think is really one that we have to dismiss.
SPIEGEL: Brody agrees with Binks, however, that there appeared to be real limits to what a placebo can accomplish. For Brody, those limits involve the intensity of disease. He uses the metaphor of a gently-moving stream versus a raging torrent.
Dr. BRODY: If the disease process you're trying to intervene and change is a gently-moving brook or stream, you can see how the placebo could be very powerful. If the disease process is more like a raging torrent or a waterfall, you can see how the placebo might not be very effective in reversing it. So most cancers, for example, are much more like the raging waterfall than they are like the babbling brook. And so that would explain it's going to be very unusual to see a placebo that shrinks a tumor.
SPIEGEL: Fortunately for hotel maids and the rest of us who spent time each week hauling dirty laundry and toiling over the kitchen floor, the placebo effect just might apply here, and perhaps listening to this story will knock a couple of pounds off the scale.
Alix Spiegel, NPR News, Washington.
INSKEEP: Just in case that's not enough for you, you can find a vitamin to boost your brain power, or find out what the real secret is to a long life by going to our Web site, npr.org/yourhealth.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
Long before this day, plenty of Americans effectively cast their votes in the presidential campaign. They did it with money. They did it with endorsements. They did it through polls. The field is already narrower than it was, but this is the time when voters formally begin to choose.
MONTAGNE: And it starts with the Iowa caucuses. In a moment, we'll report on the Republican race. We begin with a tight race on the Democratic side, where many Iowans are still considering their options.
NPR's David Greene reports.
DAVID GREENE: The candidates spent much of yesterday fanned out across Iowa, but then some made their way to the state capital of Des Moines to hold last big rallies. John Edwards brought rocker John Mellencamp with him to a ballroom in Des Moines. Mellencamp was revving up the crowd by doing some sing-along.
(Soundbite of song, "Our Country")
Mr. JOHN MELLENCAMP (Singer): (Singing) This is our country.
GREENE: Then Edwards told the crowds they have work to do.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): Go to the caucus. Stand up. Speak out. Change this country. Show what you're made of.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
GREENE: It sounded like a room full of hardcore supporters. But Kathleen Mumborg(ph) said she's still thinking about who to caucus for. She said it will be a game-time decision.
Ms. KATHLEEN MUMBORG: And I've changed three times. I started with Obama. I went to Hillary. I went then back - wait - to Edwards. And now I'm - I don't know where I'm at, but I think John Edwards is going to surprise people tomorrow. I really do.
GREENE: Not far away, Barack Obama landed in town at a high school. A long day of campaigning had taken a toll on his voice.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): To all the young people out here today, the cynics say that you won't turn out, that despite all the sweat and tears that you have put into this campaign, that you will somehow forget to show up.
GREENE: Obama returned to a signature theme that he'll do well if voters believe in themselves and believe they're part of a movement.
Sen. OBAMA: You have the chance to cast a new vision, to set a new direction to this country. Tomorrow, you have the chance to say, yes, we can.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
Sen. OBAMA: I believe you will.
GREENE: Ron Faudness(ph) was listening. He said he is planning tonight to start off supporting another Democratic candidate - New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. But if Richardson doesn't have the support to stay alive at his caucus, he'll switch to Obama. He said he likes Obama's message.
Mr. RON FAUDNESS: I believe in his perspective on the world and I support, you know, the ideas that he stands for. The reason I would think of Richardson first is I just look at him as having a model resume for a presidential candidate.
GREENE: And across town at the Iowa Historical Society, a family Americans have known for some time walked out to greet the crowd.
President BILL CLINTON: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
GREENE: Bill Clinton came on stage with Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. The former president introduced his wife this way.
Pres. CLINTON: What you really care about in public service and the only thing that matters is whether people are better off when you quit than when you started and whether our children and grandchildren have a better future. If that's your test, this is your candidate - a great president.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
GREENE: Clinton said she's proven she can bring change by setting goals and bringing people together behind her.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): Holding public office is a public trust. And you're supposed to get up every day and not think about how to gratify your own ego, but how to solve the problems that the people you represent have to make their lives better.
GREENE: I asked Barbara Rife(ph) if Clinton's won her over.
Ms. BARBARA RIFE: You know, I'm not sure. I think so though, because I like her attitudes and her ideas on education, being a retired teacher.
GREENE: But Rife said she has considered Democratic candidate Joe Biden. In fact, she's looked at the whole Democratic field and said she'll be happy if any of them wins.
Ms. RIFE: It's funny. I was just - my husband and I were just talking about it the other night. I think I could vote for any one of them.
GREENE: She's more certain about just wanting the caucuses to be over.
Ms. RIFE: It's time. It's time. You know, for Christmas, my son-in-law, the techie, he gave us TiVo and I've been whizzing right through those commercials because I'm tired of them. It's finally here and I'm glad it's here.
GREENE: David Greene, NPR News, Des Moines.
SCOTT HORSLEY: And I'm Scott Horsley.
On the Republican side of the contest, it's come down to this. Mitt Romney has run more than 8,000 television ads in Iowa trying to convince GOP voters he should be their nominee. But with just hours to go before the caucuses, the former Massachusetts governor found himself in the tiny Mason City Airport yesterday trying to seal the deal.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): We're in a neck-and-neck race. I mean, we are on a razor-thin edge. I don't know who's going to be ahead in terms of the polls. But the difference as to who's going to actually win depends on who turns out.
HORSLEY: That's why candidates in both parties have been crisscrossing the state, and why a place like Mason City, with just 27,000 residents and a Mexican restaurant called Carlos O'Kelly's drew visits yesterday from not only Romney but GOP rivals Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson as well.
Mason City resident Mike Forbes(ph) was among the voters Romney was trying to sway during a barnstorming tour of Iowa. He's leaning in Romney's direction. He likes the former businessman's plan to cut taxes on savings and investments. But Forbes also checked out Huckabee when the former Arkansas governor spoke in Mason City just a few miles away from Romney's event.
Mr. MIKE FORBES: Actually, I could support of those guys real easy. Yeah, I could vote for both of them, actually.
HORSLEY: For much of the last year, Huckabee was an also-ran in the Republican race, wildly outspent by better-funded opponents. But since November, he's held a narrow lead over Romney in some Iowa polls. He told supporters yesterday they have a chance to show America that Iowans can't be bought.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): Nobody really thinks that it's possible to win a caucus or any election when you're outspent 20-to-1. You can prove the pundits wrong and the people right.
HORSLEY: Huckabee has drawn support from evangelicals and home-schooling activists, as well as some independent voters like Florence Klein(ph), who works in a natural food store.
Ms. FLORENCE KLEIN: Actually, I was expecting that I would be more attracted to some Democrats. So it's very unusual that I'm here.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. KLEIN: I'm intrigued that if he's in a rock band and plays bass. I'm - he's just a fascinating human being.
HORSLEY: Unlike Romney, a governor's son who is catering to a traditional Republican base of social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and defense hawks, Huckabee is more of a populist. When he talks about his humble upbringing, he sounds a lot like Democrat John Edwards.
Mr. HUCKABEE: My mother was one of the seven children in her family. She was the oldest and so she went to work early so she could help them. When she was a little girl, her family lived with dirt floors, outdoor toilets. And that's where my roots are.
HORSLEY: Huckabee joked yesterday about offering body-warming campaign buttons to caucus-goers who drag friends out in the cold, and about shoveling snow into the driveways of political opponents to keep them from getting out to caucus. The jokes may have been a warm-up for Huckabee's appearance on last night's Jay Leno show. That trip sparked a minor controversy when Huckabee had to cross a picket line of the show's still striking writers.
While Romney and Huckabee battle for the top spot in Iowa, John McCain is also hoping for a strong showing. The Arizona senator had largely ignored Iowa throughout the fall and early winter. But last night he had to push his way through an overflow crowd of supporters at his campaign headquarters outside Des Moines.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): I'm very grateful for you being here. I'm grateful for this expression of support. And I can tell you we've come a long way since I met the 1,203 pound pig named Big Red at the Iowa state fair.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Sen. McCAIN: And then enjoyed a pork chop on a stick, followed by a delicious deep-fried Twinkie.
HORSLEY: Back during fair season this past summer, McCain was all but written off. But he's shown new life in recent polls. Last night he spoke about fighting Islamic extremists and restoring faith in government.
Linda Kilsmayer(ph) of Johnston, Iowa was impressed.
Ms. LINDA KILSMAYER: I feel I can trust him. I don't feel like he's bashing anybody else, like some of them are doing already. And everybody gets tired of that.
HORSLEY: A strong third-place finish in Iowa could give McCain's campaign added momentum tomorrow when the focus shifts to New Hampshire.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Des Moines.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
If you're a non-Iowan still scratching your head over how those caucuses work, find out at npr.org, where you can also read more about what's at stake there.
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
After days of bloodletting over a disputed presidential election, the man who was named the winner of that election called today for an end to the violence. At least 300 people have died since incumbent Mwai Kibaki was returned to power. President Kibaki now says he is ready to talk to the opposition once the situation has calmed. His challenger, Raila Odinga, refuses to accept the result of the election. Also today, Kenya's attorney general called for an independent body to verify the vote tally.
NPR's Gwen Thompkins is in Nairobi and joins us to talk about it. And Gwen, can you tell us more about what President Kibaki said today?
GWEN THOMPKINS: The president came and spoke before reporters at State House, which is the equivalent of the White House here in Nairobi, and he called for calm in the country. What made the speech underwhelming is that Mr. Kibaki's remarks were surprisingly mild considering what has been going on in the country for these past five or six days.
I've just come from Western Kenya, from a town called Eldoret, where there has been terrific ethnic tension and some terrible killings. In fact, the hospital administrator there told me that as many as 50 bodies have been located by hospital officials around the area, but they're not able to bring the bodies to the morgue because the security situation is so tense on the ground.
Also this morning, when I flew out of Eldoret on my way back to Nairobi, I saw no less than 37 farmhouses that were either on fire or had been burned to the ground. So this political context has enraged so many people around this country and they are paying with their lives.
MONTAGNE: And how is the challenger - Raila Odinga, the man who says he was voted in as president - how has he responded to all this violence?
THOMPKINS: You know, his comments, Renee, have been just as mild as the president's. It's as if these two men are in a death grip with one another and they're unable to see their constituents. You know, when asked, for instance, whether it might be more wise to ask his supporters not to (unintelligible) riot police and defy a governmental order not to rally today, he said - Mr. Odinga said that he did not want to deny his constituents their right to free speech.
MONTAGNE: In other words, he was willing to send his supporters into a rally where they might face a water canon and tear gas or something worse.
THOMPKINS: Absolutely, absolutely. Now he also today, this afternoon, went to the city morgue and made a very impassioned speech accusing members of other ethnics groups - he himself is a Luo - and he was accusing them and other ethnic groups of targeting his constituents and finding many of the remains of those constituents at the morgue. So you know, Mr. Odinga is a populist, he is adept at capturing the mood of a crowd, and people here have been taken aback by the kind of violence that we've seen over the past several days. No one really knows what to make of it, and you know, and so all there really is at this point is wonderment and passion.
MONTAGNE: South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu is in Nairobi to help mediate the conflict. Officials in Washington and the European Union also are reportedly working on proposed measures to resolve the crisis. Does it look like any of that is having any effect?
THOMPKINS: Not an immediate effect. There is a lot going on behind the scenes. I think both of these men - on the president as well as Mr. Odinga - are both under a great deal of international pressure. But at this point, there is no outside entity that can be called a hero in this situation. Perhaps it's too early in the process for any resolution that is satisfactory to all parties to be reached.
MONTAGNE: Gwen, thanks very much.
THOMPKINS: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Gwen Thompkins speaking to us from Nairobi.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
NPR's business starts with the price of oil.
After hitting the symbolic price of $100 a barrel, oil prices slipped back a bit. Still, pressures pushing oil prices to all-time highs remain - soaring demand from China and India, a weak dollar, and political tensions in both the Middle East and Africa's big oil producer, Nigeria.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Now, the high oil prices are pushing up costs throughout the economy; not just gas and air fares, but products at Starbucks. No, we're not talking about the coffee. It's the plastic lids on the coffee cups. They're made from petroleum. And that's going to be added trouble for the coffee company, which saw its stock price dropped five percent on Wall Street just yesterday. That's after the stock finished 2007 with its worst ever performance.
From Seattle, NPR's Wendy Kaufman has more on why investors are souring on Starbucks.
WENDY KAUFMAN: Once a darling of Wall Street, Starbucks has had a rough year. For a long time the company seemed immune to conventional economic factors. But as Bear Sterns suggested in a new report to investors, that is no longer the case. And the Wall Street firm lowered its rating on the stock from outperform to peer perform compared to others in the restaurant industry.
Another analyst, Nicole Miller of Piper Jaffray, echoed the view that today's weak economy is a major reason for the stock's decline.
Ms. NICOLE MILLER (Senior Research Analyst, Piper Jaffray): I think what surprised all of us was that we thought a certain category of concepts would be resilient to economic pressures when the fact of the matter is what was once considered sort of an everyday convenience has really become a luxury for a lot of people now.
KAUFMAN: Moreover, Starbucks must contend with higher dairy prices and it may be feeling the impact of competition from McDonald's and others who are improving their coffee offerings. But don't count the company out. Starbucks, which has more than 15,000 stores worldwide, is expanding rapidly abroad, where the economics look rosier.
Wendy Kaufman, NPR News, Seattle.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The world of business, of course, has its own jargon, much of it complex financial terminology. But many of the phrases that pepper the speech of analysts and business executives are meaningless, and it drives Lucy Kellaway nuts.
Lucy Kellaway is a columnist at the Financial Times newspaper and we spoke to her about her crusade to read the world of phrases like going forward.
Ms. LUCY KELLAWAY (Columnist, Financial Times): Hello.
MONTAGNE: Why don't I begin by asking you, what is so horrible about the phrase going forward? Obviously it just drives you mad. For me, though, it doesn't faze me that much.
Ms. KELLAWAY: Renee, I'm really shocked. I'd always had you down as a woman of judgment. So let me just tell you what's wrong with it. First of all, when you hear it, it doesn't add anything. It's like a sort of yeah, right. So if you say, what's our plans going forward? That's just a slightly more waffly way of saying what are our plans. So that's reason number one.
Reason number two: It's become a sort of - like a verbal tick. People who say going forward say it's about six times in one simple utterance. So you may not mind it. But when I'm with a real going forward addict, I feel that I want to scream.
MONTAGNE: Now, I know there's another expression - and this one actually does bother me more - and that is reach out.
Ms. KELLAWAY: I can't stand reach out. I mean again, it's got this sort of emotional charge to it that makes one feel so nauseous. You know, you get a sort of cold-call e-mail from maybe someone you've never met that says, Lucy, I wanted to reach out with some new research that you're doing. You're not reaching out. You're just telling me something and maybe something I don't even want to know anyway.
MONTAGNE: Well, there's a delicious sort of pain discussing these. Are there any other expressions that we can...
Ms. KELLAWAY: Yeah.
MONTAGNE: ...all like squirm a little bit more listening to?
Ms. KELLAWAY: Yes, I mean, you know, once one starts, one hardly knows where to stop, and one that I just cannot tolerate is at the end of the day. You know, I even heard Prince Charles was speaking about something. He said it a few times in some speech...
MONTAGNE: At the end of the day? At the end...
Ms. KELLAWAY: I didn't mind saying at the end of the day I have a hot chocolate before I go to bed. I'm perfectly happy with that. But at the end of the day, let's look at our metrics going forward and I'll reach out to you with the results is not something that - well, it does set my blood pressure rate racing, but in the wrong way.
MONTAGNE: Why do people in the financial world use these phrases and why is it so hard to get off them?
Ms. KELLAWAY: Yeah. Well, I think why they use - I mean it's partly a sort of locker room chat. We structure our language to show that we belong to a particular gang. So if everyone else is doing it, we do it. And I also think that it is quite hard in business to know precisely what it is you're supposed to be saying. So to pepper your language with fillers sort of makes sense, but it would be nice if they were a little bit more varied and slightly less annoying ones.
MONTAGNE: Well, do words like liquidity count?
Ms. KELLAWAY: Yeah. I have no - I mean, liquidity is fine because it means something. And I think you would be hard-pressed to explain what it meant in just one word.
MONTAGNE: Do you feel like you've gathered a lot more supporters? Because I get the impression that the more you bring it up, the more likely it is for people to think, oh, there's a good expression for me to use.
Ms. KELLAWAY: You know, I've been - for 13 years I've been writing a column urging people to sort of say and think more simply. And during that period matters have got worse and worse and worse, so I think I've been fantastically ineffective.
MONTAGNE: Does that mean you've thrown in the towel going forward?
Ms. KELLAWAY: I think I might have to reconsider my position going forward. However, I'm not throwing in the towel generally. There'll be lots of other phrases that I will - the optimism will triumph and I'll continue to rail again.
MONTAGNE: Lucy Kellaway writes a column on the workplace among other things for the Financial Times.
Thanks very much for joining us.
Ms. KELLAWAY: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Our last word in business goes forward to Seattle and the world of coffee once again. The word is not Starbucks but Clover, which is the name of a small Seattle company that has crafted a new kind of high-tech coffee brewer. If you thought Starbucks is pricey, wait until you've tried the joe flowing out of this machine. It's a handcrafted single-cup brewer which costs $11,000 - not aimed at the average consumer but rather at the super-specialty coffee shop owner, the kind of person who brews extra rare gourmet beans and charges people $6 a cup to drink it, which might help pay for the machine and which also makes Starbucks seem cheap.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep. Good morning.
The CIA is at a center of a new criminal investigation by the Justice Department. Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced yesterday that a federal prosecutor will examine whether CIA officers and maybe other government officials broke the law. They destroyed videotapes of the interrogations of suspected terrorists.
These tapes were made in 2002 and destroyed three years later and they reportedly showed the harsh interrogation methods used by the agency.
NPR's Dina Temple-Raston is covering the story and joins us now. Let's talk first about the man who's been assigned to investigate this. His name is John Durham.
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON: John Durham, a very interesting guy. He's a Connecticut prosecutor. And he may be best known for leading a Justice Department probe that looked at whether or not the FBI and other law enforcement agencies leaked FBI information to two notorious leaders of a South Boston gang. In fact, a retired FBI agent John Connelly Jr. was ultimately found guilty of leaking information to those mob characters.
INSKEEP: Hmm.
TEMPLE-RASTON: And he was asked to actually take part in that investigation by then Attorney General Janet Reno because law enforcement in the Boston area had a conflict of interest. So there's some parallels here. Attorney General Mukasey said yesterday that the Virginia office had removed itself from looking at the state's case to avoid any possible appearance of conflict of interest.
INSKEEP: Now let's remember what's on these videotapes and why it would be, at least in theory, a violation of the law to destroy them.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, there are a hundred hours, there are hundreds of hours of tapes and it's unclear exactly what's on them. But the one that - the ones that everyone is focusing on are tapes that apparently show waterboarding, which is like controlled drowning of a al-Qaida suspect named Abu Zubaydah, and that was in 2002.
And the CIA hanged on to these tapes apparently until 2005 when they decided to destroy them. And that was really an issue within the administration. There are some people at the CIA who wanted to destroy them supposedly because they would cause some problems for the interrogators. That's what the head of the CIA said.
The Bush administration was saying, hey, we shouldn't destroy them. This is going to lead to trouble and that seems to have been what happened.
INSKEEP: And I guess in those intervening three years, there were people who wanted the tapes. Defense lawyers for a terror suspect, the 9/11 commission, they asked for information like this and weren't given. Is that why it could be at least considered a criminal violation to destroy them?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Possibly. Now we don't know exactly what it is they are looking for, but there are several things. There could be contempt of court, if the court had actually - it turns out to these tapes encompass something that the courts would have wanted, or there could be something as bad as obstruction of justice if this is something that was actually subpoenaed and they had destroyed them anyway.
INSKEEP: Now what is this appointment of these prosecutors say about Michael Mukasey, the new attorney general?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, it actually says quite a bit about him. Now Durham, because of what he's done in the past - he's known as a very fierce investigator. Some people that I spoke to yesterday said that he was sort of like Patrick Fitzgerald-like, which certainly does not make him a favorite of the Bush administration.
INSKEEP: Let's remember that's the special prosecutor who looked into violations having to do with the Valerie Plame's CIA whistleblower.
TEMPLE-RASTON: And Scooter Libby. So and that's how that ended up working out. And what's interesting is sometimes it's not actually the crime that you're looking at, but the cover up after the crime that's going to be the problem, as was the case in Scooter Libby's case. Fitzgerald didn't actually find the crime he was looking for. He found obstruction instead. And what the concern is among some Bush administration officials is that this will go in that sort of direction.
INSKEEP: And people who know about John Durham the prosecutor say he's tenacious as Fitzgerald was tenacious.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Tenacious, and apparently not a political bone in his body.
INSKEEP: And has apparently gotten the respect of Republicans and Democrats if a Republican attorney general and a Democratic attorney general chose him for a special assignment.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Indeed, although, apparently he's a registered Republican.
INSKEEP: Okay. Well, there's some information and we'll continue listening for more. Dina, thanks very much.
TEMPLE-RASTON: My pleasure.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Dina Temple-Raston this morning.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
One of Congress' top priorities this year is to pass a law regulating the government's surveillance of American citizens. The old law expires next month. Lawmakers have to decide whether it should limit the president's ability to spy on Americans who are overseas.
And as NPR's Ari Shapiro reports, that debate reflects a larger issue about presidential power.
ARI SHAPIRO: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA is a law that tells the president generally that he must have court approval to spy on Americans in the U.S. It doesn't say much at all about Americans overseas.
When Americans go abroad to take a vacation or fight a war, the most specific explanation of their privacy rights comes in an executive order issued in the 1980s. In a recent speech, Democratic Rhode Island Senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, described the order known by its official number 12333.
Senator SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (Democrat, Rhode Island): Which says that the administration will not wiretap Americans overseas and let the attorney general determines that that person is an agent of a foreign power.
SHAPIRO: That may sound like legal ease, but the important distinction here is between a law, like the one protecting the privacy of Americans in the U.S., and an executive order, like the one protecting Americans abroad. A recent Justice Department memo spells out the difference. Here's Senator Whitehouse again, reading from the parts of the memo that he convinced the Justice Department to declassify and make public.
Sen. WHITEHOUSE: An executive order cannot limit a president.
SHAPIRO: The memo says that if the president appears to violate an executive order, he has instead modified or waived it. And he can do that in secret.
Sen. WHITEHOUSE: In other words, the only thing standing between Americans traveling overseas and a government wiretap is an executive order that this president believes he is under no obligation to obey.
SHAPIRO: Legally speaking, that's actually not such a controversial position. It's widely accepted that the president is free to change orders that originated in the executive branch.
But Pepperdine law professor Doug Kmiec, who worked in the Justice Department under President Reagan, thinks it's not exactly fair for the president to secretly ignore an executive order without telling anybody.
Professor DOUG KMIEC (Law, Pepperdine University): Because the whole point of executive orders is to specify rules. And the benefit of the executive order is one of transparency and accountability.
SHAPIRO: Kmiec says is the president secretly rejects executive orders without publicly revealing them. It undermines one of the basic tenets of the system which is that the president follows a public set of rules. In the almost three decades that Executive Order 12333 has been in place, nobody has seriously questioned whether the president is secretly ignoring the rule.
But today the atmosphere is different. The Bush administration has exerted executive power like no White House in the last 30 years. And some said that Democrats have now become so suspicious of the administration that they want to amend the FISA law to protect Americans overseas rather than leave those rules in an executive order.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon says this amendment is necessary because of the Bush administration's past behavior.
Senator RON WYDEN (Democrat, Oregon): They have undercut their arguments against what I'm trying to do by their very own words. It would be one thing for them to say, oh, we've taken care of it through an executive order. If they didn't, out of the other side of their mouths say, executive orders can't limit a president. They can't have it both ways.
SHAPIRO: Administration officials often say that Executive Order 12333 is enough to protect the privacy of Americans overseas.
For example, Justice Department's spokesman Dean Boyd said in a statement to NPR: Continued use of this procedure, together with the authorities and safeguards in the Senate Intelligence Bill, without the Wyden amendment, would ensure that surveillance can be conducted consistent with the Constitution.
Boyd pointed out that the president is required to follow the Constitution's Fourth Amendment which protects Americans' privacy, but when I asked whether ignoring 12333 would be a violation of Fourth Amendment, Boyd declined to discuss hypotheticals.
Harvard Law Professor David Baron worked at the Justice Department in the 1990s, and he says at almost every congressional hearing about spying, interrogations and detention, administration officials give a long list of protections and limitations that the White House has voluntarily put in place.
Professor DAVID BARON (Law, Harvard University): And then the senators, in questioning, often say well, since you're willing to do all that, I hope you won't mind if I just included in a statute that we're going to put up. And then almost without exception, the administration always says oh, well we would veto that. We definitely oppose you putting it in statute.
SHAPIRO: Of course, even a law may not guarantee that the president will act a certain way. The White House has asserted a right to ignore laws as well.
Ari Shapiro, NPR News, Washington.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
We have put together a quiz for you this morning. See if you can identify all five of the voices you are about to hear.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Here's a hint. The voices are very familiar to people in Iowa.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor of Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): Go out there and get your friends. Get everybody you can. Make the calls.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): I'm asking every one of you to go to the caucus. I'm asking you to caucus for me and…
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): I know it's cold outside but I'm fired up.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
Sen. OBAMA: I'm ready to go.
Unidentified Group: Ready to go.
Sen. OBAMA: Are you ready to go?
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): Put on your coat. Warm up the car. Call your friends. Come to out to caucus tomorrow night and gather…
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): People from all over the world, they're here in Iowa, watching this process because they know you are playing a key role in the selection of the next leader of the world.
MONTAGNE: And here are the answers: Mitt Romney, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
Just some of the presidential candidates hoping for a good showing in tonight's caucuses.
INSKEEP: Iowans meet in person tonight. They gather at places like Grantwood Elementary and CJ's Bar & Grill.
MONTAGNE: They've been encouraged to wear their mittens for Mitt.
INSKEEP: Or to quote, "Highjack a Church Bus and Caucus for Mike Huckabee."
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
When you think about wilderness conservation, your mind probably conjures images of pristine forests and rolling green fields. Not toxic waste dumps, but a dump that's exactly what a private land conservancy in Southern Indiana has inherited, putting it in an unusual situation.
From member station WFIU in Bloomington, Indiana, Adam Ragusea reports.
ADAM RAGUSEA: For eight years starting in 1962, an 18-acre site west of Bloomington called Neal's Landfill accepted industrial waste from what was been the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. That waste included polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs, a class of compounds used by Westinghouse to insulate capacitors produced at a nearby plant.
PCBs were banned in the '70s after they were linked to multiple health problems and the landfill was designated a Superfund Site by the EPA in 1983. Today, the landfill is capped with clay and is overgrown with grass except for the EPA's testing wells that looks like any other meadow on a hilltop.
In 2003, this land was purchased by an unlikely buyer, a nearby compost farmer named David Porter.
Ms. DAWN HEWITT(ph) (David Porter's Girlfriend): You know, a lot of people say not in my backyard. David wanted that backyard because he had more control of the situation if he was an owner.
RAGUSEA: That's Dawn Hewitt, Porter's longtime girlfriend. Looking out over his land, she says Porter was dissatisfied with the environmental remedies being negotiated here. By owning the land, he would have standing to sue. Porter had dreams of opening a kite park on this land once the cleanup was completed.
But in 2006, and as he was dying of colon cancer, Porter bequeathed the old landfill to the Sycamore Land Trust, a local non-profit that stewards about 4,000 acres in south central Indiana. Land Trust Executive Director Christian Freitag says at first, his organization wasn't quite sure what to make of the gift.
Mr. CHRISTIAN FREITAG (Executive Director, Sycamore Land Trust, Bloomington): There's probably a thousand land trust in the country who would never touch it with 10 foot pole because the first nature of reaction that everybody has is, oh, my gosh, what about the liability?
RAGUSEA: Land trust like Freitag's usually deal with cornfields or old logging areas not toxic waste dumps. But EPA Project Manager Tom Alcamo told Freitag that if Sycamore Land Trust were to take possession of the property, it would be considered an innocent purchaser under the Superfund law.
Mr. TOM ALCAMO (Project Manager, EPA Region 5): They're completely protected under Superfund unless they did something that would damage the landfill cap or damage the site remedy, there's no liability associated with that.
RAGUSEA: Legal concerns aside, Freitag says his board members had to reconsider the very active conservation and as they thought long and hard about whether to accept this Superfund site.
Mr. FREITAG: Not every piece of land that we have is going to be wilderness quality land. What does it mean to be a conservationist? Does it mean only focusing the best of the best or does it mean looking at pieces of ground like this and saying what role can we apply to bring that back into the positive realm?
RAGUSEA: After a nearly two years of grappling with those questions, Sycamore Land Trust is now finally taking possession of Neal's Landfill. While it's unlikely that Porter's dream of a kite park on this bald hill will come through anytime soon, Freitag is hoping that the treeless site could harness the wind for something else, turbines.
For NPR News, I'm Adam Ragusea in Bloomington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
Let's continue our coast-to-coast conversation on the state of America. We've been calling people along Interstate 10 this week. The highway sweeps across the southern U.S. and on the way, it passes New Orleans. That's the area where we reached Donald and Colleen Bordelon. We've been talking with them ever since they started rebuilding their house, which flooded during Hurricane Katrina.
Mr. DONALD BORDELON (Resident, New Orleans): We're doing pretty good. We're doing fine in the houses, you know, (unintelligible) 95 percent finish. We turned and took off for a Christmas holiday, my daughter got married.
INSKEEP: Oh, congratulations.
Mr. BORDELON: And Coleen's here, too, you know.
INSKEEP: Hi, Coleen.
Ms. COLEEN BORDELON (Resident, New Orleans): How are you doing, Steve?
INSKEEP: I'm doing great. It's good to talk with you again. How are things going on in your street right now?
Mr. BORDELON: Slow. It's coming back slowly, you know, I mean, we got one-sixteenth of what we have before, you know. But there's more people. We got another man down the street just moved in. Seem like a nice guy, you know.
Ms. BORDELON: And then a lot of people - they're waiting for their Road Home money to rebuild. So a bunch of people are just now starting to come back. But it's like the little things.
INSKEEP: Coleen Bordelon, you just referred to Road Home money. That is, if I'm not mistaken, government money that is designed, you know, programmed to help people to repair their houses, to rebuild, to come back. Is that right?
Ms. BORDELON: Correct.
INSKEEP: And not everybody has gotten their check.
Mr. BORDELON: No.
Ms. BORDELON: No, slow.
Mr. BORDELON: Real slow.
INSKEEP: Well now, Donald and Coleen, can you tell me, as you follow the news from Washington and the news from the presidential campaign, has anything the candidates said seemed to connect with the concerns you have in your community?
Mr. BORDELON: Not a whole lot. Their concern about it. You know, there's just so many other things. It's hard to get a lot of help there, you know, it really is.
INSKEEP: Well, stay with us, if you would because I want to continue on down Interstate 10. We get this map that is an arm spans length long at this point continuing across the country and the yellow line traces us all the way to Chipley, Florida. Am I saying that correctly Fred Peel(ph)?
Mr. FRED PEEL (Retired County Sheriff, Chipley, Florida): That's exactly correct.
INSKEEP: Fred Peel is a retired county sheriff in Chipley, Florida. Welcome to the program.
Mr. PEEL: Well, good morning.
INSKEEP: Now how closely have you been following the presidential campaign?
Mr. PEEL: Very close. We're very attentive to politics, obviously, having been in it pretty much all my adult life and I read the books each one of the candidates writes…
INSKEEP: When you say we, you mean you and…
Mr. PEEL: My wife, Vicky(ph).
INSKEEP: And has she been with you during your 24 years when you were sheriff there?
Mr. PEEL: That's correct. She has been through, I guess, I had eight campaigns over my lifetime and one-sixth of them so we've been involved, you know, in state level politics and mainly on national level.
INSKEEP: Now you are Democrat, is that right?
Mr. PEEL: That's correct.
INSKEEP: You have had a little bit of practice trying to figure out which of these guys is worth supporting. Does anybody excite you this time around on either party?
Mr. PEEL: I would say that John Edwards would do very well here in West Florida. I would concede that West Florida is generally a Republican, but there is still a lot of Democrats in the panhandle and a big candidate can appeal to this area.
INSKEEP: What is it about John Edwards or what he has to say that seems to resonate there, even with Republicans that you know?
Mr. PEEL: Well, here's some Republicans comment that they could support John Edwards and I would think it's mainly his desire to break this stranglehold by big business, which I suppose is the drug companies and insurance industries, and those kind of things.
INSKEEP: Is there a major national issue that's on your mind right now?
Mr. PEEL: Mostly, surrounding economic issues and that would range everything from national debt down to hot property taxes and those types of things. But, of course, the war is a major issue with the people here too.
INSKEEP: You got kids or grandkids?
Mr. PEEL: We have kids, yes.
INSKEEP: Do you fell like you're generation is going to be able to leave young people our country that's better than the one that was left to you once upon a time?
Mr. PEEL: The answer to that would be, no, and we had a family around last night and talked about this may be the first time that we leave the next generation a debt, spending is out of control on the national level.
INSKEEP: Well, Fred Peel, stay with us, if you would, and Donald and Coleen BORDELON are also still on the line outside of New Orleans. We're going to go next to Jacksonville, Florida, which is roughly the place where Interstate 10 hits the Atlantic Coast. That's where we found Mike Hancock(ph). Welcome to the program, sir.
Mr. MIKE HANCOCK (Resident, Florida): Thanks, Steve. It's good to be with you this morning.
INSKEEP: Would you describe what you do for a living?
Mr. HANCOCK: I'm a small business owner. I - my wife and I own a couple of small businesses. We do spray-on bed liners for pickup trucks and we do underground sewer rehabilitation work. Then I'm an old radio guy from years ago, so I do voiceover work every once in a while and then also have done political consulting on campaigns and that sort of thing in the past.
INSKEEP: You mentioned those other businesses were dependent somewhat on the real estate market, the underground sewer rehabilitation and also…
Mr. HANCOCK: Right.
INSKEEP: And, I guess, here things as to do with the automotive economy and our people are tricking out their trucks…
Mr. HANCOCK: Yeah…
INSKEEP: How's business?
Mr. HANCOCK: And unfortunately for us right now, both of our primary businesses are taking quite a hit because of the economy. And, obviously, the economy then becomes our number one concern. Driving down most of the major roadways over here in Jacksonville, you see 2007 models still lining the car dealerships, which tells us that, you know, the '08s have barely even sold yet because they still have plenty of '07s to sell.
INSKEEP: Hmm. I suppose we should mention Florida's going to have its voting here in the month of January.
Mr. HANCOCK: That's correct. I'll be voting in the Republican primary.
INSKEEP: And are any candidates exciting you?
Mr. HANCOCK: Yeah. I was an early joiner with the Huckabee team. After hearing a lot about what he said and some of the fairly radical ideas he has to shake things up, I would be surprised if he can make good on some of the things he'd like to do, simply because he has to work with Congress.
And whether it's a Republican or a Democrat Congress, not casting aspersions either way, because frankly, I think most of mainstream America is very disappointed and never would have believed that Republicans would have allowed spending to get out of control the way they have.
But having said all that, Huckabee is the guy that my wife Joanie and I will be voting for in the primary.
INSKEEP: You know, I want to ask the same question I asked of Fred Peel. Do you feel like you're going to be able to leave the country in better shape than you got it?
Mr. HANCOCK: Yeah. Steve, I still really am optimistic about that. And I think right now, at this particular time in the history, we have a lot of reasons to be pessimistic about the future of the country. I'm still very, very proud to be an American. I think we're going to have to work our butts off to make sure that we leave it better. I'm committed and prepared to do that. I know Fred, Don and Colleen are as well. I think God's hand continues to be on this country for whatever reason, and I'm glad that it does.
INSKEEP: Well, now, Donald and Colleen Bordelon, what are your thoughts about the way the country is headed and whether you'll be able to leave it better than you found it?
Mr. BORDELON: It's pretty much about the way he said it, you know? Everything's so much different than what it was 25 years ago, you know? It really scares you sometimes.
Mr. HANCOCK: But, I tell you - this is Mike over in Jacksonville. You know, we have high hopes for these different candidates. And yet, they get into the establishment up there in Washington, D.C., and it just seems like that the establishment becomes too difficult to really make any major substantive changes. So does it really make a big difference on whether we elect Mike Huckabee or John Edwards, you know?
Gosh, I would like to think that it would make a huge difference, and I'm going to vote to make my voice heard. I'm just not sure that it does. I don't know how the others feel.
Mr. BORDELON: Pretty much the same thing right here with me and Colleen. You know, it's just - it's politics, you know?
Mr. HANCOCK: Right.
Mr. BORDELON: Yeah.
Mr. PEEL: Guys, this is Fred. And I would agree, once you get into the system, even at the state government, it's constructed in a way that it would be hard for one individual to make that much difference.
Mr. BORDELON: Yeah, had an old tax collector here tell me many years ago that if I had the choice of doing a good job or being perceived to be doing a good job, I would always take the perception.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. PEEL: That's right.
INSKEEP: Oh, my. Can I just ask if any of you has ever taken a long road trip along Interstate 10, this road we've been tracing by phone, across the country here?
Mr. PEEL: Well, I - this is Fred. I lived in Jacksonville briefly at one time, and, obviously, been to New Orleans. So I'm very familiar with the whole strip. And there's a lot of variation in our country. We were here before I-10 was built. So we've seen a great deal of change.
INSKEEP: Donald and Colleen Bordelon, you ever think about getting out of New Orleans and driving West to Sonica Monica, say, on I-10?
Mr. BORDELON: Maybe one day. We got - we still got a lot of work to do down here in New Orleans. Too many other things to do first.
INSKEEP: Donald and Colleen Bordelon in St. Bernards Parish, Louisiana. Thanks very much.
Ms. BORDELON: Thank you.
INSKEEP: Fred Peel in Chipley, Florida. Thank you very much for speaking with us.
Mr. PEEL: It was an honor and a privilege. And you get a little education when hear perspectives from everyone. And I think that's what we all need to do, is just to listen to everyone and familiarize our self with what goes on.
INSKEEP: Mike Hancock in Jacksonville, Florida, thanks to you.
Mr. HANCOCK: Steve, a real pleasure to be with you all this morning.
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: They are some of the voices we've heard this week along Interstate 10. Our conversation with voters across that portion of the country ends today on Iowa caucus day - the official beginning of the 2008 presidential campaign.
You could only be listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
If you were up a little late last night, you know that late-night talk is back. Jay Leno and David Letterman returned to the airwaves, and they were not shy about the writers' strike, that it kept them in repeats for weeks.
(Soundbite of TV show, "Late Show with David Letterman")
Mr. DAVID LETTERMAN (Host, "Late Show with David Letterman"): Let me just you bring you up to date. There's a writers' strike going on - the Writers Guild of America. And we were out because of the strike for two months. And I know you're thinking to yourselves at home right now, this crap is written? Yes.
(Soundbite of TV show, "The Tonight Show")
Mr. JAY LENO (Host, "The Tonight Show"): A Jew, a Christian and a Muslim walk into a bar.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. LENO: The Jew says to the Muslim - see, I have no idea what they say, because there's a writers' strike. We don't know what they say.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Unidentified Man: Everywhere we go…
Unidentified Group: Everywhere we go…
Unidentified Man: …people want to know…
Unidentified Group: …people want to know…
Unidentified Man: …who we are.
INSKEEP: David Letterman made a deal with the union to allow his writers to come back to work. Leno's return was tougher.
Unidentified Man: …we are the union…
Unidentified Group: …we are the union…
Unidentified Man: …mighty, mighty union.
Unidentified Group: …mighty, mighty union.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO: This is Mandalit del Barco.
Here in Burbank, hundreds of writers picketed outside of Jay Leno's studios before and during the taping of his show.
Ms. SARAH SINGER (Member and Organizer, Writers Guild of America): You know, I don't blame Jay. You can't blame Jay. It's an impossible situation for all the late-night hosts. They're under a tremendous amount of pressure.
DEL BARCO: Sarah Singer is an organizer with the Writers Guild of America.
Ms. SINGER: I blame NBC, Universal and CBS and all the other studios that have refused to come back to the table and bargain.
DEL BARCO: Outside "The Tonight Show" taping, the writers carried signs that read: Not tonight, dear, and Hey, Huckabee, don't scab me - a reference to Jay Leno's guest, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee who appeared, he said, because no replacement writers were being used.
But Singer and the other union members were still disappointed.
Ms. SINGER: I think there's a lot of people that are not going to do what Mike Huckabee did. You know, there's a lot of people that are not comfortable crossing the picket line. So, I think, you know, Letterman will probably get better guests.
DEL BARCO: Still, many of those in the audience came away as excited as Vicky Hughes(ph), who traveled from Daytona Beach to watch Leno in person.
Ms. VICKY HUGHES: I don't mean to say that he doesn't need the writers, because he does. And he acknowledged that he supported them. But he didn't need them tonight. But I think that's part of Jay Leno. Before he became real famous, he used to write his own scripts.
DEL BARCO: Across the country and New York City, David Letterman's audience seemed pleased that his company, Worldwide Pants, was able to strike a deal with the guild to get him back on the air with his writers.
College student Elizabeth Coat(ph) certainly was happy.
Ms. ELIZABETH COAT (College Student): He's hilarious. I'm glad to see him back. He's doing better than ever. I missed it. I'm tired of watching the reruns.
DEL BARCO: The writer's chief negotiator, John Bowman, said the Letterman deal proved the strike doesn't have to go on forever.
Mr. JOHN BOWMAN (Chief Negotiator, Writers Guild of America): Jay, I understand your pain. You're taking a bullet for the team. You love writers, we understand that. And Dave, knock 'em dead. You made a deal with us in three days, proved it can be done, and maybe the big 7 media companies could follow suit shortly.
DEL BARCO: Mandalit del Barco, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And in his first post-strike appearance, David Letterman had a new look: a bushy gray beard, so grizzly it inspired guest comedian Robin Williams to compare him to a Civil War reenactor. Jay Leno had no Hollywood personalities to kid around with.
To find out how the two kings of late night faired in their first show since the strike, we turn to TV critic Lynette Rice. She's with the Entertainment Weekly, based here in Los Angeles.
Good morning.
Ms. LYNETTE RICE (TV Critic, Entertainment Weekly): Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Obviously, you're a critic. Tell us how they fared?
Ms. RICE: Well, it's funny because we all know now that Letterman had his writers with him and Leno did not. And yet, it almost seemed like Leno was the one with the writers and Letterman was the one who was winging it. I mean, just by virtue of the way Letterman looked when he came out on stage with that scraggly beard. And you expected the show with the writers in tow to be more polished, and actually, they didn't seem as polished as, say, Leno did - who looked totally polished. He came out, his gray hair glistening, that, you know, nice, crisp suit. And he was clearly reading off of cue cards, and he had a monologue just about as long as any other monologue when there were writers present.
MONTAGNE: Now, Jay Leno is not supposed to have writers. He's not supposed to have written it down, anything. Those are the rules. But let's hear a little of what he said last night.
(Soundbite of TV show, "The Tonight Show")
(Soundbite of clapping, cheering)
Mr. JAY LENO (Host, "The Tonight Show"): As you know, we are in the middle of this writers' strike here in Hollywood. And it's already cost the town over half a billion dollars - $500 million, or, as Paul McCartney calls that, a divorce. But that's what it is called.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. RICE: It was cute. It was vintage Leno. You got a cute joke like the McCartney one. You have the requisite Britney Spears joke, which always pops up once a week on his show. And then you have the moment of self-effacing humor. He admitted that his wife helped him with his monologue. I mean, the guy hadn't skipped a beat.
MONTAGNE: And then David Letterman, of course, did have writers.
(Soundbite of TV show, "Late Show with David Letterman")
Mr. DAVID LETTERMAN (Host, "Late Show with David Letterman"): Ladies and gentlemen, two long months, but by God, I'm finally out of rehab.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. LETTERMAN: I got to tell you something. We haven't done a show in two months, and seriously, during that period of time, I was very introspective.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. LETTERMAN: Here's what I learned about myself: Show or no show, I really enjoy drinking in the morning.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MONTAGNE: Well, that moment was funny. How about the rest of it?
Ms. RICE: It was definitely funny hearing his jokes about the way he looked, because I think he seemed to agree that he looked pretty silly with that beard.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MONTAGNE: When it came to the guests, and we just heard that at least one - the spokespeople for writers was very disappointed that Mike Huckabee showed up. But there were other guests. Robin Williams, he was on Letterman.
Ms. RICE: Yes. He's a friend of the show, and he, of course, didn't disappoint. And, you know, conversely, over on Leno, you've got Huckabee, who ends up having this great platform to talk about himself endlessly. It was a great moment for Huckabee. And, you know, he was actually kind of charming, kind of funny.
MONTAGNE: And, I mean, this is a sort of thing that, as the writers' strike goes on, Leno may be hard pressed to get the big-name movie stars who won't want to walk across picket lines.
Ms. RICE: That's the million-dollar question. You know, on the one hand, yes, there's actors out there who don't want to cross the picket lines. But at the same time, you know, this strike has been going on for over two months. I think strike fatigue is settling in. And there may be some actors out there that will cross the picket line to be on the show, because no matter what, an appearance on Leno sure helps launch your movie.
MONTAGNE: Lynette, thanks very much.
Ms. RICE: No problem.
MONTAGNE: Lynette Rice is a senior writer, covering television for Entertainment Weekly.
(Soundbite of music)
MONTAGNE: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
It didn't take long for Antonio Nunez to run into trouble at work this year. He leads Portugal's food standards agency. He is responsible for a new ban on smoking in many public places, which took effect with the New Year. And at a New Year's party Nunez was seen lighting up in public. The anti-smoking law applies to cafes, restaurants and bars. But the official says he didn't realize it applies to casinos, like the one where he was photographed.
It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
The Rose Bowl brings out parade goers popping champagne. Those lining the route of the annual Toilet Bowl parade in Hustisford, Wisconsin make do with a tractor dragging a case of beer and the king and queen ducking rolls of tp. Still, it's a hot ticket. The Toilet Bowl began in the '60s with a pickup game for those looking to sweat off hangovers. This year, one player lost its pants in a tackle and later made the winning touchdown.
It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
As China finishes building its massive Three Gorges Dam, it looks ahead to the reservoir behind that dam covering more than 400 square miles of land with water. As the water rises to its maximum this year, more than a million people have to be moved, along with homes, schools and hospitals. But this area of China is home to a unique culture as well, not all of which can be moved.
In this final story in our series on the Three Gorges, NPR's Anthony Kuhn examines what in this culture is being saved and what is being lost.
ANTHONY KUHN: Traveling by boat down the reservoir, an impressive structure dominates the shoreline in the county of Zhongxian. It's called the Stone Treasure Fortress. There aren't any fortifications anymore. There's still a beautiful 18th century, multitiered pagoda with curly eaves. It's perched on a cliff looking out over the Yangtze River.
On the front of the gateway, the water level marker says a 175.1. That's meters above sea level, the level to which the waters will rise when the dam is completed. This was once the stronghold of the Deng clan, an ancient village once clustered at the feet of the fortress. The village has now been razed and its residents relocated.
Unidentified Woman: (Speaking Chinese)
KUHN: One of them is Deng Shuhua who sells drinks and souvenirs outside the site. He recounts a local legend about how the place got its name.
Mr. DENG SHUHUA (Resident): (Through translator) The legend goes that the goddess Nuwa was fixing a hole in the sky. She was carrying some stones in a basket when one of them dropped out, fell on the riverbank and became this mountain. That's the Stone Treasure.
KUHN: Nearby, workers are cutting and chiseling stone, part of an effort to protect the fortress from the rising waters. In a nearby office, Engineer Qui Guogui explains the plan to save the site.
Mr. QIU GUOGUI (Engineer): (Speaking Chinese)
KUHN: The fortress is being surrounded by 222 concrete and steel pillars, he says, connected by walls which will seal the fortress off from the river outside. The fortress will become an isolated island accessible either by boat or a connecting bridge.
The fortress is part of an ancient regional culture. Two-million-year-old fossils found in Wushan County are the earliest known signs of human habitation in China. From China's earliest dynasties, the area was known as the Kingdom of Ba.
Downriver from the fortress is a temple dedicated to a 3rd century general of the three kingdom's period. Tour guide Wu Qiongying describes how this landmark was saved.
Ms. WU QIONGYING (Tour Guide): (Through translator) The entire temple was moved with the aim of preserving it in its original form. Every stone and brick you see here was removed piece by piece, numbered, moved, and then used to reconstruct the temple.
KUHN: After more than a decade, the effort to rescue the cultural heritage of the Three Gorges is in its final phase. Far less money has been spent on cultural preservation than on environmental protection and relocating residents.
Tang Yuyang of the Beijing Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture has been involved in the rescue effort. She says that while some important sites have been moved or rebuilt, a lot of intangible culture is being lost.
Ms. TANG YUYANG (Beijing Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture): (Through translator) The people of the Three Gorges no longer exist. What I mean is that the environment, the local customs, the feeling is gone. Before, locals carried things in baskets on their back, climbing steep stairways up the hillsides to get to the towns; now it's all highways. It's not just the physical sites that are at issue.
KUHN: Downriver from the temple is the City of the White Emperor, where the founder of one of the Three Kingdoms died. Five centuries later, one of China's most famous poets, Li Bai, mentions it in a poem about a journey through the river's fast and treacherous waters.
Mr. ZHANG TAICHAO (Former Journalist): (Through translator) Amid early morning's colored clouds, I depart from the City of the White Emperor. And one day I can make it to Xian Ling(ph) 300 miles away. As monkeys cry ceaselessly on the riverbanks, my small boat has already passed the myriad peaks.
KUHN: That's Zhang Taichao reciting the poem. He's a former journalist, author and official. He notes that with the building of the dam, the classic descriptions of the Gorges in Chinese literature and art no longer apply.
Mr. TAICHAO: (Through translator) The natural landscapes described by our ancient poems will disappear. Future generations, including my daughters, will not get to see this magnificent scenery that we Ba people are so proud of.
KUHN: On the advice of local residents, I paid a visit to the ancient village of Dachang, which I was told was full of picturesque cobbled streets and ancient wooden temples.
(Soundbite of hammering)
KUHN: I was too late. The village had been reconstituted uphill as a sort of theme park. Workers laid new cobblestones as men dressed up as Qing Dynasty soldiers manned the gates. Village employee Lei Haoming showed me around.
Ms. LEI HAOMING: (Through translator) We feel very proud because the government has spent all this money to move the village. This means that it will not be submerged, but preserved for people to see in the future, and so we feel that our culture has been well preserved.
KUHN: As is often the case in China, replication is confused with historic preservation. The main difference, of course, is that no actual residents live here anymore. They've been relocated so as to facilitate the business of separating tourists from their money.
Traveling through the Gorges, it seems that almost every rock has a name, every mountain has a legend. One of the few people who has documented the region's natural wonders before they were inundated is local photographer Wang Fengyun. He shows me a book of his work.
Mr. WANG FENGYUN (Photographer): (Through translator) The grooves on this rock were formed by people using ropes to pull boats against the current. Some of these grooves are more than three feet deep. This rock here looks like a wolf. It reminds us that the people of Ba have plucked their survival from the wolf's jaws.
KUHN: Scholar Tang Yuyang says that what makes the culture of the Three Gorges special is the interrelation between man and this unique landscape. The dam, she says, has irreversibly wrecked that relationship.
Ms. YUYANG: (Through translator) Just because we possess this technological power, we should not let it overshadow our relationship with the mountains and rivers. We should emphasize the power of nature.
KUHN: In fact, the problems of cultural preservation, economic development and urbanization in the Three Gorges can be found all over China. It's just that the building of the dam is forcing the changes on people faster here than elsewhere.
Some folks here say that the resourceful people of this ancient region will someday create a new and splendid culture. Maybe so, but for now all that's clear is that a rich cultural heritage is being submerged beneath the reservoir's waters, perhaps forever.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News on the Three Gorges Reservoir.
MONTAGNE: And you can see the curling pagoda in the Stone Treasure Fortress Anthony spoke about, read about preservation efforts, plus hear previous stories in this series at npr.org.
STEVE, INSKEEP, host:
And we'll talk next to a woman who makes it her business to say goodbye. Journalist Ann Wroe explained that job in a recent blog entry.
Ms. ANN WROE (Obituaries Editor, The Economist): I don't know what other people's first thoughts may be on Monday mornings, but mine, as the jabber of my husband's radio crawls into my dreams, is has anyone died today?
INSKEEP: Ann Wroe is not the only person who listens or reads for the obituaries first and it's her job, in fact, to write or edit them for The Economist magazine.
We've brought her to a studio in London to talk about the art of the obituary. Welcome to the program.
Ms. WROE: Thank you.
INSKEEP: People must ask you why it is that you're willing to have this as your full-time job - death.
Ms. WROE: Because it seems to me like an opportunity to get into dozens of very interesting lives and I find it endlessly fascinating, not in the least morbid. In fact, we have a tradition in England of rather irreverent and interesting obituaries, they're literary forms really.
INSKEEP: Okay now, let's talk about that because there is this old saying speak nothing but good of the dead and Hunter S. Thompson's obituary - this is a man who killed himself by gunshot, the first sentence is: There were always way too many guns around at Hunter S. Thompson's farm.
Ms. WROE: Yes.
INSKEEP: Getting right to the uncomfortable point.
Ms. WROE: Yes. The way I like to do obituaries is to get to the point and the point may not be the one we first think of. The point with Hunter S. Thompson, suddenly I thought, it's guns. And there's been others, for example, there was Arthur Miller's obituary where I discovered he'd been a carpenter. And somehow that little clue made me realize how beautifully crafted his plays were — that they were like the work of a carpenter putting together a house, if you like. And there will always some little theme that will draw me into the whole body of the obituary that will make the form of it.
INSKEEP: Now you must have to work on these obituaries for quite sometime, even before the people are dead in order to find those details and make literary use of them.
Ms. WROE: Well, I wish that was true, Steve, but I've never written a preemptive obituary. We have got about 10 of them on the stocks. That's a very small number. I've always waited until the people are dead and then I've gone to their books and everything I can find where they are speaking and I try to get inside their heads and inside their voices.
INSKEEP: I wonder if I could point out a joint obituary that you wrote here, of Brooke Astor and Leona Helmsley. You write about them together and contrast them in part in this way - Mrs. Astor was a small, delicate and fine as a Meissen cup, her tailoring, exquisite, and her jewels unobtrusive. Mrs. Helmsley, though, not large, favored loud trouser suits and chunky diamond clips with her mouth made big and cruel by scarlet lipstick. Holding nothing back there.
Ms. WROE: I guess that's true. But I find the mere chronology of a life really doesn't sum up that life for me. I want to get the texture and the sound and even the smell of someone, you know, get right inside the essence of that person.
INSKEEP: How do you approach it when the person you are writing about is clearly a despicable character?
Ms. WROE: Then I usually have fun with them. I'll write something that is quite shocking even to me. I had to deal with the southern sheriff a few months ago, where, at the beginning, he's writing about how he likes kicking Negroes in his words…
INSKEEP: This is a man who was central to the civil rights movement at one point in time.
Ms. WROE: Exactly - who was interesting to me because he was so despicable that he actually tips the civil rights movement into a bit more activity. And therefore, you know, he brought about what he most feared and what the nation most needed. But I started it by having the sheriff thinking of how much he likes dressing up in his boots and his badges and going and clearing out a few blacks and making their lives hell.
And, in a way, I was ashamed of myself for writing it and then in another way I thought, this is the view of the world that's disappearing with this sheriff. And I want readers to remember just how bad this view point was.
INSKEEP: Ever get depressed writing about dead people all the time?
Ms. WROE: No. But that's my own particular view of life and death, I guess, because I don't feel that death is an end. I think it's another adventure. It's a continuation. Therefore, I feel these spirits, both good and bad, haven't gone and I'm merely giving a sort of progress report on what they got up to while they were on earth.
The only time I do feel sad is if it's someone who is young or who has committed suicide, who had the prospect of their life before them and somehow just couldn't manage it or something went wrong.
And there'd been a few obituaries like that. That's worrying, you know, that's difficult to know sometimes quite the tone to take.
INSKEEP: I'd like to raise one other thing, if I might, would you describe for us what happened to you over the last few days in which required us to reschedule this conversation?
Ms. WROE: Yes. I mean, what I had was a minor stroke, which means that I lost the feeling in one side. I've recovered pretty quickly from the physical signs of it, but I thought a little bit to myself, you know, was this another intimation of mortality that I ought to think about?
INSKEEP: Does it get you thinking about who might write your obituary?
Ms. WROE: It sometimes does and if people think they would get to me by, you know, giving a list of where I'd been to school and where I'd worked and what I'd done, they wouldn't get anywhere near me. And this is why I - I've always worried, slightly, that obituaries of me, if they were ever to appear, just wouldn't be about me. And therefore, that challenge, I feel I've got to extend to the people I'm writing about. I've got to try and write about them getting through to their real life and their real thinking.
INSKEEP: Ann Wroe of The Economist. You can find some of her obituaries at npr.org.
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Time now for StoryCorps. This project is crisscrossing the country, recording everyday Americans talking about their lives.
And today, a story from Appalachia. That's where Cynthia Rahn grew up in the early 1960s.
Ms. CYNTHIA RAHN (StoryCorps Contributor): I lived very far out in the country so I went to kindergarten with a lot of kids from town that I didn't know. And I looked poor to everybody else and certainly everybody else looked rich to me. And so I felt a little intimidated.
INSKEEP: One kindergarten memory stands out for Cynthia Rahn. Her class was designing a diorama of life on the farm. And for homework, students had to find something they could contribute to the assignment.
Ms. RAHN: When I got home, I took off my school clothes and ran outside to play. And then we came in and ate and got ready to go to bed. And then I realized I had forgotten to do anything to prepare for this assignment. And here was momma, you know, just got home from work, tired, and I said, oh, my gosh, I've got to get something that represents a farm. And we looked. We had nothing. I started to cry. And I said I can't go to school tomorrow and not have anything. And momma said it's too late. I mean, this was what? 1962 in rural Appalachia. I mean, there were no Wal-Marts. You couldn't just ride out and get something. So she said you should have thought about this when you got home.
The next morning, I went downstairs and momma left before we got up, and she would leave breakfast. And so I came down to the kitchen and sitting on the kitchen table was a barn that was made out of notebook paper. She had taken just plain notebook paper and folded it. She folded the walls. She folded the roof. She folded doors that open so horse could go in and out. It was like magic. I looked at it. There was no staples in it. There was no tape. She had just sort of like origami or something. She had folded a barn. I had no idea where she learned to do that or how she knew how to do it.
And when I came in to school, there were other kids that, you know, have bags of store-bought plastic farm animals, but everybody was so amazed at my barn. And I just felt like queen of the day. And I knew that she cared.
(Soundbite of music)
MONTAGNE: That's Cynthia Rahn in Durham, North Carolina. Her story will be archived along with all the others at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. And you can find Cynthia Rahn's story in "Listening is an Act of Love," which is the new StoryCorps book, and at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep. Good morning.
By now you know the basics. Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrat Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses, which means Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton, among others, did not. This morning we're going to find out what it means. And NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson will guide us through it.
And Mara, what happened?
MARA LIASSON: Steve, it was a good night for insurgents. Both Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee ran against establishment figures in their own parties. The outcome on the Democratic side was a blow to Hillary Clinton, who once had a commanding lead in the state. But her message of strength and experience and even the all-out support of her husband - former President Bill Clinton - was no match for Obama. He tapped into the strong desire of Democrats for change.
A member of the Illinois State Senate just three years ago, last night Obama up-ended the plans of a candidate who once looked like the inevitable Democratic nominee. Last night in Des Moines, Obama talked about how improbable his victory once seemed.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Sen. OBAMA: You have done what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days.
(Soundbite of cheering)
LIASSON: Entrance polls showed that Obama won the lion's share of first-time caucus goers and voters under 44 years old, while Clinton won voters over 65. Remarkably, Obama even won the female vote. But more than anything else, it was Obama's message that won.
Fifty-two percent of caucus-goers said the ability to affect change was the most important criterion; only 20 percent chose experience.
Sen. OBAMA: We are choosing hope over fear.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Sen. OBAMA: We're choosing unity over division and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America.
LIASSON: Clinton, who finished third, called Obama to congratulate him. But she wasn't conceding the nomination - not at all.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): I am so ready for the rest of this campaign, and I am so ready to lead.
(Soundbite of cheering)
LIASSON: The rest of the campaign starts today in New Hampshire, where Clinton's once-formidable lead has evaporated and where she badly needs a win.
Sen. CLINTON: How will we win in November 2008? By nominating a candidate who will be able to go the distance and who will be the best president on day one. I am ready for that contest.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Unidentified Group: Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, Hillary...
LIASSON: John Edwards, who finished second, but less than a percentage point ahead of Clinton, had been running in Iowa almost nonstop since he ended his campaign for vice president four years ago. His passionate anti-corporate populism struck a chord in this state - not strong enough to win - but it was a message he had no plans to abandon.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): Corporate greed has got a stranglehold on America. And unless and until we have a president in the proud tradition of Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, who has a little backbone, who has some strength, who has some fight, who's willing to stand up to these people, nothing will change. We will never have the America that all of us dream of.
LIASSON: None of the other Democratic candidates got over two percent and two of them - Joe Biden and Chris Dodd - dropped out of the race last night.
On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee defeated Mitt Romney by nine points. Romney had vastly outspent Huckabee. And he'd spent more than a year in Iowa setting up a sophisticated organization. But that was overwhelmed by the organic grassroots energy that Huckabee harnessed through Christian churches and home school networks.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): You know, I wasn't sure that I would ever be able to love a state as much as I love my home state of Arkansas. But tonight I love Iowa a whole lot.
(Soundbite of cheering)
LIASSON: Two months ago, no one paid any attention to Mike Huckabee, but he vaulted himself into the top tier through his talent as a performer on the stump and in debates. His overt declarations of Christian faith, his sense of humor, and his own brand of anti-Wall Street populism also appealed to Iowa Republicans.
Mr. HUCKABEE: Tonight what we have seen is a new day in American politics. A new day is needed in American politics, just like a new day is needed in American government. And tonight it starts here in Iowa. But it doesn't end here. It goes all the way through the other states and ends at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue one year from now.
(Soundbite of cheering)
LIASSON: A whopping 60 percent of Republican caucus-goers identified themselves as evangelicals. And Huckabee won them over Romney by more than 2-1. The loss was a blow to Romney, who had designed a strategy based on building momentum by winning the early states.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): Well, we won the silver.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Mr. ROMNEY: And congratulations to Governor Huckabee for winning the gold. Nice job. But you know, just as Dan Jansen pointed out, you win the silver in one event, it doesn't mean you're not going to come back and win the gold in the final event. And that we're going to do.
(Soundbite of applause)
LIASSON: The Republican race now moves to New Hampshire, where Huckabee has next to no organization, but where Romney faces a strong challenge from John McCain, who tied for third place in Iowa with Fred Thompson. Ron Paul finished fifth and Rudy Giuliani sixth.
McCain, speaking in New Hampshire, clearly relished Romney's setback.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): I consider it to be Governor Huckabee's victory. I think he earned it. I think he worked hard and I think it's his victory, and I congratulate him, especially the fact that he ran largely a positive campaign. And I guess that that should be, I think, a lesson to all of us.
LIASSON: There was no question about who McCain was talking about. Both he and Huckabee had been the targets of negative ads from Romney.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Mara Liasson reporting from Iowa. And Mara, we've been talking with a couple of Iowa caucus-goers overnight who said their rooms were quite crowded last night.
LIASSON: There's no doubt about it, turnout was the big story here; 239,000 Democrats came out last night. That's up from 124,000 in 2004, almost double the turnout. Republicans - also turnout was up, 112,000 turned last night. That's up from 87,000 caucus-goers in 2000, which is the last time there was a contested Republican race here.
Democrats, though, clearly had the energy, much bigger crowds. Every one of the leading Democratic candidates had a great organization and they got out every single last available voter.
INSKEEP: Well, they certainly got out more people than normal, although I do have to mention it's still a relatively small percentage of the possible voters in a relatively small state.
LIASSON: That's true. But the reason why turnout is so important is because it means that Democrats are energized. They're excited. This is not a good sign for Republicans for November.
INSKEEP: Well, now, what are the signs here for New Hampshire then? What is the spillover effect, if any, to the next state up?
LIASSON: Well, traditionally New Hampshire sometimes validates the Iowa results. Sometimes it ignores them. But remember, last time, 2004, John Kerry started caucus night in Iowa about seven or eight points down in New Hampshire. He won. Immediately he was seven or eight points up. There are only four days between now and the New Hampshire primary. There's not a whole lot of time to turn things around between now and January 8th.
On the Republican side, the New Hampshire primary is going to be a very different story than the Iowa caucuses - very different kind of Republican electorate, much fewer evangelical voters, immigration not as important an issue. So I think Huckabee will find the political terrain there quite different.
INSKEEP: Does Huckabee have a problem, though, because he's finally broken through, he's finally won here, but he's only got a few days to try to capitalize on that and build more support elsewhere in the country?
LIASSON: That's part of the problem. One of the other problems is it's not a lot of time for him to raise money. He's got New Hampshire in four days, then he'll probably turn his attention to South Carolina, and then at least the calendar slows down a little bit. And if he keeps on winning, he'd have a chance to build on the momentum.
INSKEEP: Did anything surprise you in the results from last night, Mara?
LIASSON: A lot of things surprised me. The fact that Obama did better than Clinton among women, the fact that Huckabee did well among almost all groups of Republicans. He didn't just win with the support of evangelicals. He got the support of mainstream Republicans too. The fact that Clinton only won with those very older voters, over 65. You know, I thought it was just a stunning result all around.
INSKEEP: NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Thanks very much.
LIASSON: Thank you, Steve.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Next, we have a story about a scientific study that asked a question that went something like this: Are you attracted to the sound of my voice? I'm not asking the question. It's the question in the survey. The researchers found that for some people, the simple sound of a voice appears to play a role in choosing a mate.
Sean Bowditch reports on the link between voice and sex.
SEAN BOWDITCH: Yes or no: would you marry this guy?
Unidentified Man #1: Ujambo.
BOWDITCH: How about this man? Sound sexy and smart?
Unidentified Man #2: Ujambo.
BOWDITCH: Would this guy be a good dad?
Unidentified Man #3: Ujambo.
BOWDITCH: So does voice pitch affect sexual relationships? That's what anthropologist Coren Apicella wanted to find out. She's a doctoral student at Harvard.
Ms. COREN APICELLA (Harvard University): What I'm basically interested in is mate choice and attractiveness and how that sort of translates into health and reproductive success.
BOWDITCH: Last summer, Apicella flew half way around the world with a tape recorder to study the Hadza people of Tanzania.
Unidentified Man #4: (Speaking foreign language)
BOWDITCH: The Hadza live close to the earth. Women dig for tubers and pick berries while men collect honey and hunt with traditional bows. Apicella wanted to know: Is there a connection between voice pitch and the number of babies the Hadza have? In the first phase of her research, Apicella invited a group of Hadza men into her Land Rover and recorded them saying hello in Swahili.
Unidentified Man #5: Ujambo.
Unidentified Man #6: Ujambo.
Unidentified Man #7: Ujambo.
Unidentified Man #8: Ujambo.
BOWDITCH: Then she played some of the voices for a group of Hadza women.
Ms. APICELLA: And I just asked them, you know, which one do you prefer.
BOWDITCH: Apicella found the women preferred the men with the lower voices. That paralleled another of her findings. The Hadza men with deeper voices also had more children than their squeaky counterparts. But she says voice alone probably doesn't explain that.
Ms. APICELLA: Why there's this relationship we're not entirely sure yet. It could be that these men have greater access to mates. And so maybe these men that have deeper voices have higher levels of testosterone, maybe they're better hunters and they're able to bring more food home to their wives.
BOWDITCH: And what did Hadza men prefer in a voice? It turns out they found the women with higher pitch most attractive. But surprisingly, the men said those same women wouldn't necessarily be the best food gatherers.
Ms. APICELLA: We found that the men actually thought the woman with the lower pitched voice, so the deeper voices were better gatherers.
BOWDITCH: Still, psychologist Susan Hughes says this research suggests you can tell a lot about a potential mate just from their voice.
Professor SUSAN HUGHES (Albright College): I think this study does speak to the fact that voices are signaling some biologically relevant information to potential mates.
BOWDITCH: Like fertility or the ability to put food on the table. But Hughes, a professor at Albright College in Pennsylvania, says it's not clear if men and women in all cultures would share the preferences of the Hadza. To find out, I decided to do my own study, just minus the science. I played a few of Coren Apicella's recordings for some young women in Washington, D.C.
Unidentified Man #9: Ujambo.
Unidentified Man #10: Ujambo.
Unidentified Man #11: Ujambo.
BOWDITCH: First reaction: Which one of these gentlemen would you marry?
Ms. SOPRITA CADIZIA(ph): Probably the first one.
Ms. ALISON DEZENSO(ph): I mean, the first one, I guess.
Ms. FRANCESCA ALESI(ph): The first one.
BOWDITCH: Why?
Ms. ALESI: Because he's smooth and not aggressive.
Ms. MICHELLE WENDY(ph): Can I hear them again?
BOWDITCH: That was Soprita Cadizia, Alison Dezenso, Francesca Alesi and Michelle Wendy. Interestingly, not a single one of them chose the man with the deepest voice. In fact, they all like the guy with the highest voice.
For NPR News - (high-pitched voice:) I mean, for NPR News, I'm Sean Bowditch.
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: That story was originally produced as part of NPR's Next Generation Radio Project.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
Some familiar figures are going to have to get used to some unfamiliar roles, thanks to the Iowa caucuses.
Hillary Clinton, the candidate who positioned herself as the inevitable nominee of the Democrats, now has to make a strong showing in New Hampshire four days from now. And Barack Obama, who defeated both Clinton and John Edwards in Iowa, must take on the role of full-fledged front-runner.
Joining us now to talk about the shifting sand in both parties is NPR's news analyst Juan Williams.
Good morning.
JUAN WILLIAMS: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: And, Juan, last night Barack Obama told a victory rally they said this day would never come. He did - he pulled off a win. What does it mean for the Democrats?
WILLIAMS: Well, it redefines the whole contest, Renee. I think that, you know, the defining moment is - he kept saying that last night in his victory speech -really was the result of turnout. You saw a record turnout here in Iowa -220,000 Democrats. Previous record had been like 124. No one thought that it was possible to get that many people out on a cold night to caucus. You know, you have to show up early and stay there for several hours in order to get it done.
Obama won among young people, single people, urban people, upper-income people, and among liberal Democrats. And it really was his ability - the organization's ability to get people to the caucuses. The level of enthusiasm here for him was unprecedented. So he clearly was speaking to vision and getting people to identify with him in a way that was really uncanny.
MONTAGNE: Did the people around Hillary Clinton see this coming?
WILLIAMS: Well, you know, I saw President Clinton a couple times, and then of course the people who were running Senator Clinton's campaign, and you know, they had the sense that - they started talking about how President Clinton hadn't won before Georgia. He lost here, lost in New Hampshire, when he went on to win the presidency. And I think the whole body language and the attitude was this - we're in it for the long haul. We have the money. We have the organization. So they seem to be talking in a way that was preparing them for the idea that they were going to lose here.
MONTAGNE: And what does that the fact that Barack Obama won in a nearly all-white state - and much has been made of this - what does it say about the role race is playing in this campaign?
WILLIAMS: Well, race is an absolutely essential factor here because we've never had in the United States a leading nominee of the party be an African-American. If you go back over time, people like Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Jackson would have done the best among them, but he only won, you know, I think it was four or five states in terms of primaries.
Here you have right from the top Barack Obama putting in an impressive performance and forcing Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, his two primary rivals, to react to his race without doing so explicitly. And the voters in this 95 percent white state, as you point out, saying, you know what, we can embrace this African-American in a way that's never been done before. So it's going to be a key part of what comes from now - comes from now on.
MONTAGNE: And on the Republican side, Juan, Mike Huckabee won a decisive victory over Mitt Romney. He - Romney - invested loads of time and money in the state. What made the difference?
WILLIAMS: Again, it was turnout, a record turnout on the Republican side. Evangelicals in particular strongly favored Huckabee over Romney. And you know, if you look, just about in every category, Renee, what you see is that Huckabee was the victor, you know, people - with the exception of people who made over a hundred thousand dollars, who went for Romney.
MONTAGNE: Well, just very briefly, the race moves to New Hampshire with a different narrative.
WILLIAMS: It sure does. On the Republican side, it's going to be about John McCain, who was really a sort of second-level victory here because of Romney's loss; and on the Democratic side, I think Barack Obama's momentum, can he maintain it, and the scrutiny that he will be under from now on.
MONTAGNE: Juan, thanks very much.
NPR news analyst Juan Williams.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And now let's follow NPR's Linda Wertheimer to a small town in central Iowa -Nevada. Spelled like Nevada, pronounced Nev-ay-da(ph), is a farming community, and the results there did not match the rest of the state, though the spirit did.
(Soundbite of high school)
LINDA WERTHEIMER: Things were hopping at Nevada High School last night. There was a basketball game and two Democratic caucuses. The fourth precinct caucus was in the cafeteria and it quickly filled up. As happened across the state, these caucuses were about twice the size of last time and there were lots of new people, like Nancy Bear(ph). She came with her two daughters, both beautiful girls with buzz cuts and lots of piercings. I asked why they decided to caucus this time.
Ms. NANCY BEAR: A lot of the excitement about the campaign. I definitely don't want another Republican in the office and so I want to get behind the person that I feel will be, you know, the best candidate for president, and we're going to go with Edwards. Tracy and I are. My other daughter's over there with Hillary.
WERTHEIMER: Paula Strum(ph) and her husband were also first-timers but inspired by Senator Barack Obama to get into grassroots politics.
Ms. PAULA STRUM: I've never been interested enough to do it before. And Barack Obama inspires you.
WERTHEIMER: Do you think - why do you support him?
Ms. STRUM: Because he's a very smart man, and because he will change the way things are done in Washington.
WERTHEIMER: The caucus chair, Fay Burdick(ph), moved things along quickly. The first order of business was to count the house; each candidate would need at least 15 percent of the total to move on to the next step.
With her calculator in hand, Ms. Burdick did the math and announced that each candidate needed at least 20.1 caucus-goers. Then she sent the Nevada Democrats to their corners.
Ms. FAY BURDICK (Caucus Chair): Hillary group will go to the Hillary sign. John Edwards people will go to the John Edwards sign.
WERTHEIMER: But Ms. Burdick was moving a bit too quickly. She skipped over the one-minute speeches in support of all the candidates - speeches given by the caucus-goers. However, not all the candidates had speakers.
Ms. BURDICK: Let's start in alphabetical order. Is there anybody to speak for Joe Biden? Is anybody here to speak for one minute for Hillary Clinton?
WERTHEIMER: Yes, there was. Kathy Bagley(ph), who was the precinct chair for Hillary Clinton, came up to make a little talk.
Ms. KATHY BAGLEY (Clinton Precinct Chair): I happen to personally, as well as many of these people, believe strongly in Senator Clinton. And I'll tell you why - because I've met this lady. I've talked to this lady. I've looked in her eyes and I've seen that she has a real heart for our country.
WERTHEIMER: The Clinton forces were well-prepared with bottled water and cookies for their supporters. They brought sandwiches as well. But it turned out that sandwiches are against caucus rules and could not come in. That work paid off. Clinton led in this particular caucus - 44 people went to the Hillary side; 32 to Obama.
Down the hall, at the caucus for the rural areas south of Nevada, it was a little more complicated. John Edwards had more supporters than the others. But a little horse-trading evened things out.
Janice Beaton(ph) caucused for Bill Richardson; she explained how switching a couple of Clinton supporters to Richardson hurt Edwards.
Ms. JANICE BEATON (Richardson Precinct Chair): When I looked at the numbers, as the Richardson chairperson, I thought, well, I need to warn the Clinton camp that many of us in the Richardson camp would go to Edwards and give him two if they didn't give up a couple of theirs.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. DAVID LEAR(ph): Janet made a very persuasive argument. We knuckled under and helped her out.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. MYRA LEAR(ph): And it paid off. And it paid off for you.
Ms. ELLEN LEAR(ph): And there was a couple of us who were in the Hillary camp, and we had Richardson as our second. And so we saw the numbers and decided to go join Janice.
Mr. LEAR: Clearly, all four of these candidates are really superb people. John Edwards should have gotten two...
Ms. BEATON: No.
(Soundbite of laughter)
WERTHEIMER: You also heard there from David Lear and his two daughters, Myra and Ellen, age 19 and 18. This is their first caucus and first presidential election.
Plainly, these people don't take their preferences that seriously. Many people echo David Lear's feeling that most Iowa Democrats like several of these candidates. Just about everyone left happy last night - winners and losers -that was, by the way, not true for the high school basketball fans. The Nevada High School Cubs lost last night.
Linda Wertheimer, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
NPR's business news starts with Toyota still trucking.
The Japanese automaker is already contending with General Motors to be the biggest in the world. And here is another milestone for Toyota. Within the American market, Toyota became the second biggest seller. It knocked Ford out of the number two spot that it had held for three quarters of a century.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Ford suffered from a slowdown in consumers spending. And today we get another clue to how much the economy may be weakening.
NPR's Jim Zarroli is waiting for the latest unemployment report.
JIM ZARROLI: The unemployment report is always scrutinized carefully by economists and business leaders - and that's especially true this time around. The mortgage crisis and the ensuing credit crunch already have the economy by the ankles.
If there is a recession in 2008, as some economists fear, the evidence will start to show up in the nation's payrolls. Already there are signs that hiring is down. The online job site Monster.com said its employment index fell last month to its lowest level in almost a year. The Commerce Department said durable goods orders fell for the fourth straight month in December.
And a report co-produced by the forecasting group Macroeconomic Advisers and the payroll company ADP said private employers added about 40,000 jobs last month - less than what's needed to keep up with population growth.
Most economists believe government and private employment rose by a meager 70,000 jobs and that the unemployment rate will inch up by a tenth of a percentage point to 4.8 percent.
This is more than just a numbers game. Wall Street is anxiously awaiting another interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve. And a weak employment report will make it more likely that Fed policymakers will approve one.
Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
On Fridays, we talk about your money, including the money you spend on food. Many consumers want to eat locally-grown produce. Many small farmers want to oblige, but it's not easy to get the food shipped to a local market. The distribution business is dominated by big companies that send the food everywhere.
In Northern Michigan, one entrepreneur is using his experience as a chef and wholesaler to solve the problem.
Peter Payette of Interlochen Public Radio reports.
PETER PAYETTE: Eric Hahn grew up in Charlevoix, Michigan, at the northern end of a cherry-growing region that produces at least 100 million pounds of cherries a year.
But as the sales rep for a national food distributor out of Detroit, the sweet cherries he trucked to nearby stores were brought from Washington State - 2,000 miles away. That's because the cherries ripen there earlier and the growing season lasts longer.
But the stores and restaurants he supplied were constantly asking for local cherries.
Mr. ERIC HAHN (Cherry Capital Foods): I had grocery stores - some of my chefs were interested in them. And one of them one day just said just run down to Friskies and get me a box of cherries and bring them back. I don't have time to do it. So I did. And I sent him an invoice.
PAYETTE: At one point, Hahn convinced his company to work with some small growers on a pilot distribution project. But the fruits and vegetables still had to go through the warehouse in Detroit, and there were other logistical problems, so the company stopped the program.
When the asparagus season rolled around last spring, farmers were calling Eric Hahn, looking to sell their produce.
Mr. HAHN: The farmers that I have been working with were individuals that I had known for a long time. And I knew that they grew great peaches and I knew that they grew great cherries and strawberries.
PAYETTE: So Eric Hahn quit his job, took $5,000 out of savings, traded in his Volvo for a van, and started Cherry Capital Foods. Now he distributes food grown on about 60 local farms to over 100 nearby restaurants, resorts, stores and schools.
As Hahn drops off a load of potatoes at the Grand Traverse Resort and Spa, executive chef Ted Cizma says until now it was a chore for him to get something as simple as a bag of locally-grown potatoes.
Mr. TED CIZMA (Chef): I bought from a lot of the people that he brings to. But it required a separate phone call to each one of those purveyors. It required really being creative to get it here because most of these smaller producers aren't set up to deliver. So I was actually having to send somebody out to the different areas to pick stuff up. And quite frankly, we weren't getting the variety or the consistency that we get now.
PAYETTE: There are some debates about the environmental benefits of buying food locally. But Cizma says it's just the right thing to do. He argues there is no reason for him to buy food from California or China if he doesn't have to.
Mr. CIZMA: I'm sure they're nice people and they could use the money. But quite frankly, let's think about the Michigan economy for a little bit. We need it here worse than they need it there.
PAYETTE: Hahn says he spent nearly every day this summer in his van. And his revenues have grown to $250,000. The profit margins in this business are slim though, especially since Hahn often competes with the produce grown in countries with cheap and abundant labor.
Farmer Dick Zenner says it's a win-win situation for him. He is here at Cherry Capital Foods' warehouse dropping off the last of his hot-house tomatoes for the year. Hahn will deliver Zenner's tomatoes to a delicatessen later this morning, marking the travel time from the vine to the shelf in hours, not days. Zenner sold half his tomato crop through Cherry Capital Foods.
Mr. DICK ZENNER (Farmer): And that saved me driving around, and with the gas prices the way they are, that's money in my pocket. I don't have to do that.
PAYETTE: Zenner says he'll be putting in more greenhouses soon for lettuce. And Hahn says he'll contract to buy every head of lettuce Zenner can grow. Eric Hahn expects his sales will top $1 million next year once more farmers like Dick Zenner see the markets he's opening up. And best of all, they'll never have to travel more than 100 miles from home.
For NPR News, I'm Peter Payette in Interlochen, Michigan.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
We'll travel all the way to India for today's last word in business - and that word is rupee. The operators of Indian tourist sites like the Taj Mahal say they will only accept Indian money now. They have stopped a practice of accepting U.S. dollars because the dollar has lost so much value. It used to be you could pay 15 bucks to visit the Taj. Now you have to change $20 into rupees.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
Record-breaking numbers of Iowa voters went to last night's caucuses. In a few minutes, we'll hear about the Republican race, which Mike Huckabee won.
First, Democrat Barack Obama was the decisive winner of the nation's first official contest in this year's presidential race. For Obama, it was a come-from-behind victory crucial for his prospects in other states. John Edwards came in second, slightly ahead of Hillary Clinton's third place finish. Two other Democrats dropped out of the race.
NPR's David Welna reports from Des Moines.
DAVID WELNA: More than 239,000 Iowans showed up at the Democratic caucuses. That's nearly twice the number who attended those meetings four years ago. Many went for the first time. Many were independents, and almost a quarter of them were younger than 30. These are exactly the people polls had shown most likely to choose Obama.
By the end of the evening, the son of a black Kenyan father and white American mother had garnered 38 percent of the support of the caucuses in a state that's 95 percent white. In his victory speech, he cast the outcome as historic.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): Years from now, you'll look back and you'll say that this was the moment. This was the place where America remembered what it means to hope.
WELNA: And Obama cast himself, as he often has in this campaign, as both a longed-for national unifier and agent of change.
Sen. OBAMA: You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that's consumed Washington.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Sen. OBAMA: To end the political strategy that's been all about division. And instead make it about a vision - the bill of the Coalition for Change that stretches through red states and blue states.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Sen. OBAMA: Because that's how we'll win in November, and that's how we'll finally meet the challenges that we face as a nation.
WELNA: Obama finished eight percentage points ahead of John Edwards, who's campaigned in Iowa for much of the time since he also finished second here four years ago. Edwards tried portraying what was clearly a disappointing finish in the best light possible.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): The one thing that's clear from the results in Iowa tonight is the status quo lost and change won.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Mr. EDWARDS: And now, we move on. We move on from Iowa(ph), to Iowa, to New Hampshire and to the other states to determine who's best suited to bring about the change that this country so desperately needed.
WELNA: Indeed, more than half the Democratic caucus goers last night cited the ability to force change as what's most important to them in choosing a candidate. And both Edwards and Obama tout themselves as the candidates of change. Still, Edwards finished less than a percentage point ahead of Hillary Clinton, who took away a very different message last night. For her, this is still a contest that's all about electability and experience.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): What is most important now is that as we go on with this contest that we keep focused on the two big issues. That we answer correctly the questions that each of us has posed; how will we win in November 2008, by nominating a candidate who will be able to go the distance and who will be the best president on day 1? I am ready for that contest.
(Soundbite of cheering)
WELNA: Two other Democratic contenders last night decided to bow out. Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd did so after finishing even more poorly than Bill Richardson's two percent showing.
Here is Dodd, who moved his entire family to Iowa as he campaigned.
Senator CHRIS DODD (Democrat, Connecticut; Presidential Candidate): I'm withdrawing from the presidential race, but let me assure you, we're not exiting this race with our heads hanging. Rather, we do so with our heads very, very high. This was a great…
(Soundbite of cheering)
WELNA: In the end, the Iowa caucus served the purpose for which it was originally intended: Winnowing down the field of presidential candidates. But for Barack Obama, the caucus served his main purpose as well, showing he could win in Iowa and hoping the same will happen in many other states.
David Welna, NPR News, Des Moines.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Iowa Republicans also picked a relative newcomer to the national stage - former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. He beat former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney by a comfortable nine points. Evangelical Christians made a lot of the difference for Huckabee, who was a Southern Baptist minister before he turned to politics.
And we have more this morning from NPR's Ina Jaffe.
INA JAFFE: About 60 percent of Republican caucus goers last night were evangelical Christians. They overwhelmingly supported Mike Huckabee, and a few earlier rivals at his victory party last night decided to support him in another way.
Ms. REBECCA SWEETHOOD(ph) (Mike Huckabee Campaign Volunteer): We pray that you would lift Mike Huckabee upward as…
JAFFE: Rebecca Sweethood, a volunteer who had traveled from Arkansas, led a small prayer circle.
Ms. SWEETHOOD: Lord, we pray that he would not be ashamed to be known as the pastor. And that is exactly what a leader of a nation should be, Lord. One who is a shepherd over sheep, God; one who seeks the light…
JAFFE: But when Huckabee addressed his jubilant supporters, his talk was mostly about transcendence of a different kind.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): Tonight, what we have seen is a new day in American politics. A new day is needed in American politics, just like a new day is needed in American government. And tonight, it starts here in Iowa, but it doesn't end here.
Unidentified Man: Yeah.
Mr. HUCKABEE: It goes all the way through the other states and ends at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue one year from now.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
JAFFE: Huckabee was vastly outspent by Mitt Romney who poured about $17 million of his own fortune into his campaign. Huckabee also withstood millions of dollars of negative ads backed by a Washington-based anti-tax group. But these caucuses said Huckabee proved that people are more important than the purse. Iowans, he said, want change. They want a leader who can bring Americans together. But that doesn't mean, he said, that we will compromise our deep convictions.
Mr. HUCKABEE: We carry those convictions not so that we can somehow push back the others, but so we can bring along the others and bring this country to its greatest days ever because I'm still one who believes that the greatest generation doesn't have to be the ones behind us. The greatest generation can be those who have yet to even be born. And that's what we're going to save.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
JAFFE: As he moves on to New Hampshire, Huckabee is aware that many voters there do not share his deep convictions. He's been running third or fourth in the polls, while Mitt Romney and John McCain vie for first.
But Chip Saltsman, the national chair of Huckabee's campaign, said voters in New Hampshire and around the country will soon see another side of the candidate.
Mr. CHIP SALTSMAN (National Chair, Mike Huckabee's Campaign): I think we've got a lot of support with the fiscal conservatives out there, and I hope that we'll get a chance to talk about our economic record in Arkansas where with 10 and a half years, he's had more executive experience than anybody else who's running for president, Republican or Democrat.
JAFFE: Part of Mitt Romney's executive experience was his leadership of the 2002 Olympics, which last night gave him a way to cast his defeat in the best light possible.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): Well, we won the silver.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
JAFFE: Even without the gold, Romney was still campaigning. He said Americans were frustrated that the system in Washington was broken.
Mr. ROMNEY: How come Washington can't help us become energy-independent? How come Washington can't get health insurance for all of our citizens without making it Hillary care or socialized medicine? Washington is broken and we're going to change that.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
JAFFE: And Romney did come in ahead of John McCain and Fred Thompson, who just about tied for a distant third place. But after Romney's defeat, John McCain was sounding like he had little to fear from him at a press conference last night in New Hampshire.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): We can feel the momentum that the same kind of momentum we felt in 2000. I'm very confident with a strong positive finish here that we're going to win here in New Hampshire and go on to Michigan and South Carolina.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
JAFFE: Finishing in a distant sixth place last night was former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, once seen as the national front-runner. Then again, Iowa never played a role in his strategy. And last night, his campaign released a statement, saying that they still believe their path to the nomination runs through the many delegate-rich states that don't vote until February 5th.
Ina Jaffe, NPR News, Des Moines.
INSKEEP: You can get a look at upcoming primaries by going to this map at I'm looking at here at npr.org. Move the cursor across the map of the United States; learn about the upcoming states, dates and what's at stake. You can find it at npr.org/elections.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
The people who attended last night's Iowa caucuses include two we're going to talk with next. They both attended caucuses at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, Iowa. They were both part of a group of voters who spoke with us on MORNING EDITION last month. And we're going to turn to them once again to get a sense of what it was like in the rooms there at Roosevelt.
Gretchen Kauffman is a Republican. J.P. Steffan is a Democrat.
Welcome to you both.
Mr. J.P. STEFFAN (Democrat): Thank you.
Ms. GRETCHEN KAUFFMAN (Republican): Thank you.
INSKEEP: And let's start with you, Gretchen Kauffman, how did the caucus go?
Ms. KAUFFMAN: Well, it was very crowded in our room. In fact, we had 87 Republicans and I think that the Polk County Republican Party expected about 30 to attend our caucus.
INSKEEP: How did the discussion go with those 87 folks?
Ms. KAUFFMAN: Well, the Republican caucus isn't contentious like I - we could hear some of the Democratic ones. There were three Democratic ones at Roosevelt and there was a lot of yelling and some laughter. We started in my room with each candidate having people supporting - give a little talk, if you wanted to. I did. And…
INSKEEP: You spoke for your candidate who was…
Ms. KAUFFMAN: I did. I supported Giuliani.
INSKEEP: Okay. And then what happened?
Ms. KAUFFMAN: And then we had a vote.
INSKEEP: And…
Ms. KAUFFMAN: It's on a ballot.
INSKEEP: And how did it go among the 87 in your particular…
Ms. KAUFFMAN: In our precinct, Huckabee won. Thompson was second. Ron Paul was third. Romney was fourth. McCain was fifth. And Giuliani was sixth.
INSKEEP: Oh, were you the only Giuliani supporter there that night?
Ms. KAUFFMAN: No, I wasn't.
(Soundbite of laughter)
INSKEEP: Okay. Just checking.
Ms. KAUFFMAN: As a matter of fact, I was not.
INSKEEP: So it was a secret ballot.
Ms. KAUFFMAN: It is.
INSKEEP: And Huckabee carried the room.
Ms. KAUFFMAN: He did.
INSKEEP: So this was a quick procedure, and then you were able to listen to the rumblings from the Democrats who were meeting in the same high school -elsewhere in the same high school and…
Ms. KAUFFMAN: Yup. I stayed because we had a platform discussion after that.
INSKEEP: Well, let's find out if what you heard with your ear to the wall matches up with what J.P. Steffan experienced. What happened in your caucus, Mr. Steffan?
Mr. STEFFAN: Well, we - in this part of Des Moines, we're fairly strong Democratic precincts and we had 375 people in our caucus. We met in the cafeteria. And yeah, it was very spirited and very active. I wouldn't say that it was contentious at all. In fact, I would say that at this particular caucus, even though the groups are very large and very competitive that the people that were there were very amiable and I think everybody pretty much walked away pretty happy with how everything came off.
INSKEEP: Now, as I understand on the Democratic side, you separate everybody out. You find out how many supporters there are for each candidate. Then you start knocking off candidates, so to speak.
Mr. STEFFAN: When we divided into our groups by candidate, you had to have at least 57 people in the group in order to be viable.
INSKEEP: You were supporting one of the lesser-known candidates or one of the…
Mr. STEFFAN: Well, actually - yeah. I went in there, I felt a real affinity for Joe Biden. But I also supported John Edwards four years ago and so it was real easy for me to go in, saying that I would join the Biden group initially and then move to Edwards if we failed to get viability. And when the final count was tallied up, we elected three delegates for Obama, two for John Edwards and one delegate for Senator Clinton.
INSKEEP: Well goodness, that means that your room there reflected in some rough degree the order of the finish across the state on the Democratic side.
Mr. STEFFAN: You know, in this - I've seen that the last three caucuses is that - as our precinct goes, so has pretty much the rest of the state.
INSKEEP: Was there any horse-trading or - I hesitate to say bribing but did anybody make offers, you know, or hand out cookies, free beer, anything else to get people to switch votes?
Mr. STEFFAN: Well, about the only offer that ever really gets made is, you know, if you guys come over and join our group it will add to our delegate count, but you get to decide who gets to be the delegate of the county convention.
INSKEEP: Oh, so you have an opportunity perhaps to be that delegate yourself.
Mr. STEFFAN: Right. But I really, in the end, think that most of the folks that were in the non-viable groups had thought about this already, and they thought they had other good choices. And we're really blessed with having a lot of good choices on the Democratic side, and I think that our caucus is really indicative of that. You know, this was exciting. It was really the funnest caucus that I have ever been to.
INSKEEP: J.P. Steffan in Des Moines, Iowa. Thanks very much.
Mr. STEFFAN: Thank you.
INSKEEP: Gretchen Kauffman, thank you for speaking with us.
Ms. KAUFFMAN: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: They attended last night's Republican and Democratic caucuses at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, Iowa. And we first spoke with them after the Democratic radio debate last month.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Raw milk, the kind that comes directly to the table from the cow or goat, is getting more popular with consumers and it's more popular in spite of warnings from many health professionals that it can be dangerous.
In California, raw milk loyalists are balking at some brand new dairy standards that might affect their favorite products. And in Colorado, dairy farmers are coming together to make sure that their raw milk is safe.
Anna Panoka of member station KCFR reports from Denver.
ANNA PANOKA: In some states, people can buy raw milk at the grocery store or directly from a farmer. In others, it's illegal, and in a handful of states like Colorado, the only way people can get unpasteurized milk is by becoming a shareholder of a cow or goat herd.
Ms. LYNN RODNEY (Resident, Boulder, Colorado): This is how it comes. Just in a half gallon canning jar that they sterilized there.
PANOKA: Lynn Rodney(ph) of Boulder says pasteurized milk gives her digestive problems so she was happy to learn she could get raw milk from a dairy north of Boulder.
Ms. RODNEY: You know, if I had any digestive-type issues going on and all, it's completely just healing for me. I find that it balances my system out and so on.
PANOKA: Rodney pays $14 a month for her half share. For that, she gets a half gallon each week. She and other raw milk enthusiasts believe it's more nutritious and easier to digest and that it can help people who suffer from certain diseases.
But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says unpasteurized milk can pose a serious health risk. The agency says people have gotten sick from drinking raw milk in several states in recent years.
Colorado doesn't regulate raw milk but Alicia Cronquist, an epidemiologist with the state's health department, estimates about a dozen people each year get bacterial infections likely caused by drinking raw milk.
Ms. ALICIA CRONQUIST (Epidemiologist, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment): The thing to be aware of, however, is that no matter how tightly you regulate it, we've seen time and time again that unpasteurized milk is a risky food item.
PANOKA: Members of the newly formed Raw Milk Association of Colorado disagree. David Lynch, the founder and president of the association, acknowledges there could be a health threat if a farmer isn't running a clean operation.
That's why he and the nearly 20 dairies, now part of the group, are coming up with safety guidelines they hope all raw milk dairies in the state will follow, that includes milk testing requirements and sanitation standards. Lynch says that's important because dairy farmers have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into their new businesses.
Mr. DAVID LYNCH (President, Raw Milk Association of Colorado): To consider the fact that that could be jeopardized by someone doing an irresponsible little, raw milk operation without any accountability is certainly a concern.
(Soundbite of running machine)
PANOKA: A metal pump moves milk straight from a cow into the next room where it's bottled and cooled. Here on the Plains, east of Denver, about two dozen cows are milked twice a day at Ebert Family Farm, a member of the Raw Milk Association. Kres Ebert says he's never known anyone to get sick from drinking raw milk, but he's glad the association is creating guidelines for farmers in Colorado.
Mr. KRES EBERT (Ebert Family Farm): I milk into a closed system so I'm not out there with a bucket in the middle of a pasture, trying to milk bessie. You know, you limit the things that can go wrong and then nothing does go wrong.
PANOKA: The Ebert Family Farm like other raw milk dairies in Colorado has a waiting list of people it just can't serve. With demand outpacing supply, Raw Milk Association leaders say its all the more reason to unite the dairies and set standards for this growing market.
For NPR News, I'm Anna Panoka in Denver.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
The long presidential campaign now has its first real results. Iowa caucus goers delivered commanding wins to Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee. For Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney, two front-running candidates who spent lots of time and resources in Iowa, the results were disappointing.
On the line with us to read the tea leaves are two seasoned political strategists. Mike Murphy has run campaigns for both Mitt Romney and John McCain. He joins us from Manchester, New Hampshire.
Good morning.
Mr. MIKE MURPHY (Republican Political Consultant): Good morning.
MONTAGNE: And Chris Lehane. He worked in the Clinton White House. He's a veteran of Al Gore and Wesley Clark's presidential campaigns, and he joins us from San Francisco.
Hello.
Mr. CHRIS LEHANE (Democratic Political Consultant): Hey, good morning.
MONTAGNE: Mike, let's start with you because Mike Huckabee wasn't too well known just a few months back. Looking ahead in New Hampshire, can he turn this win in Iowa to a nationally viable candidacy?
Mr. MURPHY: I believe he probably can, but that is the million-dollar question. What he'll have to do now is raise a lot of money and start winning in other states - in New Hampshire, Michigan, South Carolina that follow on the calendar that don't - especially in the case of Michigan and New Hampshire - have as many Christian conservative voters.
Iowa is a little bit atypical that way so a Christian conservative candidate like Huckabee kind of starts on second base, but he's a very good candidate and the huge win he had will give him a huge boost. He will be able to raise some money on the Internet fast and get more and more competitive. If the election were held today, he'd probably win South Carolina.
So I would say it's now a three-way race with Mike Huckabee right up there with a resurgent John McCain and Mitt Romney, who, while wounded, still has resources and now has to win in New Hampshire and Michigan, I think, to have a realistic chance at the nomination.
MONTAGNE: Now, Chris Lehane, let's turn to you for the Democrats. How transforming is Barack Obama's victory last night?
Mr. LEHANE: I think under, you know, any analysis it was very transforming both the win and the speech that he gave last night in Iowa was very impressive. His results were impressive across the board, both in terms of how he performed well with virtually every voting bloc, and in particular, I think, the number of people that turned out in Iowa. You got a record turnout in Iowa at 239,000 or so people, including a significant number of independents, a significant number of first-time caucus goers. And that certainly suggests that he had an enormous, inspiring factor out there.
MONTAGNE: It also suggests something went wrong with Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Mr. LEHANE: Well, I think there's two ways to look at it. One way to look at it is it's just a very impressive win by Senator Obama. He really did inspire people. The fault(ph) of it is, is that, obviously, it was pretty clear that this is a change election. He ran with a very clear and concise change message. Senator Clinton ran on with a message that was predicated on experience and using that experience to translate to change, and I think Senator Barack Obama's message really cuts through, particularly in Iowa.
Now, we turn to New Hampshire, obviously, where Senator Clinton has a little bit more familiarity. The Clintons, obviously, go way back in New Hampshire. They have a good ground game there. They've a lot of support in the state, historically. But will the wave coming out of Iowa be unstoppable, and is Obama going to move on because there was such a transforming victory, or will she be able to break the wave in Iowa - in New Hampshire.
MONTAGNE: And back to the Republicans, Mike Murphy, Rudy Giuliani - now, he didn't really campaign in Iowa, but in fact, in a sense paid for that. He lost big. How does he stand now?
Mr. MURPHY: I think he's in big trouble. I believe the truth is Rudy was too clever by half about Iowa. They didn't talk about it much but they put a lot of resources in there. They matched Mitt Romney in staffers for most of the campaigns. They spent a lot of money on mail, but Rudy didn't personally campaign there as much. And I think their plan was to do, you know, the proverbial quote better than expected. Instead, he got beat two to one by Ron Paul.
So the Rudy strategy which has been, to use a baseball analogy - lose the first five innings and then roar back - is a strategy that's never worked before, and I think he's going to have real trouble executing it because he's not looking particularly strong in New Hampshire, Michigan, South Carolina or Nevada. He's trying to wait for Florida at the end of the month. He's going to find this a long, difficult way with a real hard fundraising environment if he doesn't start winning soon. So I think Rudy's campaign is in very big trouble.
MONTAGNE: Okay. I want to ask the two of you for the one-line answer to this. Do you care to wager bet on what happens in New Hampshire on Tuesday? Mike?
Mr. MURPHY: I think Obama is going to soar and win the nomination and win - she has five days to stop him, but I don't think she can. And I think you're going to see a battle royal between John McCain and Mitt Romney with Huckabee now in the hunt in New Hampshire. McCain has the edge but it could go any way.
MONTAGNE: Chris?
Mr. LEHANE: I think that Obama has a big wave, and it will be interesting to see whether the historically, independent people of New Hampshire are able to be independent within the five days that we have. And then on the Republican side, it just seems to me that the Huckabee win really is a huge boost for McCain who could potentially be the last man standing on the Republican side.
MONTAGNE: Thanks to both of you for joining us.
Chris Lehane is a Democratic political consultant based in San Francisco. Mike Murphy is a Republican political consultant. He spoke with us from New Hampshire.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
The FBI is resuming the search for D.B. Cooper, the hijacker who 36 years ago bailed out of a jetliner with $200,000 and was never seen again.
Now the FBI is trying something new, asking the public to help them find Cooper, as NPR's Martin Kaste reports.
MARTIN KASTE: Most people would consider a 1971 skyjacking as a matter of ancient history.
(Soundbite of archived news)
Unidentified Man: When he got on a plane in Portland, Oregon last night, he was just another passenger. But today, after hijacking a Northwest Airlines jet, ransoming the passengers in Seattle and making a getaway by parachute. The description on one wire service - master criminal.
KASTE: Even the media frenzy that the case inspired back then now seems dated. The folk songs, the 1981 movie and all those unsolved mystery TV shows.
(Soundbite of archived TV show)
Mr. LEONARD NIMOY (Actor): This is Leonard Nimoy. Join me for a perfect crime as we go in search of D.B. Cooper.
KASTE: But as far as the FBI is concerned, the D.B. Cooper case is more than just a historical curiosity.
Mr. LARRY CARR (FBI Agent, Seattle): It was never closed. It's always been open. It's always had a case agent assigned to it.
KASTE: That agent is now Larry Carr based in Seattle. He's well aware that he's the second generation on this case.
Mr. CARR: It's quite surreal here. Growing up a kid in Indiana, hearing about the case and giving it some thought at that point in time, and being 41 now and the lead investigator on the case. It's a little weird.
KASTE: Carr says the hijacking is no longer a priority for the FBI. It's not even very high on his own list. All he really has time to do is to try to publicize the case again, but this time he wants to share more of what the FBI knows.
Mr. CARR: If we want the public's help, they have to have the right information, and the right information isn't what's been circulating.
KASTE: For example, Carr wants to dispel the image of D.B. Cooper as some kind of master skydiver. The FBI, long ago, concluded that Cooper was no expert. He made too many amateurish mistakes. Carr also hopes that the publicity might attract some volunteers.
Mr. CARR: Perhaps someone who has a specific skill or access to new technologies - they get interested in the case.
KASTE: One clue for them to go for them to go on is the portion of the ransom money that was found on the banks of the Columbia River in 1980. Carr thinks a hydrologist might be able to track it upstream, back to its source, and maybe to Cooper's remains.
Ralph Himmelsbach, the FBI agent first assigned to the case is delighted with Carr's efforts.
Mr. RALPH HIMMELSBACH (Former FBI Agent): Good for him. Good for - I don't know him, but I'm rooting for him.
KASTE: Himmelsbach investigated the case for eight years and had followed him into retirement. He believes Cooper died during the jump, but he'd like to know for sure, especially because D.B. Cooper now seems to become a kind of folk hero for some people.
Mr. HIMMELSBACH: They say I hope he got away with it, but I look at it differently. I think he was just simply a sleazy, rotten criminal who was middle-aged, and his life had gone nowhere and he thought what a good idea and he might give it a try.
KASTE: Himmelsbach may be right that many people would rather not find out what happened. Special agent Carr says he's already getting e-mails from people begging him not to solve the mystery of D.B. Cooper.
Martin Kaste, NPR News, Seattle.
INSKEEP: You can find a link to the FBI's web page about D.B. Cooper at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The early presidential primary season is the time when most candidates have to say goodbye. Last night, two withdrew - Senators Chris Dodd and Joe Biden.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
This was Biden's second run at the White House and in a recent interview he recalled the way that his campaign imploded back in 1987.
Senator JOE BIDEN (Democrat, Delaware): I didn't deserve to be president just based on the Richter scale of was I tough enough and did I understand the process.
INSKEEP: Wait a minute, are you saying the system worked?
Sen. BIDEN: The system worked.
INSKEEP: In shoving you out…
Sen. BIDEN: The system worked.
INSKEEP: …before you even got to the election year?
Sen. BIDEN: In a strange way, it did work.
MONTAGNE: Two decades later, Senator Biden is among the most experienced Democrats and he made it into the election year, but only by three days. Last night, Joe Biden told supporters.
Sen. BIDEN: One of the things I decided when I decided to run, when Jill and the boys and Ashley said, hey, dad, give it a shot. I committed that I would say exactly what I believe. I committed that I would not, in any way, truncate anything I thought needed to be said. And ladies and gentlemen, we've done it. And let me make something clear to you, I ain't going away.
(Soundbite of applause)
MONTAGNE: Now Joe Biden returns to his day job as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
Football players may perform feats of strength and endurance, but don't forget the people who watch. They include Stan Friedman. He signed up for the Ultimate Couch Potato competition. He had to sit on a recliner watching TV sports. He could order unlimited food and drink but he was not allowed to fall asleep and he got only one break every eight hours. After 29 hours Friedman triumphed when his last competitor made an unscheduled bathroom break.
It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
Two British dentists finally have something to smile about. They've won a battle. Not with plaque, not with the tooth fairy. Rather, with Lacoste, famous for its crocodile logo. Lacoste accused the dentists of copyright infringement after they hung out a sign featuring a toothy reptile. Now, London's Intellectual Property Office has sided with the dentists, saying it was unlikely anyone would confuse the dentists' office with the French fashion brand.
It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
With Barack Obama's win in Iowa last night, the political talk is shifting to the next contest in New Hampshire. And on the Democratic side, the attention is focused on the race between Senator Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton. But Senator Clinton finished behind our next guest.
Former Senator John Edwards narrowly edged her out for second place in Iowa. And he's on the line now from New Hampshire. Good morning.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Moved pretty fast into New Hampshire, didn't you?
Mr. EDWARDS: Yes. Yes, we came directly from Iowa in the middle of the night and I got about an hour of sleep last night.
MONTAGNE: Well, you came in second, didn't win last night. Having lost in Iowa, having put in so much time and energy and money there, where must you finish in New Hampshire to stay alive in this race?
Mr. EDWARDS: What actually happened in Iowa is I was running against two celebrity candidates who raised over a hundred million dollars each. Both outspent - they outspent me 5- or 6-to-1 in Iowa. But still, I finished a strong second and beat Senator Clinton and the Clinton political machine.
So, I think, what it proves is - and this will happen in New Hampshire too -what it proves is people actually care what you stand for as oppose to how much money you raised and Iowa and in New Hampshire, what I stand for is fighting for the middle class and jobs and ending the corporate greed in America.
MONTAGNE: To the question, do you have a number there? How do you need to finish in New Hampshire to keep…
Mr. EDWARDS: I don't make those kinds of predictions. That's what you guys do. But what I do is I'm going to be here, fighting with every fiber of my being for the cause that I believe in. And this has never been about me, it's about what I believe and needs to happen in America for everybody to have a real chance.
MONTAGNE: Well, just one more moment on this. You've accepted public financing. Your rivals are better financed. Are you going to have enough money to wage a strong campaign through all of the contests, and that would include February 5th?
Mr. EDWARDS: We're not going to have an auction; we're going to have an election. People are going to decide who, actually, is ready to be president and who's willing to fight for them. Who's willing to fight for universal health care, to end global warming, for a tax and trade policy that's fair to all Americans, to bring the war to an end. I mean all of the things that really matter to America today.
And - I mean, listen, I started - I've known for a long time that I'm the little guy among the three of us. I don't have the glitz, I don't have the glamour. I don't have over a hundred million dollars, but I have plenty of money to be heard and what really matters is not money. What matters is principal and what you stand for and what your convictions are. And that's what's going to come through.
MONTAGNE: You know, one message that did come out of Iowa last night seemed to be that voters were rallying for change and optimism. Now one criticism that has been leveled at you in this campaign is that your message is too angry. What do you say to that?
Mr. EDWARDS: It's not true. I mean I'm enormously optimistic and what I think happened in Iowa was the two change candidates finished first and second. And the status quo candidate finished third.
Senator Clinton is the status quo, Senator Obama and I both believe in change. And what will happen in New Hampshire, in subsequent states, is now voters are going to be able to focus on the two of us and decide which one can best bring about change. And my own belief is that - Senator Obama has a different philosophy - is that you can't just negotiate with drug companies or oil companies. You have to actually be willing to take them on and challenge them, And I think we have a fight in front of us. And I think that choice will be very clear to voters in New Hampshire and to voters of subsequent states.
MONTAGNE: Just a last question, Senator, given you and your wife Elizabeth, have campaigned in spite of her illness, because the presidency would put you in a position to realize - both of your vision and your wife's vision of what this country should be - down the road, should it come to this, does that equation still hold for -or would that equation still hold for a vice presidential spot?
Mr. EDWARDS: No. As you know, I ran for vice president in 2004 and I'm focused now on becoming president of the United States and I believe I'm going to be successful.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for talking to us.
Mr. EDWARDS: Wonderful to talk to you. Thank you.
MONTAGNE: I hope you get a little rest there.
Mr. EDWARDS: Thanks, bye.
MONTAGNE: Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, now running for president who came in second in last night's Democratic caucuses in Iowa.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And now let's hear from one of the candidates who competed in yesterday's Iowa caucuses.
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. He finished fourth with just about two percent support. Governor, welcome to the program.
Governor BILL RICHARDSON (Democrat, New Mexico; Presidential Candidate): Nice to be with you, Steve.
INSKEEP: That could not have been the finish you were hoping for.
Gov. RICHARDSON: Well, you know, I came out in the final four. There are only four of us. I was hoping for a stronger fourth showing but we actually got close to 10 percent of the vote. The two percent were the delegates. And we had about 21,000 caucus-goers or supporters, but, obviously, Senator Obama deserves a lot of credit. He brought out a huge turnout that confounded all of us and that's where he got his margin and that's where I failed, in some areas, to get the, what is called a viability, 15 percent. But I'm in New Hampshire. I'm confident, I feel good. We head into a very important independent state where there's just straight voting and voters pick and choose rather than a very organized process that costs a lot of money, which we obviously didn't have.
INSKEEP: So, although a couple of Democrats have dropped out, you're staying through New Hampshire and will you commit to staying beyond that as well?
Gov. RICHARDSON: Yes. I am going to stay through New Hampshire. I've had organizations here. I've got a staff here. I've been campaigning in New Hampshire for a year - Nevada also. If you look at the western primaries where I'm strong, those are coming up next. Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, California. Nevada is that next primary after New Hampshire, so we're heading into my territory but I need to do well here in New Hampshire and I feel confident. I've got momentum from a lot of hard work here and now it's going to be up to the voters and I'm just making the war. It's so important to end this war. The main message of my campaign and I think that's going to resonate.
INSKEEP: Well, let me ask you about that, governor. Because it is interesting that candidates who claim the greatest foreign policy experience - you're one, Joe Biden was another - did not finish anywhere near the top in Iowa. What does that say about voter's interests and concerns right now?
Gov. RICHARDSON: Well, ending this war is so important for the country that I believe it is a top concern. Obviously, the message of change in Iowa was the most potent. But I think if you head into the end of the campaign and we've got 49 more to go, you're going to see voters look at experience, who's got CEO experience as a governor, who's got the most international experience but who's actually negotiated with foreign countries and gotten cease fires and who's made a difference in the lives of people and there, I believe the message of experience and having the experience to change the country is going to resonate.
And I have made the war the center piece not just to my campaign but - making sure we end this war. We can't do that. Unless we end the war, we're not going to have universal health insurance. We're not going to have higher paying jobs. We're not going to have so many of the domestic issues that are adversely affecting the middle class resolve. So here I am, touting this message of change. I'm a governor. I've successfully balanced budgets and I'm the only candidate that's actually negotiated with a foreign country that is on the ballot today. So that will play well, I believe, in the days ahead.
INSKEEP: That's Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico; former congressman; candidate for president. He finished fourth in Iowa and says he will continue to campaign through New Hampshire and beyond
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
Consider for a moment what can happen in a day. Twenty-four hours ago, Iowa voters hadn't even gathered for their caucuses, now they've spoken and Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee are the runaway winners.
This morning, the candidates are already in New Hampshire campaigning, the next stop in this year's break net presidential campaign. And that's where we've caught up with our correspondents, starting with NPR's Don Gonyea who's traveling with the Obama campaign.
And Don, tell us where you are exactly and what the mood is there.
Don Gonyea: I'm in an airplane hangar in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On the eastern side of the state, on the water. And Senator Obama just concluded what is his first rally, his first speech. He's stuck to very similar themes. Lots of talks about change and lots of talk about hope and a pitch to independents and Republicans and undecided. He said Iowans began something last night, now New Hampshire voters can continue that on Tuesday.
MONTAGNE: Well, let's listen to a little bit of tape of Barack Obama.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): If there are any folks here who are still undecided about who they are going to vote for, then I would like you to fill out, if I'm sufficiently persuasive here today, one of these supporter cards -how many people here are still undecided about who to vote for? We got some live ones here.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MONTAGNE: And Don, what are the prospects for Obama there in New Hampshire? That is, can he turn his Iowa win into a series of victories en route to the nomination?
GONYEA: Well, in New Hampshire it's a very different place from Iowa. And it's tempting to suddenly think of him as the frontrunner coming out of Iowa because he won so handily there, but poll show. You know, it is a very, very tight race here. And the other thing is, Iowans, talking to people - I'm sorry, New Hampshire voters, talking to people here, say that, you know, these are Obama supporters for the most part, but they don't take their cues from Iowa. They recognize that New Hampshire voters will make an independent decision here.
Now, the things that Obama's political director David Axelrod is saying, bode well for New Hampshire was just the enthusiasm out of Iowa. It even exceeded their expectations. And young people turned out. And independents turned out for Obama. And they think those are two things that will play very well and help his prospects here in New Hampshire.
MONTAGNE: Don, stay with us. I want to bring another voice into this conversation. NPR's David Greene is following Hillary Clinton's campaign and he's, of course, also there in New Hampshire already, this morning. Good morning, David.
DAVID GREENE: Good morning, Renee - And also outside an airplane hangar. I guess airplane hangar are popular this morning.
MONTAGNE: Well, I guess they're all arriving, theoretically. Oh, so Hillary Clinton came in third in Iowa behind Obama and edged out by John Edwards. Clearly not the results that her campaign was hoping for.
GREENE: Not at all. And they really want to turn things around and get headlines going more in their direction. Hillary Clinton landed quickly, came to this airplane hangar in Nashua, up here with her daughter Chelsea Clinton and former President Bill Clinton who got quite a large applause from the crowd here. And she even used the line that she doesn't often use in her speeches. She said that we've learned before that it can take a Clinton to clean up after a Bush and that that might have to happen again.
MONTAGNE: Now you have some tape of her speaking to her supporters. Let's take a listen.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): People who know as I do that New Hampshire voters are going to be weighing and assessing everything in the next five days. It's a short period of time but it's enough time.
Time for people to say, wait a minute. Number one, who will be the best president for our country on day one, walking into the Oval Office, after you're sworn in on January 20th, 2009?
MONTAGNE: David, following this loss in Iowa, is the Clinton campaign changing its strategy, do you imagine, there in New Hampshire?
GREENE: Well, the message doesn't seem to be changing very much. The theme is still experience, like Hillary Clinton says that she is the best, the change agent, because of the experience that she has.. But this is a different state and it's a different time frame. I mean, as Hillary Clinton said, she has five days now, and she has essentially - looking at these five days as very crucial to turn things around. And I think the language we just heard her saying, wait a minute, very important. What she's telling New Hampshire voters is wait a minute, don't necessarily take a look at what happened in Iowa. You be independent thinkers. Don't take advice from another state and let's start all over. As one Clinton aide put it, let's push the reset button in New Hampshire.
MONTAGNE: Okay. Hold on there. Let's turn now to the Republicans. NPR's Scott Horsley is traveling with Mitt Romney's campaign and he joins us from Portsmouth.
Scott, you've been out with the Romney campaign this morning. How's the second place finish in Iowa sitting with them? Big disappointment.
SCOTT HORSLEY: Well, certainly a disappointment, although I believe they beat Barack Obama to the Portsmouth airport by a number of hours.
MONTAGNE: That's something.
HORSLEY: The Romney campaign touched down about 3:30 this morning in Portsmouth. I think former Governor Romney couldn't wait to get into New Hampshire, into New England. It was a very New England scene when he arrived. There were - there was a little ice on the tarmac and Dunkin Donuts waiting for him in the hangar. And he has said that he is going to face a very different opponent here in New Hampshire than he did in Iowa where he finished second behind Mike Huckabee. Here, he expects his main challenger to be Arizona Senator John McCain. And he promised to go aggressively against Senator McCain and that started as early as this morning when he said to reporters that the message he draws from Iowa is that voters are looking for change. And he said very pointedly that there's no way Senator McCain can represent himself as the candidate of change in Washington when he is Washington.
MONTAGNE: Scott, what can you tell us about Mike Huckabee, though? How, now with his big victory in Iowa, how do you think he's likely to be received there in New Hampshire?
HORSLEY: Well, that's going to be interesting to see. Judd Greg, the former governor and now senator of New Hampshire was with former governor McCain - former governor Romney as he visited a restaurant here in Portsmouth this morning. And Judd Greg said he really doesn't think the Christian right will play the same powerful role here in New Hampshire that they did in Iowa where our poll show about 60 percent of the Republican voters were self-described Evangelicals and, of course, they vote very heavily for Mike Huckabee. So Mitt Romney does not really see Mike Huckabee as his big opponent, at least here in New Hampshire. He said he might bring that same evangelical force to bear in some other states, but here in New Hampshire (unintelligible) John McCain.
MONTAIGNE: We lost you a little bit there, Scott Horsley. But I'm going to turn to Don Gonyea right now and ask you a general question. Is a victory in New Hampshire make or break for any one of these candidates?
GONYEA: Well, it's certainly very important for Hillary Clinton, given the third place finish in Iowa and John Edwards needs to continue to be competitive and stay in the game. Clearly, a candidate like Barack Obama, he's got money, he's got organization, he's got a win under his belt. Not as critical for him.
MONTAIGNE: And, Don, you may still be speaking but we seem to be losing you there but that's okay. I'm going to turn to David Greene and ask you another question here about the Hillary Clinton campaign. Bill Clinton lined up to play a big role in his wife's campaign over the next four days. If it is somewhat of a make or break race there, what affect is Bill Clinton's participation likely to have?
GREENE: Well, it's not clear. And certainly, Renee, I think it's a bit of a risk because one thing that you heard from Iowa voters, I think, is that they don't want the status quo. If Bill Clinton is a reminder that this will be bringing a family back into the White House that was there before, certainly a risk, I think, Hillary Clinton is hoping that Bill Clinton is a reminder of good economic times and then her suggestion is that she can bring those back. She talked about today that the next year is going to be very tough. She believes, economically for the country, and there was her husband next to her, someone who balanced the budget, might be a reminder of what she hopes she would be able to do as president.
MONTAGNE: Thank you all very much for joining us. From New Hampshire, David Greene with the Clinton campaign; NPR's Don Gonyea with the Barack Obama campaign; and NPR's Scott Horsley with the Romney campaign. Again, they spoke to us all from New Hampshire where the candidates are this morning after the Iowa caucuses.
You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
After describing places afflicted with problems, from suicide bombings in Jerusalem to student suicides in Tokyo, Eric became intrigued with finding those places in the world in which people are reportedly happiest, and why they may be so.
P: Eric Weiner, who is almost smiling now, joins us in our studios. Eric, thank you so much for being with us.
ERIC WEINER: Almost but not quite, Scott. I am happy to be here, Scott. Okay.
SIMON: Well, we take that with new authority with this book. Happiness is a goal or even a purpose in life. It's a relatively new invention.
WEINER: It is for most of us. For the special people, the gods - I'm talking centuries ago - it was considered attainable. But it wasn't something that everybody aspired to or was expected to attain.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
WEINER: And, you know, I think that has created a special kind of unhappiness in our deity, the unhappiness of not being happy. You know, there's a lot of pressure in this day and age to...
SIMON: Which is different than the unhappiness of envy maybe, of observing other people with more of something.
WEINER: Right, because you don't necessarily aspire to that. You don't think it's possible to be happy.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
WEINER: I mean, happiness went from being this glorious benefit bestowed on the fortunate few to something that each one of us expects to obtain. And expectations and happiness are not necessarily related. They often go in opposite directions.
SIMON: Think it might be revelation to people that there actually is a World Database of Happiness.
WEINER: The World Database of Hapiness. Indeed, it exists in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In fact, there is this burgeoning science of happiness, and a lot of it is compiled in this one rather unhappy looking office building in Rotterdam.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
WEINER: And it's run by a very kindly Dutch professor who looks a bit like Robin Williams and his name is Ruut Veenhoven, and he's a pretty happy guy. And I started my search there and trying to construct a sort of utmost of bliss, I call it. The countries to be homogenous, to be honest...
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
WEINER: ...they're not the most diverse places. They tend to be fairly wealthy. But the correlation between wealth and happiness is very tricky. A little bit of wealth will buy you a lot of happiness. If you're a Bangladeshi farmer, the best way to make you happy would be to give you more money.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
WEINER: But if you are a Swiss or an American person, giving you more money is not necessarily going to make you happy.
SIMON: Let me ask you about some of the datelines of happiness...
WEINER: Right.
SIMON: ...that you visited. Switzerland first. One of the reasons they might be happy is that things just work well.
WEINER: They have, I think, a very healthy attitude towards money.
SIMON: And they have a lot of it.
WEINER: They have a lot of it.
SIMON: Yeah.
WEINER: And then there's just this love of the land.
SIMON: Yeah.
WEINER: The Swiss love their Alps and every ground that in their land. And I think that's an important ingredient in happiness, to feel that connection.
SIMON: I'll ask about Bhutan. You met a man named Karma(ph). I was fascinated by something he said which is to be happy, you need to set aside maybe five minutes a day to think about death.
WEINER: That really hit home with me. I think that in this country, we do not talk about death. It is - we will talk about anything except for death. We will talk about how much money do we make, we'll talk about our sex lives, we'll talk about politics. We will not talk about death.
SIMON: I'll ask about Iceland. Is there something about cold and even darkness that promotes a spirit of togetherness?
WEINER: I think there is. And I made a point of wanting to go there in the middle of January. And first of all, the cold allows for coziness. There's a huddling together, this closeness of flesh upon flesh and people embracing each other, if not...
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
WEINER: I think a cold climate does promote closeness of humanity which is key to happiness, definitely.
SIMON: And so why isn't Russia happier?
WEINER: Russia, and any country that has had contact with Russia in the last hundred years.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
WEINER: However glancing that contact may have been, they're unhappy. I mean, statistically, these are the least happy countries in the world. You know, one theory is that there is a darkness in the Russian soul and that the Russians just are a dark people, and they like to chew on their misery. And then, I don't know. There's an element of mystery as to why the Russians are as miserable as they are.
SIMON: Are you happier for doing this book?
WEINER: So to answer your question, yes. I am happier but still grumpy.
SIMON: Eric, thank you so much.
WEINER: A pleasure, Scott.
SIMON: I'm very happy you joined us.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
The quintessential New Yorker has actually made his last three films in London and has had some of his best reviews in recent years. Mr. Allen's new film, "Cassandra's Dream," stars Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor as two brothers who nursed their dreams like a dwindling thimble of scotch.
WOODY ALLEN: I was working on a story about two brothers, actually, a whole family who is completely dependent on their successful uncle.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
ALLEN: Then, it occurred to me that they all have something that they want from him. But what if the uncle had a real serious problem and he was the one that beat them to the punch, and he spoke about his needs. And from that, everything grew quite easily.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE "CASSANDRA'S DREAM")
COLIN FARRELL: (As Terry) I can't do it. I can't.
EWAN MCGREGOR: (As Ian) No, we're going to do it, Terry, because Uncle Howard needs us to do this very badly.
FARRELL: (As Terry) Oh, let's not play games, Ian. You're thinking of us. Well, we cannot have it.
MCGREGOR: (As Ian) I'm not playing games, Terry. Your whole life is in the toilet unless you've got some way of paying off a 90,000-pound debt.
FARRELL: (As Terry) I'm not as cool as you are, Ian.
MCGREGOR: (As Ian) I am not cool, Terry. I am fighting very hard not to panic. But this is a way out for me, too.
ALLEN: And then I had to figure out what kind of characters would be so dependent on the person. So the father had a failing restaurant. One brother worked for him. The other brother gambled and worked in a garage. And it wouldn't have worked if the brothers were successful and opulent. They wouldn't be dependent upon him for any kind of largesse. So there would be no way he could prevail on them for a favor.
SIMON: It seems like they have just enough success for their dreams not to be ludicrous.
ALLEN: Right.
SIMON: Not fantasies.
ALLEN: Right. They're not wildly deluded. I mean, there is no reason to think that the character that Ewan plays couldn't succeed. Of course, as with most people, most of our dreams don't really work out.
SIMON: You said most of us don't fulfill our dreams.
ALLEN: Mm-hmm.
SIMON: Is that true of you?
ALLEN: For me, it was not true of. In spades, I have fulfilled just about all of my dreams. I've become a film director. I was a comedian. I've played New Orleans jazz all over the world despite my utter mediocrity at it. I've played baseball in Dodge's stadium and was flied out to by Willie Mays. But that's very unusual, and I'm very mindful of the fact that it's been sheer luck and that most people don't have that kind of luck. I've just been fortunate.
SIMON: Do you have a lot of characters running around in your head at any given time?
ALLEN: Yes. Many, many times when I'm shooting a film, the idea for another one will come to me, just random, as a non sequitur. I'll be sitting around and I'll see an item on the newspaper about a man who've committed a tax fraud or something. And I'll think that'd be an interesting idea for a movie or - and I write it down. And when the time comes to write, I have a half dozen or maybe more ideas scratched out and I don't have to begin in that terrible way of not having anything to begin you're thinking on, which is really unpleasant.
SIMON: You're known for doing a lot of master shots...
ALLEN: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
SIMON: ...as they're called, which is the wide shot. The actors - it would go on for several minutes, not cutting to the closer shot. Why do you do that? Are you contrast of doing it, you must be at this point, more than other director?
ALLEN: No. Now, you'll think of being facetious, but I'm not. I do it and have always done it out of sheer laziness, the tedium of making a film, of getting a scene - let's say a one page talk scene - and to shoot a three shot then shoot your close-up and her close-up and my close-up and this goes in. Now, we're here for all day and maybe a day and half, shooting the same scene. It's so boring, is expensive and so boring that I found if I could do it in a master shot and get it to work, I could do it and be finished with it, the actors like it. They don't have to do it over and over. And so it evolved into what's perceived as a style, which, in fact, is just laziness and frugality.
SIMON: Does it let you make more pictures, in a sense, because you're able to...
ALLEN: Yes. You know, the average budget for a Hollywood film, I'm told, is - just the average film is like $40 million. And they've go all the way up to 60, 90, a hundred. But I make all my films for 15 million. And I can make them quickly. People that finance them don't really ever get hurt. So consequently, they let me work very freely because nobody is really at much risk.
SIMON: What about the collegiality of filmmaking? Is that part of what you enjoy, or do you have to?
ALLEN: Well, you know, it's a mixed blessing because you work close, close, close with a group of people for a period of time and then suddenly...
(SOUNDBITE OF THUMB SNAPPING)
SIMON: Yeah.
ALLEN: ...it vanishes. And everybody feels bad for, you know, a few hours.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
ALLEN: I mean, and you...
SIMON: You exchange phone numbers, right, and all that stuff.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
ALLEN: Well, yeah. The next morning, it's fine. But it's not fine that day. Be - for instance, I'm embarking on a film, so I'm working with the crew and with the actors. And 7 o'clock in the morning, I see them and we're with each other every second of the day. We're trying things out and we're working harder, then suddenly, it's the last day, the last shot, and then, there's always a little wrap party or a little goodbye drink. And the next morning you wake up and everyone is already on their planes to Africa and California in different places and it's forgotten. I have never made permanent friends with anyone from movies.
SIMON: Really?
ALLEN: Scarlett Johansson, who I have done three pictures with, feels that I'm the most antisocial person that she's worked with. And I always insist that I'm not antisocial. I'm just not social. I don't know. It's just personality, my personality.
SIMON: Have you not, at least on one or two occasions in your life, had well- known longstanding romantic relationships...
ALLEN: Oh, yes. I've been - I was lucky in that way, too.
SIMON: ...with people who have been in your film. But with people who've been in your film.
ALLEN: Yes. I don't count those exactly as friendships, you know, in the sense, you know, guys I can could up and you go to the basketball game which is something. I've had some wonderful romances in my life with the wonderful and beautiful women. And they've made real contributions to my life and to my work. And you know, and I've been very lucky that way. I mean, I'm really, really lucky.
SIMON: This is just dime-store pop psychology.
ALLEN: Mm-hmm.
SIMON: But is that why you make films or in show business, in the theatre because, in a sense, it forces you to have relationship that at least have some of the trappings of friendship?
ALLEN: When I grew up, I found I could escape on the other side of the camera that world doesn't exist for real. But when I get a chance to work for months with very beautiful women, very handsome, witty men, they're in costumes, the music is (unintelligible).
SIMON: But in part, they're witty because you write their lines.
ALLEN: And so I have escaped into movies in a way that I've done when I was younger. But I can't duplicate now that I'm older because I'm wiser than I was when I was younger. I can't sit in a movie house and think that Humphrey Bogart is really that tough and that wonderful. I don't think people are. So I'm able to fabricate the dreams myself and then participate in them.
SIMON: What answer do you have for people who say I wish he'd make a funny movie again, Mr. Allen?
ALLEN: Well, I'm trying. I mean, this spring, I'm going to try and make a funny movie. You know, I'm - it was interesting. You know, people that were saying that to me. And I made a couple of funny movies but not many people came to see them. "Small Time Crooks" was a funny movie. And a movie more than I thought was one of my funniest movies really "Hollywood Ending," nobody came to see. That was a natural idea. It wouldn't have been a great idea for Chaplin or Buster Keaton or something. I played a blind film director, and I did it well. I thought I think I was the only person that ever played a blind person in the movies who was not nominated for an Academy Award.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
ALLEN: And the picture - you know, the picture came out very well. But nobody saw it. And then people would then be saying to me, well, these pictures are too light. You should be doing more serious things. But I wanted to do them. I enjoy doing comic films and I do have - I think a funny comedy idea for this spring in New York. And I am going to do it. And then, if it's successful, great. If it's not, I'm sure people will say, oh, he should be doing things like "Cassandra's Dream" or "Match Point." There have much more substance to them.
SIMON: You are about 70?
ALLEN: Seventy-two.
SIMON: Okay.
ALLEN: I was 72, December 1st.
SIMON: Happy birthday.
ALLEN: Oh, thank you.
SIMON: Do you think you've learned anything about how to persist, how to keep creating, how to keep challenging yourself?
ALLEN: Don't read your reviews; don't believe them when they tell you you're great; don't worry if they tell you you're no good; don't get caught up with awards; don't get caught up with all that peripheral nonsense of the business - grosses, high grosses or low - just shut up and make your movies and that really works fine. That's the only thing I learned. I learned it many years ago - I was young. And I never learned anything since and I've never learned anything of real value in my life.
SIMON: Mr. Allen, thank you so much for your time.
ALLEN: Thank you.
SIMON: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
As NPR's Robert Smith reports, the event turned into a full-contact sport.
ROBERT SMITH: Unidentified Man #1: Please welcome to the stage, Senator Hillary Clinton.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING CROWD)
SMITH: It seemed like the evening might just be a fun practice game for the candidates, until Clinton began to charge at her opponents. First, a little friendly elbow on Barack Obama's theme of change and hope.
HILLARY CLINTON: Some people think you make change by demanding it, and some people think you make change by hoping for it. I think you make change by working really, really hard and...
SMITH: The Obama supporters, back at the cheap tables near the goal lines, started to boo. Clinton had promised that after finishing third, she would be more aggressive about taking on Obama, and sure enough she butted again, this time in reference to Obama's health care proposal that doesn't mandate coverage for everyone.
CLINTON: Would I leave out the young couple from Manchester who have their own business, whom I met door-knocking and are wondering whether they're going to be able to afford health care for themselves and their children?
SMITH: Unidentified Group: Obama. Obama. Obama.
SMITH: Unidentified Man #2: For safety concerns, before we can proceed, please take your seats.
(SOUNDBITE OF GROANING CROWD)
SMITH: With all these chaos on the soccer field, Obama himself appeared. He couldn't have asked for a better metaphor. Whereas, Clinton never mentioned the four-letter word Iowa, Obama was happy to rub it in.
BARACK OBAMA: We expanded the reach of the Democratic Party by rallying not just the tried and true Democrat, but the independent and even the Republican to our cause by bringing in more young people into the caucus process than at anytime in the history of the Iowa caucuses.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING CROWD)
SMITH: Stephanie Powers(ph), a Clinton volunteer from Washington, D.C., said she's still amazed by all these young women who've abandoned the chance to elect a female president.
STEPHANIE POWERS: I saw younger women. They should have been through the struggle.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
POWERS: They ought to get on their knees and thank her for all the work that she did and for those of us who are in her age group because we've paved the way. And you know what, it's a lot easier now.
SMITH: Robert Smith, NPR News, Manchester.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
NPR's Audie Cornish reports on how the Republican race is shaping up.
AUDIE CORNISH: Each of the current frontrunners in the New Hampshire primary race faces what may be is make-or-break moment in this campaign. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is working to prove his Iowa win was not a fluke borne of special appeal to evangelical voters.
MIKE HUCKABEE: You know, I've not lived here, I've not perhaps run for office here before, and I've not spent gazillions of dollars. All I got to do is just - what my wife tell you - I'm a wonderful person and maybe you'll believe me. I don't know.
CORNISH: And after spending millions in Iowa, only to come in second to Mike Huckabee, former Governor Mitt Romney was downplaying his so-called silver- medal finish.
MITT ROMNEY: The message I got out of Iowa was that people in Iowa said they want change. The two Washington insiders - John McCain and Hillary Clinton - both lost; John McCain by a lot. And I look at that and say, what you're seeing from the people of Iowa is they want someone from outside Washington to come in and change things in Washington. And that's right up my alley.
CORNISH: Unidentified Man: He pushed a plan to keep illegal immigrants here permanently.
(SOUNDBITE OF MITT ROMNEY'S CAMPAIGN AD)
CORNISH: And for his part, McCain, too, needs a first-place finish here to recapture the magic of 2000, imploring the voters who once handed him a win here then to give him another chance. And as he does that, he warns them of the negative ads to come. Ads that try to alienate the hawkish, fiscal conservatives McCain has been targeting here of late.
JOHN MCCAIN: My friends, I'm a proud Republican. I'm a proud Ronald Reagan Republican. I'm a Theodore Roosevelt Republican. I am a proud conservative. But we, Republicans, betrayed our base when we let spending get completely out of control. When we...
CORNISH: McCain knows a poor showing in Iowa does not eliminate him here. Most voters here insist Iowa won't dictate their choices. For instance, when it comes to Huckabee, Josh Roby(ph) of Hollis has his doubts.
JOSH ROBY: We just got back from visiting the middle of the country. And it's an interesting place to visit but it's different than it is here certainly in the northeast. And he's just frankly a little too Christian right wing, I think, for most of the people around here.
CORNISH: Audie Cornish, NPR News, Manchester.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
Charlie, thanks very much for being with us.
CHARLIE COOK: Good morning.
SIMON: Did the Iowa caucuses exert anymore influence on the New Hampshire primaries now that they're so much closer together this year?
COOK: Well, I think, particularly on the Democratic side, it will have an enormous influence. I mean, it's like a catapult. And in state like New Hampshire, where independents can vote any either primary, a win by a candidate like Barack Obama who does draw disproportionately well among independents, I think he's going to get a lot of momentum out of this.
SIMON: What about the other side, in Governor Huckabee? Or is - are there still a lot of factors in New Hampshire that make it very promising territory for the guy who used to be the governor next door?
COOK: Huckabee will have a lot more trouble, I think, in New Hampshire because it's a very secular state. It's a state that's a lot more moderate on social and cultural issues. And probably more suspicious to a former Baptist minister running that a lot of the Huckabee support seem to come out of fundamentalist churches, but also people that were very suspicious of a Mormon, of Mitt Romney. And that really was the backbone of the Huckabee support. But going into New Hampshire, it's going to really test Romney's next-door status.
SIMON: Mm-hmm. Senator McCain, speaking on Thursday night with specific reference, I guess, to Governor Huckabee's win in the caucuses, said this shows you the power of debates. That the debates really count for something. There are going to be a couple more debates in New Hampshire over the next couple of days. Do you think they're going to accomplish a lot?
COOK: Well, they can. I mean, obviously in the Republican side there is a vacuum. Republicans are desperately looking for a new Ronald Reagan, and they haven't found one yet. But it has allowed John McCain to come back. In some ways, he's almost more the next-door candidate than Mitt Romney in the sense that he has a stronger appeal among independents than Romney has. Even before the Huckabee victory in Iowa, some of the Romney strategists were actually more worried about McCain being their real rival for the nomination than Huckabee. And I suspect they may still fell that way.
SIMON: Mm-hmm. More scrutiny now for Barack Obama.
COOK: Yes. But I don't know that the scrutiny will start immediately. The news media loves a good story, a good narrative. And the story of Barack Obama, not just winning but winning pretty convincingly over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards who had been, you know, practically living in Iowa for five years, this is a real big story. And they're just going to savor this story for a few days first.
SIMON: Within hours of the result in Iowa, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd - two distinguished U.S. senators - dropped out of the race. Do you see any other candidates being on the line in New Hampshire?
COOK: Well, I think we're going to watch Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, to see whether he stays in after a very disappointing showing. The interesting thing to me is there was almost a direct relationship - the more experience you had, the worse you did. You know, veterans of Capitol Hill coming in, you know, are your fourth, fifth and sixth. Hillary Clinton with the next most experience, coming in third, and then Edwards and then Obama, who's, you know, only been in the Senate for three years. Experience just seemed to matter very, very little, if any. In fact, it almost worked against you in terms on running on the Democratic side.
SIMON: Charlie Cook, editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report, thanks so much.
COOK: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
NPR's Gregory Feifer reports from Georgia.
GREGORY FEIFER: When the dark-haired, energetic president appeared, the crowd erupted in cheers, calling out Misha, Saakashvili's nickname.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHEERING)
MIKHAIL SAAKASHVILI: (Speaking in foreign language)
FEIFER: Almost shouting himself hoarse, the 40-year-old American-trained lawyer, who came to power following the Rose Revolution in 2003, promised to reunify Abkhazia with the rest of Georgia. Among the crowd, Bilogias Sarkavas(ph) said he respects Saakashvili for cracking down against corruption and building Georgia's infrastructure.
BILOGIAS SARKAVAS: (Through translator) Just take a look around you, he's built roads and schools. He's hardworking, helping people by making sure wages and pensions are paid.
FEIFER: Speaking after his rally, Saakashvili called himself a founding father of the new Georgian state.
SAAKASHVILI: The country that has been the hopeless (unintelligible) which has formed itself into the downlink of the World Bank. But it was for very painful reforms. And basically now, we went out to our people and said, okay, you want to go on like this, or you want something else.
FEIFER: Former Foreign Minister Salome Zourabichvili is an opposition leader, who says the police crackdown showed the true nature of Saakashvili's administration.
SALOME ZOURABICHVILI: We were telling our foreign friends that this was not a democratic government, but this is first time that it was make - made obvious for a much larger public.
FEIFER: But the opposition has been splintered, and Saakashvili has accused an opposing candidate of trying to overthrow the government. Billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili was recorded offering a police official $100 million to help undermine the government.
SAAKASHVILI: This guy basically promotes bribing of police officer to kill the minister of interior, to make a coup d' etat, to arrest members of government. So, excuse me, but are we dealing now with politics or we are dealing with pure criminal activity?
FEIFER: Former winemaker Levan Gachechiladze is Saakashvili's main opponent in today's vote. He says Saakashvili has dominated media coverage and barred other candidates from buying space on billboards.
LEVAN GACHECHILADZE: (Georgian spoken)
FEIFER: Gregory Feifer, NPR News, Tbilisi.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
Thank you very much for being with us.
STEPHEN MORRISON: Thank you, Scott.
SIMON: Supporters of President Kibaki and Mr. Odinga have both used the word genocide to describe the violence. Is that - I don't want to get caught up in semantics, and obviously people have died - but is that the word you'd use?
MORRISON: As to meeting the definition of genocide, I don't think you can say this is state-directed genocide. I don't think that it approaches the intent to destroy an ethnic entity. What it amounts to is a spasm of interethnic violence in communities that are in very close range of one another. We've seen this in earlier electoral contests in Kenya in which one community felt that it was robbed of its just rewards electorally and resorted to violence.
SIMON: When you accuse leadership of both sides of in some ways abetting, if not exactly inventing this violence, what do you mean exactly?
MORRISON: Well, what I mean by this is that each side has resorted increasingly to use of youth gangs to enforce their will in local electoral settings. This is a trend that has gotten a lot of note from close observers there who were, back in the latter part of '07, warning that these instruments of local violence were in place and were being used as enforcers in the electoral process and could be turned against innocent civilians.
SIMON: What kind of resolution can you foresee, Mr. Morrison?
MORRISON: There's a couple of very obvious steps that need to happen, and these are the steps that are under negotiation right now. One is a cooling-off period, a return to some kind of interim-shared governance. Keep in mind for the first period of the Kibaki government, Raila Odinga was a partner within that coalition. There's no reason why you couldn't come to some sort of interim arrangement and then set the clock back and rerun the elections under more guarded circumstances.
SIMON: The phrase that keeps coming up is a made-in-Kenya solution as opposed to something brokered by the U.S., the European Union, the United Nations.
MORRISON: I think that is accurate and telling about Kenya as a society and as a polity. It was the initiative of independent, prominent, respected Kenyan figures who stepped forward and put these ideas on the table, and then rallied and invited Bishop Tutu to come in, and engaged with the diplomatic community leadership to bring them around on this. And that's a source of great promise and hope, I believe, for Kenya.
SIMON: Stephen Morrison, who is director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, thanks very much.
MORRISON: Thanks, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
Professor Owings says that at the defense that squirrels have developed, it's a nice example of the opportunism of animals.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
John Carlisle joins us in the studios. Thanks so much for being with us.
SIMON: Thank you. Glad to be here.
SIMON: You cite a specific example and that's the criminal case against Congressman Alan Mollohan of West Virginia, Democrat who's in the House of Appropriations Committee. Tell us about that case and how you came to it.
SIMON: Well, every May when congressmen file their financial disclosure forms, we make it a point of reviewing the forms of all members of House Appropriations Committees.
SIMON: Republicans and Democrats?
SIMON: Republicans and Democrats.
SIMON: Yeah.
SIMON: We look for discrepancies. And then, like, what happened, our chairman, Ken Boehm, found that of a four-year period, between roughly 2000 to 2004, Representative Alan Mollohan's wealth suddenly went from fairly modest assets of just $30,000 to as much as six to $12 million. So Ken Boehm initiated - linked the investigation that amounted in about 10 months, and he found several dozen felonies where he was earmarking funds to friends and business associates who then cut him in a lucrative business deals. That's when we approached the media, in this case, the Wall Street Journal to give them the scoop.
SIMON: Now, the National Legal and Policy Center has a conservative agenda.
SIMON: Sure.
SIMON: I think that's safe to say.
SIMON: Sure.
SIMON: Do your investigations, therefore, have that same agenda?
SIMON: Well it turns out, she paid only about $180,000 for this property, and most real estate insiders stated that this should have cost at least 250 to as much as $350,000. Within 24 to 48 hours that we filed our complaint with the committee, she agreed to sell back the property for what she purchased it back to Mr. Penny. And to be good investigator means you fill, you follow trail of facts.
SIMON: There are other nonprofit groups that have begun funds for investigative journalism.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
SIMON: I think probably the most prominent recently is a group called ProPublica.
SIMON: Right.
SIMON: And that's being headed up now by Paul Steiger, former head of the Wall Street Journal, being funded by people like Herbert and Marion Sandler, George Soros' Open Society Institute. Do you trust them to do honest investigation? [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: As reported on 1/26/08 Weekend Edition Saturday, there is no connection between either Mr. Soros or his Open Society Institute and Pro Publica.]
SIMON: Well, they have said that their mission sounds certainly appropriate and nonpartisan enough to expose corruption in incorporations and government. Now, I have no doubt - to doubt the sincerity of that statement. But that being said, I mean, the Sandlers are devoting up to $10 million per year on this entity and they have made it quite well known - and as is their prerogative that they will, too - they have a certain agenda that they're pushing to what they would call as counter-the-vast right-wing conspiracy, just like George Soros, linking that to prerogative. So I find it hard to believe that we're not, at least, have a liberal-leaning orientation.
SIMON: One of the reasons that the Wall Street Journal is so respected, the newspaper that Mr. Steiger used to head, is they have a very strong line that separates the editorial page from the news page.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
SIMON: Are you trying to blur that line?
SIMON: No. Not at all. I mean, ultimately, you know, we don't force it down the throats. We uncover what we think are scandals and we present it to them, and it's up to them to make the decision. It doesn't give any blur line of editorialism and better reporting, that's their decision to make. We can't draw the line for them.
SIMON: Thanks very much for being with us.
SIMON: Glad to be here.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
And he joins us from New York City. Thanks very much for being with us.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
LARRY ASHMEAD: I'm glad to be here.
SIMON: Who is Bertha Venation?
ASHMEAD: Well, actually, it's the only non-real name in the book. It's a drag queen in London who adopted the name.
SIMON: You began to take a shine to unusual names from the time you were youngster.
ASHMEAD: Well, my mother's best friends were Bettina Button(ph) and Edith Shortsleeve(ph).
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
ASHMEAD: And she didn't wear short sleeves.
SIMON: I don't blame her. It would only expose to ridicule. And you have a whole section on aptly named professionals.
ASHMEAD: I don't know which comes first - the profession or the name. There's a dentist named Dr. Fang. There's a gynecologist named Dr. Ovary(ph). There's another gynecologist called Dr. Cherry(ph), which I thought was funny and most people do, but they don't.
SIMON: I've turned a page in your book to some of the aptly named professionals. And no particular order, of course, probably the most famous is Simon Rattle, music director of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
ASHMEAD: That's right.
SIMON: But there's Hugh Fish(ph) who's an environmental engineer; Johnny Worm(ph) who grows peaches in California; Andrew Inches, a videotape editor in New York City. You have a section here too on people with improbable names who marry each other.
ASHMEAD: Well, that's a big problem because you get sort of hyphenated names and first names that don't go with last names. I called a woman whose married name is Gay Beech(ph) and said, I think it's funny and she said it's spelled B-E-E-C-H. No A.
SIMON: And Dan Coffee(ph) sends along the recollection that he's niece married a man with a last name Bean.
ASHMEAD: That's right. Coffee Bean.
SIMON: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SIMON: And a Joseph Cotton's(ph) son married a woman named Velvet Satin(ph).
ASHMEAD: And so she became Velvet Satin-Cotton.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SIMON: Well, Mr. Ashmead, been a pleasure to talk to you.
ASHMEAD: Well, it's been very nice talking to you.
SIMON: Go to see her tonight, and hundreds of other funny names of real people. And this is NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
David Letterman negotiated his own deal with the union that allowed him to return with his writers, and the strike became the topic of their Top 10 list.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV PROGRAM "LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN")
CHRIS ALBERS: I don't have a joke. I just want to remind everyone that we're on strike, so none of us are responsible for this lame list.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SIMON: Thanks so much for being with us, Mr. Carlin.
PETER CARLIN: Oh, it's my pleasure.
SIMON: I'm intrigued by the fact that at least the overnight rating showed that more people watched Jay Leno.
CARLIN: Well, I think there may have been a lot of curiosity about how Jay and Conan were actually going to function on the air, you know, without their writers. And everybody knew that Dave coming back was just going to have business as usual, whereas theoretically, at least, Leno and Conan O'Brien were going to be making it up as they went along. And Jay has kind of a larger fan base than Dave, but the key thing that's going to change in the next few weeks is that the union is actually encouraging people - actors and other Hollywood union people - to take bookings on the Letterman show and the Craig Ferguson show, whereas they consider the NBC shows and Jimmy Kimmel show on ABC to be, you know, strike breakers.
SIMON: How are the formats changed or how are they going to have change because, presumably, if the shows without writers are going to have to be more interview based and the union is playing hardball, it will be more difficult than ever to book big-named guests who might be reluctant to cross picket line.
CARLIN: Yes. So what ends up happening is that you have to become more creative in who you're booking and, you know, exactly how you fill up your time. And that's where Conan O'Brien, I think, has really come to the fore in the last couple of days. I've been impressed that his show has been hysterically funny because he's going around, essentially making things up as he goes along, you know, going up to his office with his video camera and just sort of showing off his toys on the shelves or climbing up to the catwalks above the stage to see what's up there. So it's this kind of rainy-day-at-home- alone-and-you-know- -the-cat-in-the-hat-shows-up type of environment.
SIMON: Monday night, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert returned with their shows without their writers. Now, these are writer-based shows. They have interviews, but no doubt about it the shows are based on scripts. What do these guys do? How do they hold an audience?
CARLIN: The interesting question with Colbert is the fact that the union, essentially, is forbidding these guys from performing as characters and the Stephen Colbert that you see on the "Colbert Report" isn't really Stephen Colbert. It's the sort of fictional alter ego character.
SIMON: Yeah.
CARLIN: So just by appearing on his show, it seems that Colbert is breaking the union rules.
SIMON: One of the things that made those shows succeed in the market nature is that they weren't doing what Letterman, Leno and, for that matter, Conan O'Brien were doing but something that was distinctly topical. If what they have to do is the same kind of stuff that, say, Conan O'Brien is doing, then they all begin to resemble each other.
CARLIN: Yeah. And, you know, and that's obviously the curved ball that's been thrown to them, that they have to reimagine themselves on the fly. Guys like Conan O'Brien, and I suspect, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, may secretly enjoy and rise to the challenge because they're those kind of odd people who were just engineered to perform and to be funny. And I think it probably, you know, on some level, makes them feel, you know, like mountain climbers who really only are happy when their above 8,000 meters, you know, in the death zone as they call it. For my money, you know, I mean, I think it's great when the TV world, which is always so formulaic and so predictable, veers completely out of control. I mean, it's breathtaking TV.
SIMON: Thanks so much.
CARLIN: Hey, it's my pleasure. Thank you very much.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
Hello, Dan.
DANIEL SCHORR: Hi, Scott.
SIMON: Dan, record number of caucus-goers in Iowa.
SCHORR: Right.
SIMON: We've heard all kinds of analysis over the past couple of days.
SCHORR: Yes.
SIMON: Let's get to yours, and what you foresee. First, the Democratic side and Senator Obama's victory. What do you see as being responsible?
SCHORR: Secondly, I think it's quite remarkable and should be noted as perhaps a point of passage in the history that Iowa is 95 percent white. And when an African- American wins this caucus in a 95 percent white state, I think maybe we have begun to transcend race.
SIMON: On the Republican side, former Governor Mike Huckabee. Obviously, a lot of the analysis attributed the support to social conservatives and evangelicals. What do you see are some of the factors responsible for Governor Huckabee?
SCHORR: Well, I think the Huckabee factor has something in common with the Obama factor and that is that Americans and the voters - it may be only Iowa but I think somewhat more - are really wanting to shake things up and have fresh faces and fresh ideas. The word change keeps coming up, and I think the word change means something to voters in Iowa and elsewhere.
SIMON: So that their relative unfamiliarity almost became a political asset?
SCHORR: I think that's right. The word change kept coming up sop often along with the word hope, which was Obama's word. And some people think hope is a funny thing, but...
SIMON: And it's where Governor Huckabee was born in fact.
SCHORR: And it's where Governor Huckabee was - as well as Bill Clinton, was born. But it wasn't that hope. It was the, what you call, the audacity of hope as Obama called it in his book title. And his words, which may not mean much to us because we're cynical, we hear them so often, apparently they have registered in both the cases of these two winners of both parties.
SIMON: Going into New Hampshire, which happens in just a couple of days, there are many factors obviously that could still change the course of an election as we saw just a little over a week ago with the assassination in Pakistan.
SCHORR: Yes.
SIMON: But this week, oil reached $100 a barrel. New unemployment figures were released. Unemployment is at a two-year high of 5 percent. Do you project the economic issues are going to affect the campaign seriously as we go forward?
SCHORR: Well, it's not important whether I think so, but apparently President Bush thinks so. All this time, he's been talking about the fundamentals were okay and don't worry. But now, he's indicating a certain worry comes out, and now thinks maybe we need to have a stimulus package, and that maybe a stimulus package included in the state of the union address. And that it really is true. That ordinarily, the pocketbook is a deciding issue in elections. It hasn't been entirely true lately, thanks to a war and various other big stories that have intruded our land.
SIMON: This week, the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the destruction of hundreds of hours of videotaped CIA interrogations.
SCHORR: Yes, sir.
SIMON: The attorney general appointed federal prosecutor John Durham to oversee the investigation. What do you noticed about some of the parameters and what do you foresee?
SCHORR: On the other hand, the Congress is not sitting still. And they apparently, both on the Senate and the House sides, are proceeding with wide-open investigations. They wish to call in witnesses. They have the former CIA officer Jose Rodriguez, who is the one who actually gave the order for the destruction of the tapes. He's being called up to testify. What are you going to do, take the Fifth Amendment? Stay tuned.
SIMON: Pakistan's President Musharraf announced this week that parliamentary elections that have been scheduled, of course, next week will be postponed until February 18...
SCHORR: Yes.
SIMON: ...following Mrs. Bhutto's assassination. And there is a continuing argument that may last for years over responsibility for Mrs. Bhutto's death.
SCHORR: Well, absolutely. Apparently the Musharraf government is very sensitive about that. They've called in the Scotland Yard in Britain to help them with it. And then Musharraf comes out and said, yes, fine but don't go on a wild goose chase. They seemed to be very worried about the way the public reacts to this. But it was very interesting that they have confiscated all the medical records. And all we need now is a grassy note.
SIMON: Thanks very much, Dan Schorr.
SCHORR: Sure.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
This weekend, they took the contest east to New Hampshire with NPR's Scott Horsley tagging along. He filed this Reporter's Notebook.
SCOTT HORSLEY: There are times on the campaign trail when Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney sound a lot alike - two Republican former governors, who solve problems in their own states and are now offering to do the same for the whole country.
MIKE HUCKABEE: I'm not sure why we would like somebody to lead the country as president who spent his or her time recently in Washington. If they haven't fixed it by now, I think maybe it's a good indication they can't fix it.
MITT ROMNEY: It can't happen from inside Washington. I want to get it done as somebody from outside who knows to get the job done.
HORSLEY: But there are other times when the first and second place finishers from Iowa couldn't sound more different, like when Huckabee strapped on a base guitar last night to jam with the New Hampshire rock band called Mama Kicks.
LISA GUYER: Let's take it down low, boys. I want to hear it from the governor on bass guitar. Come on.
HORSLEY: In Iowa, at least, Huckabee's passionate believers outnumbered Romney's rational deciders. Once the results were tallied, Romney wasted no time moving on to the next battleground. Aboard his chartered jet, Romney staffers welcomed the announcement that they were landing in New Hampshire.
ROMNEY: Thank you, guys. Thank you so much. The pancake was delicious. Thank you.
HORSLEY: A few hours later, Romney was busy shaking hands with the breakfast crowd in a Portsmouth restaurant. Romney's most formidable opponent is New Hampshire is expected to be Arizona Senator John McCain. Huckabee, meanwhile, just seems to be enjoying himself. And he makes no apologies for his lighthearted approach.
HUCKABEE: Sometimes, people take themselves more seriously than they take the issues that touch this country.
HORSLEY: We'll soon know whether Huckabee's upset victory in Iowa was a one-hit wonder. But he seems to be having more fun at the moment than the dogged Romney, even sticking around last night to play an encore with Mama Kicks.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "PUT A LITTLE LOVE IN YOUR HEART")
GUYER: (Singing) I hope when you decide, kindness will be your guide.
MAMA KICKS: (Singing) Put a little love in your heart.
GUYER: (Singing) You see it's getting late? Baby, baby, don't hesitate.
KICKS: (Singing) Put a little love in your heart.
GUYER: (Singing) In your heart...
SIMON: Mama Kicks and NPR's Scott Horsley.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
Some people have a political investment in refusing to see progress in saying the American people will never vote for someone who is black, a woman, Asian, Hispanic or whose name ends with a vowel. It confirms their view of America as a place that is unchanged and irredeemable. That's not the country we glimpsed this week.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
NPR's Wade Goodwyn reports the key organizer behind the African-American community's activism in both towns is a mild-mannered, 54-year-old former Baptist minister who is white.
WADE GOODWYN: In 1998, when Bean moved to his wife's tiny hometown in Texas to be near her aging parents, he never imagined he was about to enter a whirlwind.
ALAN BEAN: The idea of moving to Tulia for me was like moving to the end of the world.
GOODWYN: But Tulia, Texas, was about to change Alan Bean forever, and he was going to return the favor. In July of 1999, 46 people in Tulia - nearly all of them black - were arrested and charged with cocaine trafficking. There was no hard evidence, no video, no witnesses. The case is rested solely on the word of one undercover sheriff's deputy. The allegation that there were so many cocaine dealers in an economically depressed rural town of 5,000 people did not register as something unusual except to a few.
BEAN: My mother-in-law - when she saw the article in the paper, her initial reaction was 46 drug dealers in Tulia? Who were they selling to?
GOODWYN: The first defendant to go to trial was an African-American hog farmer named Joe Moore. Although no cocaine was ever found, Moore was sent to prison for 90 years.
BEAN: A lot of us were deeply concerned about the drug sting prior to the conviction of Joe Moore. But when Joe went down for 90 years, we were just absolutely appalled. And then when we started to look at the case, we realized, by God, this guy was almost certainly innocent.
GOODWYN: When Alan Bean says that a lot of people in Tulia were appalled, he means Tulia's black community and three white families - his, his in-laws and an old, white farmer who had employed Joe Moore as a farmhand.
BEAN: What we did was we started writing letters to the editor. And so I wrote a letter and then Charles Kiker, my father-in-law, wrote a letter approving of my letter and then Garry Gardner chipped in, approving of our letters, and it sounded almost as if we had this groundswell of opposition to what was happening in the courtroom.
GOODWYN: In despair, Bean tried to contact the outside world. He called the NAACP, the ACLU, the Amarillo Globe-News, the New York Times, the governor's office, the Justice Department. His pleas were dust in the prairie wind, so Bean gave up and tried to organize Tulia's black community, starting with the families of the 46 defendants. And that, actually, was quite a few people.
BEAN: One of the lessons that we learned in Tulia was the importance of grassroots organizing. You know, we were able to get this group of families together that was not very cohesive on its own, and we were able to get people to hang together long enough for the story to sort of become self-sustaining.
GOODWYN: Alan Bean wasn't telling Tulia's black community something it didn't already know about its relationship with local law enforcement. What Bean brought was a fresh, raw Canadian sense of outrage and perhaps even more importantly a conviction that they could actually do something about this - make the world pay attention, and improbably he turned out to be right.
BEAN: When a story is small, nobody wants to listen to you because the story is small and there's very little national impact. When a story gets sufficiently big, you reach a tipping point at which everybody gets involved.
GOODWYN: Eventually, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote nearly a dozen op-ed pieces that spurred a high-priced East Coast lawyer to fly down and represent the defendants pro bono. And that made a big difference. In an evidentiary hearing, the sheriff's deputy's testimony collapsed, and the governor pardoned most of the defendants. In a state that prides itself on its unflinching commitment to law enforcement, it was an unlikely victory for the defense. But it was not Alan Bean's last battle.
CRAIG FRANKLIN: He came to Jena, did extensive interviews with the family members of the Jena Six.
GOODWYN: Craig Franklin is the assistant editor of the Jena Times and he is no fan of Alan Bean.
FRANKLIN: He actually came in anonymously, and I call it snooping around, trying to find out what he could. I believe he might be a retired minister of some kind and that was the pretense in which he came into the community.
GOODWYN: Jena, population 3,000, is the Louisiana town where three nooses were hung in the school courtyard tree after a black freshman asked if he could sit under there too. A subsequent series of racial confrontations ended with six black students charged with attempted murder after they attacked a white student who'd been melding off. Just like Tulia, all of this happened in relative anonymity until, Franklin says, Alan Bean showed up.
FRANKLIN: There wasn't any media attention or any outside groups interested in this at all at the particular time.
GOODWYN: And even though Bean was much more widely known because of what had happened in Tulia, the response was exactly the same as before - nobody cared. So Bean wrote the story himself. Jena Times editor Craig Franklin reads Bean's opening which, if a bit overstated, was prescient nonetheless.
FRANKLIN: So there we have in that very opening paragraph what he intends to do with the situation in Jena, Louisiana and, in fact, what has Jena become known as the most racist town in America, which is totally untrue.
GOODWYN: Craig Franklin blames Alan Bean for what has happened to his hometown of Jena.
FRANKLIN: He was able to this by contacts who he knew would be friendly to his version of events. Because I'll be honest with you, when you first look at the situation and you say, oh, there was noose that's hung in a white tree and then we have blacks that were overly charged, that certainly makes great headlines. And it did make great headlines, but the truth of the matter is many of the things that were being reported were false.
GOODWYN: The white community in Tulia certainly knows how Franklin feels, but it actually wasn't Alan Bean who first put together the Jena narrative. It was a young African-American lawyer, a public defender named Derwyn Benton. Remember that first Jena e-mail that was forwarded to Alan Bean? That was Benton's e-mail.
DERWYN BENTON: We knew they were going to need good, strong legal counsel.
GOODWYN: What Benton wanted were experienced Louisiana trial lawyers willing to do a little pro bono work. What he got was Alan Bean. But Benton says that turned out much better than he expected.
BENTON: He wouldn't take no for an answer. And what he also did, he was in a way that others weren't able to - to make folks understand that if this is the sort of oppression and injustice that you think is run-off-the-mill, then shame on you. It made folks really think, god, you're right. And I think folks around these parts had become used to injustice, just being normal.
GOODWYN: Wade Goodwyn, NPR News, Dallas.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
Time now for sports.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIMON: Good morning, Howard.
HOWARD BRYANT: Good morning, Scott. That is some rousing music you've got there.
SIMON: Yes. Yes. Well, it's Howard's theme as we think of it here. Washington Redskins, formerly the Deadskins, play the Seattle Seahawks today. Washington's on a roll. They wouldn't be favorite. They are not favorite, ordinarily, but they won four to the last five games.
BRYANT: They have won four in a row, actually. And they - when you look at what Washington has done, it's really remarkable especially coming off at the death of Sean Taylor, where something as devastating as that really puts football in perspective. And for a lot of guys, it just makes you think do they even want to play anymore because Sean Taylor was their friend. He was someone who had such enormous talent. And then they go out and they lose the very next game to Buffalo, and a miscue by the coach in terms of not knowing how many time outs were left. And then they lose their quarterback against Chicago. And then they haven't lost a game since. So I actually like what they're doing. They are the most inspirational story of the post season and I actually think that they are playing so well right now. I think Seattle's going to lose that game.
SIMON: Well, and that sets up Jacksonville against Pittsburgh...
BRYANT: It's Jacksonville and Pittsburgh - also very interesting game but for different reasons because Pittsburgh was supposed to be a team that was going to challenge Indianapolis and challenge New England. But they've had so many injuries. You lose Willie Parker, the running back and you lose Aaron Smith, the defense man. They are so banged up right now and they are playing a Jacksonville team that they always say that those southern teams are playing in the warm weather or that play indoors can't go up and play East Coast northern smash mouth January football.
SIMON: Steeler football.
BRYANT: Exactly a Steeler football in Jacksonville - went up there last month and they pounded Pittsburgh, and so Jacksonville is very well-equipped to play winter football, as they say, in the frozen tundra.
SIMON: Two games on Sunday that at least according to the odd makers lack mystery - Giants versus the Buccaneers in Tampa Bay and the Titans versus the Chargers in San Diego. Any reason for you to dispute that?
BRYANT: And I think that the Giants, for all that they have gone through this year, I think because they played such an inspired game against the Patriots in the last game of the season, I think they realized that, hey, we took New England to the Madden. If they're the best team going, we can handle anybody. So I think that that's going to be a really fun game. I think that the Giants offense is going to overcome the Tampa defense even though Tampa's defense is the best in the league.
SIMON: Switching gears entirely - are you going to watch Roger Clemens on "60 Minutes?"
BRYANT: Oh, not only am I going to watch Roger Clemens, but I'm going to watch him tomorrow and then I will watch him a week after next when he's in Congress on the 15th and 16th of January. This is a devastating, important moment for him. His legacy is on the line, under oath. And I'm looking forward to seeing what he has to say tomorrow night and also what he has to say when we get to Capitol Hill.
SIMON: Can he say anything that will satisfy you?
BRYANT: I think he has to explain why his personal trainer has said what he said against him and I'm not sure but I need to see him. I'm going to reserve judgment on that one.
SIMON: Thanks very much.
BRYANT: Thanks as always.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
Mr. O'Neil, thanks so much for being with us.
FLOYD O: Well, thanks for having me on today.
SIMON: I understand this year's event is more concerned with the accuracy of fruitcake tossing than the distance.
NEIL: Yeah. Well, after 13 years, the competition has gotten pretty steep. The distances that were being achieved by some of these devices were getting out of control. Two years ago, we were kind of forced to move it from the local park up to the high school track where the fruitcakes could be launched into the mountains and not be landing on buildings and restaurants as it was downtown. So we moved it back down in the park this year and we've created several new competition categories that I think are going to be pretty fun to watch this year.
SIMON: I understand Boeing and several aerospace companies get involved.
NEIL: Well, yeah. We have a team from Boeing that had started competing about five years ago. And the first year they came out, they did pretty well. And the next year, they used a slingshot type of contraction with elastic bonds. And, unfortunately, that winter, it was extraordinarily cold and the rubber broke down and it didn't take their fruitcakes too far and they were actually beat by a team of girl scouts. So much to their embarrassment, they decided to really put some engineering into their devices and came up with a pneumatic canon. And right now, they hold the record. Last year, they shut their fruitcake 1,225.50 feet.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
NEIL: We actually use GPS tracking devices to find it.
SIMON: I'm sure that's why the technology was invented (unintelligible).
NEIL: I think so. I think it's all about fruitcake positioning.
SIMON: I was reading over some of the rules that you have here.
NEIL: Uh-huh.
SIMON: And it says participants should bring your own fruitcakes. Fruitcakes must contain glaceed fruits, nuts and flour. They cannot contain anything inedible.
NEIL: Well, some folks have found that if they can alter their fruitcake beyond the natural ingredients, they might get a little further distance out of them. We actually have a tech inspection table that every fruitcake gets probed and stuck with devices to make sure that there are no additional foreign objects in it beyond the natural foreign objects that are part of a natural fruitcake.
SIMON: Yeah, because for a lot of people that's just the point.
NEIL: Yeah.
SIMON: There's nothing edible about a fruitcake.
NEIL: Well, that's funny, because both of my sister, right before the holidays - and much to my chagrin and surprise - she actually likes the darn things and was going to eat hers this year.
SIMON: Oh, really?
NEIL: So go figure.
SIMON: One last competitor, I suppose.
NEIL: That's right.
SIMON: Mr. O'Neil, I don't think I've ever ended an interview quite this way before. Good hurling to you, sir.
NEIL: Thank you so much, sir.
SIMON: And this is NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
Now, there's been opposition from people who complain that banning smoking is a step toward restricting drinking, adultery and other French liberties that Napoleon defended at Waterloo. But surprise, surprise most Parisians interviewed in the French Press said they actually like being able to smell food and breathe freely in cafes without worrying about swallowing secondhand smoke. Fines for smoking inside a cafe begin at $100 or these days about 5 euros.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
Eleanor Beardsley sends this report.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY: At a wine fair in Paris, hundreds of vintners from Bordeaux Burgundy and all over France extol the qualities of their wines in a giant exhibition hall. Francois Brun(ph) is a seventh generation winemaker from Alsace. The elegant labels on Brun's bottle describe the great variety, give the vintage and carry the name of his chateau. And now, they also carry a mandatory warning - the silhouette of a pregnant woman holding a glass with the universal flash mark across her bulging belly. The black and white logo may be minuscule, but Brown says it clutters his labor and could hurt sales.
FRANCOIS BRUN: (Through translator) For us, wine is anchored in our traditions and we are used to sharing it in a responsible way. We don't feel we are making a dangerous product for pregnant women or anyone else as long, as it is enjoyed with pleasure and moderation.
BEARDSLEY: Michel Craplet is a psychiatrist with the French Association of Alcoholism and Addiction, one of the groups that lobbied for the warning label. Craplet says the regulation met such resistance because it meant accepting that wine could be as dangerous as other alcoholic drinks.
MICHEL CRAPLET: Wine is a totem. It's a very important product in the culture not only in the agriculture but in the culture of France, in paintings, in literature wine is everywhere. So drinking too much wine or not drinking at all is concept to be a bad citizen.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOORBELL RINGING)
BEARDSLEY: Outside on the sidewalk, a young couple is looking at Scala's champagne display in the window. A question about the logo amuses them. They're expecting their first child.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SALVEC MONDIE: (Speaking in French)
BEARDSLEY: I think they are right to put the logo, but we don't really need it. Everybody already knows not to drink if you're pregnant said Salvec Mondie. You can drink in occasional glass, but it should be rare. And most future mothers don't drink at all.
MONDIE: (Speaking in French)
BEARDSLEY: For NPR News, I'm Eleanor Beardsley in Paris.
SCOTT SIMON, Host:
From member station KYUK in Bethel, Alaska, Angela Denning-Barnes reports on steam cleaning the Yupii way.
ANGELA DENNING: They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but are often just many plywood shacks with an old oil drum stove inside that's covered in rocks, with a pail of water nearby and some kind of ladle for pouring.
(SOUNDBITE OF STEAM)
DENNING: There are many variables. For some longtime steamers, getting it hot enough can be tricky.
MICHELLE GEORGE: You're burning but you don't feel like you're totally burning, like it's not going in because you damage your skin too much. And you should - could just pour coals so the heat could go in.
DENNING: Michelle George jokes with her friend about it. But the 21- year-old from Nightmute on the Bering Sea coast really likes it hot.
GEORGE: To me, I want to feel the heat inside, not just on the outside but inside like you're totally...
(SOUNDBITE OF GASPING)
DENNING: The fact that Nightmute doesn't have many trees for firewood doesn't matter. George and her friend, Nelly Igimok(ph), say you can compensate with pallet wood and a few extras.
GEORGE: Shoes are the best. If you get shoes...
NELLY IGIMOK: Because there's a rubber inside it.
GEORGE: Yeah. And those really smooth kinds.
IGIMOT: Or like old clothes that you don't want to use anymore.
GEORGE: And you put, like, seal oil and - but it has to be old. It's better if it's old. And with the okuk(ph)...
IGIMOT: And it's hot.
GEORGE: ...really hot, it's good. We put lots of shoes, seal oil and the blubber part with wood.
DENNING: Just how hot a person can stand it can be somewhat competitive. George says the women she steams with always see who can stay in longer, which took her over the limit one time.
GEORGE: I was just sitting there and then I was, like, please, God, please, God, I'm not going to be first. And then, they'd just kept pouring. And I guess I had passed out. And they told me (unintelligible).
DENNING: According to these YK Delta residents, dry heat doesn't even compare to a steam. George remembers a disappointing sauna in an Anchorage hotel.
GEORGE: It says do not pour water. And I was, like, how would the heck are we going to get hot. And we turn the thing on, we waited an hour and later - nothing, like, you're just sitting in there like you're just getting tired and you're like such a waste, like, you just get - feels like you're just dirtier.
DENNING: The only way to get really clean is in a good hot steam bath, really hot.
GEORGE: And when you really burn and burn and burn and pour and pour, when you're done, you're like everything's gone and like you have no problem.
(SOUNDBITE OF STEAM)
DENNING: For NPR News, I'm Angela Denning-Barnes in Bethel, Alaska.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
(Soundbite of This I Believe montage)
Unidentified Man #1: I believe in mystery.
Unidentified Woman: I believe in feelings.
Unidentified Man #2: I believe in being who I am.
Unidentified Man #3: I believe in the power of failure.
Unidentified Man #4: And I believe normal life is extraordinary.
Unidentified Man #5: This I believe.
Our This I Believe essay today comes from Sister Helen Prejean of New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1981, she began dedicating her life to the poor of that city and eventually to prisoners on death throw. Her book about her experiences there, "Dead Man Walking," was made into a movie with Susan Sarandon in the role of Sister Helen.
Here's our series curator, independent producer Jay Allison.
JAY ALLISON: Sister Helen Prejean was pleased to hear her essay would air today, on the Feast of the Epiphany, when Christians celebrate the revelation that Jesus, as the manifestation of God in human form, offered salvation to all people. She felt it was an appropriate day to pronounce her belief in making her Christian faith concrete through her actions.
Here is Sister Helen Prejean with her essay for This I Believe.
Sister HELEN PREJEAN (Author, "Dead Man Walking"): I watch what I do to see what I really believe. Belief and faith are not just words. It's one thing for me to say I'm a Christian, but I have to embody what it means; I have to live it. So, writing this essay and knowing I'll share it in a public way becomes an occasion for me to look deeply at what I really believe by how I act.
Love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus said, and as a beginner nun, I tried earnestly to love my neighbor - the children I taught, their parents, my fellow teachers, my fellow nuns. But for a long time, the circle of my loving care was small and, for the most part, included only white, middle-class people like me.
But one day I woke up to Jesus' deeper challenge to love the outcast, the criminal, the underdog. So I packed my stuff and moved into a noisy, violent housing project in an African-American neighborhood in New Orleans.
I saw the suffering and I let myself feel it: the sound of gunshots in the night, mothers calling out for their children. I saw the injustice and was compelled to do something about it. I changed from being a nun who only prayed for the suffering world to a nun with my sleeves rolled up, living my prayer. Working in that community in New Orleans soon led me to Louisiana's death row.
So, I keep watching what I do to see what I actually believe.
Jesus' biggest challenge to us is to love our enemies. On death row, I encountered the enemy - those considered so irredeemable by our society that even our Supreme Court has made it legal to kill them. For 20 years now, I've been visiting people on death row, and I have accompanied six human beings to their deaths. As each has been killed, I have told them to look at me. I want them to see a loving face when they die. I want my face to carry the love that tells them that they and every one of us are worth more that our most terrible acts.
But I knew being with the perpetrators wasn't enough. I also had to reach out to victims' families. I visited the families who wanted to see me, and I founded a victims support group in New Orleans. It was a big stretch for me, loving both perpetrators and victims' families, and most of the time I fail because so often a victim's families interpret my care for perpetrators as choosing sides - the wrong side. I understand that, but I don't stop reaching out.
I've learned from victims' families just how alone many of them feel. The murder of their loved one is so horrible, their pain so great, that most people stay away. But they need people to visit, to listen, to care. It doesn't take anybody's special, just someone who cares.
Writing this essay reminds me, as an ordinary person that it's important to take stock, to see where I am. The only way I know what I really believe is by keeping watch over what I do.
ALLISON: Sister Helen Prejean with her essay for This I Believe. Prejean is finishing up a new book "River of Fire," a spiritual memoir beginning in her childhood.
Our invitation to write for our series goes out to everyone of every age. Consider writing your own. You'll find out more at our Web site npr.org/thisibelieve, where you can also find a link to our podcast.
For This I Believe, I'm Jay Allison.
HANSEN: Jay Allison is co-editor with Dan Gediman, John Gregory and Viki Merrick of the book "This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women."
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
I'm sitting in the NPR parking garage, lobby level. It's appropriate that we're here because we're beginning a series on cyber crime. A little like "Dragnet" or "NCIS" or "CSI." And we're about to go to a cyber forensic lab in Richmond, Virginia. The sun is not up yet.
(Soundbite of song "Who Are You?")
THE WHO (Band): (Singing) Who are you? Who, who, who, who?
HANSEN: Cyber criminals. The internet is full of them - pornographers, gang members, good fellows, intelligence agents, scam artists, you name it. They're based in Eastern Europe, Russia, Canada and here in the United States. In fact, they have no boundaries. Cyber security expert Jim Lewis says they even have their own social networks.
Mr. JIM LEWIS (Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies): You have to know somebody to get in. You have to be kind of cleared. But there's networks, communities, virtual communities of cyber criminals who cooperate. They exchange ideas. They sell each other credit card numbers. They have contests to see who can be the first to hack a system.
Some of the communities even have rating systems, like eBay, so you can say this cyber criminal who's offering you this hacking tool has sold 10 times in the past and he's have - all his customers are satisfied. It's very professional. It's very specialized. This is a very different world than the world we were in even five years ago.
HANSEN: Jim Lewis works with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In the 1990s, he was a cyber security expert at both the State and Commerce departments. Lewis says, although cyber crime has been around for awhile, people are just beginning to recognize it as a real problem, mainly because of the rising economic costs to businesses. But regular folks also face increased risks.
Mr. LEWIS: Hundreds of millions of people are connected to the Internet. And the Internet is this global network. It spans borders. It's mainly anonymous. It's an ideal breeding ground for crime. And there's a lot of value on the Internet, valuable information, monetary information, bank information. It's become very attractive to criminals. So you may not see cyber crime until you get that noticed that your personal information has been lost or until you see that your bank account has been emptied out.
HANSEN: This month, we're going to report on cyber crimes and how law enforcement, both federal and local, deals with them.
Our series begins in the parking lot of a two-story brick office building in Midlothian, Virginia just off Route 60.
(Soundbite of car running)
HANSEN: It's the headquarters of the Virginia State Police. Inside this building is a group of cyber forensic investigators. Here, they examine the digital fingerprints of such high-profile cases, as the Virginia Tech shooter.
(Soundbite of footsteps)
HANSEN: Do you have special handshake or anything?
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: Corinne Geller, with the Virginia State Police, guided our tour of the well-protected cyber forensics lab.
Ms. CORINNE GELLER (Spokeswoman, Virginia State Police): The reason it has to be kept secured is because evidence it's actually stored in here and they have to mark everybody who has access to a room for a kind of a chain of command.
(Soundbite of knocking)
HANSEN: We're not going to contaminate the evidence, are we?
Ms. GELLER: No, we won't. No, it's in another locked room.
Unidentified Man: Hi.
Ms. GELLER: Good morning.
Unidentified Man: Good morning.
HANSEN: Hi.
Ms. GELLER: As you see me walk in, these are all the examiners' offices. This is where the forensics takes place. So if anyone was to walk in, they would have evidence up on their screens.
HANSEN: First Sergeant Robert Keeton is in charge of this lab.
First Sergeant ROBERT KEETON (Director, Virginia Digital Forensics Laboratory): About 50 percent of the work that we do here is directly involved with child predators and child pornographers. The other 50 percent is a mixture of homicides, embezzlement cases, quite a few of those money-laundering cases, even dogfighting. We worked a little bit on the Michael Vick case, of course the Virginia Tech case with Cho. As you saw in the news, it had a large clip of his statement that he made, and of course that was found digitally. That was all recorded digitally and found digitally. And we discovered all that here at our lab.
HANSEN: So you work on the Virginia Tech shooting and that was Seung-Hui Cho?
First Sgt. KEETON: Yes. The Virginia Tech case was a little more predominant, of course, national news, but many cases are regional or local. There was a Catholic priest here in the Richmond area who was embezzling moneys from two churches that he pastored. We were able to find where he was sending money overseas and doing some other things that would not have been known otherwise without the computer data.
HANSEN: The actual laboratory looks like a large, long supply closet - a coffee machine sits at one end, the insides of personal computers and laptops wrapped in white evidence tape dock the counter that runs against one wall. Electronic equipment lines the other. The width of the room only fits two adults, shoulder to shoulder. Here, six examiners work full time - often with the FBI - on cases that require digital forensic examination, and the load is heavy - about a hundred cases a year. Last month, officials announced plans for a much-needed new facility with room for at least a dozen more examiners as well as space for classrooms and training.
Virginia is not alone in its need for more resources. Across the country, experts say, there are far more cases than investigators.
(Soundbite of compressed air)
HANSEN: At one work space on the counter of the cyber lab in Richmond, forensics examiner Richard Seweryniak uses compressed air to remove dust and debris from inside the computers.
So I guess you always wanted to be a clean forensic expert since you don't have to deal with some of the things that medical forensic experts have to do?
Mr. RICHARD SEWERYNIAK (Forensic Examiner, Virginia State Police): That's correct. We do have latex gloves up here on the shelf. We do have an eyewash station. We do have all different types of things. But typically, the hard drives and computers will not have biological evidence on those that we have to worry about such as fingerprints or blood or other bodily fluids.
HANSEN: Seweryniak's cases range from homicides to fraud to child pornography.
Mr. SEWERYNIAK: One of the cases over here deals with a laptop, and there's also a desktop. And that is the case involving a suspected taping of minors, videotaping of minors. I have - the evidence room that's where - after I acquired the data in a forensically sound environment, and we document every little thing that we do to it and we use evidence tape to help secure the evidence, make sure that no one else has messed with the evidence.
HANSEN: What's a forensically sound environment?
Mr. SEWERYNIAK: Forensically sound environment preserves the evidence. One of the key things is that we have to ensure that there are no modifications to the media. Just by simply booting a computer, you are literally changing hundreds of files in a Microsoft-operating environment. So one of things that I like to describe is when you ship something in a container, you receive that item in a container and everyone can see what's inside that container. But we take a look at all those little packing peanuts. And by examining each of those, all those little ones and zeros, we can tell what was shipped in that container before, so we were able to retrieve deleted files. And in some cases, like the Rodney Rodis case…
HANSEN: What is that, the Rodney Rodis case?
Mr. SEWERYNIAK: That was a Filipino priest that was suspected of embezzlement. After receiving our report from this lab, he changes plea from not guilty to guilty. And I personally worked that case in which I was able to retrieve up to five years of deleted documents and over three years of deleted e-mails.
HANSEN: The field of cyber forensics has a very steep learning curve. Seweryniak has to keep up with a constantly changing technology. He points to dozens of books piled on the shelves above the counter, books on old computers, as well as the latest in software and operating systems.
Seweryniak's case on child pornography is a reminder that the problem is not just local, it's global. Pornographers can access photos of young children from anywhere. And pornography laws in other countries differ from those in the United States, which makes this cyber crime harder to prosecute.
Again, Jim Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Mr. LEWIS: Focusing on one country isn't really that useful. Location is irrelevant when it comes to cyber crime or cyber security. There are so many avenues for criminals or spies to take. This is a different kind of security problem, and we want to get out of thinking in geographic terms.
HANSEN: Security expert Jim Lewis.
To hear him talk about the threat of botnet or robot network when a hacker takes over your computer, go to our Web site npr.org.
Next Sunday, our cyber crime series continues with the discussion of cyber law. Do laws exist to protect citizens against cyber crimes, who enforces those laws, and who governs the Internet? We'll post those questions next week.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Bugs Bunny cartoons often spoofed classical music.
(Soundbite of cartoon "What's Opera, Doc?")
Mr. MEL BLANC (Actor): (As Bugs Bunny) (Singing) Oh, mighty warrior of great fighting stock, might I inquire to ask if what's up, doc?
Mr. ARTHUR BRYAN (Actor): (As Elmer Fudd) (Singing) I'm going to kill the wabbit.
HANSEN: The 1957 satirical take on composer Richard Wagner "What's Opera, Doc?" is just one example. Here with more is music historian Robert Greenberg.
Welcome.
Mr. ROBERT GREENBERG (Music Historian): Thank you so much, Liane.
HANSEN: I had this image of Bugs Bunny wearing a white tie and tails. He was quite the concert musician. Tell us a little bit about the other composer's music that performed or attempted to perform.
Mr. GREENBERG: I think attempted to perform is probably a better way of putting it.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GREENBERG: You know, it's always interesting how this concert music was actually employed in these cartoons because, you know, Bugs is your every person. So when he deals with this high-end Euro music - at least how it might have been perceived back when these cartoons were made - there was always a bit of satire involved - a bit of mocking. So, yeah, kind of spoofs more than actually performs. But there's lots of music that was used - "Tales from the Vienna Woods," "The Rabbit of Seville" features that, we would guess, Rossini's "Barber of Seville" opera.
Oh, is there any composer that's more fun to poke fun at than Wagner?
HANSEN: What composer? How about Franz Liszt.
Mr. GREENBERG: Well, you know, the Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody Number Two" - Liszt with his wild hair and his mannerisms and his shamanistic attitude towards performance. And perhaps his most popular - if not his best - piano pieces, this "Hungarian Rhapsody Number Two," which Bugs uses.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. GREENBERG: This is "Rhapsody Rabbit" from '46. And it's one of my very favorites because there is an audience member that coughs. So Bugs stops playing for just a moment, resumes playing; the audience member coughs again. Without missing a beat, Bugs pulls out a revolver and shoots the audience member. It is the fantasy dream come true of every musician. Overly violent, admittedly, but very satisfying.
(Soundbite of music)
HANSEN: These are examples from the '40s and the '50s. And classical music -did it get popularized through the cartoons? I mean, didn't it get hurt at all - all those parody?
Mr. GREENBERG: I wish - it was being parodied more today. AT least, it's out there in the tunes that were used, the pieces that were used, were tuneful enough to be memorable and folks could seek them out should they choose to. Also, in these days, folks were hearing a lot more so-called classical music on their radios. I think it was more intrinsic to the culture, and the pieces that tended to appear in these cartoons were pieces that people were, at least, vaguely familiar with already.
HANSEN: There is one movie that I think has stayed with people - certainly people of my generation and my children's generation. This is Disney's "Fantasia." It was released in 1940. And I believe it was rereleased in the '70s, rereleased in the '80s. And I have to tell you, "Night on Bald Mountain" scared me to death when they did that movie. So much so that when I took my children to see it later, we left before the last act.
Mr. GREENBERG: Before the ending begins.
HANSEN: Because I was so traumatized. But describe what happens in the part. It's really the last act of "Fantasia."
Mr. GREENBERG: It is. What you have is this extraordinary piece of music by Modest Mussorgsky, a Russian composer. And it was orchestrated after his death by his friend Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. And that's the version that we are usually hearing - the Korsakov version. In any case, we have this devil-like shadow monster emerge from this mountain.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. GREENBERG: And gathers about him all of these ghouls and ghosts and other assembled nasties.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. GREENBERG: And he starts playing with them and killing them off any way he wants.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. GREENBERG: and it isn't until the townspeople gather with their torches and ringing church bells in the background to the music of Schubert's "Ave Maria," that he is forces this evil creature back into the bowels of the mountain.
(Soundbite of song "Ave Maria")
Mr. GREENBERG: The animation is amazing - very expressionistic. And for kids watching this, yeah, it is very dramatic. And it's like watching, I guess, "The Wizard of Oz" when you're a small kid. That wicked witch might not seem so scary to adults. But if you're a kid, that's hardcore stuff.
HANSEN: What was Disney trying to do with this project, because there are, of course, other moments in the film beforehand - "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," of course, with Mickey Mouse - in the title role.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. GREENBERG: I think the intent was to create an all-inclusive art form as it could have been achieved back in 1940, using animation, using music, using the environment of the theater. This was the first commercially released film to use stereo sound, for example.
HANSEN: You remember the "Dance of the Hours" - with the hippos doing ballet? I mean, who can forget that, right?
Mr. GREENBERG: Yeah.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. GREENBERG: That whole scene with the various animals trying to dance the ballet is hysterical.
HANSEN: Children became familiar with classical music to, say, through these cartoons. Do you think that happens anymore? Is this generation losing now?
Mr. GREENBERG: Yup. No doubt about it. And it's our job as parents and as educators to just play as much and as wide a variety of music to them in the car, at home, wherever we are, as we can. Another problem with this generation - because it's so easy to say the problem with this generation - but our media has become so visually oriented that sometimes it's nice to break away from the video stuff - even something like "Fantasia" - and just play music. Ask your kids what does this music describing to you? What does the sound like to you? If this was a sound track, what kind of visual imagery might you attach to it? But ask them to use their imaginations when they listen. That's a job that we have that perhaps our parents didn't have to do themselves.
HANSEN: Music historian Robert Greenberg. He is with San Francisco Performances and The Teaching Company, which markets recorded lectures in the arts and sciences. And he spoke to us from member station KQED in San Francisco.
Thanks a lot.
Mr. GREENBERG: My pleasure.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
And joining us from Jamaica today is puzzle master Will Shortz.
Hey, Will, I understand you're attending a friend's wedding.
WILL SHORTZ: That's right. I'm best man for a friend's wedding this weekend. And so we're in Kingston, Jamaica. I'm just having a great time.
HANSEN: Is it nice and warm?
SHORTZ: It is so warm. It's 80 degrees today. When I left New York, it was under 20.
HANSEN: Wow. Wow. Before we begin the puzzle today, I want to mention some new words that are going to be coming up, not only in a few moments in this program but in the food world. And I want to know if you've heard of them. The first is Veganomicon.
SHORTZ: No. What is that?
HANSEN: It's an all-encompassing cookbook. Given the title was kind of a tongue-in-cheek, sci-fi thing, but it's all recipes vegan. How about a vegangelical?
SHORTZ: I've never heard that before. No.
HANSEN: Someone who preaches the gospel of vegan.
SHORTZ: Okay.
HANSEN: I thought you'd like to know that because, after our segment, we have some chefs from the post-punk kitchen who are considering all things vegan - exotic ingredients and easy substitutes for dairy products. These women play guitar with oven mitts and they bake cupcakes - Tiramisu cupcakes.
SHORTZ: Wow.
HANSEN: You'd never seen that on a vegan menu. Now - hmmm, yeah. Hmm, mm, mm. So that's coming up. But first, we play. And in order to do that, you have to remind us of the challenge that was to be solved over the past week.
SHORTZ: Yes. It came from listener Scott Gardener of Edwardsville, Illinois. I said, take the equation 5 + 5 + 5 = 550. And I said, make it true by adding a single line. And as a hint, I said, the answer is not a not-equal sign.
HANSEN: What was your answer?
SHORTZ: We'll the answer is to convert one of the plus signs into a four by drawing a diagonal line from the upper left point to the leftmost point. And you get 545 + 5 = 550.
HANSEN: Oh, how elegant. That works very well. We had over 1,000 entries from people who solved the puzzle. Our randomly selected winner is John O'Donahue from Eugene, Oregon.
Hi, John.
Mr. JOHN O'DONAHUE (High School Counselor): Hi, Liane.
HANSEN: What do you do there in Eugene?
Mr. O'DONAHUE: I'm a school counselor - high school counselor.
HANSEN: How long have you been playing the puzzle?
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Well, I've been listening for the 16 years. I think this is about the third time that I actually entered.
HANSEN: Well, you get to play on the air today, John, so please meet Will and let's play.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Hi, Will.
SHORTZ: Hi, John. Every answer today is the name of a well-known company. Name the company from its anagram. For example, if I said coal, C-O-A-L, plus A, you would say Alcoa.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Okay.
SHORTZ: All right. Number one is pale, P-A-L-E, plus P, as in pale. And it's the name of a computer maker.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Apple?
HANSEN: Apple. That's right.
SHORTZ: Apple is right. Good. Number two is scam, S-C-A-M, plus Y. And it's a retail company.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Retail.
HANSEN: A department store.
SHORTZ: Department store.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Macy's?
SHORTZ: Macy's is right. Ahoy, A-H-O-Y, plus O.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Okay.
SHORTZ: And this is a way that you might get on the Internet.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Yahoo?
HANSEN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: Yahoo is it. Coons, C-O-O-N-S, plus U.
HANSEN: Hint.
SHORTZ: And it's a company in oil. It's a brand of gasoline.
HANSEN: Sunoco.
SHORTZ: Sunoco is it. Good. Pound, P-O-U-N-D, as in the British monetary unit.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Okay.
SHORTZ: Plus T, as in Thomas. And we're going for chemicals here.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: I'm going to say Dawpost(ph).
HANSEN: Close. Good. First letter is right.
SHORTZ: The first letter is D, as in dog. You know this one, Liane?
HANSEN: I do. It's an East Coast company, originally, in Wilmington, Delaware. DuPont.
SHORTZ: DuPont is it. Try this one. Litho, L-I-T-H-O, as in a short for lithograph, plus N, as in Nancy. And it's the name of a major hotel chain.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Hotel chain. Hilton?
SHORTZ: Hilton is it. Good. How about this? Metal, M-E-T-A-L, as in iron or gold, plus the letter T, as in Thomas. And it's a big company in toys and games.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Oh, is it Mattel?
HANSEN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: Mattel is it. Good. Prize, P-R-I-Z-E, as in an award, plus F, as in Frank. And this is a major pharmaceutical company.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Pfizer?
HANSEN: Yes.
SHORTZ: Pfizer is it. Copies, C-O-P-I-E-S, as in Xerox copies, plus P, as in Peter.
HANSEN: This is the full name of the company, huh?
SHORTZ: Full name of the company and it's big in beverages, softdrinks.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: In beverages.
HANSEN: Mm-hmm. A rival to Coca-Cola.
SHORTZ: Right.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Oh, Pepsi. Pepsi Co.
HANSEN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: Co is it. Good.
How about accost, A-C-C-O-S-T as in your accost somebody, plus M as in Mary. And it's a telecommunications company.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Comcast?
HANSEN: Mm-hmm.
SHORTZ: Comcast is it.
Traitor, T-R-A-I-T-O-R, plus M as in Mary. And this is another major hotel chain.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Marriot?
SHORTZ: Marriot is it.
And here's your last one. Poor will, P-O-O-R-W-I-L-L, plus H.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Well.
SHORTZ: It's a maker of appliances, large appliances.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Large appliances. Whirlpool?
SHORTZ: Whirlpool. Nice job.
HANSEN: I didn't know Whirlpool was an anagram of poor will with an H. Poorwill indeed from Jamaica, indeed.
John, you were terrific.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Thank you, Liane. Thank you, Will.
HANSEN: And we have some things for you. For playing our puzzle today, you'll the WEEKEND EDITION lapel pin, the 11th edition of "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus," the "Scrabble Deluxe Edition" from Parker Brothers, "The Puzzlemaster Presents" from Random House volume 2, Will Shortz' "Little Black Book of Sudoku," and "Black and White Book of Crosswords" from St. Martin's Press, and one of Will Shortz' "Puzzlemaster Decks of Riddles and Challenges" from Chronicle Books - few, a mouthful.
John, what member station do you listen to?
Mr. O'DONAHUE: We listen to KLCC in Eugene, Oregon.
HANSEN: Okay, John O'Donahue in Eugene, Oregon. Thanks for playing the puzzle with us today.
Mr. O'DONAHUE: Thank you very much Liane and Will.
HANSEN: All right, Will, from the beach in Jamaica, what's the challenge we have to work on?
SHORTZ: Take the phrase, Yeshiva Center, which is a place of Jewish studies, Y-E-S-H-I-V-A C-E-N-T-E-R. Rearrange these 13 letters to name a well-known movie. It has three words in its name. What movie is it? So, again, Yeshiva Center, rearrange these 13 letters to name a well-known movie in three words. What movie is it?
HANSEN: When you have the answer, go to our Web site npr.org/puzzle and click on the Submit Your Answer link. And that's a new address. It should make the puzzle page a lot easier to find. Once again, that's npr.org/puzzle. Only one entry per person, please. Our deadline this week is Thursday, 3 p.m. Eastern time. Please include a phone number where we can reach you at about that time because were going to call you if you're the winner. And you'll get to play puzzle on the air with the puzzle editor of The New York Times and WEEKEND EDITION's puzzle master, Will Shortz.
Hey Will, have fun. Thanks a lot.
SHORTZ: Thanks, Liane.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
And we do have Pollyanna coming up in a few weeks.
But coming up right now is NPR's JJ Sutherland with a character that has influenced all of us, and with the story that best begins with a question. What's up, Doc?
(Soundbite of Looney Tunes clip)
BUGS BUNNY (Cartoon Character): Start talking. It's your nickel. Who? This is Associated Press. The public has been demanding my life story? Oh, I can a tell few right over the phone.
JJ SUTHERLAND: Bugs Bunny is one of the most popular, most enduring and most recognizable characters in the world. His trademark smirk and ever-present carrot were born in the late 1930s, exploded into fame during World War II, and became an indelible part of American culture ever after.
Bugs is an aspirational character; the person with a comeback to every situation; the coolest kid in the class. Robert Thompson - let's call him Bob -is the director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. He says Bugs was a departure from rabbits like Peter Cottontail.
Professor ROBERT THOMPSON (Director, Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, Syracuse University): Bugs Bunny was a very different kind of bunny. He was a wise guy. He was aggressively defiant, and that was very appealing. At the same time, there was something actually a little bit threatening about Bugs Bunny because he did always win. He was such a wise guy.
(Soundbite of Looney Tunes clip)
BUGS BUNNY: It's true, Doc. I'm a rabbit all right. Would you like to shoot me now or wait until you get home?
DAFFY DUCK (Cartoon Character): Shoot him now, shoot him now.
BUGS BUNNY: You keep out of this. He doesn't have to shoot you now.
DAFFY DUCK: He does so have to shoot me now. I command that you shoot me now.
(Soundbite of gunshot)
SUTHERLAND: After the smoke clears and Daffy puts his bill back on, he realizes how Bugs took him in - pronoun trouble.
Billy West is one of the current voices of Bugs Bunny.
Mr. BILLY WEST (Voice Talent, Bugs Bunny): He is charming. He is very, very smart, you know? I mean, he can quote Shakespeare and then he'll tell you where a bar room in Brooklyn was, you know?
(Soundbite of Looney Tunes clip)
BUGS BUNNY: Oh, it's down in 2020, Doc.
SUTHERLAND: He's pointing out the contradictions inherent in Bugs Bunny. He's nice but a bit of a bully, appealing and scary, high culture and low. He morphs from one to the other seamlessly. And Bugs, they aren't antithetical - that very materialness is what makes Bugs, Bugs. An example, in one short "Water, Water Every Hare," Bugs is being chased through an evil scientist castle. At one point, Bugs is trapped between the tip of man or rabbit-eating alligators and a humungous monster who seems to be made solely of a mass of orange hair.
(Soundbite of Looney Tunes short "Water, Water Every Hare")
BUGS BUNNY: Uh, oh, think fast, rabbit. My stars, where did you ever get that awful hairdo? It doesn't become you at all. If I'm going to say, let me fix it up.
SUTHERLAND: A transformation into a hairdresser is complete, instantaneous and of course totally takes in with his adversary with predictable results.
(Soundbite of Looney Tunes clip)
BUGS BUNNY: But I'll be back before you're done.
(Soundbite of gunshot)
SUTHERLAND: Bob Thompson, the professor, says Bugs is a uniquely American expression of an ancient archetype, the trickster.
Prof THOMPSON: If you want to teach a course in folklore 101, and you need an example for a trickster, Bugs Bunny is a perfect example of it. He defies authority. He goes against the rules. But he does it in a way that's often lovable, and that often results in good things for the culture at large.
SUTHERLAND: Perhaps this is best demonstrated by Bugs Bunny's emblematic adoption in World War II. The representative of the culture, the epitome of the American character was used in propaganda, painted on bombers and sewn on paratroopers' patches. Bugs' rule-breaking was helping win the war.
Puck in "A Midsummer's Night's Dream" is also a trickster, as this coyote in Native American mythology, anansi in West African stories, or the monkey king in Chinese culture. They're all characters who defy every convention of their society, heck, of reality itself.
(Soundbite of Looney Tunes clip)
BUGS BUNNY: I know this defies the law of gravity but, you see, I never studied law.
SUTHERLAND: Bugs' defiance of everything - his refusal to be bound by any rules extended to his, well, extensive cross-dressing.
Mr. WEST: Which was just strange, but I loved it when he would just dress up, like, to hide out from somebody like Elmer Fudd.
(Soundbite of Looney Tunes clip)
ELMER FUDD: Oh, I wonder where the wabbit went.
BUGS BUNNY: I'm over here, doc. Muah.
Mr. WEST: You know, and he plant one on Elmer Fudd's head. And I never thought there was anything weird about it. I just thought it was like, this guy will do anything.
SUTHERLAND: That was Billy West again, the voice guy.
(Soundbite of Looney Tunes clip)
ELMER FUDD: (Singing) Oh, where do I get the wabbit?
BUGS BUNNY: (Singing) What would you want with a wabbit? Can't you see that I'm much sweeter? I'm your little senoriter.
Mr. WEST: I'm not so sure - much sure, though, that he was getting sexual stimulation about dressing as a woman as he was getting sexual stimulation because dressing as a woman was making other people crazy.
SUTHERLAND: And that is perhaps why Bugs Bunny lasts. He doesn't seem like a character of the '40s. He seems like a character of today. He's wise-cracking. He's gender-bending. He's rule-breaking - broke around long before punk rock or Davie Bowie of Jerry Seinfeld. He is impossible to pin down in any specific sense. In a way - the only way to describe Bugs Bunny is to simply show one of his cartoons. Point at the rascally rabbit and see him in total, not in parts. From high opera to bullfights, from Shakespeare to Brooklyn, from men to women, he is all of those and yet none.
(Soundbite of Looney Tunes clip)
DAFFY DUCK: Who is responsible for this? This - I demand that you show yourself. Who are you? Huh?
(Soundbite of door closing)
SUTHERLAND: JJ Sutherland, NPR News.
BUGS BUNNY: Aim high, you stinker.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
Republican and Democratic presidential candidates squared off in New Hampshire last night. Here are some of the voices during the back-to-back debate.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Republican Presidential Candidate): In the private sector, for 25 years, I brought change at company after company. In the Olympics - it was in trouble - I brought change. In Massachusetts I brought change. I have done it. I have changed things, and that experience is what America is looking for.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Republican Presidential Candidate): I just want to say to Governor Romney, we disagree on a lot of issues, but I agree, you are the candidate of change.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Republican Presidential Candidate): The primary purpose of a government is to recognize that those rights did not come from government, they came from God, they're to be protected and then defined as the right to a life; the right to liberty, our freedom to live our lives like we want to live them without government telling us how to do it.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Democratic Presidential Candidate): But these entrenched, moneyed interests that have a stranglehold on the middle class, that are doing - incredibly destructive to American jobs and the health care system, energy, all taxes, trade, there in everything. I have been in the trenches fighting them for - on my whole adult life. And it takes strength, backbone, fight, and you have to take them on.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Democratic Presidential Candidate): What we need is somebody who can deliver change. And we don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered. The best way to know what change I will produce is to look at the changes that I've already made.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Democratic Presidential Candidate): When the American people are the determined that something is going to happen, then it happens. And if they are disaffected and cynical and fearful and told that it can't be done, then it doesn't. I'm running for president because I want to tell them, yes, we can. And that's why I think they're responding in such large numbers.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
There are just two days left until the New Hampshire primary. And as you just heard, the candidates are in a fierce battle for votes there. The debates were held at Saint Anselm College near Manchester and were sponsored by ABC News, WMUR-TV and Facebook.
NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson has our report.
MARA LIASSON: Both presidential primary battles are in flux. On the Democratic side, polls show that while Barack Obama didn't get a big bounce from his victory in the Iowa caucuses, he is closing the gap with Hillary Clinton. They are now tied in New Hampshire. On the GOP side, John McCain has continued the surge he began a few weeks ago here and he has pulled ahead of Mitt Romney who was defeated in Iowa by Mike Huckabee.
Romney, the former leader in New Hampshire, is now fighting a two-front war. And this new dynamic was on full display last night after Huckabee criticized Romney for failing to support the surge in Iraq.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Republican Presidential Candidate): I supported the surge when you didn't. I'm not a person who is out there taking cheap shots at the president. I worked really hard to get him elected. But I'm not running for George Bush's third term. I want to be the president of the United States on my own terms.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Republican Presidential Candidate): I did support the surge, but look, you know, Governor, don't try and characterize my position. Of course, this war has now been…
Mr. HUCKABEE: Which one?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. ROMNEY: You know we're wise to talk about policies and nothing like personal attacks.
Mr. HUCKABEE: Well, it's not a personal attack.
LIASSON: In New Hampshire, the bigger threat to Romney is John McCain. He won the primary in 2000 and has focused almost exclusively on the state since his campaign ran out of money in the spring. In his commercials, Romney has been hammering McCain for his position on tax cuts and for supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants. McCain responded last night, insisting he never supported amnesty and pointing out that at one time Romney had agreed with him.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): No better authority than Governor Romney believe that it's not amnesty, because two years ago, he was asked, and he said that my plan was, quote, "reasonable and was not amnesty." And for you to describe it as you do in the attack ads, my friend, you can spend your whole fortune on these attack ads, but it still won't be true.
LIASSON: No doubt there will be more attacks coming from all directions. The Republican candidates will continue their argument tonight when they meet again for another debate, their final encounter before Tuesday's primary.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is trying to stage her version of the famous comeback that her husband pulled off here 16 years ago. After coming in third in the Iowa caucuses, behind both John Edwards and Barack Obama, Clinton came to the debate last night, determined to direct more scrutiny toward Obama's record.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Democratic Presidential Candidate): You know, Senator Obama's chair in New Hampshire is a lobbyist. He lobbies for the drug companies.
LIASSON: Clinton also quoted an AP story that said Obama could have a debate with himself because he has changed his position on several issues. John Edwards, describing both himself and Obama as agents of change, jumped in to make common cause against Clinton.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Democratic Presidential Candidate): That's not the kind of discussion we should be having. I think that every time this happens, what will occur — every time he speaks out for change, every time I fight for change, the forces of status quo are going to attack every single time. I mean, I didn't hear these kind of attacks from Senator Clinton when she was ahead. Now that she's not, we hear them.
LIASSON: Obama was clearly feeling the boost of momentum from his victory on Thursday night. His goal last night was to appear calm and presidential and to remind voters in New Hampshire that he had just won in Iowa.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): What I think is important that we don't do is to try to distort each other's records as, you know, election day approaches here in New Hampshire. Because what I think the people of America are looking for are folks who are going to be straight about the issues and are going to be interested in solving problems and bringing people together. That's the reason, I think, we did so well in Iowa.
LIASSON: Obama spent the day yesterday, giving speeches to overflow crowds. Senator Clinton held an unusually long town hall meeting taking questions for two hours in an effort to showcase both her depth of knowledge and her approachability. In the debate last night, she was asked about the problems she has to overcome.
Mr. SCOTT SPRADLING (Anchor, WMUR-TV News): What can you say to the voters of New Hampshire, where they seem to like Barack Obama more?
Sen. CLINTON: Well, that hurts my feelings.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SPRADLING: I'm sorry, Senator. I'm sorry.
(Soundbite of applause)
Sen. CLINTON: But I'll try to go on.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Sen. CLINTON: He's very likable, I agree with that. I don't think I'm that bad.
Sen. OBAMA: You're likable enough…
Sen. CLINTON: Thank you.
Sen. OBAMA: …Hillary, no doubt.
(Soundbite of laughter)
LIASSON: And then, Clinton delivered the ultimate Democratic insult: comparing Obama's likeability to that of George W. Bush.
Sen. CLINTON: You know, in 2000 we, unfortunately, ended up with a president who people said they wanted to have a beer with; who said he wanted to be a uniter, not a divider; who said that he had his intuition and he was going to, you know, really come in to the White House and transform the country. And you know, at least I think there are the majority of Americans who think that was nit the right choice. So I'm offering 35 years of experience making change and the results to show for it.
LIASSON: This was the last Democratic debate before New Hampshire votes and all the Democratic candidates will be holding events practically around the clock until the polls close here on Tuesday night.
Mara Liasson, NPR News, Manchester.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
The Republican presidential candidate who spent the most time campaigning in Wyoming has won the majority of that state's delegates to the national convention. Mitt Romney, after his second place finish in the Iowa caucuses, gained eight of Wyoming's 12 delegates. Republican state officials moved the caucus from March to January to try to attract national attention and make their caucus matter.
Wyoming Public Radio's Bob Beck reports on whether their gambit worked.
(Soundbite of crowd)
BOB BECK: The Wyoming caucus started early Saturday morning with people showing up to register and party officials greeting them. The representatives of the candidates supply them with signs, T-shirts and stickers. It also allowed for some last-minute questions.
Unidentified Man: Well, Dr. Paul believes basically in a strong national defense.
Unidentified Woman: All right.
Unidentified Man: You know, he believes that we should be able to secure our borders and then bring our troops home so that we can do more here locally.
BECK: Normally, Wyoming's county conventions are part of a process that gets ignored, not only nationally but locally as well. Usually, the excitement is limited to those lucky few delegates who get travel to the national conventions. But this year was different.
In individual convention, Wyoming's version of caucuses normally draws around 70 people. This time, it was closer to 250. Delegate Mike Mosher(ph) says people had been discussing this event for weeks. Even though only a handful of candidates campaigned in the state - Romney, Fred Thompson, Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter - Mosher says the attention they got from the candidates was unprecedented.
Mr. MIKE MOSHER: There's one or two campaigns in particular where I've received something at least every other day. I could keep my house warm through the winter with the number of flyers if I put them in the fireplace.
BECK: While others were undecided, Elizabeth Schmidt(ph) knew exactly who she would support.
Ms. ELIZABETH SCHMIDT: I'm supporting Duncan Hunter because he is a conservative's conservative and there aren't any running right now.
BECK: Only five of the candidates had people speak on their behalf. With debates going on in New Hampshire, none of the candidates were in Wyoming at all, but they sent emissaries. Duncan Hunter's wife, Lynn, showed up, as did Mitt Romney's son, Josh. In the end, Romney grabbed the most votes, and Josh Romney credited his father's knowledge of key Western issues.
Mr. JOSH ROMNEY: We have a ranch out here and I have a ranch out here, so we spend a lot of time out here. And I've gotten to know a lot of wildlife issues and ranching issues that pertain particularly to the West. And my dad's also got, I believe strongly, (unintelligible).
BECK: Republican State caucus coordinator Tom Sansonetti says Wyoming is small enough that people expect to meet the candidates. And they notice when people don't come to the state.
Mr. TOM SANSONETTI (Republican Coordinator for County Convention, Wyoming): Those that showed did well. Duncan Hunter did very well, and he was here, as I understand it, three times. Ron Paul did okay. Fred Thompson, who came to Casper, got the second most votes up there. So, if you come, you do well. And so notice, by the way, how many votes Mike Huckabee got.
BECK: That would be zero. Both Huckabee and John McCain were totally shut out in Cheyenne and did not gain any delegates in the state; neither do Rudy Giuliani. While some may poke fun at Wyoming's attempt to get some attention, Sansonetti maintains that it worked. Candidates campaigned in the state for the first time in years, and Sansonetti believes Wyoming will get even more respect and attention four years from now.
For NPR News, I'm Bob Beck in Cheyenne.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Another kind of criminal probe is under way right now, this one in Washington. NPR's senior news analyst Daniel Schorr offers some historical context.
DANIEL SCHORR: Attorney General Michael Mukasey's appointment of federal prosecutor John Durham to conduct a criminal investigation into the CIA's destruction of interrogation tapes provides a potential benefit for the Bush administration. The probe enables the president to say that he can't comment on a case while it's being investigated, and the investigation may last longer than the final year of his term, since that is how long these investigations generally take.
But the administration is spared only if Congress desists from its own investigations, and that is not likely to happen. Both the Senate and the House intelligence committees are mounting full-scale inquiries.
The issue is likely to explode as early as January 16th, when Jose Rodriguez is scheduled to appear before the House committee. Rodriguez was the CIA's director of National Clandestine Services and the person who actually gave the order for the destruction of the tapes. He is certainly in a position to reveal whom he consulted in the agency, in the Justice Department and the White House.
But history teaches that witnesses in similar situations often invoke the Fifth Amendment and bargain with Congress for immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony. The most famous such case was John Dean, the Nixon lawyer who defected and pinned Nixon to the wall as the head of the Watergate conspiracy.
The chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee, Sam Ervin, offered Dean limited immunity for his testimony. Special prosecutor Archibald Cox said that granting Dean immunity would damage the prosecution of the Watergate figures. Judge John Sirica said he sympathized with Cox, but ruled that the court had no power to interfere with a congressional investigation. And so, as some of my older listeners may remember, Dean gave sensational testimony about how he had warned Nixon of a cancer on the presidency. Dean also told of the Oval Office tapes, which finally did Nixon in. The prosecutor managed, nonetheless, to send several Watergate conspirators to jail, including Dean.
Well, a similar issue was raised in the Iran-Contra scandal. Former White House aide Oliver North testified with limited immunity before a joint congressional committee. And as a result, an appeals court overturned his subsequent conviction.
And so now, once again, with the destruction of the CIA tapes, we are faced with the prospect of competing prosecutor and congressional investigations.
This is Daniel Schorr.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
As Dan mentioned, in the summer of 1973, former White House counsel John Dean testified as part of the Senate's investigation into the Watergate break-in. This is a taped except of Dean as he recalled that meeting with President Nixon.
(Soundbite of archived recording)
Mr. JOHN DEAN (Former White House Counsel): What I had hoped to do in this conversation was to have the president tell me we had to end the matter now. Accordingly, I gave considerable thought to how I would present this situation to the president and try to make as dramatic a presentation as I could to tell him how serious I thought the situation was if the cover-up continue.
I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. And if the cancer was not removed, the president himself would be killed by it. I also told him that it was important that this cancer be removed immediately because it was growing more deadly every day.
HANSEN: John Dean's testimony would prove to be prophetic - perhaps even self-fulfilling. Richard Nixon resigned as president the next year.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
The world's largest consumer electronics trade show opens in Las Vegas tomorrow. All the latest gadgets and coolest products will be on display. Victor Godinez is a technology reporter for the Dallas Morning News, and he wants you to know about a Web site that can make your home movies look sharp.
Mr. VICTOR GODINEZ (Technology Reporter, Dallas Morning News): If you've ever wondered what YouTube would look like if its videos were in high-definition, well, they'd probably look a lot like what you can find on Vimeo.com. The site is spelled V-I-M-E-O, an anagram of the word movie, is one of the first - if not the first - online video sites to let you post your home movies in full-fledged HD.
With Vimeo, you just click play and the video starts playing directly in your browser without having to download anything. So far, Vimeo has focused on showing videos made by amateurs rather than commercial TV shows and movies, and most of the clips on the site are a bit artsy. You'll find a lot of nature videographers shooting scenes in their backyards, or wannabe musicians creating half-baked music videos.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. GODINEZ: But that's okay. While the cream will eventually rise to the top -and there are some talented shooters on the site - Vimeo's real benefit right now is making it easier to share high-definition home videos with friends and family. Until now, you've had to use other methods such as attaching a movie clip to an e-mail or burning HD videos to a disc. That's cumbersome, slow and expensive. With Vimeo, you just upload your file once to the site and anyone with a fast Internet connection can watch it. It's all free and the video quality really is excellent.
While watching a YouTube or Google Video in full screen feels like someone smeared Vaseline in your eyes, Vimeo videos more than hold their own in full screen mode, looking nearly as sharp as a HD channel on your high-def television.
Eventually, YouTube and all the other big video sites will start offering their own HD content because Americans already are watching billions of videos online. With that many eyeballs roaming the online video landscape, it's inevitable that any technical advance by one video service will be copied before long by all its competitors. For now, though, Vimeo - which has about 275,000 users - is one of the most unique online video services on the Web. It offers aspiring directors a chance to make their projects shine, and it gives you one more reason to justify buying that fancy, new high-definition camcorder you've had your eye on.
(Soundbite of archived video)
MOLLY (ph): Let me - hey, ready?
Unidentified Man: Yeah. Why don't you introduce yourself first?
MOLLY: Oh, yes.
(Soundbite of music)
MOLLY: Okay. Hi. I'm Molly.
JENNA(ph): I'm Jenna.
MOLLY: Right here at CES 2007, launching a new product. It's little…
HANSEN: Victor Godinez is the technology reporter for the Dallas Morning News. He came to us by way of member station KERA.
This is NPR News.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
The terms veganomicon and vegangelical share the root word vegan. Vegans are people who don't eat meat, dairy or eggs. But if your idea of a vegan meal is tofu, sprouts and soy milk, you haven't been introduced to Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. Their idea of tasty vegan food includes asparagus and lemongrass risotto, eggplant, potato, tiramisu, cupcakes and...
Ms. ISA CHANDRA MOSKOWITZ (Co-author, "Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook"): And the moussaka cream, which is pine nuts and tofu.
Ms. TERRY HOPE ROMERO (Co-author, "Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook"): Silken tofu and maybe a couple of other things. And when you bake it, and it comes out - it looks like this gorgeous béchamel cream…
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Well, you have brown, so nicely.
Ms. ROMERO: People look at it and they thought it was fake cheese. And I'm like, no, we don't do that.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: Moskowitz and Romero have written several best-selling vegan cookbooks. They're latest is called "Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook."
The two met in the mid-1990s outside of Dive Bar in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. They were both in the punk scene, where Romero says food was major part of the culture.
Ms. ROMERO: Look, at anytime you can have a band on your living room floor from Ohio or some place. And, you know, let's make something to eat, you know…
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: And making best friends in one day, like…
Ms. ROMERO: Right.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: That's what happened, like, you met somebody over the weekend -they were your best friend by Monday.
Ms. ROMERO: Yeah, yeah. And we're hanging out all the time.
HANSEN: What were some of bands that ended up spending time on your living room floor?
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Oh, where to begin?
Ms. ROMERO: Yeah.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: And probably no one anybody's ever heard off, like, the most famous one I can think of is Oi Polloi, which are Scottish punk rock band that are vegan and they're still around.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. ROMERO: We drove them around our van to Canada.
HANSEN: But this also sounds like this is food with attitude.
Ms. ROMERO: Yes and it is certainly.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Right. We really actually tried to be accessible and not have, quote, unquote, "attitude."
Ms. ROMERO: Right.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: So our Web site actually says vegan food without attitude because it's not so much about judging you and, you know, it's more about experimenting and eating.
Ms. ROMERO: Yeah. I think that's part, like, of the - what we call post punk. Like we take this, I guess, the more accessible parts of it. Like you do want to call, like, get up and do it yourself as opposed to waiting…
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: That's right.
Ms. ROMERO: …for someone else to make it for you kind of aspect.
HANSEN: Why does the word vegan scare people?
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Does it scare you?
HANSEN: No, not really.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: I think because it's an ethical choice and that it sounds like a moral judgment to people. And it also sounds like depravation to people.
HANSEN: Mm-hmm. Terry, would you agree?
Ms. ROMERO: Ah, yeah. It's also a funny word, you know, it sounds like a religion or a planet or just something that doesn't sound like a normal part of life.
HANSEN: Mm-hmm. Why - I mean, from experience, why does so much vegan food tastes so awful?
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Let's see. I think it might be because people don't necessarily get a culinary degree and then decided to go vegan, so they've made this choice and then, you know, have to learn how to cook.
Ms. ROMERO: Yeah. I think it's a lot of times, people kind of feel that, okay, I've made this decision for one reason or another and I have to use these ingredients and this serves almost setting themselves up for, like, for less. For, like, I'm going now accept less in my food and what it can be.
HANSEN: You mean by, you know, just sticking with tofu and tempeh and those muffins that taste like, you know, prison loaf.
Ms. ROMERO: Yeah.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Right. Yeah, but not actually learning how to cook right and thinking…
Ms. ROMERO: Because I love tofu.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Yeah, I do too, and it really has a lot of special characteristics and qualities that come out right when you learn how to actually prepare it correctly.
HANSEN: Mm-hmm. Isa, you actually recommend, if I'm not mistaken, that if someone wants to begin cooking vegan, don't worry about these ingredients, like tempeh, for example, but learn how to cook vegetables.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Right, exactly. That was kind of the basis for Veganomicon.
Ms. ROMERO: Absolutely.
HANSEN: And so what - how - what do you teach people about cooking vegetables?
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Well just the basic methods, like, just how to cook the most flavor out of them, and that vegetables do actually have flavor. A lot of us grew up with canned or frozen vegetables that seriously lack flavor. But to eat fresh and…
Ms. ROMERO: Yeah.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: …and seasonally…
Ms. ROMERO: Go to your farmer's market.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Exactly.
HANSEN: I imagine you also encourage people to be adventurous, I mean, try those vegetables perhaps you hadn't heard of before.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Yeah, exactly, especially now with the farmer's market. We have such a variety of plant-based food to choose from.
Ms. ROMERO: Right. Get a purple cauliflower.
HANSEN: Yes.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Absolutely.
HANSEN: Or those cauliflowers that looked like they got…
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: The Romanescos.
HANSEN: Yes, they look like Madonna's bra.
Ms. ROMERO: The fractal.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Yeah.
HANSEN: Yeah.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: The joining of math and vegetables.
HANSEN: Yeah. So perfect. When you are concocting recipes, do you veganize existing recipes?
Ms. ROMERO: Occasionally. Like we have, say, picatta or the moussaka - things -we're going to try to reinvent the wheel.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Yeah, I mean, it's - there's a lot of great food out there that can easily be translated to, you know, vegan standards just by removing the meat and it can become something new and exciting even from there. And it's also good for - to mix what people like and are familiar with, you know, it's like sort of a springboard.
HANSEN: What do you use in this - particularly the baking recipes, what do you use in them to replace butter and eggs?
Ms. ROMERO: Believe it or not, it's not that difficult. We use a lot of - we use soy milk as sort of the basis for not only the milk but it also replaces a lot of the liquids. We mostly rely on vegetable oils like canola and safflower. And a lot of leavening just happens with baking powder and baking soda like normal stuff, normal supermarket items.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Yeah.
HANSEN: What's the thing do - you add a vinegar, it is a soy milk or something because it looks…
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Yes, yes, yes.
HANSEN: Tell us what that does?
Ms. ROMERO: Yeah. Well, that's sort of a like an old-fashioned…
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: …Depression era.
Ms. ROMERO: It really is. It's kind of amazing. They made all these great cakes in that era when, I guess, there was a big scarcity in eggs. And you create a chemical reaction at first with the acidity of the vinegar curdles the proteins in the soy milk and then later on when we combine that with dry ingredients like baking - like including baking powder, baking soda, you get this explosion where you'll get a lot of carbon dioxide generated and that creates leavening.
HANSEN: So what does the title of your book, Veganomicon, mean?
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Well if we were to break it down into the Latin, it means that the big book of vegan law, but we don't take ourselves that seriously.
Ms. ROMERO: Oh, no. It's kind of a joke like we we're - we look like kind of nerdy things like nerdy movies and nerdy culture. And a lot of our friends, you know, like we like to joke about this stuff.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Yeah.
HANSEN: Do you still cook for punk bands?
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Sometimes.
Ms. ROMERO: Yeah. There's a group called The Shondes, which are Yiddish punk rock, girl band, and you know, made (unintelligible) for one of their shows.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: Like Terry and Isa, The Shondes are from Brooklyn. Their new album, "The Red Sea," will be release Tuesday. Terry and Isa have a public access cooking shows "Post Punk Kitchen" which is now on hiatus.
If you are able to catch a few installments when it was broadcast in New York online then you remember one of Isa's favorite party tricks.
How did you learn to play the guitar with oven mitts?
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Well, actually it's just a matter of editing.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: So I can play the guitar and then, you know, I just, you know, use the oven mitt and then we edit some good before it's over. Many years of school and now we've ruined the illusion.
HANSEN: We'll keep it a secret, just, you know, you, me and all 3 million other people.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: All right.
Ms. ROMERO: All right.
HANSEN: Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero are the authors of "Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook."
Thanks, both of you.
Ms. MOSKOWITZ: Thank you.
Ms. ROMERO: Thank you.
HANSEN: You can find some of Terry and Isa's vegan recipes on "The Post Punk Kitchen's" Web site, that's bppk.com.
LIANE HANSE, host:
During the coming year, we will be broadcasting other segments about food featuring both top chefs and home cooks. We're going to talk about the emerging trends and how food is made, bought, prepared and served.
According to several different sources around the country, 2008 will be the year of ethical eating. Vegetarian and locally produced food will graced more tables, wines will be more than organic they'll file-dynamic. There will be servings of microgreens you grow yourself, exotic grains such as amaranth and quinoa, and what are called probiotic dishes, food that helps digestion for inflammation. Expect a backlash against bottled water. Flavored tap water will fill our glasses instead. Bold Korean, African and Brazilian flavors will be big, but big entrees will be replaced by small plates.
Artificial is out, junk food will lose its junk ingredients. Authentic is in. Phytonutrients are in, antioxidants are out. Gogi berries and pomegranates are in. The blood orange is the new super fruit. Salt is the new balsamic vinegar. Tea is the new coffee. And caffeine will still be king. Cupcakes apparently are last year. This year go for the pudding or better yet savor a nice piece of dark chocolate candy.
(Soundbite of music)
HANSEN: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
Republicans hammered each other last night in their final debate before Tuesday's New Hampshire primary. Polls show John McCain leading the pack, ahead of rivals Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.
In a moment, Richard Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, joins us in the studio.
But first, here are some New Hampshire voices on what they expect from their next president.
(Soundbite of archived recording)
Unidentified Woman #1: Honesty. I just want to know the facts, you know, whether it's good or bad - just tell the truth.
Unidentified Man: I'm looking for integrity, morals, ethics - all of the positive characteristics that it takes to be president of the United States.
Unidentified Woman #2: I'd like to know what a candidate's opinion is on subjects like abortion. I like to know, you know, what they would - how they would carry that out - their opinions.
HANSEN: Honesty, morals, abortion - all are especially important issues to evangelical voters. Evangelicals in Iowa carried former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to victory, but will they do the same in New Hampshire? Richard Cizik is here to try to answer that question and more.
Welcome to the program.
Mr. RICHARD CIZIK (Vice President, Governmental Affairs, National Association of Evangelicals): Thank you, Liane.
HANSEN: Will Mike Huckabee be as appealing to the New Hampshire evangelical crowd as he was in Iowa?
Mr. CIZIK: Maybe not as much. Let's face it. Iowa is populous territory and Mike Huckabee is a populist. He's not a moralist. He's certainly not a cultural warrior, and neither are Iowans, so he did very well there. But now, he goes to the Granite State. The question is will the themes that he kicked back and forth out there in the prairie pass for good Republican politics there in the Granite State. Live free or die is the theme there.
And therein, you have limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who, well, they don't always like what populist want. Populist want more government influence, more (unintelligible) power to help people. And so the kinds of themes he hit - well, for example, put it this way. Out in Iowa, Mr. Huckabee said, every time Americans strive to rise, well, they're pushed down every time by their own government. That's - well, that's populism. It might not pass for good politics.
HANSEN: Mm-hmm. Talk about the evangelical, though - the vote. Do you think - are there splits among those who've considered themselves evangelical? Or do they largely support one candidate?
Mr. CIZIK: Well, you saw that evangelicals go decisively in Iowa for Huckabee.
HANSEN: The populist…
Mr. CIZIK: They weren't going to vote for Romney. Romney made a pitch, but he didn't quite sell it. He is kind of a manager like the present president. And people are looking for inspiration. A lot of evangelicals listened to that speech by Obama and said, wow, that man is an orator. And evangelicals admire oratory. After all, we are public communicators. And that's what, frankly, most of the nation wants too. So Huckabee gained because he is that, a communicator - a former pastor. He's not an oppressive moralist, however. And so he's able to marriage - marry the two, you see, his economic populism with his concern for faith, morals and candor - all the rest.
HANSEN: You mentioned that Mitt Romney didn't make much of headway among evangelicals. What about Arizona Senator John McCain?
Mr. CIZIK: McCain is an interesting figure. He may well inherit the mantle if Romney falls in New Hampshire. Of the mainstream Republicans - even the Wall Street Republicans - even though he is - well, he's not the a traditionalist either. And so some of those who dislike Huckabee here in this town - that's Washington - also dislike McCain. McCain is talking, well, about the environment. He talks about limiting special interests. Some of these are not traditional themes of Republicans. And so who is going to inherit the mantle? I think it's a split in the party.
HANSEN: And just briefly, South Carolina - any projection there?
Mr. CIZIK: I would think that Huckabee would do better in South Carolina than he would in New Hampshire. And so this is going to continue. It's going to be a fight for the soul of the Republican Party, note that up.
HANSEN: Richard Cizik is the vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. And he joined us in the studio. Thank you so much for coming in.
Mr. CIZIK: Thank you, Liane.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
For the past nine months, we've been listening to voters in the town of Exeter, New Hampshire. It's a town with families of great wealth and very modest means - about evenly divided among Republicans, Democrats and independents. Today, in our final installment before Tuesday's primaries, New Hampshire Public Radio's Jon Greenberg revisits some of the undecided voters we've met along the way.
(Soundbite of archived recording)
Unidentified Man: Welcome to New Hampshire, the site of the first-in-the-nation Democratic primary.
JON GREENBERG: Back in June, we sat down with a small group of Democrats and watched the debate among the Democratic candidates. By the end of that evening, Karen Pryor(ph), a part-time worker at a publishing company, had a new interest in John Edwards. But now, Karen has been won over by Barack Obama's optimistic message. Still, Karen says her commitment to Obama implies no criticism of Edwards or Hillary Clinton.
Ms. KAREN PRYOR: You know, on a 1-to-10, they may be 10, but I see Barack Obama as a 12, as a 15. I mean, he just embodies something - a dream, a hope, a desire to really do it right.
GREENBERG: Another debate watcher that June evening was Eric Lipset(ph), a 41-year-old salesman of business software. John Edwards had also made a good impression on Eric, but it took seeing Edwards in person at Exeter's town hall before Eric could finally make up his mind. Tough talk on immigration from Edwards helped lock in his support. Edwards said illegal aliens could stay in the U.S. if they learn to speak English and pay the fine for breaking the law. Eric says Edwards struck the right balance.
Mr. ERIC LIPSET (Business Software Salesman): Let's think about it practically. How can we deal with it, but yet, at the same time, let's admit that these people have come illegally.
GREENBERG: Early on, we met Holly and Philip Tisdal(ph), a Republican couple with a very personal stake in the Iraq war. Iraq is the main reason Holly is likely to vote for John McCain.
Ms. HOLLY TISDAL: He has children in the military as do I, so that has - that is a big consideration for me. And so it's my children's lives, and that has to be most important thing to me. And I totally trust McCain on that.
GREENBERG: Her husband, Philip, has settled firmly on Rudy Giuliani. Philip is equally comfortable with Giuliani, Mitt Romney and McCain. But in his view, Giuliani makes the best case for conservative policies.
Mr. PHILIP TISDAL: It's very hard to sound bite against people who are for the poor. It's very hard to sound bite against people who want to give others rights. And when I went and saw Giuliani, he can explain who we are in the most fluid and natural and honest way. And I said, given I love all three, I'm going to pick the guy who can tell America who we are.
GREENBERG: There was a time when Giuliani was also the first choice for Bob Kelly, a dirt farmer. Now, Bob thinks Giuliani can't see beyond the threat of terrorism and talks of spending billions more overseas when Bob wants Washington to focus on issues closer to home. He might vote for John McCain, but his passion lies with a very different candidate.
Mr. BOB KELLY: My dark horse is Ron Paul, who really sort of says all the things that I believe. It's just a question of getting my arms around and see, you know, just sort of a fringe guy who has the luxury of saying those things or does he really have a shot.
GREENBERG: During the summer, we also checked in with independents who had handed McCain his huge victory back in the 2000 primary. One was Jerry Hammel(ph) a home improvement contractor. Jerry has long soured on McCain. Now, he might vote for Mike Huckabee, the winner of the Iowa Republican caucuses.
Mr. JERRY HAMMEL (Home Improvement Contractor): He's got a good feel about him. He seems like he's a nice guy, an honest guy. And he seems like the type of guy that you could talk to without, you know, feeling that he's a lot better than I am.
GREENBERG: Fear of Mike Huckabee could be enough for another independent, Lee Williams(ph), to decide to vote in the Republican primary. Right now, Lee is considering two Democrats - Clinton and Obama. But she feels that religion plays much too big a role in the policies of both Huckabee and Romney. To block them, she might vote for McCain.
Ms. LEE WILLIAMS (Resident, New Hampshire): We really help decide who becomes president. And if Hillary Clinton bowled me over or, if on Sunday, Barack Obama bowled me over, is that enough to outweigh the honest threat that I feel for this country if either Romney or Huckabee become president?
GREENBERG: Lee might not see McCain as her first choice. But if her calculations told her to vote strategically, she would. After all, that's what makes her an independent voter.
For NPR News, I'm Jon Greenberg in Concord, New Hampshire.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Out west, more bad weather is headed toward California on the heels of winter storms that have already pummeled the state. Blackouts, blizzards and floods have stretched across California and into neighboring Nevada.
But the worst may be over as Brook Binkowski of member station KPCC reports.
BROOK BINKOWSKI: In Northern California, 20-foot wave pounded San Francisco's beaches. In the Sierras, a blizzard dropped five feet of snow on the mountains, which were also buffeted by hurricane forest winds. And in Southern California, 10 inches of rain dropped in some areas as authorities worried about mudslides in places that have been stripped bare by last fall's wildfires. The problems stretched in to Nevada where a levee burst near Fernley, flooding the town and temporarily trapping 3,500 people who then had to be evacuated.
Now, more rain, wind and snow are rolling in to wallop the West Coast. Max Mady(ph) is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service post in San Diego. He says, so far, Southern California has gotten off easy.
Mr. MAX MADY (National Weather Service): Looking at the state of California, this was a huge storm. We did not see the worst of the storm here in Southern California. We got our fair share of heavy weather. But farther to the North, they got it much worse than we did up there with very, very heavy snow; very, very strong winds. Down here, we got quite a bit of rain. The preparation though was in place and the damage reports came in were few and far between.
BINKOWSKI: In hard hit Northern California, hundreds of thousands of homes are still waiting to get their power back, but Mady said the worst of the weather had passed and things should be getting back to normal by Tuesday.
For NPR News, Brook Binkowski reporting from San Diego.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen.
The president of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia appears to have won a second term after exit polls gave him a majority in yesterday's election. Pro-Western leader Mikhail Saakashvili says the election will give him a mandate to continue his reforms. But opposition leaders say the results were falsified, and they're calling on their supporters to take to the streets.
NPR's Gregory Feifer reports from the Georgian capital Tbilisi.
(Soundbite of applause)
GREGORY FEIFER: Members of Saakashvili's campaign staff react to the first announcement inside their smoky headquarters in center of Tbilisi.
(Soundbite of car horns)
FEIFER: Outside, on a rare snowy night, Saakashvili supporters didn't wait for official results to celebrate. Car drivers honk horns and wave flags bearing the country's national red and white colors.
(Soundbite of cheering)
FEIFER: Several hours later, a confident looking appeared in a giant auditorium to thank hundreds of supporters.
President MIKHAIL SAAKASHVILI (Georgia): (Speaking in foreign language)
FEIFER: The American-trained lawyer, who came to power during the Rose Revolution in 2003, said he would wait for final official results. But he said exit polls showed he would win an outright majority, enabling him to avoid a runoff and urge opposition leaders to work with him. The exit polls showed Saakashvili's main opponent, Levan Gachechiladze, winning half Saakashvili's number of votes. But Gachechiladze says he won the election and accused Saakashvili of lying.
Mr. LEVAN GACHECHILADZE (Member of Parliament, Georgia; Presidential Candidate): (Through translator) The counting process is being held under conditions of terror. The exit polls have been falsified and Saakashvili has started a party to sell his victory to the electorate.
FEIFER: Gachechiladze and other opposition leaders have called on their supporters to take to the streets today. More than 1,000 international observers monitored the election, including more than 400 from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. So far, observers have said they have seen isolated violations, but that the election appears to have met democratic standards.
Nino Burjanadze is speaker of parliament and the country's acting president during the election. She says she urged her counterparts in Europe to send hundreds of additional observers to monitor the election.
Ms. NINO BURJANADZE (Speaker of the Parliament, Georgia): We did this to prove to everybody, to our people and to international communities, that we are really very serious about democracy, about democratic elections.
FEIFER: Opposition members don't agree. Last November, tens of thousands of demonstrators protested against what they call Saakashvili's authoritarian tactics. The president shocked his Western allies by ordering riot police to break up the protest. He accused the opposition of trying to seize power and called Saturday's election to diffuse the crisis and restore his authority. After casting his vote on Saturday, Saakashvili said the election was not about restoring his tattered democratic credentials but about getting a mandate to continue his policies.
Pres. SAAKASHVILI: We are going to stick to the course of the reforms, the radical reforms we institute to improve the life of our people, and to make Georgia a real success story.
FEIFER: Saakashvili says his priority in his new term will be to alleviate his country's endemic poverty and continue Georgia's drive to join NATO and integrate with the West. The authorities say they'll allow street protest to take place within the law. But as Tbilisi braces for possible demonstrations, many of those who voted yesterday say they'll respect any result and that the country has to leave its political instability behind.
Gregory Feifer, NPR News, Tbilisi.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
In Kenya, aid workers are trying to help a quarter million refugees. They were caught up in the violence that swept the country after last week's election. Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki now says he's ready to discuss a power-sharing arrangement with the opposition. Opposition leaders who accused the president of election fraud say they're willing to go to the bargaining table as long as there's an international mediator.
NPR's Gwen Thompkins joins us from Nairobi.
Gwen, first of all, what can you tell us about the latest developments and the opposition's response?
GWEN THOMPKINS: Well, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki did announce this weekend that he's willing to share power with the opposition through the formation of a national unity government. He made this announcement shortly after talking with U.S. envoy Jendayi Frazer, who is hoping to help mediate the situation. Raila Odinga, the opposition leader, has said that he will not accept Kibaki's invitation. He called for negotiations through an international mediator.
And it's important to realize at this point that Kibaki's offer falls into the category of stating the obvious. Kibaki's party lost so many seats in parliament last week that in order to move forward, he must be in coalition with other parties. And Odinga's party, the opposition leader, has the most seats in parliament right now. So it would be a logical choice to want to go into a government of national unity with the opposition. Odinga, who has already had experience in a coalition with Kibaki before - this was back in 2002 - he had a bad experience back then, and he doesn't appear to want to go back into business with the president right now.
HANSEN: You're in Nairobi as we mentioned, and boy, it was brought to a standstill last week during the fighting. What's the situation there now?
THOMPKINS: You know, slowly but surely, many areas appeared to be returning to some form of normalcy. You know there are people on the street. There's public transportation. You see an awful lot of people walking to and from their churches. Today has been set aside as sort of a national prayer day in Kenya as people are praying for peace. And at the same time, there are an awful lot of humanitarian organizations that are trying to respond to the needs of many of the citizens here in Nairobi who are living in the shanty towns of Nairobi. There are huge, huge shanty towns and who are without food and water.
HANSEN: Gwen, talk a little bit more about that. Talk a little bit more about the lack of food in the areas where the fighting was most pronounced.
THOMPKINS: Well, just after the election results were announced last Sunday, a week ago today, the shanty towns of Nairobi exploded. People were very angry. Kibera, which is one of the largest slums in the world - and it's actually in the constituency of Raila Odinga - that place went up in flames in many areas, people burned down food stalls and other business that were actually conduits of food and other materials to the neighborhood.
So what's happened is that in the wake of so much - not only violence against people, but also destruction of property, there's been a stop in the food flow and the water flow to many of these areas. And these areas house, you know, hundreds of thousands of people. So, you know, many of the people who've been displaced from these shanty towns have found some relieve at parks nearby.
There's a report actually that two women gave birth last week in the park. You can sort of guess how serious the situation is when people are having to give birth on open air in one of the big capitals of East Africa. So the situation is serious. Many believe here that it's going to become more serious as the days were (unintelligible) and folks have not eaten for some days.
HANSEN: Has the violence all been election related or are there other reasons?
THOMPKINS: You know many places exploded in violence. And this seemed to be, you know, a true representation of how, you know, an awful lot of people felt. I mean, this was a very close election so, you know, it's fair to say that half of the population is unhappy with the result. So you can definitely see where that announcement could have sparked a real backlash. But there are other areas of Kenya where there have been long-standing ethnic rivalries.
I'm thinking particularly of western Kenya, where many Kikuyus - and this is the tribe of the President Mwai Kibaki - they've been living there for the past 40 years or so. But they've been living among anther ethnic group called the Kalenjin. And the Kalenjin for these past 40 years have felt as if that land has been taken away from them. So when I was there last week, and I saw what appears to be a real backlash against Kikuyus there, the election definitely appeared to be a fig leaf really for the expression of long-standing tensions.
HANSEN: NPR's Gwen Thompkins in Nairobi, Kenya.
Gwen, thank you so much.
THOMPKINS: Thank you, Liane.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
You're listening to WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News.
Time now for your letters. And there were some reactions to Andy Borowitz's with his predictions for 2008.
Hubert Smith(ph) wrote, you must give us warning when Mr. Borowitz is about to produce his merry japes. I have scarcely enough time to get the ace bandages wrapped lightly around my ribs before he began his astonishingly transient yet hilarious piece today.
But Janet Ackenheil Thomas from Tucson, Arizona, was not so enraptured. Sunday's Column by Andy Borowitz, she wrote, was mostly beating dead horses, utterly tasteless. And Huckabee's choice of a running mate was plain insulting to people of all religions, even atheist.
Most of the year-end letters we received were reflective. Kay Slaughter of Charlottesville, Virginia wrote that she was moved by Adam Dorn's remembrance of his father, record producer, Joel Dorn. I listened to it twice, she wrote, one is riding in my car and one is seated at my computer, playing it for my daughter. It made me cry each time. What a beautiful portrait of a music lover who was able to produce incredible music and of a father who let his sons know how much he loved them.
Edward Sigmund(ph) sent this. I grew up and still live in Philadelphia. Whenever I had a day off from classes at Temple University, I would listen to Joel Dorn on Philadelphia's jazz station. I would always look forward to hearing the hard times theme by David "Fat-Head" Newman. Hearing it again brought back memories.
Finally, about the essay we broadcast by our recently retired senior supervisor and producer Bob Malesky.
Steve McIntyre(ph) of Beaver Dam, Arizona wrote this. I have been very consciously at the passage of time, not the days and weeks but the decades. And so hearing this morning that after 20 years at WESUN and 30 at NPR, Bob Malesky is moving on - I had to catch my breath. I started listening to NPR about the same time that Bob started working there. And well, I remember WESUN's with Susan Stamberg at the microphone and Steph Skagorry(ph) live at the piano.
And though I never before gave me much thought, I now realize that hearing Bob Malesky's name in the WESUN credits had become, over the years, a comforting familiarity. But not until this morning did I know that Bob was reading the letters and e-mails I've been sending over the years. I am pleased he was. I want him to know that always I regarded them as akin to letters to the editor and those which seemed critical were so in the way one feels one cam be with family and friends, those upon whom we rely and can trust.
You can write to us. Go to our Web page npr.org and click on the Contact Us link.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
(Soundbite of In Character montage)
BUGS BUNNY (Cartoon Character): What's up, Doc?
Ms. VIVIAN LEIGH (Actress): (As character) Fiddle-dee-dee. War, war, war.
(Soundbite of gunshot)
Unidentified Man #1 (Actor): (As The Lone Ranger) Hi-yo Silver.
Unidentified Woman #2 (Actress): (As character) I really don't know why you're here Mr. Grant.
HANSEN: This week, NPR begins a new series called In Character. For the next six months we'll put these characters on the couch, explore their origins, their effect on the culture at large; find out what makes them tick and why they've endured.
In the studio with us is Elizabeth Blair, she's the curator of In Character.
Elizabeth, first, a little bit of background. What is this series going to be?
ELIZABETH BLAIR: It is going to be a series where every segment we'll, as you said, put a fictional character on the couch. We'll find out a little bit more about what the vision for this character was and get at that thing that sort of universal that either it's a character that we recognize ourselves in that character or it's a character where we recognize something about the social climate of the day, something about a particular generation.
HANSEN: Who are some of the characters?
Ms. BLAIR: We have Atticus Finch, Ugly Betty, Scarlett O'Hara, Darth Vader, Jim from Huck Finn and Pollyanna.
HANSEN: And I understand you're also going to be soliciting nominations from listeners?
Ms. BLAIR: Yes. On our Web site, we'll be asking listeners to come up with their own fictional characters and to write a 100- to 150-word essay on why they think this character is important.
HANSEN: Mm-hmm. And then what happens?
Ms. BLAIR: It is possible that we will do a radio piece if several listeners nominate the same character. We will also be posting the best essays on the Web site.
HANSEN: Okay. Elizabeth Blair is the curator of the In Character series.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Climate Connections, our series with National Geographic, goes underwater this month. As the Earth continues to warm, rising sea levels will threaten islands and coastlines around the world. Many places hope they're going to be able to engineer their way out of trouble when the time comes.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Some, like Venice, have already started. Over the last century, this 1,300-year-old island city has seen a growing number of high-water tides. The increased flooding is due to the land shrinking and also rising sea levels brought about by climate change. A huge and controversial engineering project is under way, aimed at parting the waters to protect the Pearl of the Adriatic from disappearing under the sea.
NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: A boat ride in the Venice lagoon is a discovery of how man and nature have created one of the world's most extraordinary experiments. Left alone, lagoons tend to either dry up and become land or are overwhelmed by the sea and turn into bays.
Starting in the 16th century, the Venetians diverted major rivers outside of the lagoon to prevent silt from filling it up. It covers 212 square miles. And along with the city of Venice in the center, there are some 50 smaller islands, as well as dozens of mudflats and sandbanks — havens for thousands of aquatic birds that flock here even in winter.
The delicate and fragile ecosystem is the largest wetland in the Mediterranean. Today, it's being threatened by rising seas, and it must be protected if Venice is to be saved.
Ms. FRANCESCA de POL (Consorzio Venezia Nuova): You see these windows, which are almost at the sea level? Those windows have been closed as they are too much exposed to the waters.
POGGIOLI: Francesca de Pol works for Consorzio Venezia Nuova, the consortium entrusted with the task of safeguarding Venice. She points to windows of a building on the Grand Canal filled with cement. No Venetian lives on the ground floor anymore.
In the last century, the city sank 11 inches, mostly due to pumping of groundwater and methane gas for local industries. But it's also being affected by rising sea levels.
Ms. de POL: What does it means? That the same tides that were not flooding the city 100 years ago today are high-tide events.
POGGIOLI: Here, it's called acqua alta. High water afflicts Venice mostly in the winter. A century ago, it happened seven times a year, now it's more like a hundred.
The visionaries who first began building Venice 1,300 years ago used materials for the foundations that could withstand water. But with the seabed sinking, brick walls of the ground floors are being corroded, and waterlogged buildings are crumbling.
Sophisticated technology is now being used to rescue the lagoon. The ambitious engineering project, the biggest public works in Italian history, is called MOSE, the acronym in Italian for experimental electromechanic module. It also happens to mean the Italian word for Moses, recalling the biblical parting of the Red Sea.
It consists of building 78 floodgates at the three inlets that link the lagoon to the Adriatic. Francesca de Pol says one of the gates' characteristics is their flexibility.
Ms. de POL: Depending on the different kind of tides, you have a different management of the gates. You are not obliged to close the whole lagoon. You can choose to close one part, one inlet and not the other, in case of wind coming from a certain direction. You can choose of not closing the whole system, but only parts of the gates for certain types of tides. So you continue to have this exchange of water, which is diminished but not totally blocked.
POGGIOLI: This is the worksite at the Malamocco inlet. The walls at each end are being built just like Venice was. Instead of wooden pilings, teams of workers are driving 125-foot-long steel and concrete pilings into the lagoon bed.
Ms. de POL: The doors will be in between this area and in front of us where you see that boat. And it will be from one side to the other. When at rest, they will be under, lying on the bottom of the inlet channel. When a tide - a dangerous tide is forecast, compressed air will be inflated inside the gates. It will empty the gates from the water. And they will rise and block the entrance of the tide.
POGGIOLI: Submerged gates will each be up to 92 feet long, 65 feet wide, and weigh 300 tons. When not in use, they'll be invisible. In another effort not to alter the landscape, the worksite is on a specially built artificial island that will be demolished once the entire project is completed.
The debate over the floodgates has been under way for nearly four decades. The design was finally approved by the Italian government in 2003. Costs now stand at $7 billion.
Claudio Mantovan is the supervisor at the Malamocco worksite.
Mr. CLAUDIO MANTOVAN (Supervisor, MOSE, Malamocco ): (Speaking in Italian)
POGGIOLI: We have finished the navigation lock, he says, that will allow large ships to enter the lagoon when the gates are up. We're on schedule, 37 percent of the entire project is completed, and he says it should open as planned in 2012.
Mantovan acknowledges a few days of work were lost due to peaceful protests, and it's not just environmentalists who opposed MOSEs. Journalist Alberto Vitucci has been covering the project for years. He sums up the opponents' counter arguments.
Mr. ALBERTO VITUCCI (Journalist): (Through translator) In order to build trenches for the MOSE gates, they are going to dig up millions of cubic meters of seabed and replace them with cement, which seriously could alter the ecosystem. The entire mechanism will be underwater, making maintenance extremely difficult and costly. And the authorities never took any alternative project into serious consideration.
POGGIOLI: Other proposals included narrowing the inlet channels to reduce the water flow from the sea into the lagoon, and banning tankers and large ships from entering. Some criticize the project as irreversible and outdated. They say it was designed without taking into account predictions of rising sea levels over the next century.
Engineers at the MOSE project respond that the mobile gates are designed to last at least a century and to protect Venice from a difference in water level between the sea and lagoon of up to six and a half feet.
The latest prediction of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is for a one or two-foot increase by the end of this century. Despite opposition, the MOSEs project is moving ahead, and it's being closely watched not only by Venetians.
Coastal cities all over the world, from New Orleans to Singapore to Bombay, know that due to rising sea levels, Venice's seasonal flooding could soon become a shared, global phenomenon.
Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.
MONTAGNE: Later today on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, you can hear how Venetians are dealing with the high water and nipping at their knees. And at npr.org/climateconnections, you can get videos of climate science in action. That's from public television's Wild Chronicles.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
One year ago this week, President Bush outlined a new strategy for Iraq.
In a nationally televised speech from the White House, he unveiled an increase or a so-called surge in U.S. troops. And the president promised more American economic aid. Mr. Bush also said he had received a pledge from the Iraqi government to do more to heal the country's divisions.
Today, we begin a series of four reports looking at the president's speech and what's been accomplished over the last 12 months.
We begin with NPR's Tom Bowman.
(Soundbite of crowd)
TOM BOWMAN: January 2007, violence in Iraq is steadily rising, especially in Baghdad - car bombs, shootings, ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people, and it is unacceptable to me.
BOWMAN: So the president decided to act. He announced he was sending in 30,000 more American troops to Iraq, most of them to Baghdad. And he said the Iraqis would boost their own troop levels.
Pres. BUSH: The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi army and national police brigades across Baghdad's nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi army and national police brigades committed to this effort.
BOWMAN: But a year later, those 18 Iraqi brigades are down to 15. Some of the units have been sent by the Iraqi government to other hot spots - the outskirts of the capital, to the cities of Diwaniyah in Basra in the south. Even from the start, all those Iraqi national police units operated at about half strength, and many are still linked to Shiite death squads.
Mr. CHARLES RAMSEY (Former Police Chief, Washington D.C.): They have a lot of very, very serious issues within the national police.
BOWMAN: That's former Washington D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey on NBC's "Meet the Press" in September. He was on a high-level panel looking at the Iraqi security forces. Ramsey says the panel recommended disbanding the national police.
Mr. RAMSEY: They need to be refocused because currently they are not performing at an effective level. And if what you want is a police force rooted in democratic principles, the national police miss the mark.
BOWMAN: But American commanders in Baghdad refuse to disband the national police, preferring instead to retrain them, replace corrupt commanders.
The national police are just one example of stubborn sectarianism between Shiites and Sunnis - the kind President Bush said in January would be a thing of the past.
Pres. BUSH: Prime Minister Malaki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated.
BOWMAN: In some cases, it has been tolerated by Maliki's Shiite-led government. In the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadiya, an armed citizens group organized by the Americans was pulled off a checkpoint in the fall by the Iraqi government. Why? The citizen's group was all Sunni.
Major General JOSEPH FIL JR. (U.S. Army): At the request of the Iraqi government, we did suspend them from operations.
BOWMAN: That's Major General Joseph Fil, who at the time commanded U.S. troops in Baghdad. He says the Sunni citizen volunteers were withdrawn, even though they were doing a good job.
Major Gen. FIL JR.: I can tell you that the violence in Sadiya went down when we had those initial volunteers on the job. And we're anxious to get them and the Shia that will be mixed with them back on the streets, no question about it.
BOWMAN: Iraqis taking control of their streets, taking over more responsibility - that was a big part of the president's speech a year ago, with a date certain.
Pres. BUSH: To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November.
BOWMAN: By year's end, Iraq controlled nine of the country's 18 provinces. The American ground commander, Lt. General Ray Odierno, says security is still tenuous in many areas, so he's being careful about any turnover of authority to the Iraqis.
Lieutenant General RAY ODIERNO (U.S. Deputy Commander in Iraq): Well, we review that every month, and it goes month to month. So we'll continue to evaluate those as we move forward.
BOWMAN: There's been progress on security, but little movement on the political front. President Bush in January said Iraqi politicians were supposed to pass an oil law.
Pres. BUSH: To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.
BOWMAN: But it didn't pass. There are still deep divisions in the Iraqi government, in the parliament, especially with the Kurds. They want more control over the oil in their region in northern Iraq. But American officials say oil revenues are being distributed on a roughly per capita basis without the law.
In his speech, President Bush also laid out another political benchmark.
Pres. BUSH: To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year.
BOWMAN: Provincial elections were not held. Sunnis want them so they can have a greater say in how they are governed; the Shiites are stalling. American officials now hope elections will be held sometime this year.
The president also said the Iraqi government would promote reconciliation with Sunnis.
Pres. BUSH: To allow more Iraqis to reenter their nation's political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws.
BOWMAN: The government has not reformed these laws. That would allow thousands of Sunnis into government jobs, many of them low-level members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. American officials say the bill has a good chance of passage this year.
Then there's the issue of money. Twelve months ago, President Bush said Iraq would spend more of its own money, not just rely on the hundreds of billions of dollars in American aid.
Pres. BUSH: To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs.
BOWMAN: But by year's end, Iraq spent about one third of that $10 billion. American officials say the Iraqis still don't have a competent bureaucracy to distribute money. And in some areas, they say, money is withheld because of sectarian reasons.
In his January speech, President Bush made it clear the Iraqi government was running out of time.
Pres. BUSH: If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people. And it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act.
BOWMAN: Now is the time, one year later, it appears, to diminish those expectations. Just before Christmas, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice downplayed those promises. Compare her remarks to those made by President Bush from a year earlier.
Pres. BUSH: So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.
Secretary CONDOLEEZZA RICE (U.S. Department of State): I no longer think of them so much as benchmarks as the pieces that they are now presenting as what they need to do over the next year.
BOWMAN: A similar chord was struck by the American ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker. He told this program on New Year's Day that the Iraqi government must assume more of what is now being done by the Americans.
Ambassador RYAN CROCKER (U.S. Ambassador to Iraq): We would look to see the government to be, and be seen by its people as the deliverer, increasingly, of security services and prosperity, thereby attracting the growing support of Iraq's people. None of these are tremendously flashy. They are all extremely important. And that's what we'll be working for as we move through 2008.
BOWMAN: Crocker says Iraq is a substantially better place because violence is down.
Tom Bowman, NPR News, Washington.
MONTAGNE: You can read George W. Bush's speech on the surge and our footnotes on that speech, plus what remains to be done, at npr.org.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
Five Republican presidential candidates took their final shots at each other in their last debate before New Hampshire voters go to the polls tomorrow. At the Fox News forum the former front-runner in that state, Mitt Romney, fought back against his two most threatening rivals, John McCain and Mike Huckabee. The Republicans sparred on taxes, spending, and the buzzword of this year's campaign, change.
NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson reports.
MARA LIASSON: Mitt Romney was on offense last night after being pounded by his rivals in a debate on Saturday night for being a flip-flopper. Last night he attacked both John McCain and Mike Huckabee on a subject close to the hearts of Republicans in this traditionally tax-averse state. Romney pointed out that McCain was one of the two Republican senators who had voted against the Bush tax cuts.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): So, you have a choice. You can select somebody who wants to fight for those things or you can select somebody who's actually done those things. And I've got a record of cutting spending and cutting taxes.
LIASSON: McCain responded.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): Look, ask Jack Abramoff, who's in prison today, a guy who was a corrupt lobbyist and his friends, if I haven't cut spending. Ask the Air Force and Boeing, where I saved $2 billion, $2 billion by fighting against a bogus Air Force tanker deal. I think it was the reason why I wasn't elected Miss Congeniality in the United States Senate. I have a record of saving billions for the American taxpayers.
LIASSON: McCain is leading Romney in the polls here. And if he wins the New Hampshire primary, Romney will have been twice denied the early state victories he was counting on. The man who beat Romney in Iowa, Mike Huckabee, is a distant third in the polls here. But Romney also sparred with him last night on taxes.
Mr. ROMNEY: Now, I asked you a question to begin with.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas): Mm-hmm?
Mr. ROMNEY: And that was, net-net, did you raise taxes in your state by half a billion dollars?
Mr. HUCKABEE: We raised jobs; we rebuilt our roads.
Mr. ROMNEY: You know, you know, that's political speak.
Mr. HUCKABEE: You know...
Mr. ROMNEY: The question is, you can avoid this issue by just saying...
Mr. HUCKABEE: You spent tens of millions of dollars saying all negative things about me.
LIASSON: The Republican Party establishment is apoplectic about the rise of Mike Huckabee. His anti-Wall Street populism sometimes makes him sound like a Republican class warrior. On the campaign trail, he often says people would rather elect someone that reminds them of the guy they work with, not the guy who laid them off.
Mr. HUCKABEE: When people sit around their dinner tables at night, they feel the effect of $3-a-gallon gasoline. They feel the effect of double-digit inflation on their health care costs. They understand that, and they're working two jobs and they're still not getting a great deal ahead from where they were the year before. If that's populism, then I'm guilty, because I think that if you understand the struggle of a lot of American families, our party had better wake up to that. If we don't, we're going to lose.
LIASSON: Since Romney lost the Iowa caucuses last week, he's retooled his message, saying the lesson of Iowa was that voters want change and that he is an outsider who can shake things up in Washington. He says McCain has been in Washington too long.
Mr. ROMNEY: Washington needs fundamental, top-to-bottom change. Just sending the same people to Washington but in different chairs is not going to result in a different outcome. And there is a very dramatic difference between talking about change and actually having led an organization with executive leadership skill, helping turn around in business, or turned around the Olympics, or turned around a state, and that is something which I think America is crying for.
LIASSON: It's not clear whether the Washington insider label will stick to the maverick McCain; he has been a thorn in the side of the Republican establishment for years.
Sen. McCAIN: I know that I have been an agent of change. I'm proud to have been one of those who has played a key role in bringing about one of the most important changes in recent years. And that was the change in strategy from a failing strategy in Iraq pursued by Secretary Rumsfeld, which was needlessly causing the sacrifice of our most precious American treasure. I don't know of a better change than saving American lives.
LIASSON: Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani also participated. Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul were excluded because Fox only invited candidates who had reached double digits in the national polls.
Mara Liasson, NPR News, Manchester.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
As most of the Republicans debated yesterday, Democrats were campaigning. And let's check in with two of our correspondents. They've been tracking two leading candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. NPR's David Greene has been following the Clinton campaign. What is she saying now that she's not leading in the polls in New Hampshire?
DAVID GREENE: Well, she is sounding a little more negative, Steve. You know, Hillary Clinton came out to a high school in Nashua yesterday and she really went after Barack Obama. Now, she doesn't bring up his name specifically, but she says things like that you want a doer, not a talker to be president. She also suggested in a debate here on Saturday night that he might be bringing false hope to the American people.
I think there's a little frustration in the Clinton camp that, you know, Barack Obama criticizes her for her votes on Iraq, but then, you know, he voted for Iraq war funding.
And also, there is now an issue that the Clinton campaign is trying to make. Barack Obama often talks about Clinton's ties to lobbyists, and it turns out that the co-chairman of Barack Obama's campaign, Jim Demers in New Hampshire, has done some lobbying work for the pharmaceutical industry. So Clinton starting to take a more negative approach now, getting close.
INSKEEP: Okay. So that's what the Clinton campaign is saying. NPR's Don Gonyea is following Barack Obama. How does he respond to all this?
DON GONYEA: Well, first, let's talk about that issue of false hope that has been leveled at him by the Clinton campaign that David just talked about. He has seized on that. He's out on the stump now saying false hope, false hope, what is that? What is a candidate supposed to be talking about? What is a candidate supposed to be trying to give the American people?
When John Kennedy talked about going to the moon, he said, did John Kennedy say, well, it's really far out there, so we shouldn't get our hopes up too high. So Obama has seized on that.
Now, he has also responded - his campaign has responded directly to the charges that he's being hypocritical by having a lobbyist as his campaign co-chair in - here in New Hampshire, Mr. Demers. It is true that Demers is a lobbyist, and he does have clients that include pharmaceutical companies.
But here is the distinction the Obama campaign is drawing. His communications director, Robert Gibbs, says Demers is a state lobbyist who does not do business involving any federal legislation or federal regulation, and that the campaign has drawn a distinction between lobbyists who are registered to work at the state level and those who lobby the federal government. And they say that, you know, a ban on lobbying money and PAC money is far from perfect, but there is a distinction that's worth being drawn here.
INSKEEP: Gentlemen, I want to ask about another candidate here. But first, I want to just follow up here. Clinton's campaign has suggested that the media have been going easy on Barack Obama. Any sense of that from the press corps there?
GREENE: I think so. And this is not the first time. There's a legacy, Steve, of the Clintons not feeling like they are being treated exactly fairly in the media.
And as we were flying here with the campaign from Iowa to New Hampshire, it was a sleepless night, in part because a lot of Clinton's advisers were up trying to talk about the plan for Iowa, the plan for New Hampshire. And what they started saying was, you know, there's a lot more to learn about Barack Obama. We think you should be asking tougher questions. And now that the polls are suggesting that the Clinton is indeed in a tough fight here against Obama to win, and maybe even trailing, that strategy is starting to play out. The campaign did a conference call with reporters yesterday where they were saying, you know, there are a lot of questions you should be asking about Barack Obama. You should be, you know, digging in more. So I think there's a real frustration that the media is not doing its job when it comes to Barack Obama.
INSKEEP: And let me…
GONYEA: And that's from the Clinton campaign. And, you know, there are a lot of stories out there that we've done about Barack Obama that the media continues to do. And there are plenty of stories yet to be done, certainly.
INSKEEP: Okay. We'll continue to be listening for that. And let me just ask very briefly about another candidate, John Edwards. Where does he fit into this? In a debate on Saturday night, he almost seemed to be tag-teaming with Barack Obama against Hillary Clinton.
GREENE: Well, and Edwards denies that he is necessarily teaming up, but he certainly - it was a striking moment, and a tough moment for Hillary Clinton, to have two other top candidates in the race kind of gang up on her. And you can sort of see Edwards perhaps sensing some vulnerability with Hillary Clinton at this morning.
INSKEEP: Okay, gentlemen, thanks very much. NPR's David Greene, appreciate it. And NPR's…
GREENE: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: …Don Gonyea as well. NPR's Don Gonyea as well in New Hampshire this morning, thank you very much.
GONYEA: All right. Take care.
INSKEEP: And we'll continue following the voting here that begins on Tuesday, the New Hampshire primary, the first primary election of the campaign season for Democrats and Republicans alike.
You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
All-star pitcher Roger Clemens says he never took anabolic steroids or any other banned performance-enhancing drugs.
(Soundbite of TV show, "60 Minute")
Mr. ROGER CLEMENS (Pitcher): The stuff that's being said is ridiculous. It's hogwash for people to even assume this.
INSKEEP: That's a taped interview in which Clemens spoke on the CBS program "60 Minutes." It was broadcast last night. This was Clemens' latest attempt to salvage his reputation after last month's release of the Mitchell Report on doping in baseball. Roger Clemens was the most prominent player named in the report.
And we have more this morning from NPR's Tom Goldman.
TOM GOLDMAN: Nearly a month ago, the Mitchell Report revealed testimony by Roger Clemens' longtime personal trainer, Brian McNamee. McNamee said he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone several times during three different seasons. But it wasn't until last night that the public got to hear Clemens answer questions about those allegations for the first time.
Clemens' interrogator was the venerable Mike Wallace, famous tough guy journalist who's taken on heads of state and religious leaders. But critics noted Wallace also was a friend of Clemens and an occasional visitor to New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner's ballpark suite. Would that be enough to soften Wallace's hard edges? Here is some of last night's Q and A.
(Soundbite of TV show, "60 Minute")
Mr. MIKE WALLACE (Host): Did your former trainer, Brian McNamee, ever inject you?
GOLDMAN: Yes, said Clemens, with Vitamin B12 and Lidocaine, a local anesthetic.
(Soundbite of TV show, "60 Minute")
Mr. WALLACE: Never, never a human growth hormone?
Mr. CLEMENS: Never.
Mr. WALLACE: Never testosterone?
Mr. CLEMENS: Never.
Mr. WALLACE: And never anabolic steroids?
Mr. CLEMENS: Never.
Mr. WALLACE: Swear?
Mr. CLEMENS: Swear.
GOLDMAN: McNamee testified for the Mitchell Report with a guarantee that he'd avoid going to jail by telling the truth. But Clemens told Wallace, McNamee's claim of steroid injections is not the truth.
(Soundbite of TV show, "60 Minute")
Mr. WALLACE: What did McNamee gain by lying?
Mr. CLEMENS: Evidently not going to jail.
Mr. WALLACE: Jail time for what?
Mr. CLEMENS: Well, I think he's been buying and moving steroids.
Mr. RICHARD EMERY (Attorney): Roger's answer makes no sense.
GOLDMAN: Richard Emery is Brian McNamee's lawyer.
Mr. EMERY: Because in order to stay out of jail, Brian had to tell the truth, which is what he did.
GOLDMAN: But Emery says Wallace didn't point that out. John Sowatski(ph) is a professional journalist who teaches reporters how to do interviews. He says he was disturbed by Wallace's lack of follow-up questions with Clemens. For instance, Wallace noted that McNamee said in the Mitchell Report that he injected Clemens' longtime pitching buddy Andy Pettitte with human growth hormone, and Pettitte publicly acknowledged it.
(Soundbite of TV show, "60 Minute")
Mr. WALLACE: Why would Brian McNamee tell the truth about Andy Pettitte and lie about you?
Mr. CLEMENS: Andy's case is totally - is totally separate.
GOLDMAN: John Sowatski.
Mr. JOHN SOWATSKI (Journalist): Wallace never asked what is separate about it. Again, he just dropped it.
GOLDMAN: Wallace did ask Clemens why he was speaking out now rather than before the Mitchell Report came out in mid-December.
(Soundbite of TV show, "60 Minute")
Mr. WALLACE: Why didn't you speak to George Mitchell's investigators?
Mr. CLEMENS: I listened to my counsel. I was advised not to. A lot of the players didn't go down and talk to him.
Mr. WALLACE: No, I know.
Mr. CLEMENS: But if I would have known what this man - what Brian McNamee would have said in this report, I would have been down there in a heartbeat to take care of it.
GOLDMAN: In his report, former Senator George Mitchell writes: In order to provide Clemens with information about these allegations and to give him an opportunity to respond, I asked him to meet with me. He declined.
It appears Clemens and several other players will not have that luxury next week on Capitol Hill. They've been invited to testify at a congressional hearing about the Mitchell Report. Clemens says he'll say under oath what he said last night. Brian McNamee's lawyer, Richard Emery, insists what Clemens said is enough to sue for defamation, but Emery says he wants to see what happens when this battle over the Mitchell report goes to Congress before he goes to court.
Tom Goldman, NPR News.
INSKEEP: And by the way, Clemens has filed his own defamation suit against the personal trainer. This is NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
The U.S. Supreme Court today examines whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. Lethal injection is the method used to execute convicted killers in almost all of the states that have the death penalty. This is the first time in more than a century that the court has examined a method of execution as to whether it's unconstitutional. It does so at a time when public support for capital punishment is declining, and DNA proof has exonerated 15 men on Death Row.
NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports.
NINA TOTENBERG: Thirty years ago, death by lethal injection was conceived of as a more humane way to execute the condemned. And today, 36 out of 37 states with death penalty laws on the books use that method. But the three-drug cocktail pioneered 30 years ago has not changed over time, and critics charged that it poses an unnecessary risk of pain and suffering that now can be easily avoided. Indeed, death penalty opponents note that the cocktail used for executions today was long ago abandoned by the American Veterinary Association for use in killing animals because it was deemed unnecessarily cruel.
Today's test case comes from Kentucky, which uses basically the same lethal injection protocol as other states. The lead defendant ambushed and brutally murdered two policeman who'd come to arrest him on an out-of-state felony charge. There's no claim of innocence. The only question is whether the current method of lethal injection poses too great a risk of a painful death when a more benign protocol is available.
Kentucky, backed by other death penalty states and the Bush administration, argues that states have led the way in finding more humane ways to execute the condemned. The state contends that there's been no showing of a substantial risk of pain and suffering using the current lethal injection protocol.
Roy Englert represents the state.
Mr. ROY ENGLERT: The small magnitude of these risks is certainly something the state emphasizes as a reason why there shouldn't be judicial micromanagement. But also the inability to quantify the risks associated with one procedure versus another, there's going to be no predictability about what a judge will say the lowest risk method is.
TOTENBERG: Countering that argument, death penalty opponents contend there is ample evidence that the current three-drug cocktail poses an unnecessary risk of pain and suffering and that the current protocol thus violates the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The Supreme Court has long interpreted the 8th Amendment bar as based on evolving standards of decency. Thus, punishments that were acceptable at the time the Constitution was written, punishments like putting people in stocks, would not be permissible today. The last time the court ruled on a method of execution was in 1878, when the court upheld death by firing squad. By the 20th century, states moved to electrocution, gas and finally, lethal injection.
So just what's in the lethal three-drug protocol that's used now in Kentucky and elsewhere? The first drug, sodium thiopental, is a barbiturate meant to put the condemned prisoner to sleep deeply enough that he feels nothing afterwards. The second drug, pancuronium, is a paralytic that prevents the prisoner from twitching, convulsing or indicating discomfort. Anesthesiologists and end-of-life doctors contend in briefs filed with the court that if a person is not properly anesthetized, the paralytic will prevent him from being able to indicate any distress, and pancuronium can make him feel as if he's suffocating. The third drug, potassium chloride, stops the heart. But again, if the prisoner is not properly anesthetized, medical experts say the drug will be excruciatingly painful. It will make the prisoner feel as if his veins are on fire.
Kentucky's lawyer, Roy Englert, argues that's all besides the point, since the state's protocol calls for the condemned prisoner to be given three grams of thiopental first, and that is 10 times the surgical dose of the barbiturate.
Mr. ENGLERT: If the three-gram dose of sodium thiopental is correctly delivered, there is going to be no pain and no suffering.
Ms. ELIZABETH SAMUEL(ph) (Attorney): If that dose is given properly is the operative phrase.
TOTENBERG: Death penalty defense lawyer Elizabeth Samuel.
Ms. SAMUEL: And that means that if it is given by individuals who know how to mix the drugs properly, how to administer the drugs properly, and who are able, both in terms of skill and physical proximity to the inmate, to ensure that the anesthesia is going into the veins and not the tissues.
TOTENBERG: Samuel, who heads the California Death Penalty Project at UC Berkeley, contends that the procedures used in Kentucky and elsewhere are an invitation to botched executions, which have in fact occurred.
The paralytic prevents the prisoner from indicating that he's not asleep. What's more, she observes, the technicians administering the drugs are not even in the same room as the condemned prisoner. Once the IV lines are inserted, the technicians administer the drugs from another room with a glass window. No medically trained personnel are in the death chamber to check on lines and monitor the prisoner. Only the warden is in the room.
Ms. SAMUEL: Assessing anesthetic depth is not something that a warden is capable of doing.
TOTENBERG: Those opposing the three-drug protocol say it would be far simpler to use a massive overdose of one drug, a more modern and long-acting barbiturate, which is what veterinarians do when putting down animals large and small.
Indeed, Kentucky's own medical expert at one point testified that a one-drug solution would get rid of most of legal objections to the procedure, but he added that it could take longer and because there would be no paralytic to avoid twitching, it could be more difficult for witnesses to watch.
Kentucky's lawyer, Roy Englert, adds that that the one-drug protocol has not been tested on humans.
Mr. ENGLERT: The potential for error in an untested methodology as opposed to one that has been successfully used hundreds of times is much greater.
TOTENBERG: Experts in anesthesiology and end-of-life critical care, however, seem to disagree. Joseph Meltzer, a professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Columbia University, echoes other experts when he says that the three-drug cocktail is sufficiently complicated in the mixing and administration of the drugs that it has inherent risks.
Dr. JOSEPH MELTZER (Columbia University): Each added level of complexity opens the door to potentially more and more error, so one drug may be more simple than three.
TOTENBERG: That basically was the conclusion of a Tennessee State Committee appointed to evaluate various methods of lethal injection. But state officials indicated they were worried about being the first state to deviate from the current norm. And defenders of the current procedure argue that even if they adopted the one-drug solution, death penalty opponents would undoubtedly challenge that, too.
Now the Supreme Court is looking over the states' shoulders. In a previous lethal injection case that did not directly challenge the method of execution, some members of the court seem to indicate they see no constitutional requirement for a painless execution, while others indicated that the state may have an obligation to execute in the most humane way possible.
For now, the court has blocked all executions so that no prisoner will die while it considers the issue. But by summer, the court will have some answers to the questions about what is and is not acceptable in executions by lethal injection.
Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
MONTAGNE: You can read more about what's at stake in the lethal injection case at npr.org.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
The Supreme Court is busy, which means we will hear a lot from Nina this week, including her reporting on another Supreme Court case involving a voter ID law. This is the sort of law that states have approved to prevent fraud.
Indiana's law essentially requires voters to present a government-issued photo ID such as a driver's license or a passport. The law's critics include Democrats who say that having to show an ID makes it difficult for poor, elderly or minority voters who tend to vote Democratic. People we'll hear in that story include Democrat Toba Wang(ph).
Ms. TOBA WANG: We found that although there is fraud in the system, it doesn't take place at the polling place. You don't have many cases at all of people showing up at the polls and either pretending to be somebody else or somebody who has died.
INSKEEP: Indiana's attorney general defends this law, saying the state is just trying to prevent possible future fraud. Lower courts have ruled differently on similar laws, but as Nina reports this week, judges have voted along party lines. And we'll get a preview of what the Supreme Court might do later this week.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
NPR's business news starts with the coffee wars heating up again.
In the latest salvo between two giant purveyors of food and drink, McDonald's plans to set up coffee bars in its 14,000 locations this year. The Wall Street Journal is reporting details of the plan, which involves hiring baristas and selling espresso drinks like lattes or McLattes, perhaps, at lower prices than Starbucks. The companies have been battling for each other's customers. McDonald's has beefed up its coffee offerings. Starbucks now sells breakfast sandwiches. And the coffee shop chain that started as a place for people to relax has even set up drive-thrus at some of its 11,000 locations.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Would like fries with that latte?
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
On Mondays we focus on technology. And today we begin with an ambitious project to create a laptop for children in the developing world. This program has received a lot of publicity, but it's running into big problems. One of its big corporate backers backed out.
Cyrus Farivar has more.
CYRUS FARIVAR: IN 2005, MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte announced the effort to design a $100 laptop. The project was aimed at schools in the developing world. But it's hit a few snags.
The latest is Intel's decision to withdraw. The split arose because Intel and Negroponte's group could not agree on how Intel would market a rival product that sells for around $250. Officials with the One Laptop Per Child project claims their laptops provide vast educational benefits. But foreign governments, the target clientele, aren't buying. The millions of orders needed to reduce the price to $100 never materialized. That said, there are pilot projects in some countries, says Wayan Vota, editor of OLPCNews.com.
Mr. WAYAN VOTA (Editor, OLPCNews.com): Right now we have a lot of reports of children really excited about their laptops and playing with them, but we don't have reports that this play and enjoyment is transferring into real learn - knowledge and real growth and development of the child. And that's really the key metric Negroponte needs to show to have OLPC grow and take off with developing world.
FARIVAR: Even if the $100 laptop project doesn't succeed, it's already had an impact. Today, there are many other companies from Silicon Valley to East Asia making laptops that cost under $400.
For NPR News, I'm Cyrus Farivar.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The makers of the One Laptop Per Child device are still hoping for some oohs and ahs when they show off their gadget at the world's biggest technology conference. The Consumer Electronics Show starts today in Las Vegas. One hundred and forty thousand people are expected to descend on the city for a glimpse of the world's biggest TV screen, the smallest computer, solar batteries, and lots of things that connect to each other - without wires.
NPR's Laura Sydell has this preview.
LAURA SYDELL: The real show hasn't started yet but hundreds of people, including this reporter, stood in a line that snaked around a lobby at the Sands Expo this weekend to get a glimpse of the preview.
This year, consumers may be excited to learn that electronics companies have been teaching devices to talk to each other. Jean Charles Piaget(ph) with Handsfree shows off a digital photo frame that connects wirelessly to your home computer.
Mr. JEAN CHARLES PIOGET: Some of the newer model we'll launch later this year will have the tuner capability and also wireless, might be able to interact with the Web site...
SYDELL: So your digital frame will connect to the Internet, where it could pull pictures from Flickr or another online photo site.
There's been a lot of talk in the past about being able to view the Internet on a television set. Coming to market this year will finally be affordable devices like the Internet View from Adlogix. Christian Hay(ph) says you attach the device to your computer and...
Mr. CHRISTIAN HAYES: YouTube video or any kind of online video content, instead of watching it on your small-screen laptop, you can then transmit it and watch it on your big-screen television.
SYDELL: Wireless technology is also going green. Growing awareness about global warming is making the public more interested in products that conserve energy.
Mr. ALAN PENCHANSKY (Iqua): This is the Iqua SUN. It's the world's first solar-powered Bluetooth headset.
SYDELL: Alan Penchansky is with Iqua. The Iqua SUN has a tiny photovoltaic cell in it.
Mr. PENCHANSKY: Which enables you to use any available light indoors or outdoors to give the unit additional power so that you extend both the talk time and the standby time of the device.
SYDELL: There seems little doubt that this year, wireless is taking off as never before. TVs, MP3 players, cars, home stereo systems, all are connecting wirelessly.
Nelson Allen, director of Digital Media at Samsung, says wireless has been around for a while, but it's getting easier to use and cheaper.
Mr. NELSON ALLEN (Samsung): The cost of Bluetooth chips are under $5 now. Battery power has improved. And in the past, it was the wireless that would drain the battery. So technology is allowing it all to happen.
SYDELL: But can you take wireless too far?
(Soundbite of cooler on wheels)
SYDELL: Like this wirelessly controlled cooler on wheels with two beers over ice making its way across the floor to Ian Chisem(ph) of Interactive Toy Concepts.
Mr. IAN CHISEM (Interactive Toy Concepts): You don't always a want to get up when you need - someone needs a beverage. So I can quickly deliver it to them. It's that simple. You don't have to leave your chair. You just push the button, your favorite beverage is taken to you.
SYDELL: Chisem admits that his device could make an unfortunate contribution to America's obesity problem. There are more than 20,000 consumer electronic devices on display here at CES, but only a few of them are likely to catch on.
Laura Sydell, NPR News, Las Vegas.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Some of the technologies on display have already caught on in places like Japan. Japanese consumers already use their mobile phones to watch TV, pay for chewing gum at the convenience store and buy subway tickets. New technology is making the mobile phone even smarter now. And our last word in business today is remote control.
At the Consumer Electronics Show, a group of Japanese companies and universities showed off an iPhone application that allows the user to switch the lights on and off in an apartment in Tokyo. So if you think you might have left the light on, just call. The technology also allows for the phone to control home appliances from afar, which means that while you are at work, instead of going online shopping, you can do more exciting things on company time, like wash your clothes and do the dishes.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
We're about to talk with the Democratic candidate who was, until recently, the front-runner in New Hampshire's presidential primary. Senator Hillary Clinton now trails Barack Obama, and the voting is tomorrow. Joining us on the line from her campaign bus is Senator Hillary Clinton. Good morning.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: And do you happen to know where exactly in New Hampshire you are?
Sen. CLINTON: I am. I'm in Concord, New Hampshire. And I'm just waking up here on the bus.
MONTAGNE: Yeah, you slept on it, I take it, or at least got some sleep on it.
Sen. CLINTON: Well, I didn't sleep on the bus, but it sometimes feels that way when we're crisscrossing the country like this.
MONTAGNE: First and a question, I think, a lot of people would like to know. Can you afford to lose in New Hampshire?
Sen. CLINTON: Well, Renee, obviously I'm going to work as hard as I can today and tomorrow to reach as many voters with, you know, my message about my candidacy and then go on. I've always intended to run a national campaign, and I have prepared to do so from the very beginning. So we'll go right through the February 5th states.
MONTAGNE: Over the weekend, you've been telling voters that they should elect a doer, not a talker and saying that in various ways. What are you trying to say about your rival Senator Barack Obama?
Sen. CLINTON: Well, what I'm asking voters to do is to look at each of us and contrast and compare our records, our plans, our experiences in order to get the facts that are relevant to making a decision. You know, I would not be running for president if I didn't think that I was the best qualified person to really tackle the problems that we face in our country and the world at this time.
And I think that it is important to look at what each of us brings to this race. And there is a difference in how we approach problems, what we have done over the last years to solve problems. You know, if you want to know what I'll do, look at what I've done. And I think that there's a contrast here, between, you know, talking and doing and between rhetoric and reality that is an important one.
MONTAGNE: What, senator, though, what makes him a talker rather than a doer?
Sen. CLINTON: Well, I think that if you look at the results that I've been able to bring about to improve people's lives, even here in New Hampshire. You know, a program that I helped to start, the Children's Health Insurance Program, gives health care to 7,000 kids and bipartisan legislation that I was able to push through the Senate and then the House to get in to law over a threat of a veto, gives health care to National Guard and Reserves.
And, you know, working on issues ranging from respite care for caregivers to improving the adoption and foster care systems, just - so many ways that I've been working to make people's lives better and…
MONTAGNE: Well, clearly, you have done these things. But what makes Senator Obama merely a talker, someone with rhetoric, but nothing behind him, beyond that?
Sen. CLINTON: Well, you know, in the debate that we had here in New Hampshire the other night, the moderators asked all of us, you know, what we've done. What is our favorite, most important accomplishment and I think in both Senator Edwards and Senator Obama's case, there was a real contrast.
Senator Edwards said that he had passed a patient's bill of rights and in fact, of course, it never did pass the Congress and it was never signed in to law. And Senator Obama said, well, he had helped to pass lobbying reforms so that lobbyists couldn't have lunch with members of Congress. I think it was Charlie Gibson, the moderator, who said, well wait a minute, they can have lunch standing up. They just can't have lunch sitting down. So I think it's important to begin to actually take the records that each of us bring to this race.
You know, we don't have good guides in life to anything that we do, based just on what we say. We always look behind that. I mean, if we're going to choose any important - make any important decision, you're going to want to know what's behind it. And that's all that I'm asking. I have the greatest respect and regard for Senator Obama. I think he is an incredibly gifted politician who has been extremely, you know, positive in putting himself forward.
MONTAGNE: One thing, though, your…
Sen. CLINTON: But, as we pick a Democratic nominee, I really think we've got to go deeper than that, and that's what I am asking.
MONTAGNE: Our correspondent David Greene told us earlier this morning that your campaign is urging reporters to look deeper, but in this case, more closely at Barack Obama's record. What do you think is there?
Sen. CLINTON: Well, Renee, take for example what Senator Obama said two weeks ago, not about me, but about Senator Edwards. He said that Senator Edwards changing positions between 2004 and 2008 would make him unelectable in the general election. Well, in fact, Senator Obama has a very obvious record of changing positions from the time he ran for the Senate, his early years in the Senate, and now, of course, running for president.
Well, if he's going to say that records matter - which he has said on numerous occasions - and if he's going to point to another opponent as being unelectable for changing positions, then clearly that's a criterion that he's trying to get voters to judge others on. Therefore, I think, it is more than fair to judge him as well.
So when he says he's going to vote against the Patriot Act and he goes to the Congress and votes for it, or when he says that he is against special interests and lobbyists and he has a lobbyist running his campaign in New Hampshire. For any other candidate, that would be relevant information, and I think that is relevant in this case as well.
MONTAGNE: Senator Clinton, thank you very much.
Sen. CLINTON: Thank you very much, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Hillary Clinton speaking to us from her campaign bus this morning in New Hampshire.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And let's get some analysis, as we do every Monday morning, from NPR's Cokie Roberts. Cokie, good morning.
COKIE ROBERTS: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: Just heard Hillary Clinton say that she's going to stay in this race through the February 5th primaries, that's the day when many, many states are voting and apparently regardless of whether she loses New Hampshire. Can she stay in the race if she loses New Hampshire?
ROBERTS: Yes, because she has the money to stay in the race. You know, people, people tend to get out of races when they're broke. And she can soldier on and say I'm looking toward these bigger states and looking towards more scrutiny of Obama's record, which is clearly what she's talking about, what she just talked about with Renee.
So, yes, she can stay in and we heard John Edwards yesterday say he plans to stay in through the conventions. Now, it's going to be tougher for him unless he decides to pour his own money in. But that is, I think that you do have these candidates saying they're going to certainly stay through this big Tsunami Tuesday, as it's called, on February 5th.
INSKEEP: How has this race and what the candidates are saying evolved over the weekend now?
ROBERTS: Well, I think that what you're really hearing Hillary Clinton talk about is, change is just a six-letter word. And even though everybody is saying the word change, change, change, change, change on both parties, there is a lot more talk about action, not words, which she just said to Renee, but also, apparently, she is taking more control of her own campaign. We talked about this last week, that there's so many cooks in that kitchen that it's been a problem for her, and that she has now decided to be the chief chef.
INSKEEP: Hmm. Cokie, I'd like to know, Iowa sometimes means a lot in the presidential race, sometimes means very little. On the Democratic side now, have things fundamentally changed, do things feel different now that Obama has won Iowa?
ROBERTS: Yes. I think that there's a sense of possibility for Obama that wasn't there for some voters before Iowa. And the voters are taking a fresh look at him in New Hampshire and liking what they see. And he makes the point that words have meaning, that it is not just words and no action, that words have the ability to inspire and bring about change. And I think the people are responding to that very strongly.
INSKEEP: Cokie, thanks very much.
That's NPR's Cokie Roberts, and you can follow all the campaigns as they try to win over undecided voters in New Hampshire with a video on our Web site, npr.org. And, of course, we're covering the Republicans as well, elsewhere in this program, elsewhere on NPR. Big contests coming up in both parties this week.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
There are the presidential candidates, and then there are the people doing the real work of campaigning. In New Hampshire, volunteers make phone calls, wave signs and knock on doors.
NPR's Robert Smith went out with supporters of Democrat John Edwards to get a view from the street level of politics.
ROBERT SMITH: The first secret of door-to-door campaigning is you have to get up early. The sun is just peeking over the buildings here in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and already there's a couple hundred people here with the Edwards campaign getting stoked up and ready to go out and ready to knock on doors.
Unidentified Group: We want John.
Unidentified Man #1: Again.
Unidentified Group: We want John.
Unidentified Man #1: In New Hampshire.
Unidentified Group: We want John.
Ms. KAREN AYERS(ph) (Resident, New Hampshire): You need to be pretty upbeat when you're talking to people to influence them. So you need to be, you know, cheerful mood and have a smile on your face. It makes a big difference.
SMITH: What's your name? Where you're from?
Ms. AYERS: Karen Ayers, Hampton Falls.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Mr. DAVID FROST(ph) (Resident, Portsmouth, Pennsylvania): What's the name of this street, Tom?
SMITH: Another secret of door-to-door campaigning, especially in these tiny New England towns, is to always go with a local.
Mr. TOM HOOVER(ph) (Resident, Lancaster, New Hampshire): We can walk right around, maybe we got another house on the other side.
SMITH: I'm walking the south side of Portsmouth with David Frost, who's from here and with Tom Hoover, who is from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who's come into the state to campaign for John Edwards.
(Soundbite of knocking)
Unidentified Man #3: Oh, it was somebody knocking on my door.
Mr. HOOVER: How are you doing?
Unidentified Man #3: Good.
Mr. HOOVER: We're wondering if you have a favorite yet in the race or…
Unidentified Man #3: You know, I've been a Hillary supporter for a while…
Mr. HOOVER: Yeah.
Unidentified Man #3: …but somebody just called this morning saying who are you going to vote for on Tuesday, and this time I said Barack Obama so, yeah.
Mr. HOOVER: All right. Well, it's good to see you're taking an active role in this.
Mr. FROST: Thank you very much.
Unidentified Man #3: Yeah.
SMITH: Do you ever think that perhaps you're being a little too nice? Don't you want to argue with him? Don't you want to take him down…
Mr. HOOVER: No.
SMITH: …and say come on?
Mr. HOOVER: I argue with my wife. I don't want to argue with - I think we question people and ask them to be sure about what they've decided.
SMITH: Hey, I think it's someone from another campaign. Who do you think it is?
Mr. HOOVER: Hello.
Ms. BRENDA SIEGELMAN(ph) (Resident, Portsmouth, New Hampshire): Hello.
SMITH: You're with?
Ms. SIEGELMAN: Richardson.
SMITH: You're not going to rumble with these John Edwards guys just because you're Bill Richardson?
Ms. SIEGELMAN: Do you want to arm wrestle or something then?
Mr. HOOVER: Oh no, that's okay.
Ms. SIEGELMAN: Okay. No they declined.
SMITH: What's your name?
Ms. SIEGELMAN: Brenda Siegelman.
SMITH: These guys can cover their ears because they're working for another campaign. I mean, what is the secret to effective door-to-door campaigning?
Ms. SIEGELMAN: Be nice, be friendly, be kind, and don't bug people if they want to be bugged.
(Soundbite of knocking)
SMITH: Melissa Costa(ph), how many people knocked on your door today?
Ms. MELISSA COSTA (Resident, Portsmouth, New Hampshire): Just two, so far, but it's morning.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SMITH: How about phone calls?
Ms. COSTA: Phone calls? We've had about three.
SMITH: So if you wanted a little peace and quiet, can you take the phone off the hook and just draw the curtains and pretend you're not home?
Ms. COSTA: I go upstairs and take out my hearing aids; then I can't hear them knocking.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SMITH: Well, I suppose come Wednesday, it's going to be awfully quiet around here.
Ms. COSTA: I don't think I'll miss them.
(Soundbite of footsteps)
Mr. HOOVER: Well, we'll finish up our canvassing and then we have another whole packet in the car.
SMITH: What are you going to do with your time, come Tuesday when this is all over?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. HOOVER: Well, hopefully it's going to continue, but I'm sure there'd be something…
SMITH: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to prematurely end your campaign.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. HOOVER: Hopefully, it's still the beginning. You just don't give up, just keep on and keep on.
(Soundbite of footsteps)
SMITH: Of course, the strange thing is that these two guys don't even know if what they're doing is working. They simply knock on doors, mark down whether the person is interested or not, or wants to receive more information, and then they cross their fingers. They won't know until Tuesday, when all of New Hampshire votes, if their efforts have been worthwhile.
Robert Smith, NPR News on the south side of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
MONTAGNE: You can follow the campaigns as they try to woo undecided voters in the final days before the New Hampshire primary with a video at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep. Good morning.
We've been listening in as some undecided voters work their way toward being decided. These voters are in New Hampshire. Their state holds the nation's first presidential primary tomorrow. The voters were paying attention to ABC News and Facebook debates over the weekend.
And NPR's Linda Wertheimer was paying attention to them.
LINDA WERTHEIMER: Will three hours of face time with all 10 candidates make the sale to voters both undecided and independent? Not easily. Dan Rothman(ph) sells computers. He listened to the Republicans and made some cuts.
Ms. DAN ROTHMAN (Resident, New Hampshire): Giuliani, Romney and Thompson frightened me with their approach to the world - that we know better with preemptive strikes, and so they're off my list. And I'm looking for strong Republican candidate who is a reasonable person.
WERTHEIMER: Most of our independents who lean Democratic like John McCain. Al Davenport(ph), who sells industrial equipment, is in that group. In other years, he might even have voted for him.
Mr. AL DAVENPORT (Resident, New Hampshire): I think that John McCain made - he impressed me a little bit more today because I think he's a little bit more sincere than he was before. I think he is a man who believes in what he's doing even though I don't believe in everything that he believes in. I think he is a man of his own convictions.
WERTHEIMER: But some McCain fans felt he should not have mocked Mitt Romney for changing his positions on issues like abortion. McCain called Romney the candidate of change. Amy Briar(ph), who works for a software company, thought that was beneath him.
Ms. AMY BRIAR (Resident, New Hampshire): In the past and other debates, he has really risen above, I think, the fray of the rest of that kind of stuff. So I was a little disappointed to see him go there. I still passionately believe he's a person who could lead our country successfully in the future.
WERTHEIMER: Steve Cavatar(ph) works with disabled people. He will vote in the Democratic primary, where change is the big issue. He was amused by McCain.
Ms. STEVE CAVATAR (Resident, New Hampshire): He tried to bring that out in the debate and Romney reacted against him and said that personal bias wouldn't really be helpful right now, and yet he's the one that's running negative ads on TV and then he's in the debate going wah, wah, wah.
WERTHEIMER: What about the man who won the Iowa caucuses, Mike Huckabee? Barbara King(ph), who's a marketing manager for a computer company, noticed less talk of Christian values.
Ms. BARBARA KING (Resident, New Hampshire): I thought he almost tried to hide them tonight. That - he talked about God when he impacted the Constitution, when he referenced that. Other than that, he really - I don't think we saw the true Huckabee, or at least the gentleman he was in Iowa, and the person I think he'll be in any Southern primary.
WERTHEIMER: Huckabee impressed Tony Lamoli(ph) who works for the phone company.
Mr. TONY LAMOLI (Resident, New Hampshire): I think Huckabee, who I've seen so far, could stand up at least with his personality and charisma to Obama. If Huckabee cannot be portrayed as a whacko, right-wing, Bible thumper, I think he has a chance, at least, intellectually at standing up and dealing with Obama.
WERTHEIMER: That conversation took place between debates. After 90 minutes of Democratic candidates, we finally had a decision. Dot Porniay(ph), office manager for a nonprofit group.
Ms. DOT PORNIAY (Resident, New Hampshire): I came here leaning toward Obama, but I think that Richardson took my vote tonight.
WERTHEIMER: Pat Garren(ph) is still undecided. She liked the front-runners but worried a bit about Obama.
Ms. PAT GARREN (Resident, New Hampshire): I'm wondering if he were feeling well tonight because he was so low-key. I saw him yesterday and he was very animated. I thought Hillary Clinton did extremely well tonight. I have not heard her in person. And I think she probably helped herself after not doing so well in Iowa.
WERTHEIMER: At the end, the majority of our group thought they'd likely vote for some Democrat. Dan Rothman said he was very impressed with Obama and by the end of the debate liked Clinton. However…
Mr. ROTHMAN: I'm voting strategically. I'm not voting for president, and I may well vote in the Republican for Huckabee, who is a pleasant surprise, or McCain just to avoid having any of these lunatics winning the primary for the Republicans.
WERTHEIMER: To help the GOP pick a candidate he can live with, you understand, just in case.
Steve Capithorn's(ph), voting for a Democrat. He said his family has been playing "if the election were today" since last summer.
Mr. STEVE CAPITORNS (Resident, New Hampshire): Most everybody on the porch said Hillary. And we did the same thing in my sister's living room at Thanksgiving and everybody said Obama. And then we did the same thing in a restaurant at Christmastime and everybody said, I'm undecided.
(Soundbite of laughter)
WERTHEIMER: Undecided, independent New Hampshire voters we met in Concord.
Linda Wertheimer, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Last night, another closely watched political figure made a TV appearance. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, gave his first interview since last month's assassination of Benazir Bhutto. He told CBS' "60 Minutes" that Bhutto took too many risks and is responsible for her own death.
Inside Pakistan, many accused Musharraf and members of his government of involvement in her killing. The White House continues to support him.
NPR's Jackie Northam examines why.
JACKIE NORTHAM: Over the past few years, since it became apparent that President Musharraf planned to hold on to power, he has lurched from one crisis to another, increasingly losing support of the Pakistani public and causing concern in the international community. Throughout this time, the Bush administration has stood rock steady behind Musharraf. Just last week, while political turmoil raged across Pakistan, President Bush once again called Musharraf an ally of the U.S.
Christine Fair is a South Asian specialist at the RAND Corporation.
Ms. CHRISTINE FAIR (Senior Political Scientist, RAND Corporation): The Bush administration really sees Musharraf in the sort of terms that are standard for the Bush administration, which is: he's a good guy, he's the right man, he's the best thing we have in terms of an ally in the war on terrorism. Now, Musharraf is clearly not the best person, and increasingly, he is very much part of the problem.
NORTHAM: Despite the Bush administration's support, there are growing calls both within and beyond Pakistan's borders for Musharraf to step down, including one by the International Crisis Group, a nonpartisan international monitoring organization.
Robert Templer, the ICG's Asia Program director, says Musharraf is a threat to Pakistan's stability.
Mr. ROBERT TEMPLER (Director, Asia Program, International Crisis Group): What we've seen, particularly in the past six months, is that Musharraf has systematically undermined institutions such as the judiciary, the media, political parties. This is not a man who's really looking for democracy, he's someone who's looking to cement his personal power in place.
NORTHAM: Templer says Washington's seemingly unquestioning support for Musharraf could backfire and cost the U.S. what little goodwill it has left with the people of Pakistan.
Mr. TEMPLER: It has to do with what they say is an enormous hypocrisy - America pretending to support democracy around the world while simultaneously doing everything in its power to prop up a military dictatorship in Pakistan.
NORTHAM: But Dr. George Friedman, the CEO of Stratfor, a global intelligence company, says the U.S. doesn't have much choice when it comes to dealing with Musharraf, especially when he was the army chief of staff. Friedman says the U.S. needs the help and cooperation of Pakistan's army, however limited that help is, for the war in neighboring Afghanistan and to help contain al-Qaida and Taliban militants in Pakistan. Friedman says it's critical the U.S. maintains its relationship with Pakistan's military even if that means dealing with Musharraf.
Dr. GEORGE FRIEDMAN (CEO, Strategic Forecasting, Inc.): I think the U.S. policy is not really pro-Musharraf nearly is as much as it is pro-army in the sense of we really need them. The Americans can live with anyone in the army who emerges in power.
NORTHAM: Friedman says he suspects the Bush administration would be happy for Musharraf to quietly leave the scene and be replaced by another general. But Friedman says the White House would only alienate or annoy the Pakistan military by calling for Musharraf to resign or by trying to play one individual off another. Because, Friedman says, so far there are no signs the army wants Musharraf gone.
Dr. FRIEDMAN: My view is that, while there are a lot of calls for the resignation of Musharraf, the army has made no decision on this. And when the army makes a decision, it will do so in order to have as orderly a transition as possible.
NORTHAM: But RAND Corporation analyst Fair says even if the U.S. continues to back Musharraf, it must also be seen to support Pakistan civil society and institutions.
Ms. FAIR: For example, the Supreme Court, the Election Commission. We should be working with the political parties. We should be working with the Lawyers Guild, with the Pakistan Human Rights Commission.
NORTHAM: Fair says the U.S. needs to make up for lost time now in the lead-up to the February 18th parliamentary elections.
Jackie Northam, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
We're going to meet an American icon this morning, one who risked mountaintops and mine shafts to save the boy she loves. Know her name? One more hint: Unlike others of her species, she always comes when called.
(Soundbite of TV series, "Lassie")
Mr. JON PROVOST (Actor): (As Timmy Martin) Lassie. Lassie.
MONTAGNE: Since she first appeared in print in the late 1930s, Lassie has achieved immortality - like many of the characters we're featuring in our new series, In Character. This morning, NPR's senior correspondent Ketzel Levine profiles a canine phenomenon who frequently masquerades as the dog next door.
Mr. MICHAEL MARTIN(ph) (Resident, Portland, Oregon): Rufus…
Ms. CINDY MARKS(ph) (Resident, Portland, Oregon): Rufus, come.
Mr. MARTIN: Come.
Ms. MARKS: Rufus, come.
KETZEL LEVINE: Anywhere U.S.A., although this morning it's out front of a bright red house in Portland, Oregon, where collie-coated Rufus and Mercy are playing with their squeaky toys. It turns out this day is their owners' 26th wedding anniversary. Cindy Marks and Michael Martin's union is both blessed and obsessed.
Mr. MARTIN: Oh, settle down. Sorry. It's been about 20 years since we've been collecting the Lassie memorabilia.
LEVINE: Dare I see the collection?
Ms. MARKS: Oh, absolutely. Come on in.
Mr. MARTIN: Absolutely.
LEVINE: The dining room is a shrine to the beatific collie - the wet brown eyes, the iconic white blaze spilling down to a black nose. The shrine includes a Lassie lamp with a dimmer - all the better for worship - and a gorgeous Lassie lunchbox.
Mr. MARTIN: We also have in here…
LEVINE: Michael Martin rummages through 20 years of garage sale and eBay debris to find these treasures.
Mr. MARTIN: Lassie stamps from Liberia, Paraguay and Oman.
LEVINE: I neglected to tell them that I had this.
(Soundbite of archived audio)
Unidentified Man #2: Yes, ladies and gentlemen, of the world's most famous dog, Lassie in person.
(Soundbite of dog barking)
LEVINE: Alas, you cannot always believe what you hear on the radio. Lassie, ladies and gentlemen, is a work of fiction, a character out of a 1938 short story by a talented writer named Eric Knight. It's a story about a poor mining family forced to sell the family collie, who against all odds, fights her way back to them from Scotland to England. Mr. Knight expanded his story into a novel that was made into the 1943 film "Lassie Come Home."
(Soundbite of "Lassie Come Home")
Unidentified Man #3: (As character) She's going down south, grandfather. She's going toward Yorkshire.
Unidentified Man #4: (As character) By jove, child, I believe you're right.
Mr. ACE COLLINS (Lassie Historian): Dogs, for a large degree in motion pictures, were there for comic relief, kind of like the sidekicks in motion pictures were at the time.
LEVINE: Author and Lassie historian Ace Collins.
Mr. COLLINS: They might do something clever from time to time but more than anything else they made us laugh. In the movie "Lassie Come Home," that all change because the dog was the focal point of the entire story.
LEVINE: Check out this story. The first day on the MGM film set, the studio had chosen a blow-dried best-in-show beauty to play Lassie, and this after scouring the country for the right look. But when the script called for her to jump in water, she refused. So they had to use the male stunt dog owned by the now legendary animal trainer Rudd Weatherwax. Sadly, the stunt dog's looks were apparently marred by, quote, "an ugly white blaze running down the forehead." Still, he did the job.
Mr. COLLINS: He did the scene so well, as a matter of fact, that when Louis B. Mayer saw the rushes, he informed the studio to fire the show dog and hire this unwanted, unpedigreed collie named Pal. And Pal became Lassie.
LEVINE: The look was launched; never mind that the collie in Eric Knight's short story was black, white and gold. The essential character traits were preserved.
Mr. PROVOST (Former Actor): Faith, hope, loyalty, compassion. I mean, all of those things were all just rolled up in that gorgeous dog.
LEVINE: Of the millions of children whose lives were transformed by the television show "Lassie," which premiered in 1954, none has been as deeply affected as a man now living in Santa Rosa, California. He has no collies. In fact, he has a beagle named Barney. But without "Lassie," Jon Provost, who played Timmy from '57 to '63, might still be stuck on a mountain, in a cave, or heaven help us, down a well.
Mr. PROVOST: You know, that well, I'll tell you, and it was more than one well, and there were a lot of, you know, old abandoned mines and Timmy was a great kid but, boy, he was slow. I don't - if he didn't have that dog…
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. PROVOST: …he would not be here today.
LEVINE: And perhaps if we hadn't had that dog, we might have a whole lot less dog hair on the sofa.
Ms. PATRICIA McCONNELL (Author, "For the Love of a Dog"): That's the show that helped us redefine who dogs are and what their place is in society. And it made it okay to love a dog as much as many of us have always loved dogs.
LEVINE: Patricia McConnell is a widely red animal behaviorist whose latest book is titled "For the Love of a Dog." She credits Lassie with helping to move dogs out of the yard and into the house and for setting a ludicrously high bar for that other end of the leash.
Ms. McCONNELL: We talk about the Lassie phenomenon in which people expect that they, too, would have a dog who you never had to train to do anything and who always did exactly what you wanted. I mean, there was never a show about Lassie peeing on somebody's pillow, you know.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. McCONNELL: So we see people all the time who honestly believe that dogs come, if they're good dogs, not only understanding everything we say, but they inherently want to do something just because you ask.
(Soundbite of TV series, "Lassie")
Unidentified Man #5: Now, look girl, rocking chair. Do you understand? Rocking chair. Where is it?
(Soundbite of dog barking)
Unidentified Man #5: Come on. I think we've solved our problem.
LEVINE: Ah, the magic of '50s TV and some smart collies who did more than tricks, they acted with all the soul of the dog created so many years ago by Eric Knight. Mr. Knight was killed in action during World War II. He would never know what a phenomenon he started in film, radio, TV and in vintage Dell Comics like the shelf load collected by Lassie fanatics Cindy Marks and Michael Martin.
Mr. MARTIN: Lassie fights a blinding blizzard to free Timmy from a snowy trap.
LEVINE: You know what's scary is that the color in your face has gotten really bright.
Mr. MARTIN: Well, there's something about Lassie that brings people to life.
LEVINE: Ketzel Levine, NPR News.
(Soundbite of TV series, "Lassie")
Mr. PROVOST: (As Timmy Martin) Lassie.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
You can nominate future subjects in this series by going to our In Character blog at npr.org/incharacter.
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
MONTAGNE: And I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
Give Judith Law style points for defiance. She pleaded guilty to grand larceny and burglary and received a five-year suspended sentence. Then she violated probation. So the judge reinstated the jail time. But when asked to sign a document in the case, she included a message telling the judge to kiss her rear end. She didn't say exactly that. The judge then added 90 days to her sentence. And an appeals court has now upheld his decision for contempt.
It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
A Museum of Laziness is open for one week in Bogota, Colombia. Among its exhibits, a couch in front of a TV, hammocks and various beds. Its curator said the city-sponsored museum is aimed at an intellectual exploration of the idea that laziness is the enemy of work - although many museum-goers appear to be exploring the idea of the couch potato, taking snoozes on the exhibits.
This is MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Guy Raz reports on how that happened as part of our series assessing the new White House strategy of the surge.
GUY RAZ: And the magazine's key military writer, Frederick Kagan, was clearly distressed when he appeared on C-SPAN.
(SOUNDBITE OF C-SPAN INTERVIEW)
FREDERICK KAGAN: The American people have become very frustrated with the course of this war. They should be frustrated. We're losing.
RAZ: The White House listened and agreed to roll the dice. But during the first six months of the surge, violence in Iraq reached an all-time high. Retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor was following events closely.
DOUGLAS MACGREGROR: Up until that point, the surge was simply providing more targets for the insurgents to shoot at.
RAZ: But then around June, almost too fast for anyone to absorb, the violence began to plummet - a decline that continues up to this moment and has turned one-time Iraq skeptics like former General Barry McCaffrey into believers.
BARRY MCCAFFREY: The real debate in my mind - and I think the issue at stake is not whether things are better in Iraq; they are unquestionably like night and day change in the level of violence. The real question is what caused it.
RAZ: What caused it is open to debate. General Petraeus credits the surge.
DAVID PETRAEUS: The improvements in security are a result of the greater number of coalition in Iraqi security forces and the strategy that guides the operations we conduct.
RAZ: But some current and former military officers I spoke with disagree, including Virginia Senator Jim Webb, whose own son, a Marine, served in Iraq before the surge was implemented.
JIM WEBB: My son was there fighting in Ramadi when the situation began to turn around, and I don't believe that it would be appropriate for people to say that that was even a part of the surge.
RAZ: Barry McCaffrey and other former officers explained that a surge of 30,000 more troops into a country of 30 million could never have enough of an impact alone to turn things around.
MCCAFFREY: The least important aspect of the so-called change in strategy was the surge.
RAZ: So if it wasn't just the surge, how did it happen? Well, part of it was exhaustion among Sunnis, tired of fighting and dying. Another part was a ceasefire declared by the largest Shiite militia. But the other part, possibly the most significant, can be traced to the end of last May. That month, 126 U.S. troops died, the second deadliest month for U.S. forces during the war. General Petraeus was under pressure to reduce those casualties.
MACGREGOR: And Petraeus seems to have concluded that it was essential to cut deals with the Sunni insurgents if he was going to succeed in reducing U.S. casualties.
RAZ: Barry McCaffrey is just back from a five-day trip to Iraq, where...
MCCAFFREY: I went to a couple of these CLCs; you know, it's five awkward-looking guys with their own AKs standing in a road junction with two magazines of ammunition, and they're there as early warning to protect their families in that village. I think that's good.
RAZ: Some 70,000 former insurgents are now being paid $10 a day by the U.S. military. It costs about a quarter billion dollars a year. It's a controversial strategy, and Colonel Macgregor warns that it's creating a parallel military force in Iraq - one made up almost entirely of Sunni Muslims.
MACGREGOR: We need to understand that buying off your enemy is a good short-term solution to gain a respite from violence. But it's not a long-term solution to creating a legitimate political order inside a country that quite frankly is recovering from the worst sort of civil war.
RAZ: That civil war has subsided - for now. It's diminished because of massive internal migration, a movement of populations that has created de facto ethnic cantons.
MACGREGOR: Segregation works, is effectively what the U.S. military is telling you. We've facilitated, whether on purpose or inadvertently, the division of the country. We're capitalizing on that right now, and we are creating new militias out of Sunni insurgents. We're calling them concerned citizens and guardians. These people are not our friends. They do not like us. They don not want us in the country. Their goal is unchanged.
RAZ: But General Barry McCaffrey argues the gamble is worth taking.
MCCAFFREY: Ten dollars a day, we could pay them that for 10 years if we had to. Better we provide an infusion of cash where we're keeping a local night watchman for us on duty than we conduct combat operations. The money isn't a factor we ought to even take into account.
MACGREGOR: People desperately want to see success.
RAZ: Again, Colonel Douglas Macgregor.
MACGREGOR: They want to believe that we have done something positive for the population of Iraq, that we are helping them to become something positive. The thing that worries me most of all is what happens over the next 12 to 24 months in Iraq. Could we not have actually made matters worse in the long term? Are we not actually setting Iraq up for a worse civil war than the one we've already seen?
RAZ: Guy Raz, NPR News, Washington.
MONTAGNE: Tomorrow we'll hear about the growing disillusionment in Iraq over a political impasse that has paralyzed the government and the parliament.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Addressing Iran is one of the many challenges on a trip that's expected to mark a change in style for the president, as NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.
MICHELE KELEMEN: The Bush administration has been mugged by reality. That's how one analyst, Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, sees this trip to the Middle East.
JON ALTERMAN: After vowing to transform the Middle East, the administration is submitting to it, resorting to the sort of process-driven incremental diplomacy that previous administrations had pursued and that this administration had disdained.
KELEMEN: The Israeli-Palestinian peace process, he says, is a case in point.
ALTERMAN: A friend who used to work in the White House told me, you know, this president doesn't like to tee things up. He's a closer. He likes to close deals. And this deal is not ready to be closed.
KELEMEN: President Bush says that by the time he leaves office, he thinks he can help the Israelis and Palestinians reach a vision of what a Palestinian state would look like. But he and his staff have played down any expectations of a breakthrough on this trip, saying the visit is mainly about trying to keep up the momentum.
GEORGE W: I will make clear that America is deeply committed to helping both parties realize the historic vision we share: two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.
KELEMEN: The second part of the president's trip will be to the Gulf, where he will visit with troops in Kuwait, get an update on Iraq, and visit the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet in Bahrain. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley says a key issue in the president's talks with Gulf leaders will be Iran.
STEPHEN HADLEY: There's a lot of concern in the region about Iran, not all of it expressed publicly. And I think the president is going to want to go and talk privately and quietly to indicate that we understand the challenge that Iran represents to the region, that our friends and allies in the region can count on our commitment to the region and our continued presence in the region.
KELEMEN: But Vali Nasr, a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, says Gulf leaders are skeptical that President Bush knows what he's doing, and doubt a strategy of containing Iran can work.
VALI NASR: The president is going to the Middle East at a very bad time, in a sense that he's going with the aim of trying to sell an old policy without coming up with a new policy to sell, trying to sell the old policy of containment literally right after the Arab governments have already signaled that they are shifting away from that policy.
KELEMEN: Several analysts said they expect President Bush will be on the receiving end of lots of lectures about the realities in the Middle East, though all of that in private. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies says many in the region have already written off this president.
ANTHONY CORDESMAN: People are going to be polite. They will be accommodating in some ways, but they're well aware that this is not only an election year, it is an election year from an administration that really has no heir that can really speak for the future or run for the future.
KELEMEN: Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Washington.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Even though the rate of growth is slowing, NPR's Joanne Silberner reports that news may not be as good as it sounds.
JOANNE SILBERNER: Every year since 1960, government economists have collected information on how much is spent on health care in the U.S. and by whom. Then they analyze how much things have changed since the year before. This year's analysis was headed by Aaron Catlin, an economist with the Department of Health and Human Services.
AARON CATLIN: Health spending in the United States accelerated slightly, picked up in growth to 6.7 percent in 2006. That's up two-tenths of a percentage point from 2005.
SILBERNER: Again, economist Aaron Catlin.
CATLIN: With the prescription drug estimate, we attribute about 50 percent of the growth in prescription drugs spending to increases in use. Some of that increased use had come from beneficiaries under Part D.
SILBERNER: But some other health experts say there are big problems ahead. Health care inflation is far from solved. Health care consultant Bob Lashefsky.
BOB LASHEFSKY: It's sort of like the ship is sinking at a reduced rate from where the ship was sinking before. Health care costs are going up at about twice the rate of inflation. Five years ago, they were going up at four times the rate of inflation.
SILBERNER: Paul Ginsburg sees other problems. He's president of the Center for Studying Health Systems Change, which has been examining health spending in communities around the country. For one thing, Ginsburg says, if the economy hits a downturn and wages slump, health care costs will take a bigger bite out of every paycheck. Plus, he expects that the nation's obesity epidemic is going to drive up health costs. And in traveling around the country, he's seen marketplace changes that worry him.
PAUL GINSBURG: What we've seen is that, you know, the hospitals and physicians have identified which services are the most profitable. So hospitals identify, you know, cardiac procedures, and physicians have identified imaging. And what's profitable they're building.
SILBERNER: Joanne Silberner, NPR News, Washington.
INSKEEP: Even with all that spending, a separate study out this week finds that the United States lags behind other developed countries in preventable deaths. You can get those numbers at npr.org/health.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
And NPR's Tom Gjelten reports that these parallel inquiries may now raise the question of which is more important.
TOM GJELTEN: The case of the destroyed CIA videotapes raised concerns in Congress and in the Justice Department for different reasons. Congressional leaders were unhappy the agency destroyed the interrogation tapes without telling them. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has scheduled a hearing into the matter on January 16th.
SILVESTRE REYES: There are a number of questions that we have about what created the situation we're in today. That is, why the committee was not informed about the debate within the agency about potentially destroying the videotape.
GJELTEN: Meanwhile, the Justice Department is moving ahead with its criminal investigation. Stephen Saltzburg of the George Washington University Law School says the destruction of the interrogation tapes could be a crime, even if no court had ordered that the tapes be preserved.
STEPHEN SALTZBURG: It is possible to obstruct justice before an investigation begins, if the person who is destroying evidence has reason to believe that there will be some kind of a formal proceeding and the intent is to assure that this evidence is not available.
GJELTEN: Chairman Reyes says his committee will consider its oversight responsibility versus the Justice Department's prosecution responsibility. He won't say what the committee will do, but he's not promising to stay out of the Justice Department's way.
REYES: Just like we would not expect justice to comply with a request from us that might compromise their rule, we certainly are not going to agree to do anything just simply because the Department of Justice ask us.
GJELTEN: Stephen Saltzburg, who served as an independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation 20 years ago, says the controversy over the destruction of the interrogation videotapes is so important that the congressional oversight committees may choose to move ahead with their inquiries regardless of the impact on the criminal investigation.
SALTZBURG: Now, I think Congress is of a mind to say that oversight matters, that Congress has a role to play in deciding what kind of interrogation techniques are permissible. And that may be, in terms of American credibility and the world view of the United States, that may be more important for Congress to get this right than prosecuting every single person who might possibly be prosecuted for a crime that could be discovered.
GJELTEN: Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Jason Beaubien reports from New Orleans.
U: LSU, LSU, LSU...
JASON BEAUBIEN: Jubilant Louisiana State fans flooded onto Bourbon Street as the game ended. The decisive victory over the top-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes made LSU the first school to claim two gold championship series national titles. They also won it in 2004.
U: LSU, LSU, LSU...
BEAUBIEN: But in a college football season in which the number one ranking was as elusive as a clear-cut leader in the Republican presidential race, the victory for LSU didn't come easily. And early in the game, it was far from certain. Soon after the opening kickoff, Ohio State fans at a bar called Utopia celebrated the Buckeyes' early 10-to-nothing lead.
U: It is early - not even five minutes into the game - but Ohio State could not have scripted a better start so far.
BEAUBIEN: But LSU clawed its way back in the first half. The Tigers' defense blocked a field goal and then picked off an Ohio State pass to shift the momentum of the game solidly in LSU's favor.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BEAUBIEN: In a city known for the blues and that's known sorrow on biblical proportions of late, Louisiana State's appearance in the national title game was another excuse for a celebration. And on a beer-strewn sidewalk in the French Quarter, LSU sophomore Lee Engel(ph) was doing just that.
MONTAGNE: This is New Orleans, the most dirtiest, nastiest, most beautiful place on the planet. And either way, I don't care who wins, it's all good.
BEAUBIEN: Buckeye fans were also reveling in the beautiful nastiness of Bourbon Street. Ohio State alum Jason Smith(ph), beer in hand, shrugged off the loss.
MONTAGNE: Yes, I'm disappointed, but you know what? Getting in the National Championship Game two years in a row was a feat in of itself, but too bad we lost.
BEAUBIEN: Jason Beaubien, NPR News, New Orleans.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Good morning once again, John.
JOHN FEINSTEIN: Steve, I don't know if the cobwebs have shaken off yet, but good morning.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: Good to talk with you. So how did LSU win this game?
FEINSTEIN: But the team that really didn't belong in this game was Ohio State, because the Big Ten was such an overrated conference this year. As mentioned in the piece, Michigan lost to Appalachian State.
INSKEEP: So does that suggest that LSU's two losses really does show about how good a team they were? Really good, not the greatest ever, but Ohio State was just inferior in your opinion?
FEINSTEIN: Yes. I think that's a good description. LSU's two losses were both in triple overtime. So they could have been undefeated; they were not. Southern California had injuries. They could have been undefeated; they were not. There were no great teams this year. There were very good teams like the ones I've mentioned. And again, this gets back to the same argument we have every year in January: there should be a playoff system so you can determine that national champion and who plays for the National Championship on the field, not by computers and votes of sportswriters and people like that.
INSKEEP: Well, is there anybody other than LSU who got into the championship game by that system and won? And is there anybody else who has a legitimate claim on the national title today, according to some people?
FEINSTEIN: Well, yes. I mean, Georgia, which played in the same conference as LSU and also had two losses certainly can make a claim. They finished the year with seven straight wins. As I said, Southern Cal, which dominated another Big Ten team, Illinois, in the Rose Bowl. And even Kansas, which finished way down in the polls, seventh, they only had one loss all season. And that was to Missouri, which finished fourth in the polls. So any of those teams can make that claim, as can LSU, of course, and that - maybe the presidents at Georgia, Southern Cal and Kansas will be so upset by what happened that they'll take a step in the direction of a playoff.
INSKEEP: Nobody was undefeated though. Hawaii had a shot.
FEINSTEIN: Right.
INSKEEP: Didn't get anywhere near it.
FEINSTEIN: No, Hawaii got crushed in the Sugar Bowl by Georgia. And unfortunately now people are saying, well, this proves that the teams from the non-BCS conference aren't good enough, they shouldn't play against the powers. Last year, Boise State beat Oklahoma when they had the chance to play against a power school. That's why we should have a tournament so that we can have a George Mason a la basketball in football.
INSKEEP: One last thing, John. And be honest now. Did you manage to watch the game last night all the way to the end?
FEINSTEIN: All the way to the end. It took forever, didn't it? And that's because there is one really bad rule that needs to be changed in college football. They call a timeout every time a team gets a first down. They need to go to the NFL rule where they call timeout only in the last two minutes when a team is trying to win the game. The games are much too long for everybody.
INSKEEP: All right. John Feinstein after an the endurance contest last night, thanks very much.
FEINSTEIN: Okay. Thanks, Steve.
INSKEEP: His latest book is "Cover-up: Mystery at the Super Bowl."
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Tom Goldman has more.
TOM GOLDMAN: Clemens' lawyer, Rusty Hardin, knew what people were thinking. If Clemens really were innocent, why wouldn't he come out and say it himself right away? So yesterday, Hardin explained, it was he who muzzled Clemens.
RUSTY HARDIN: I understand you all wanted instant denials. But as is real clear, this is an issue that has implications not just for his reputation and his career as he goes into the sunset, but for his human jeopardy. Why in the world would we want to start talking to anyone before we, the people advising him, were totally comfortable?
GOLDMAN: Unidentified Man: 1998 you were 16-6 and you go 14-0. Do you feel the need to tell your side of that story for the...
ROGER CLEMENS: Let me just stop you right there. This is not about records and heroes and numbers. I could give a rat's (bleep) about that. This is about my health. I have always been concerned about my health, what I put in my body. Okay?
GOLDMAN: It was a much more subdued Clemens earlier in the press conference on tape. Hardin played a recording he'd made last week of a phone conversation between McNamee and Clemens, who speaks first.
(SOUNDBITE OF RECORDING)
CLEMENS: Like I said, I'm numb. My family's numb.
MCNAMEE: I know that. I know that.
CLEMENS: Like I said, I'll fly out tomorrow to talk to you face to face, whatever you want me to do. What do you want me to do?
GOLDMAN: Tom Goldman, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Its stock price is down almost 50 percent from a year ago - 50 percent, that's like the difference between a venti and a tall. And the giant coffee chain has brought back its former CEO Howard Schultz to run the company. Schultz has publicly complained that Starbucks is losing its way.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
And forgetting about consumers as it expands. Schultz says he plans to open fewer stores this year. He also faces a slowdown in consumer spending and heavy competition from McDonald's, Steve - McDonald's. The hamburger chain plans to open coffee bars in its fast food outlets in a bit, to steal Starbucks' customers.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
David Wessel is economics editor of the Wall Street Journal and a regular guest here. David, good morning.
DAVID WESSEL: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Okay. Let's talk about possible solutions to economic problems that people have put on the table - tax cuts?
WESSEL: And Marty Feldstein, who was a Reagan adviser - like Mr. Summers, a Harvard professor - is also calling for fiscal stimulus. His idea is a little different. He thinks we ought to legislate it now, and then put it into effect if unemployment keeps rising.
INSKEEP: You know, when people used to say fiscal stimulus, they were talking about increasing government spending. Is anybody talking about that?
WESSEL: That seems to be off the table at the moment. You are absolutely right. These days, people look at President Bush's 2001 tax cut as kind of the accidental perfect fiscal stimulus. It was conceived before the economy weakened. But it turned out to hit just right. And some people would like to do that again now.
INSKEEP: What is President Bush proposing, if anything, to deal with the economy?
WESSEL: Well, last week President Bush started talking about considering options for fiscal stimulus. But in the speech that he gave yesterday and another speech that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gave, they didn't unveil any new initiatives. Instead, they emphasized that they are watching the economy. They are concerned. They're not ruling things out. But they continue to talk about the existing policies and how important they are to keep the economy going. And of course the president wants to make his tax cuts permanent and will position himself against the Democrats who want to raise taxes on upper income people if they win the election.
INSKEEP: Are they talking about the existing policies? Because in spite of a lot of turmoil and concern, the feeling at the White House is that things are not really that bad.
WESSEL: I'm certain that the White House is as worried about the economy as anybody else. And there's an awful lot of uncertainty. I think that when Congress and the White House try and fine tune the economy, they usually end up doing too much or too little or doing it too late. And so their inclination is to target their efforts on specific problems, as Mr. Paulson has talked about - dealing with foreclosures, avoiding them, and working on getting the banks to lend again.
INSKEEP: And let's talk about the guy whose job is to fine-tune the economy: the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. What might he do in the future?
WESSEL: Well, the conventional wisdom about economists is that this is best left to the Federal Reserve. And markets expect the Fed to continue to cut interest rates. They've cut interest rates a full percentage point already. Most people in the markets expect another full percentage point at least in rate cuts over the next year. And many people think that'll be enough to soften the blow of housing - probably not to avoid a recession, but to keep it mild.
INSKEEP: Anybody actually likely to pass a tax cuts, say, or some other proposal?
WESSEL: I was at the American Economic Association meetings over the weekend, and Paul Krugman, the economist and New York Times columnist, said one side will not accept tax cuts for rich people and the other side won't take action without tax cuts for the rich.
INSKEEP: David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal, good to talk with you again.
WESSEL: You're welcome.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
MORNING EDITION's tech guru is Mario Armstrong. We called him to help in figuring out what this means for the consumer. Morning, Mario.
MARIO ARMSTRONG: Good morning, Renee. How are you?
MONTAGNE: Pretty good. Now that Warner Brothers is backing the Blu-ray - so Blu-ray must be feeling pretty good, is it a done deal? Will Blu-ray become the industry's standard format?
ARMSTRONG: Yeah, I don't think right now we can claim that HD-DVD, the rival format of Blu-ray, is out for the count at this point. This is a significant blow against the HD-DVD movement. And this only leaves now, Renee, Paramount and Universal Studios as the only two exclusive studios left to HD-DVD. And the big winner in this whole format war really is going to come down to who can attract more of the studios. And right now Blu-ray is winning.
MONTAGNE: And is Blu-ray any better or different than HD-DVD?
ARMSTRONG: But the average consumer doesn't really care, I think, about the technical standards more than will the movie that I want to watch be available on the format that I can view.
MONTAGNE: Well, if Blu-ray wins this war of the formats and becomes a standard, is that better for the consumers in the sense that there is a standard?
ARMSTRONG: Yes and no, because - yes, in the sense that there is a standard because now studios and hardware manufacturers, people that make the devices that would play these disks, can now focus on one format. And that would be great. The bad side would be no competition. And that could drive up market prices, not drive them down.
MONTAGNE: Mario, thank you.
ARMSTRONG: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Mario Armstrong is MORNING EDITION's regular commentator on technology. He also hosts the technology show, "Armstrong's Digital Spin" on member station WEAA in Baltimore.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
If you're like our listener Cliff Burke(ph), this is your day. Mr. Burke wrote us the other day to complain every day, week after week, you start with the election. Hillary this, Obama that. There comes a time to stop beating a dead horse. And listener Margie McLain(ph) added, other things are happening in the world.
MONTAGNE: Here's why this is their day. New Hampshire is voting. And on the day of major elections, we tend to cutback our political coverage. It gives people a little extra room to vote. So we'll watch the New Hampshire vote all day long.
INSKEEP: But we'll wait for the in-depth coverage until there's actually something to tell you. Many NPR stations will carry an election special tonight after the polls close. And in the meantime, here is some of the other news.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Kathy Lohr reports.
KATHY LOHR: It had been a couple of decades since anyone used the citizens' petition drive to call for a grand jury in Kansas when the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families ran across the law.
PHILLIP COSBY: We found the statue, dusted it off, and started using it.
LOHR: Phillip Cosby with the group's Kansas City office says communities from Abilene to Overland Park have called grand juries to target outlets that sold, what he believes, were obscene materials. Seven grand juries were called in four years. And Cosby says six of those brought indictments.
COSBY: So what it is, is we the people in Kansas do enjoy a place where we can touch a lever of power to actually move prosecutors, and that's the way the law reads. Once the signatures are gathered, they have to investigate what the people are asking for.
LOHR: Cheryl Sullenger is with Operation Rescue.
CHERYL SULLENGER: I am absolutely and 100 percent convinced we would not have an investigation without the citizens' petitions.
LOHR: A grand jury looked into Tiller's practice in 2006 but failed to indict him. The former attorney general filed 30 charges against Tiller, but they were dismissed. Sullenger said the local D.A. refused to pursue charges, leading her group to act.
SULLENGER: We're using a legal process that has been provided to the citizens of the state of Kansas to get an investigation. This isn't harassment. This is just, let's look into this. Let's see what's really going on there. And if the laws are being violated, let's go ahead and have charges filed like we would have for anyone else who violated the law.
LOHR: Tiller has denied any wrongdoing and claims the grand jury is harassment. Julie Burkhart with the pro-choice political action committee, ProKanDo, agrees.
JULIE BURKHART: This has been used as a political wedge issue far too long in this state as well as in this nation.
LOHR: Burkhart says the grand jury petition is a tool being used by a small group that she says wants to reduce access to women's health care.
BURKHART: And this is a political witch hunt. We would like for these things to stop in this state so that we can get on with the real business of the people here.
LOHR: Kathy Lohr, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
NPR's legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg has more.
NINA TOTENBERG: But the procedures used by the state were so complicated as to invite problems, and that a simple alternative was available. That didn't seem to impress conservative members of the court like Justice Antonin Scalia.
ANTONIN SCALIA: This is an execution, not surgery. The other side contends that to know whether the person is unconscious or not, all it takes is a slap in the face and shaking the person.
DONALD VERRILLI: Justice Breyer observed that death penalty supporters see this challenge as something of a ruse.
BREYER: What the other side says is well you are just trying to do this by the back door, insist upon a procedure that can't be used.
VERRILLI: Well, I think that one point of the one-drug protocol, of course, is to demonstrate that we're not doing that.
TOTENBERG: In short, said lawyer Verrilli, the challenges are offering a viable one-drug alternative. Chief Justice Roberts...
ROBERTS: Do we know whether there are risks of pain accompanying that method?
VERRILLI: I think you do, Mr. Chief Justice because by definition, barbiturates cannot inflict pain.
TOTENBERG: Justice Breyer said, however, that he remains unpersuaded by the studies he has seen about the relative merits of different methods to end a life by lethal injection.
BREYER: I'm left at sea. I understand your contention. You claim that this is somehow more painful than some other method. But which?
VERRILLI: Well...
BREYER: And what's the evidence for that? What do I read to find it?
VERRILLI: The thiopental is a barbiturate that by definition will inflict death painlessly.
TOTENBERG: Justice Stevens followed up...
STEVENS: What is the justification for the second drug?
ROY ENGLERT: It does bring about a more dignified death - dignified for the inmate, dignified for the witnesses.
STEVENS: So the dignity of the process outweighs the risk of excruciating pain.
ENGLERT: No, your honor. No. It takes a very long time to die with the one- drug protocol.
STEVENS: It's very long then - 10 minutes?
TOTENBERG: Here, for example, is Justice Souter...
SOUTER: What's disturbing Justice Breyer, what's disturbing me and others is, we want some kind of a definitive decision here. And it seems to me that the most expeditious way of getting it - if comparative analysis is appropriate - and I will be candid to say I think it is - is to send this case back and say, okay, do a comparative analysis. Make the findings.
TOTENBERG: Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
He may also have the last word in Pakistani politics as well, as NPR's Philip Reeves reports.
PHILIP REEVES: This is the place where Benazir Bhutto was killed - a shrine with flowers and candles has sprung up on the sidewalk. Roger Mohammad Yasin(ph) is standing beside it in tears.
ROGER MOHAMMAD YASIN: (Speaking foreign language)
REEVES: Since Bhutto's assassination, Yasin has spent every day at this place, here in the city of Rawalpindi. Today, it's raining and very cold. Yasin is 27 in penniless. He says every night, he sleeps here beside the shrine on the ground.
MOHAMMAD YASIN: (Through translator) She is our leader. I don't want to leave her.
REEVES: Yasin speaks of Benazir Bhutto as if she's a deity. But he also reveres the man who's replaced her.
MOHAMMAD YASIN: (Through translator) He is capable of running the party. People's Party has a bright future.
REEVES: That man is Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's husband. For years, Zardari has been one of the most controversial figures in Pakistani politics. Now, he could soon be one of the most powerful.
(SOUNDBITE OF MEN YELLING)
REEVES: Unidentified Man: It was pre-plan. It was pre-planned as such.
REEVES: Zardari immediately installed their son, Bilawal, as the party's chairman and symbolic leader. The party's always been a dynasty. But Bilawal is only 19 years old and still immersed in his studies at Oxford University. 51- year-old Zardari is the man in charge.
TARIQ BHATT: He wants to run the party. He wants to become the prime minister.
REEVES: Journalist Tariq Bhatt(ph) has tracked Zardari for 20 years.
BHATT: He wants to be a king. He wants to be the real power. He wants to replace Benazir Bhutto now after she is dead.
REEVES: Retired Air Vice Marshal Raji Mussefsai(ph), a party stalwart, is impressed.
RAJI MUSSEFSAI: He delivered himself very well on friends, and despite the fact that he has had no exposure in the last few years.
TANVE AHMED KHAM: The nation of Pakistan is a very insecure nation today. It's paranoid.
REEVES: That's Tanve Ahmed Kham(ph), he was foreign secretary in one of Bhutto's governments.
AHMED KHAM: Anybody who can hold out the promise of just steering the ship of the state through these trouble and waters can get enormous dividend out of it - a big deal will be forgotten.
REEVES: Not, says, Tanve Ahmed Kham in Pakistan.
AHMED KHAM: Anybody can really have a (unintelligible) in Pakistani politics. I mean, you know, he knows that in the short run, there'll be far too much opposition. And people will recap all things. He knows that there has to be the intermediate stage. But this does not mean that they'll not have long-term memberships.
REEVES: Like Benazir Bhutto, Zardari talks of a progressive, moderate Pakistan. But his style is different. That much was clear, says Tanve Ahmed Kham, while Bhutto was in office.
AHMED KHAM: Mr. - intended to withdraw into a group of his own making. They tough in their manners. They toughened their attitudes. And they did not resonate well with the more literate segments of the People's Party.
REEVES: Journalist Tariq Bhatt agreed that Zardari is fun to be with, but not always.
BHATT: He has that professional of being autocratic. And he, at times, is very insulting to people. But maybe he will change himself. Some people says he has the ability to change and he has changed himself after the death of Benazir Bhutto.
REEVES: But Nusraph Javet(ph), a TV presenter and political commentator says Zardari played a huge part in Bhutto's life.
NUSRAPH JAVET: I know it for a fact she was almost madly in-love with him.
REEVES: Speaking at the Bhutto ancestral home on the day he took charge, Zardari said he didn't know exactly why Benazir Bhutto had chosen him as leader.
ASIF ALI ZARDARI: She saw something in me that you haven't. I don't know whether I'm up to the task, only time shall tell. I have a lot of friends with me. I have a lot of - the whole party with me - to guide me.
REEVES: And the corruption allegations...
ALI ZARDARI: Obviously, she didn't believe them and neither did the people of Pakistan.
REEVES: Some of the people of Pakistan aren't so sure. At the scene of Bhutto's killing, Mohammad Afrak(ph), a carpenter, has come to pay his respects. He says he's a party loyalist mourning his lost leader. And he doesn't much like her replacement.
MOHAMMAD AFRAK: Philip Reeves, NPR News, Islamabad.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
And Eleanor Beardsley has been closely watching the French president's love life for us. Eleanor, what did he say?
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY: Unknown woman: (Speaking in French).
NICOLAS SARKOZY: (Speaking in French).
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SARKOZY: (Speaking in French).
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: Eleanor, you want to translate that for us?
BEARDSLEY: That's right. So that's the journalist, the French journalist, she finally says, you know, public and private life are linked with you. Are you going to get married to Carla Bruni and when?
INSKEEP: Oh.
BEARDSLEY: He talks about their trip to Egypt, which was every Christmas. He talks about them being spotted at Euro Disney. He says, if you think you're being manipulated, don't send your photographers. And then at the end, everyone's waiting, and he goes, but you guessed it. It's very serious. We're serious. But it's not a newspaper who's going to set my wedding date.
INSKEEP: Noticed that he ducked to that question about whether he's getting married or not.
BEARDSLEY: He ducked it but then he said this: but there's a good chance you'll hear about it when it's already done. So now, it's sort of clear that there is going to be a marriage and it's going to be maybe a secret thing and nobody's going to find out until it's done. But he made it clear that they're serious and they're together.
INSKEEP: Are there serious policy implications when the president of France is dating a supermodel?
BEARDSLEY: And then he is going to Saudi Arabia very shortly and he's not taking her there at all because, obviously, an unmarried couple cannot visit Saudi Arabia like that. So it is causing some problems abroad.
INSKEEP: Eleanor, thanks very much.
BEARDSLEY: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: Eleanor Beardsley with the latest from Paris.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Wade Goodwyn reports.
WADE GOODWYN, Host:
It was a gathering of moderates. Two former senators - David Boren from Oklahoma and Sam Nunn from Georgia hosted the panel. The two Democrats' purpose was to urge the presidential candidates from both parties to heed a call of bipartisanship. There was a sense of urgency rooted in the belief expressed by Senator Nunn that this country's well-being is diminishing.
SAM NUNN: National surveys reveal that an unprecedented seven out of ten citizens believe that life for their children will not be as good as their own. Approval for the United States around the world has dropped to historically low levels, with only one out of four people approving of our country's actions.
GOODWYN: Former U.S. Senator Jack Danforth, a Missouri Republican, was one of the many who spoke longingly of the way it used to be.
JACK DANFORTH: What has happened in American politics in recent years is that each of the two political parties has appealed to the base of the party, the true believers of the party.
GOODWYN: Republican consulted Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower, came the closest.
SUSAN EISENHOWER: Health care, baby boomers retiring, infrastructure - all of these are big ticket items. So the reason we need bipartisanship is it's going to require political courage to make choices. And what I'd like to see these candidates do is get up and tell us what their priorities are.
GOODWYN: Most of the national media probably would have ignored this feel-good exercise and bipartisanship if New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg hadn't been one of the panelists. But Bloomberg's presence fueled interest because of speculation that he might run for president as an independent, using his multi- billion dollar fortune to do what fewer other independents ever could. Bloomberg recently renounced his membership in the Republican Party. But, as he has done in the past, yesterday he gave no indication that he actually intends to run.
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: Look, I'm not a candidate, number one, I am a former businessman and a mayor. I think what has changed is that people have stopped working together. Government is dysfunctional. And, I think, lastly, there is no willingness to focus on big ideas. Congress and all of government seems to focus on the small things until the public gets so fed up that they then have to do something. And then invariably what comes out of it is a comprise like you saw in the energy bill.
GOODWYN: Wade Goodwyn, NPR News, Norman, Oklahoma.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
NPR's Linda Wertheimer reports on some primary tradition.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD NOISE)
LINDA WERTHEIMER: Concord is the state capital and on the last day of campaigning, there was a party going on in front of the state house. It was warm, almost spring like. There were crowds of partisans waving signs, car horns honking, buses bringing candidates and reporters, a snowman demonstrating against global warming. It was not always so. Cathy Mayer(ph) was taking in the scene in Concord this morning. She said her first primary was 1976, she worked in a hairdressing shop in Peterborough and she met her first presidential candidate, quietly trolling for voters in diners, and mills, and beauty shops.
CATHY MAYER: We came in to a shop and everybody - because there was a radio station down below, and the people in the shop said who is he, and I said, he's Jimmy Carter. And he's going to be the next president, and then he was.
WERTHEIMER: Jimmy Carter was the first president in recent times to successfully use New Hampshire as a catapult into the White House. Candidates have since followed his lead. Theresa Rosenberger is a lobbyist for AARP. She moved here 20 years ago just in time to see the comeback kid make his comeback.
THERESA ROSENBERGER: My first primary was 1992 and that was when Bill Clinton was running the first time against George Bush, and I saw it from a very different perspective.
WERTHEIMER: Paula Rogers(ph) also had a different view of her first primary. She was a little girl.
PAULA ROGERS: Captain Eisenhower and Stevenson...
WERTHEIMER: That's the farthest I can go. With that have been key (unintelligible)? I can't remember either.
ROGERS: Maybe, I don't know. But it was Captain Eisenhower I remember particularly.
WERTHEIMER: What did it feel like then?
ROGERS: Well, I was a child. So I'm not yet sure exactly what it felt like. But I do remember a lot of radio coverage. I do remember people visiting New Hampshire. I remember something about a chicken and I can't remember whether it was (unintelligible), but it became part of the campaign story.
WERTHEIMER: Paula Rogers is a prominent lawyer now in Concord. Theresa Rosenberger worries that just five days between Iowa and New Hampshire means late deciders won't have private time with candidates.
ROSENBERGER: In the past, you would have time between Iowa and New Hampshire, so you really could go sit down with a candidate, see him again in living rooms or groups of a hundred. And you really felt like you knew him now. It's so concentrated you're in on the debate.
WERTHEIMER: Brian Shea owns the Barley House. This week, he invented a healthy low-fat burger named for a certain weight-conscious candidate.
BRIAN SHEA: So we put it on a whole wheat bun, fresh baby spinach, fresh tomato and fried pickle. You know, you also have the option of getting the bison burger which you can take it up to another level.
WERTHEIMER: Dr. Roger Brooks is the principal.
ROGER BROOKS: I believe that we owe every child in Beaver Meadow school a peak experience that will really shape who he or she becomes in life.
WERTHEIMER: Look out for some of them to become news anchors. Brooks has teams of news-gathering fifth graders who'd been brought to the process all school year. Zac Spiegel(ph) is a so-called kid reporter for scholastic magazine who dove between the legs of larger journalists to get to the front and get a story.
SPIEGEL: My second one with Barack Obama. That was probably my - it's probably my biggest story because a lot, a lot, a lot of people like him. John McCain was my biggest like writing story, but it was pretty huge.
WERTHEIMER: Linda Wertheimer, NPR News, New Hampshire.
INSKEEP: And so that's the past and here's the future. You can hear NPR's special coverage and analysis of today's New Hampshire's primaries tonight starting eight o'clock Eastern Time on many NPR stations and at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Kim Masters reports that both "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" went on without material from their writing staffs.
KIM MASTERS: Stewart spent a good portion of his time talking about the striking writers and explaining in sympathetic and satirical terms why the studios are unwilling to pay them a percentage of revenues from the Internet.
(SOUNDBITE OF "THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART")
JON STEWART: It's very simple why writers are not paid for Internet content. It's actually a very clever formula. The distance to the screen divided by the size of the screen, squared, times two and a half equals shut the (bleep) up.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
MASTERS: According to Union rules, Stewart, a Writers Guild member, is not permitted to perform material that was written in advance, even if he wrote it himself. Still, his opening monologue did not seemed entirely unscripted. That point was noted in a little end-of-show banter with Stephen Colbert.
(SOUNDBITE OF "THE COLBERT REPORT" SHOW)
STEPHEN COLBERT: Jon, I watched some of your show tonight and I'm going to tell you I'm very alarmed by how prepared you seemed.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
COLBERT: I will be making a phone call to the Writers Guild People's Council for the Preservation of the Written Word.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
COLBERT: It will not go unnoted, sir.
STEWART: Please don't turn me in.
MASTERS: Colbert spent a bit more time on politics, but like Stewart, he made several references to the strike and his lack of the usual scripted material. And he signed off with this.
(SOUNDBITE OF "THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART")
STEWART: Writers, I'll see you in my dream. Goodnight everybody.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
MASTERS: Jon Stewart's only guest was Ron Seeber, a labor professor from Cornell University. Stewart asked him a question that he's been on many minds in Hollywood in recent weeks.
(SOUNDBITE OF "THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART")
STEWART: Is this intractable and it literally has gone to the point of they're both dead to each other and it goes on for months now?
RON SEEBER: It's never intractable...
MASTERS: Kim Masters, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
As Joel Rose reports, the show tries to present a sympathetic portrait of this sadly misunderstood profession.
JOEL ROSE: Anyone who's ever come back to their car to find out a little envelope under the windshield wiper knows exactly what this man is going through. Denial followed by anger.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SERIES, "PARKING WARS")
DANIELLE O: Unidentified Man: (Unintelligible).
CONNOR: Unidentified Man: Why don't you get it fixed? That's what I'm saying...
ROSE: That's a scene from TV series "Parking Wars." The argument goes on like this for a while before the driver finally gives up and speeds away. For ticket writer Danielle O'Connor(ph), this is just another day at the office.
CONNOR: Unidentified Woman: You don't like being wrong.
CONNOR: Have a nice day.
ROBERT SHARENOW: They're targets and more so than any other job I can think of.
ROSE: Robert Sharenow is the vice president at A&E, the cable network that's producing "Parking Wars."
SHARENOW: There's no other job in the public sphere where people walked down the street and are mocked and yelled at and sometimes spit at. And you developed, you know, a real fix skin and part of that personal armory is to have a sense of humor to be able to laugh it off.
ROSE: This isn't the first time A&E has focused its cameras on the Philadelphia Parking Authority. It was also the subject of a one-hour documentary in 2003. Parking Authority's Deputy Director Linda Miller hopes the show will create some sympathy for her crews.
LINDA MILLER: We're hoping that it will soften the aspect when people encounter our people on the street and understand it's what they do on a daily basis and it's their job.
ROSE: What you won't see on the show is any mentioned of recent scandals over perks for Parking Authority managers and other financial shenanigans. Executive Producer Robert Sharenow says the show focuses instead on the human drama.
SHARENOW: People do harbor such deep-seated emotions about their cars. It's almost like a family member. So when they have their family member taken away, you get some very irrational reaction.
ROSE: Unidentified Woman #2: And so like (unintelligible).
ROSE: An unscientific poll conducted outside the Parking Authority office on a bitterly cold day suggests that a lot of Philadelphians know about the show and some may even watch it.
MERRILL DRIVER: Yes, yes. I think they'd be funny.
JENNIFER GEE: Watching people get their car, running after their cars.
DRIVER: Like running after a tow truck and stuff.
KENNY HOLMES, Host:
Some think a writer work in this kind of weather and worst, you know, and then going into a hostile environment. Yeah, I have sympathy for some of them. For some of them, not all of them.
ROSE: Kenny Holmes, Jennifer Gee and Merrill Driver. But Sarah Jacobson(ph) says she will not be watching the show when it premiers tonight.
CHERRY JACOBSON: Because I think that that's in a way supporting them and I don't ant to support them at all because they've towed my car three times.
ROSE: For NPR News, I'm Joel Rose in Philadelphia.
INSKEEP: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Security in Iraq may have improved, but the drop in violence hasn't been matched by political progress. Last year, President Bush insisted on a series of benchmarks, although none of those benchmarks has become law yet. The U.S. military has fostered reconciliation efforts at the local level. Those efforts haven't been matched at the national level, where political battles continue to paralyze the government.
In this next of our reports on one year into the U.S. troop surge in Iraq, NPR's Anne Garrels examines the political landscape there.
ANNE GARRELS: No one has anything good to say about the current Iraqi government, not even Barham Salih, the deputy prime minister.
Mr. BARHAM SALIH (Deputy Prime Minister, Iraq): I think we do have a very serious political crisis in this country. We need to do a lot better in terms of bringing about the political environment that can sustain these security gains. Iraq is in need of exceptionally qualified, capable government. My government, the government of which I am part of, leaves a lot to be desired. A country like Iraq cannot be run like this.
GARRELS: What was billed as a national unity government has fractured. Sectarian and political fights over power have left one-third of the government's ministries leaderless, with resulting chaos.
Kassim Daood, a member of parliament with the ruling Shiite coalition, says it's the U.S., not the Iraqi government, which has improved security. He says Iraqi Sunnis turned against al-Qaida not because of anything the government did, but because al-Qaida overplayed its hand and the U.S. stepped in to help Sunnis now willing to battle insurgents.
Mr. KASSIM DAOOD (Shiite Parliament Member, Iraq): We need badly the engagement of the government. Probably we may lose now the momentum. For the time being, I'm calling cease-fire. I'm not calling a real reconciliation. If you want me to call it a real reconciliation, I would like to see the fingerprint of the government on this process.
GARRELS: U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker says the government must do more to reassure Sunnis who have turned on al-Qaida. One way is to provide jobs.
Ambassador RYAN CROCKER (U.S. Ambassador to Iraq): We'll do job creation for a while, but the Iraqi government - as it will have to do in a number of other areas - is going to have to pick up the larger and larger share of this as we move ahead.
GARRELS: The U.S. military has been busy getting Sunni and Shiite leaders to work together at the local level, but Crocker acknowledges this has not been replicated by Iraqi officials at the national level.
Ambassador CROCKER: That's got to happen or nothing good is coming down the line.
GARRELS: M.P. Kassim Daood doesn't see any hope of progress as long as Nouri al-Maliki remains prime minister. He says Maliki is dangerously sectarian and the government clinically dead. He's exasperated with the Bush administration's continued support for Maliki.
Mr. DAOOD: Basically, we cannot improve it without changing the government itself. When we want to start any initiative regarding to this, we immediately receiving one of these statements from your president saying that I'm supporting Maliki. And this has played a very destructive way in our efforts and really frustrating us.
GARRELS: Charles Tripp, an Iraq specialist at London University, says the current chaos serves the interests of many and may well continue for a long time.
Professor CHARLES TRIPP (University of London): There is an array of characters and parties and personalities and factions who are not discontented with the relative powerlessness and loss of authority of Maliki himself. It doesn't do much for national government, but it allows a lot of people to line their own nests, develop their own militias, create their local power bases, insert themselves into forms of power in Iraq.
GARRELS: It's not just the executive branch which is a problem. The Iraqi parliament doesn't get a passing grade either. For the past month, it didn't muster a quorum.
In a rare public interference in politics, the leading Shiite religious figure in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, refused to bless parliamentarians who recently went on the pilgrimage to Mecca, declaring they had more important things to do here at home.
(Soundbite of crowd)
GARRELS: At Baghdad's social services office, displaced Iraqis are united in one thing: despair. The halls are crowded with the poor and the homeless. Hassan Abbass Shaker, an unemployed father of nine, has come here again and again, only to be turned away each time.
Mr. HASSAN ABBASS SHAKER: (Through translator) We risked our lives to vote for this government. Even if someone couldn't walk, he crawled to cast his vote. We hoped this government could achieve justice, but all they do is collect huge salaries.
GARRELS: American Colonel Ricky Gibbs, in charge of southwest Baghdad, is just as frustrated. He's ready to tear his hair out; this coming from a no-nonsense, crew-cut officer. He is trying to get a senior official from the Health Ministry to come to his area. But despite repeated efforts, no one has turned up.
Colonel RICKY GIBBS (U.S. Army): Now, I need to get that guy in here because I have three hospitals we need to open. And I have tried at every level that I know of from my Army chain of command through driving up there and meeting with people in the vice president's office saying I need this guy and he hasn't shown up yet. I've told them I will come pick you up in my armored vehicles.
GARRELS: Government corruption is a major problem, and benchmark laws on de-Baathification, oil, and provincial powers have stalled over lack of consensus on what kind of country Iraq should be. There's no agreement on what Americans might call states rights. The absence of these laws means it's not clear what levels of government are responsible for what. And as long as these laws are not passed, there are unlikely to be local elections, which Ambassador Crocker believes are critical to providing local credibility and stability.
Ambassador CROCKER: It's probably going to be fairly important to have elections, say, within the coming year as a means of, you know, regulating this competition.
GARRELS: In the meantime, Colonel Gibbs says people he meets tell him the Americans are the government for now.
Col. GIBBS: We're that link until the government stands up. And the people see us. You go over in East Rasheed and they told General Petraeus, they say the Americans are the government. We are delivering the services.
GARRELS: But American forces can't do everything. After five years, no one is meeting the expectations of Iraqis. And just as no one has anything good to say about the government, many Iraqis still blame the U.S. for their problems.
At the social services office, Iraqis are just as critical of the Americans as they are of the Iraqi government. Given its huge power, Iraqis say the Americans must be deliberately undermining Iraq.
But for all its effort to push the process, the Bush administration seems powerless to get timely results from the Iraqi government.
Anne Garrels, NPR News, Baghdad.
MONTAGNE: Tomorrow, our final story in our series on the one year anniversary of the surge. It examines another goal - getting Iraq's own army and police to take over security there.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Politics is front and center at the Supreme Court today as the justices examine the constitutionality of laws requiring voters to show a government-issued photo ID in order to cast a ballot. More than 20 states have enacted such laws in recent years, and Democrats contend that they suppress voter turnout.
NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports.
NINA TOTENBERG: Since the fateful 2000 election, Republicans in many states have pushed for voter ID laws to stave off what they see as a major problem: vote fraud through voter impersonation at the polls. But studies have shown the problem does not exist.
Democrat Tova Wang and her Republican counterpart conducted research and together filed a federally mandated report on this question.
Ms. TOVA WANG (Democrat, Program Officer, Democracy Fellow, The Century Foundation): We found that although there is fraud in the system, it doesn't take place at the polling place.
TOTENBERG: Royal Masset, who by his own estimate has been involved in some 5,000 Republican campaigns in Texas, agrees.
Mr. ROYAL MASSET (Republican Strategist): My experience is that in-person voter fraud is nonexistent. It doesn't happen, and if you really analyze it, it makes no sense because who's going to take the risk of going to jail on something so blatant that maybe changes one vote?
TOTENBERG: Voter fraud does exist, say the experts, but in more systematic ways, through ballot box stuffing, voter machine manipulation, registration list manipulation and absentee balloting.
Still, 24 states have passed some form of voter ID law. Indiana's is the strictest: It requires that anyone voting in person must present a current government photo ID.
If you don't have one, you can vote provisionally at the polls, but you must present the required ID at an appropriate government office within 10 days or your vote will not be counted. People who don't have IDs can get them free from the state, but must have appropriate documents, such as a certified birth certificate, and other secondary proof.
The Democratic Party and the American Civil Liberties Union went to court seeking to block the law, noting that there is not a single recorded case of voter-impersonation fraud in Indiana's history. A federal appeals court acknowledged that the law poses a heavier burden on groups that tend to vote Democratic - minorities, the poor and the elderly. But, the court said, the burden is slight.
Today in the Supreme Court, the state will argue that the law is necessary to promote public confidence in the system.
Indiana Attorney General Steven Carter.
Attorney General STEVEN CARTER (Indiana): There is concern about fraud in the future, so it's a preventative approach that hopefully can maintain the integrity of the voting process.
TOTENBERG: Countering that argument will be lawyer Paul Smith, representing those challenging the law.
Mr. PAUL SMITH (Lawyer): Under the Supreme Court's doctrine, the fundamental right to vote is protected from laws which look like legitimate regulations but don't actually serve any purpose while imposing significant burden.
TOTENBERG: The devil, Smith contends, is in the details of Indiana's law. He cites, for example, the case of a woman who made three trips to the motor vehicle bureau in a vain attempt to obtain a free voter ID card. Her problem, even after she obtained her birth certificate, was that it was not in her married name. While the state does provide free voter ID cards, lawyer Smith observes, voters incur considerable costs in time and money to secure the documents the state requires as a condition for getting the cards.
The League of Women Voters has filed a brief with concrete examples. One of them is Kim Tillman, an Indianapolis stay-at-home wife of a janitor and mother of seven children ages 1 to 11. In order to get the free voter ID card, she had to get her birth certificate from out of state, a process that she said would have cost as much as $50. And that was money she needed for household bills. Not being able to vote, she says, made her feel like she isn't a citizen.
Ms. KIM TILLMAN (Resident, Indianapolis): I believe that I should be able to have a voice, you know, to say who I would like governing the state that I live in. But unfortunately because of the state laws, I'm not able to do that.
TOTENBERG: The state contends that Mrs. Tillman could have voted if she had gone to the state offices within the 29 days before an election and sworn out an affidavit saying she is indigent, a process she would have to repeat prior to each election. There is no indigency affidavit provided on Election Day at the polls.
In the most recent mayoral election in Indianapolis, the city documented 34 cases of voters who had voted repeatedly and consistently in past years and whose signatures matched their registrations, but who had to cast provisional votes because they did not have the proper ID. Only two of those 34 voters went back within the required 10-day period after the election with the appropriate ID so their votes would be counted.
Attorney General Carter notes that 34 voters out of 160,000 isn't all that many.
Attorney General CARTER: So those who didn't have the proper photo identification was really a miniscule number in this urban county.
TOTENBERG: Voting rights lawyers counter that there were likely many more who just turned around and went home instead of taking the time to vote provisionally. In any event, they contend, even 34 votes, when duplicated in other locations throughout the state, can add up to hundreds, even thousands of votes which could decide a closely contested election.
And the challengers argue that without some proven problem with voter impersonation, the ID requirement is an undue burden on the right to vote and the right to run for office on a fair playing field.
Again, lawyer Paul Smith.
Mr. SMITH: If you think of an election as a race, a sprint, and if you could put up three hurdles in front of both runners, that it's an equal sprint, and in the end it's a fair contest. But if you can add an extra hurdle in front of one of the runners and not the other, then it doesn't prevent the runner from finishing the race, it just makes it a lot harder to win because you have this additional burden.
TOTENBERG: The state, however, counters that all voting regulations impose some inconvenience.
Secretary of State Todd Rokita.
Secretary of State TODD ROKITA (Indiana): There are burdens to register to vote; there are burdens in gas or shoe leather in going to the polls. That doesn't mean they were disenfranchised. They chose not to go through the parameters for voting in person on Election Day that required in Indiana.
TOTENBERG: State Attorney General Carter adds that even though registered voters without proper ID must take extra steps to legitimize their votes...
Attorney General CARTER: The elections don't sneak up on any of us. There is an opportunity to start that process if need be several weeks or months before the election.
TOTENBERG: There are no hard figures on how many eligible voters are without any current state or federal government photo ID. The state points out that in the hotly contested 2006 federal election in Indiana, voter participation was up by 2 percent.
But the Census Bureau and the Federal Highway Transportation Agency estimate that across the country, about 11 percent of voting-age citizens, some 21 million Americans, lack any form of current government-issued photo ID. The ubiquitous driver's license doesn't exist for many city dwellers who use public transportation, or for those too poor to own a car, or for senior citizens who no longer drive.
The lower courts have come to different conclusions about voter ID laws in different states. Some laws have been struck down and some upheld. Without exception, though, the judges have cast their votes along party lines, with Republican appointees in favor of the voter ID laws and Democratic appointees against. Now, with the legacy of Bush versus Gore lurking in the background, the Supreme Court is poised to pack another political punch.
Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
MONTAGNE: And you can learn more about voter ID requirements around the country at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
We turn, now, to sports and another story in this week's news. Pitcher Roger Clemens. This week, he angrily denied accusations he used banned drugs. For commentator Frank Deford, that calls to mind an athlete who played another sport at another time.
FRANK DEFORD: Most of you never heard of Ralph Beard, or if you did, had forgotten him by the time he died a weeks ago just short of age 80. But back in the 1940s, Beard was terrific all-American, who led Kentucky to two national championships and the United States to a gold medal in the 1948 Olympics. He was already a first-team NBA All-Star when it was revealed that he had taken money from gamblers to shave points in games at Kentucky.
Beard, like so many other players of that era, was summarily banned for life from the game. He admitted his guilt, too, saying that he had simply grown up poor and just couldn't resist taking the money. He lost it all for only about $700 - branded forever as a fixer.
We tend to be more critical of athletes, like Ralph Beard, who conspired to lose rather than those like steroid users, who cheat trying to win. But the fact is, that it makes no difference in which direction an athlete cheats. Either way, he's distorting fairness, which is the very essence of sport. Ralph Beard's transgressions caused his own team victory. If Roger Clemens or any other player named in the Mitchell Report is guilty as charged, then he cost other teams their fair due. What, pray, is the difference?
Now, of course, Clemens is taking a refrain from so many other guilty athletes' lyrics by claiming that he didn't know that he was being given a banned substance. Barry Bonds swore he thought it was all just flaxseed oil, remember?
But here, Clemens is disputing his trainer, Brian McNamee, who testified -under threat of jail if he was caught lying - that he injected Clemens with steroids and HGH.
The sad and bizarre phone call with McNamee that Clemens taped last Friday and then played in public seems only to me to confirm the pitcher's guilt. McNamee was distraught for having testified against his old friend and meal ticket. Time and again, he pleaded, what do you want me to do, Roger? Wouldn't an innocent man with a tape secretly running say, just tell the truth, Brian. But Clemens didn't. And never did McNamee volunteered that he had lied. He seemed only to regret that the truth had hurt so.
All right, I'm sorry. Perhaps I'm just too cynical. Perhaps I have just heard it all too often - even emotionally to my face - from athletes claiming with just as much dramatic insistence as Clemens, that they were innocent, only to be convicted later.
Even after he told the truth, Ralph Beard spent more than 50 years of his life in shame. If Roger Clemens is guilty, then he deserves no better. Let's put the right word on it. Any player who took steroids is a fixer. He fixed games.
MONTAGNE: Frank Deford joins us each Wednesday from member station WSHU in Fairfield, Connecticut.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
New Hampshire's presidential primary altered the race for both parties' nominations. On the Republican side, John McCain won. And we'll have more on that in a moment.
We begin with Hillary Clinton, who was expected to lose New Hampshire just hours before she didn't.
NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson is in Manchester, New Hampshire. And Mara, what happened?
MARA LIASSON: Well, what happened was we had a big upset. And it was pulled off by the candidate who had been the frontrunner; then she became the underdog after losing Iowa. She had been behind in all the public polls by an average of eight points; talk about a rollercoaster. Then she won by three points. And I would say that Hillary Clinton has earned the label of comeback kid, even more than her husband, who came in second here in 1992 and just called himself a comeback kid. But let's take a listen to what she had to say last night.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): Over the last week, I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
Sen. CLINTON: I felt like we all spoke from our hearts and I am so gratified that you responded. Now, together let's give America the kind of comeback that New Hampshire has just given me.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
LIASSON: The Clinton campaign is trying very hard to show that she's not the candidate of the past, and you could see it last night. There were a bunch of young kids behind her on the stage; that's very different than in Iowa, where she had Madeleine Albright and Wesley Clark standing with her.
INSKEEP: Although that image happened after the victory was sealed. How did she manage to pull this out, when all polls showed her behind?
LIASSON: Well, the polls are still a real mystery. The polls were actually very good predictors on every other aspect of the New Hampshire vote except the Clinton-Obama contest.
What appears to have happened is that unlike Iowa, where Obama won the female vote, women really came home to Clinton here in New Hampshire. She won big among women at all income levels. And also, even though Obama won independents, it wasn't by enough to offset the bigger margins that Hillary had among Democratic regulars.
Steve, you know, the results here surprised the Clinton campaign just as much as they did everyone else. They were fully expecting her to lose. They were getting ready to regroup for the big primaries on February 5th. Now she goes on to those contests with the wind at her back.
Sen. CLINTON: We're going to take what we've learned here in New Hampshire and we're going to rally on and make our case. We are in it for the long run.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
LIASSON: The results were a setback for Barack Obama. But when he addressed his supporters last night, he was upbeat.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): I am still fired up and ready to go.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
LIASSON: Obama is still strong in the upcoming Nevada caucuses and South Carolina primary. But his narrow loss in New Hampshire deprived him of the boost his campaign had been expecting from two back-to-back wins.
Sen. OBAMA: We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. And they will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks and months to come. We have been asked to pause for a reality check. We have been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
LIASSON: John Edwards placed third. And although he vowed to continue in the race, he doesn't have a lot of money. And his hope that the race would turn into a contest between himself and Obama has not panned out. Instead, the Democratic race has been transformed into a two-person battle - between Obama and Clinton, both well-funded popular candidates.
INSKEEP: So that's what's happening on the Democratic side. What about the Republicans?
LIASSON: On the Republican side, the establishment lost again. And New Hampshire voters chose their favorite maverick, John McCain. He had staked everything on New Hampshire after he ran out of money in the spring.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): When the pundits declared us finished, I told them I'm going to New Hampshire where the voters don't let you make their decision for them.
(Soundbite of crowd)
Sen. McCAIN: And when they asked, how are you going to do it? You're down in the polls, you don't have the money. I answered, I'm going to New Hampshire, and I'm going to tell people the truth.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
LIASSON: McCain held hundreds of town meetings and answered thousands of questions - winning New Hampshire votes the same way he did in the 2000 primary.
Sen. McCAIN: I'm past the age when I can claim the noun kid no matter what adjective precedes it.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Sen. McCAIN: But tonight we sure showed them what a comeback looks like.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
LIASSON: With McCain's win in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney has now lost two of the early states he had been counting on. But he did win the tiny Wyoming caucuses on Saturday. And he pointed that out last night in his concession speech.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): Well, another silver, and it's - I'd rather have a gold, but I got another silver. And now there've been...
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
Mr. ROMNEY: There have been three races so far. I have gotten two silvers and one gold. Thank...
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
Mr. ROMNEY: Thank you, Wyoming.
LIASSON: Although fewer independents voted in the Republican primary than the Democratic primary, McCain got the lion's share of their votes. He split support of Republicans with Romney. McCain also did better among the half of Republican voters who were unhappy with President Bush. Romney carried those who were satisfied with the president.
Then there was Mike Huckabee, the Republican who came in third. Every candidate has music at their election night parties, but Huckabee was the only one whose introduction had a soundtrack.
(Soundbite of music, "Also Sprach Zarathustra")
Unidentified Man: Outspent 20-1, he shocked the world with a landslide victory in the Iowa caucus.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Unidentified Man: And now New Hampshire has sent a message to the world that two months ago no one would have believed.
LIASSON: Huckabee has the least money of the leading Republican candidates, but he seems to be having the most fun, partly because he exceeded his own low expectations for New Hampshire. Not long ago, he was in single digits here.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): Tonight, you've given us so much more than we could have imagined just a few days or weeks ago. And over the last few days, we've seen that momentum build and the excitement at our rallies and the enthusiasm of our people and the size of the crowds. And we just sensed that we were going to do better than a lot of people thought that this old unknown Southern boy could possibly do up here in New England.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
So that's the survey of the Democratic and Republican fields as reported by NPR's Mara Liasson. And Mara, where do the Republicans go from here?
MARA LIASSON: Well, Mitt Romney and John McCain go to Michigan, where the primary is next Tuesday. They both have history there. Romney grew up in Michigan. His father was the governor. McCain won the Republican primary in Michigan in 2000.
Democrats and independents can vote in that primary, so that could help McCain. Then there's South Carolina four days later, where Huckabee has a very big lead in the polls. Lots of Christian conservative voters there, and that's where he'll be headed.
INSKEEP: We've gotten this deep into this report without mentioning Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York.
LIASSON: Well, Rudy Giuliani came in fourth in New Hampshire, in single digits. He left New Hampshire before the results were in last night. He goes straight to what was supposed to be his firewall state of Florida, but where he's now tied in the polls with Huckabee.
So the Republican race is still quite a muddle, and I forgot to mention Fred Thompson. He got one percent last night. He didn't really compete here in New Hampshire, but he's going to make his last stand in South Carolina.
INSKEEP: That's NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Democrats are also preparing for fierce competition in South Carolina. It's the first state with a significant black vote. In an interview on MORNING EDITION, Barack Obama says he'll be challenging Hillary Clinton for those voters.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): We are in a strong position to win, as they are. We have put together I think a great campaign. We are seeing enormous numbers of people, first time voters, younger voters, participating in the process, and you know, I'm reaching out not just to the African-American community, but people from all walks of life, saying we can put together a coalition that we haven't seen in a long time to actually a progressive agenda forward.
MONTAGNE: Obama also accused former President Bill Clinton of mischaracterizing his record on a major issue, Iraq. Obama said, quote, we'll be going to have to call him on that.
INSKEEP: If you missed that interview, it's on the front page of our Web site, npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
There's been more violence in Kenya. Kenyans have hoped this week would bring an end to the clashes that erupted after last month's disputed election. The incumbent president - who has begun a second term in office, despite dubious poll results - was supposed to meet his challenger later this week to talk about power sharing, but that meeting has been canceled.
For the latest, we turn to NPR's Gwendolyn Thompkins in Nairobi.
Welcome, Gwen.
GWENDOLYN THOMPKINS: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: So what happened to make it that President Mwai Kibaki will not be meeting with his challenger, Raila Odinga?
THOMPKINS: Well, the challenger, Raila Odinga, rejected the invitation. This was around the same time that President Mwai Kibaki went on national television yesterday and named a vice president and about 17 members of his cabinet. He named some of the most important cabinet positions for secretary of defense, the minister for finance, the minister for internal security.
These are the choice positions in a cabinet. And the challenger, Raila Odinga, had expected that his meeting with the president on Friday would begin negotiations toward a power-sharing agreement between Mr. Kibaki and the opposition. So Mr. Odinga, the challenger, is now saying that his meeting with the president on Friday is off because he felt that it would just be gimmickry.
MONTAGNE: So why did, then, Kibaki name his cabinet so fast?
THOMPKINS: You know, President Kibaki has moved very quickly throughout this entire process, to claim and now consolidate power. So within an hour of the announcement of the dubious election results, he took the oath of office. And, now, in advance of this meeting with Odinga, the challenger, he's creating his own government.
So Mr. Kibaki has never really shown much interest in international mediation or in deal-making, and he appears to be showing no quarter to Mr. Odinga and the opposition. But Mr. Kibaki, in making these decisions to claim and consolidate power quickly, is also pushing the country - which had calmed down a bit - on back toward the bitterness and violence we've seen over these past several days. And it also endangers his own tribe, the Kikuyu, who've been among those who've been most heavily targeted in the violence.
MONTAGNE: Well then, ultimately, does this mean power-sharing is off if these talks are off?
THOMPKINS: Well, not necessarily, Renee. I mean, you know, both of these politicians - President Kibaki and Raila Odinga - they've been in the business a long time, and they have each survived and lived to fight another day, so to speak.
So the Odinga camp has said that it has not closed the door yet on international mediation. You know, John Kufuor, the president of Ghana and the chairman of the African Union, is here, and he's here prepared to help mediate talks. Also, Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer is expected to return to Kenya to continue the process of getting these men to the bargaining table. So it's too early yet to give up completely on a negotiated settlement. But at this point, many Kenyans have lost the optimism that they have in the beginning of the week.
MONTAGNE: You know, on Monday, presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama took a break from campaigning to appeal to opposition leaders there in Kenya by telephone. His father, of course, was Kenyan. What has been the response there to his call?
THOMPKINS: You know, there hasn't really been much of a response to his call at this point. I mean, people in Kenya are keeping an eye on the presidential race in the United States. Irrespective of ethnic group, they do seem to support Mr. Obama's presidential bid. But at this point, people here are more interested in the players who are here.
MONTAGNE: Gwen, thanks.
THOMPKINS: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Gwendolyn Thompkins, speaking from Nairobi.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
I'm Steve Inskeep. And this is Hillary Clinton.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): I want especially to thank New Hampshire. Over the last week I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
INSKEEP: So there's one explanation for her surprise win New Hampshire last night. Let's find out what else we can from NPR's Juan Williams, who's in New Hampshire.
And, Juan, what were Clinton's advisers saying before the results were known?
JUAN WILLIAMS: Well, before the results, Steve, they were pretty much down. They thought that this was going to be a loss. They were talking about the fact that Bill Clinton didn't win one before Georgia; looking down the road, thinking about what they could possibly do in terms of even bringing new people into the campaign, re-jiggering the message. They did not expect to win here.
INSKEEP: So they did not expect to win, but they did have a campaign organization, it's often said, in New Hampshire. What kind of organization was that?
WILLIAMS: An organization that was very strong in terms of making calls, getting out the votes, and I think in some ways they understood the message better than Mrs. Clinton and her national team, because they, for example, were sending out leaflets here highlighting the fact that Hillary Clinton has been a strong supporter of women's right to choose on abortion and presenting Barack Obama as an unknown, unsteady ally in that cause - something, of course, very important to Democratic female voters. Among union members, seniors, people over 40, and especially people over 65, Hillary Clinton had a dominant performance Tuesday night. So in all those ways you see you the power of a Democratic Party machine in New Hampshire benefiting the Clinton campaign.
INSKEEP: Democratic Party machine. Who were the people or the kinds of people that Hillary Clinton had on her side even as it seemed that her campaign was slipping?
WILLIAMS: Well, elected officials, union officials, and you're talking about people who have been involved, of course, going to back to Bill Clinton's comeback effort back here in '92, and of course he finished second and become the comeback kid. Hillary Clinton has actually won this to become her own version of a comeback kid.
INSKEEP: So Democratic elected officials in New Hampshire were with Hillary Clinton? Could Obama or John Edwards, for that matter, bring in anybody to compare?
WILLIAMS: Well, no. What the effort for Obama was really the tremendous energy, the sense of history being made by the first African-American to really been a leading contender for his party's nomination. If you look at people who were casting their first vote in a primary, plus 12 for Obama; if you look at the independents, people who weren't registered as Democrats or Republican, plus seven for Obama; and with young people, those under 30, particularly those 18 to 24, two-thirds of them voting for Barack Obama.
So those were newcomers to the process, people outside of the Democratic Party or the union organizations, who were the primary supporters for Barack Obama.
INSKEEP: So you've got newcomers favoring Obama, you've got solid Democrats and organizational Democrats sticking with Hillary Clinton and coming up with a lot of votes. And I want to draw on one voter group - women. Women voters in Iowa seemed to go for Barack Obama by a substantial and surprising margin. What did Hillary Clinton's campaign do or say to try to win the women's vote back in New Hampshire?
WILLIAMS: I think Hillary Clinton presented herself as a woman who understood the struggles of women in American society, often talking about issues relating to health care, relating to caring for children, and having to deal with children while you're a working mom.
She had a tremendous advantage with the women with children, married women with children in particular. And don't forget she got emotional, I think that may have played to her advantage. She shows a little bit of emotion and people see it as breaking through the ice queen image and making it clear she cares deeply about this process. I think that's the big difference between the Hillary Clinton that we saw campaigning in Iowa and the Hillary Clinton we saw on stage, especially in the last few days here in New Hampshire.
INSKEEP: NPR's Juan Williams is in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Thanks, Juan.
WILLIAMS: You're welcome, Steve.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
To test some of the theories of Hillary Clinton's comeback, we go to NPR's Linda Wertheimer now. She was in Jaffrey, New Hampshire last night to watch returns with local Democrats.
LINDA WERTHEIMER: Jaffrey is a tiny town. It has only one polling place, at the VFW Hall, where the turnout caused a traffic jam in this village at the foot of Mount Monadnock. The Jaffrey Democratic Committee had a potluck party to watch returns come in at the historic inn at Jaffrey Center, a rambling 150-year-old house.
Bobbie Gilbert, who is the Democratic chair, read us the local results.
Ms. BOBBIE GILBERT (Jaffrey Democratic Committee): We have the town moderator call us with the results.
WERTHEIMER: Okay, so it looks as though Mrs. Clinton is doing pretty well in Ringe.
Ms. GILBERT: She did. She was 377 to Obama's 343.
WERTHEIMER: It's much closer in Jaffrey.
Ms. GILBERT: It is, only by two votes.
WERTHEIMER: And as the evening went on, it began to look that as Jaffrey voted, so would the whole state vote, giving a narrow victory to Hillary Clinton.
Carol Brownwood(ph) analyzed the Clinton comeback this way.
Ms. CAROL BROWNWOOD: I think that in the last few days, Hillary really showed all facets of herself to people, that she was human, she cares. She convinced people at the debates that she's qualified, ready to go. I think we had all excellent candidates on the Democrat side, but she just had a little bit more.
WERTHEIMER: Did you happen to see that moment when Hillary Clinton - when somebody said something really nice to her...
Ms. BROWNWOOD: I did. I saw that replayed on the news and...
WERTHEIMER: What did it look like to you?
Ms. BROWNWOOD: It looked like that she was truly moved. And earlier, someone had said to me, knowing that I was a Hillary supporter, that she had no soul, and I think she proved that she indeed had soul.
(Soundbite of crowd)
WERTHEIMER: Anne Webb(ph) is a retired Episcopal priest, probably just the sort of woman who saved the Clinton candidacy last night in New Hampshire. She said she was fretting over her choices when she had an epiphany.
Ms. ANNE WEBB: All of a sudden, on Saturday morning, I woke up and I thought, well, I don't know why, if I like all of these people equally, I think it's all right not to vote for Hillary. And so I woke up on Saturday morning thinking I have to vote for Hillary; women in this country are never recognized for what they accomplish or what they say. And I must not fall into the trap of not acknowledging her contribution to government in this country.
Unidentified Man #1: She's winning, 48 percent.
WERTHEIMER: While Webb was describing her decision, standing in the bar at the inn, it became clear that Hillary Clinton was in fact winning. When she could make herself heard, Webb finished the story.
Ms. WEBB: And my daughter called me Saturday morning as I was coming to this. And she said, you know, she had been a committed Obama supporter. And she called me up Saturday morning and she said, when I was young I told you I was not going to be called a feminist. And she said, you looked at me and you said that's very ungrateful. And I'd forgotten. I didn't remember that at all. And she called me Saturday morning. She said, I'm going to vote for Hillary. I'm not going to vote for Obama. I cannot imagine what I was thinking. And so I had to say to her, me too.
WERTHEIMER: We heard from other Clinton supporters too, who like her experience or wanted to vote for women. But of course there were Obama voters like Bridget Johansson(ph), a farmer who raises grass-fed beef. She said she supported Clinton but switched to Obama.
Ms. BRIDGET JOHANSSON: Obama allows you to dare to hope. You get to move beyond the conflict. You get to move ahead to where we could be and what we might be and what we can be if we only have the will. And whatever happens in New Hampshire tonight, I think it doesn't matter so much as that what we're seeing now is we have a good contest between Hillary and Obama. And they're going to continue that for the next three or four weeks. And may the best candidate win.
WERTHEIMER: The Democrats of Jaffrey left the inn in just that sort of mellow mood, having played their important role, mostly satisfied with their little surprise for the rest of us.
Linda Wertheimer, NPR News, New Hampshire.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
NPR's business news starts with what your phone bill tells you about the economy.
The head of the nation's largest phone company says the slowing economy is hurting his business. AT&T's chief executive, Randall Stephenson, yesterday said his company has cut off service to a number of landline and home broadband customers. He wouldn't say how many people had stopped paying their bills but he blames the weak economy.
Excuse me a moment.
(Soundbite of dial tone)
INSKEEP: I just wanted to make sure we still had our service.
Stephenson said wireless customers are hanging in there because cell phones are the last thing that consumers would surrender. His comments add to the growing talk of a possible recession, and his company's shares took a hit on Wall Street.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The CEO of General Motors yesterday made an appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. He not only showed up; he gave the keynote speech - the first auto chief to do so at a show known for home and office gadgets.
NPR's Laura Sydell has more.
LAURA SYDELL: Big cars with booming stereo speakers filled thousands of square feet at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Inside these cars are systems that allow drivers to take advantage of 3D GPS navigation, cellular phone systems, and bring a broadband Internet connection into the car. So it makes sense that for the first time in 41 years the CEO of a major car company gave a keynote.
Unidentified Man: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner.
SYDELL: Richard Wagoner of General Motors arrived on stage in a Chevy Volt, a not-yet-released hybrid-type vehicle that can run on electricity.
Also on display here is a GM prototype car that pretty much relieves drivers of driving.
Mr. RICHARD WAGONER (General Motors CEO): Autonomous driving means that someday you could do your e-mail, eat breakfast, apply your make-up, read the newspaper, and watch a video all while commuting to work.
SYDELL: In other words, says Wagoner, you can do what you already do in the car, but do it without risking an accident. But Wagoner's promises don't always deliver.
GM's stock dropped this week because the company's engineers are scrambling to figure out how to run a whole range of vehicle features, from satellite radio to air conditioning, in order to get the Volt out as promised in 2010.
Laura Sydell, NPR News, Las Vegas.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
We turn now to taxes and the people who look forward to tax time because they're expecting refund checks from the IRS. And this is a story about people who can't wait. Millions of Americans get their money a couple of weeks faster than the government can send it by taking out refund anticipation loans. These are high-interest loans. Consumer advocates and state attorneys general have long complained about them. And now the IRS may be joining the fight.
Frank Morris reports from member station KCUR.
FRANK MORRIS: Tax season just started this week. But in midtown Kansas City, Gary Lee(ph) is already out on the street, dressed as the statue of liberty, drumming up business.
Mr. GARY LEE: Tax time, baby, taxes. Come on here and get your taxes done. Tax time, Liberty Tax Service. Come on in and get your taxes done. Right here, baby, right here.
MORRIS: Inside this strip mall shop, it's quiet. No customers right now. Hardly anyone has their W2s yet.
So franchise owner Andrew Banker(ph) is running one of the new hires through the basic script.
Mr. ANDREW BANKER (Franchise Owner): The fastest way we can get your money is the refund anticipation loan. It is a loan based off of your anticipated refund. And then your check will print off at our office within 24 to 48 hours.
Ms. JESSICA WILLIAMS: Oh, great.
MORRIS: This trainee, Jessica Williams, is pretending to be the customer here. But it's a pretty natural role. She says each year she takes a refund anticipation loan and pays typically 150 bucks in fees and interest to get the rest of her return a couple of weeks sooner.
Ms. WILLIAMS: I usually need my money back as soon as possible. I mean, it's usually spent before I even get it.
MORRIS: This kind of attitude drives consumer advocates nuts.
Ms. JEAN ANN FOX (Consumer Federation of America): Don't pay the borrower your own tax refund.
MORRIS: Jean Ann Fox is with the Consumer Federation of America.
Ms. FOX: This is high-cost, high-risk credit extended to consumers who can least afford it.
MORRIS: The fees and interest on these short-term loans can amount to what would be triple-digit annual interest rates. But that's not the part that concerns the IRS. It's not worried about what the loans cost low-income taxpayers; rather what they might cost the Treasury. The agency has opened a 90-day study and comment period to see if tax preparers systematically jack up their clients' returns in order to sell them bigger loans.
David Williams, director of electronic tax administration for the IRS, says there's evidence some do.
Mr. DAVID WILLIAMS (Internal Revenue Service): Are there isolated incidents where people are - have incentives to inflate loans and create a tax problem and encourage cheating? Or is this a widespread problem that requires the IRS to take some action?
MORRIS: Like stopping preparers from sharing tax returns with companies that make the loans.
Mr. JOHN HEWITT (Liberty Tax Service): No, I just don't think it's going to happen.
MORRIS: John Hewitt worked for H&R Block before quitting the lead Jackson Hewitt, then leaving there to launch Liberty Tax Service. He says these loans account for a big chunk of his revenue, but notes that tax preparers are paid a flat fee for selling them. That's federal law. He denies that companies use backdoor incentives to boost tax return figures and loan revenue. And Hewitt says if the IRS stops tax preparers from sharing information with banks, which in turn set up refund loans, that business will go elsewhere.
Mr. HEWITT: It could go to a bank. It could go to a check cashier. It could go to a finance company. It could go to a pool hall or a back alley. But there are taxpayers who want that money and they want it today. They need it. And they're going to do whatever it takes, go wherever they can to get it as soon as possible.
MORRIS: Whether these people can get their refund anticipation loan lined up by the person who does their taxes a couple of years from now may hinge on whether the IRS believes that that preparer is motivated by simply figuring the biggest legitimate refund or by selling the taxpayer the biggest possible loan.
For NPR News, I'm Frank Morris in Kansas City.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Our last word in business is digital dining.
By now we're used to pumping our own gas, checking ourselves out of the supermarket and checking ourselves in at the airport. The latest in self-service technology is a touch-screen at your restaurant table. It allows you to place orders directly with the kitchen. Why keep a waitress waiting while you agonize over fries or onion rings?
The company behind the technology says it provides faster service and fewer mistakes. It also makes it easier to order that extra slice of pie. I don't think the screens have an icon where you can pound your fist if you're unhappy with the food, but there's always the button to summon a real live waiter. And you can complain to that person.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep. Good morning.
Just yesterday, newspapers were giving the names of Hillary Clinton advisers about to lose their jobs. Everything looks different now that she's won the New Hampshire primary. On the Republican side, victory went to John McCain, who actually did change his top advisers when his campaign seemed to collapse last year. Those two victories mean the two major parties are far from settling on their nominees.
And we have two reports this morning starting with NPR's Audie Cornish.
AUDIE CORNISH: Despite all the polls to the contrary, it was Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama, giving the victory speech last night.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): You helped remind everyone that politics isn't a game. This campaign is about people, about making a difference in your lives, about making sure that everyone in this country has the opportunity to live up to his or her God-given potential.
CORNISH: But since her surprising third-place finish in Iowa, Clinton flipped the script in New Hampshire. Suddenly, she was taking a lot more questions from voters, reaching out at campaign stops and even allowing the public to see her up close, like when she teared up at an event Monday in Portsmouth.
Marcia Lynch(ph), a Clinton campaign volunteer from Boston, believes that moment may have tipped the balance.
Ms. MARCIA LYNCH (Campaign Volunteer; Resident, Boston): I actually think that might have been a strong moment for her to show a very true, real compassionate side of herself and to show deep passionate feelings, and maybe she should do that a little bit more.
CORNISH: Clinton's win puts an end to the premature political obituary writing and it puts Senator Barack Obama back on the defensive going into the next caucus and primaries. But in his concession speech, Obama sounded anything but defeated.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): We always knew our climb would be steep. But in record numbers, you came out and you spoke up for change. And with your voices and your votes, you made it clear that at this moment in this election, there is something happening in America.
(Soundbite of cheering)
CORNISH: Win or lose, Obama clearly touched a nerve among New Hampshire voters, leaving many people here inspired, like Scott Polts(ph) of Concord, who'd remained undecided until late in the contest.
Mr. SCOTT POLTS (Resident, Concord, New Hampshire): I just - I like his charisma. To get a predominantly white state to be behind you like that, you know, it's pretty impressive.
CORNISH: None of these developments fazed the folks at the John Edwards campaign.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Unidentified Group: Edwards, Edwards, Edwards, Edwards, Edwards, Edwards, Edwards…
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
CORNISH: Campaign officials there figure the Clinton upset slows the momentum of Barack Obama and sets up a potentially vicious battle between the front-runners.
To their campaign, Edwards just needs to hang on long enough to reap the benefits of a potentially long and drawn-out nomination process. Edwards told supporters in New Hampshire that while he was two states down, there were 48 more to go.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Mr. EDWARDS: I want to be clear to the 99 percent of Americans who have not yet had the chance to have their voices heard that I am in this race to the convention, that I intend to be the nominee of my party.
CORNISH: Also vowing to continue the fight is Bill Richardson. The New Mexico governor finished a poor fourth here but insists that his candidacy will be revived once the campaign heads west.
Actually, Michigan is next up on the calendar, but the candidates are not campaigning there. The national Democratic Party has penalized the state for moving up its primary, thus the candidates will compete next in Nevada, with its strong Hispanic presence. Then, it's on to South Carolina. It was the only state primary Edwards won in 2004 but with African-Americans comprising 50 percent of the Democratic electorate, this could be the state that launches an Obama comeback. Either way, the fight for the Democratic nomination goes on.
Audie Cornish, NPR News, Manchester, New Hampshire.
TOVIA SMITH: I'm Tovia Smith.
John McCain ended his New Hampshire campaign hitting the same places and promising the same straight talk as he did eight years ago. And although he didn't win the same kind of landslide as he did in 2000, he did emerge with a clear and critical victory.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Sen. JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): I talked to the people of New Hampshire, I reasoned with you, I listen to you, I answered you. Sometimes, I argued with you.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Sen. McCAIN: But I always told you the truth is best I can see the truth and you did me the great honor of listening.
SMITH: Listening, especially, where independents, who make up more than 45 percent of New Hampshire voters, like Manchester business owner Keith Hershman(ph).
Mr. KEITH HERSHMAN (Businessman, Manchester, New Hampshire): He still stands for what he stood for in 2000. He hasn't changed. He's a strong leader and he says things that people don't want to hear sometimes but he says them. He's a maverick in the Senate. That's his record.
SMITH: You think he's older now?
Mr. HERSHMAN: He's older, he's 71.
SMITH: You think he still got it?
Mr. HERSHMAN: Yeah. I saw him on Elm Street yesterday with his wife. He's got it more than I do.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SMITH: McCain's win revives his campaign that it basically run out of money, staff and steam. With the momentum now back on his side, McCain vowed to win the next contest in Michigan - a state he also won eight years ago but a state where he will face another tough fight from Mitt Romney.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): I have a sister here, Lynn. Lynn, where are you? Oh, she's already going to Michigan to get some votes. All right.
SMITH: Romney and his sister, Lynn, grew up in Michigan, where their father was governor and is still well thought of. Conceding defeat last night, Romney insisted he was in the race for the long haul, with what he called a 50-state strategy and he tried again to make the case that he's the only outsider and proven manager who can bring about the change that voters want.
Mr. ROMNEY: Sending insiders back to Washington just to change different chairs, that's not going to get the job done. I think you have to have somebody from outside Washington who has proven that he can get the job done in one setting after another and is...
SMITH: Romney spoke just briefly and smiled through what had to be a painful loss in his own backyard. No Republican has ever gone on to win the party's nomination after losing both Iowa and New Hampshire. Now, Romney is reportedly planning changes in his campaign to take more control of himself and loosen up a little. While he's got the super smooth stump speech, the impressive resume and the perfect family to go with it, Romney has so far failed to really bond the way he needs to with voters, like 69-year-old businessman John Herot(ph). Herot cast his ballot yesterday for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who finished well back in the pack.
Mr. JOHN HEROT (Businessman, New Hampshire): I think Romney is a great manager, he's proven it, right? But we need a leader, not a manager. Romney's competent but not inspiring.
SMITH: Another voter, who called Romney took pre-packaged, went instead for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee - the Iowa winner who last night celebrated his third-place New Hampshire finish. That keeps Huckabee alive heading in to Michigan and South Carolina, a state that should be more hospitable to his religious values message that had little sway in New Hampshire.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): We thought that if we could finish in the top - we kept saying four or five. We'd feel pretty good about that knowing just how tough it's been to try to break through. But tonight, you've given us so much more than we could've imagined just a few days or weeks ago.
SMITH: In fact, it had to be hard for all of the candidates to imagine how much they'd be helped or hurt by this year's super condensed primary schedule. With just five days between Iowa and New Hampshire, Huckabee was still riding his post-Iowa bounds and Romney could barely begin to recover from his surprising loss. This time, the winners and losers will have a whole week before the next contest.
Tovia Smith, NPR News, Manchester, New Hampshire.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
One final word from a candidate who received just 13,000 votes more or less in New Hampshire. Bill Richardson finished a distant fourth among Democrats, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Last night, he noted that you could hardly sit down in a New Hampshire diner without a candidate stopping in.
Governor BILL RICHARDSON (Democrat, New Mexico; Presidential Candidate): I want to apologize to all the New Hampshire voters who I interrupted their meals the last few days. But I want to just say how honored I am to have participated in this great state first primary. Now I know why New Hampshire is first.
(Soundbite of applause)
MONTAGNE: More lunches and dinners will be interrupted soon in Michigan, South Carolina and other states as the candidates move on. For complete results from New Hampshire and an interactive map of upcoming presidential primaries, go to npr.org/elections.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
President Bush traveled to Israel in an effort to help refocus stalled peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: We seek lasting peace. We see a new opportunity for peace here in the Holy Land and for freedom across the region.
INSKEEP: That's the president speaking as he arrived in Tel Aviv this morning on his first visit as president to Israel and the Palestinian territories. That new opportunity that he mentioned follows re-launched peace talks in Annapolis, Maryland, last November.
NPR's Eric Westervelt brings us up-to-date.
ERIC WESTERVELT: What six weeks ago politicians hailed as the positive spirit of Annapolis quickly, deteriorated back here into finger pointing and deadlock. Palestinians said Israel's plans to build new Jewish homes in south Jerusalem and expand settlements in the occupied West Bank were undermining talks before they got started.
Israel said the Palestinian authority continually failed to secure the West Bank - its sole area of control after losing the Gaza Strip to Hamas last year. Daily rocket and mortar fire from Hamas-controlled Gaza into southern Israel, including a barrage this morning, continues to frustrate and anger Israelis.
It's into this atmosphere that President Bush arrives today to try to rebuild what little momentum there was coming out of Annapolis. Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met for two hours in Jerusalem. Olmert spokesman Mark Regev says the two agreed to quickly start direct an ongoing negotiations on all the big core issues. Those include settlements, border, security, Jerusalem and refugees.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat says President Bush's visit today sends a strong message that these talks will be substantive.
Mr. SAEB EREKAT (Chief Palestinian Negotiator): It's only us that can deliver. But the president is telling us, if you deliver I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. The world will not let you down. We'll be there for you economically, politically, security - everything you need to (unintelligible) this agreement will be there. That's a good offer.
WESTERVELT: Prime Minister Olmert's spokesman Regev says the two sides could begin high-level talks as early as next week. Regev says, quote, "For talks about the big core issues, political issues, you need politicians doing that." The Israeli team will be led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and the Palestinian team led by former Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei.
Jewish settlers in the West Bank meantime say they'll use Mr. Bush's visit to protest against Prime Minister Olmert, who's been politically weakened by the 2006 war with Lebanese Hezbollah.
Fifty-year-old Bowas Haeitzni(ph) lives in Kiryat Arba, a large settlement near Hebron. Haeitzni says Jews have a God-given biblical right to all West Bank land, and Olmert has no right to negotiate with Palestinians over that land.
Mr. RUVEN HASSAN(ph) (Political Scientist, Israel): Here they want to give our land to the biggest monsters of terror - to our worst enemies. It's impossible.
WESTERVELT: Ruven Hassan, an Israeli political scientist, says Mr. Bush may have waited far too late into his presidency before visiting the area and becoming directly engaged in the peace process.
Mr. HASSAN: The issues between us are very, very deep. It's settlements. It's Jerusalem. It's the right of return. It's terrorism. It's Gaza. In order words, this is a situation that gets more and more difficult to solve with each passing year.
WESTERVELT: Other analysts question whether Mr. Bush is ready and willing to exert the needed political pressure on Israel over West Bank settlements and illegal outposts, and with the Palestinians on security and cracking down on militants. Both are first-staged pledges in the U.S.-backed roadmap peace plan - a plan that's so far has never been on track.
Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Jerusalem.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
Voters in New Hampshire love to say they don't care what happened in Iowa, and they proved it last night. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton won an unexpected victory over Barack Obama. As for the Republicans, John McCain came out on top.
We're going to get some analysis now from two of our regulars. Chris Lehane worked in the Clinton White House. He's a veteran of Al Gore and Wesley Clark's presidential campaigns. He joins us on the line from San Francisco.
Good morning.
Mr. CHRIS LEHANE (Democratic Political Consultant): Good morning. How are you doing?
MONTAGNE: Fine. Thank you.
Mike Murphy has run campaigns for both John McCain and Mitt Romney, two men of the hour. He joins us from Manchester, New Hampshire.
Hello.
Mr. MIKE MURPHY (Republican Political Consultant): Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Mike, let's start with you and your former clients. Not long ago, many had written off Senator John McCain. He was broke. His advisers were quitting right and left. How much of a comeback was this for McCain?
Mr. MURPHY: Well, it was a terrific comeback. I think the lesson of last night on both parties is be careful about writing anything off. John McCain was originally the front-runner in the Republican Party but he got into some trouble. He basically took it all on his own shoulders, and it was him going town hall to town hall in New Hampshire in a hard-fought contest. He came back just to win a huge upset. So now, he'll go out of here with a lot of momentum. And he and Mitt Romney, who waged a tough campaign, didn't quite make it, are going to face each other in Michigan next week - which I think will become the finals between them. And I think if Romney doesn't win there, he'll be in real trouble. If McCain does well in Michigan, he'll have a lot of momentum, and he'll be able to zoom forward probably as the new kind of regular Republican front-runner.
MONTAGNE: Of course, McCain, people will remember, won big in New Hampshire in 2000, didn't go on to win the nomination. Can he go all the way this time even if he does win the next couple of primaries?
Mr. MURPHY: Well, one difference we got is the calendar now. It's a lot more compressed than it was then. Many of us think that if we'd had that calendar in 2000, McCain would have been nominated. So if he does well in Michigan, and it's a state he won last time and he has a lot of momentum on New Hampshire recharging his campaign, he does well next Tuesday, I think he's in very good shape to be the nominee.
MONTAGNE: Chris, let's turn to you and the Democrats. Hillary Clinton has been more accessible to voters since Iowa and more forceful in pointing out her differences with Senator Obama. Was that - those things - the things that made the difference for her?
Mr. LEHANE: Look, I think, on both sides in the Iowa and in particular in the Democratic side, it's not surprisingly it came down to character and, you know, you look at the exit polls and clearly voters in New Hampshire thought highly of Senator Clinton particularly in terms of her experience, particularly in terms of the sense that she was up for the job. And I think what they're really looking for is some way to connect with her. And on Monday you had that moment, that moment when she teared up when asked about the question about - you know, how challenging the campaign trail is. And to me that moment served as the bridge to really connect her with the voters of New Hampshire and allowed her to really catapult herself in the race where people really race her off. It was an amazing, amazing comeback.
MONTAGNE: You know, some of the polls had Obama winning New Hampshire by as much as 13 percent. How did they get it so wrong?
Mr. LEHANE: You know, it's a really good question. Everyone was surprised in the numbers last night. And no one really seems to have an answer to it. And I just fundamentally think that the people of New Hampshire take a great deal of pride in the fact that they're independent group of folks, and I also think you just cannot underestimate what that moment on Monday really meant to folks.
Mr. MURPHY: I'm terrified that candidates are going to be crying now to drop off a hat. I agree, that was a huge catalyst. I have a theory about it. None of us really know. Everybody is shocked. One of the great ironies will be I think a lot of people may claim in the Clinton campaign they knew all the time. And nobody was more surprised than they were last night, but that people didn't want to fire her.
When - it was a national media thing if she lost in New Hampshire and campaign was totally over and the view of the average voter before it might have began and the crying, and the residual affections for the Clintons and the Democratic world here in New Hampshire might have combined to create the kind of a perfect moment, because very few of us in politics have seen that kind of a movement so late in the primary, and it was a huge shocker.
MONTAGNE: Well…
Mr. LEHANE: Absolute, absolute stunning event.
MONTAGNE: …to both of you, how does the race changed in both parties now, going into the next few primaries?
Mr. MURPHY: Oh, she survives. That's the big news. Her campaign was teetering on complete destruction, donor revolt internal strife. Now, she can go to her donors, raise some money. She has a total credibility to run. The media will give her a bounce. She can even lose, excuse me, lose South Carolina, looming on the calendar ahead of her and keep fighting. I still think Obama wins in the end, but it's going to be a heck of a race for the nomination on the Democratic side.
And on the Republicans, McCain is back in business. Romney is fighting for his life. Maybe he'll be the Hillary Clinton comeback next year in his home state of Michigan. We don't know yet. And then the Republican nomination will get a lot clearer.
MONTAGNE: Chris Lehane, let's just turn to you and ask you about John Edwards who, obviously, came in second in Iowa, but a distant third here - there in New Hampshire. He says he sees it for the long haul, but can he afford to be?
Mr. LEHANE: That's the key question. At the end of the day, money is what keeps these campaigns afloat. A campaign will stand on the race as long as it has money. And, you know, there's a real question here whether there will be enough oxygen to sustain his campaign going forward through the financial perspective. He has taken matching funds and he does have the support of a number, a very big and important labor organizations, so he has the potential to stay in. But, again, at the end of the day, is he going to have money to go on beyond South Carolina particularly when you get to February five and you have to spend millions and millions of dollars on paid television.
MONTAGNE: Chris Lehane is a Democratic political consultant based in San Francisco and speaking to us from there. Mike Murphy is a Republican political consultant, and he spoke to us from New Hampshire.
Thanks to both of you.
Mr. LEHANE: Thank you.
Mr. MURPHY: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
A weakening economy means a lot less tax revenue for services in California. The state faces a $14 billion budget deficit, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is trying to fix that without raising taxes. Yesterday the governor laid out some of his plans during a state of the state address to lawmakers, and we have more from NPR's Richard Gonzales.
RICHARD GONZALES: Governor Schwarzenegger was uncharacteristically somber as he described a California that is pretty much in the same shape as when he took over five years ago from a Democratic governor who was forced out by angry voters.
Governor ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (Republican, California): I said it back during the recall and I'll say it again. We do not have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.
(Soundbite of applause)
GONZALES: Schwarzenegger insisted that California economy remains strong. The problem, he says, is that revenues are flat, but state spending increases are written into the law.
Gov. SCHWARZENEGGER: So for several years we took actions to balance the budget, as long as the economy was booming. For several years, we kept that budget wolf from the door. But the wolf is back.
GONZALES: The answer, says the governor, is an approach he's already tried, a constitutional amendment to tie state spending to revenues.
Gov. SCHWARZENEGGER: When revenues spike upwards, the amendment that I propose would not let us spend all of the money that rushes in when the economy is good. Instead, we would set some of the good year money aside for bad years.
GONZALES: Schwarzenegger acknowledged that in his first year as governor he failed to get the Democratic-controlled legislature to pass a similar constitutional amendment. And three years ago, voters in a special election rejected another proposal to control the budget.
Schwarzenegger says he knows budget cuts will be painful, but he said fiscal responsibility is a way of being compassionate towards the poor and elderly.
Gov. SCHWARZENEGGER: We cannot continue to put people through that binge and purge of our budget process. It is not fair. It is not reasonable. It's not in the best interest of anyone.
GONZALES: Details of the governor's proposed spending cuts will be officially unveiled Thursday, but he made it clear that he won't seek a tax hike. And that was exactly what Republican lawmakers wanted to hear.
Michael Villines is the assembly Republican minority leader.
Mr. MICHAEL VILLINES (Republican Minority Leader in the Assembly): Nobody is going knocking on California's door and saying, hey, we hear you're having a hard time, let us give you more money. So the state of California and the politicians can't turn around and say we need you to give us taxes or help us. We have to live within our means.
GONZALES: But Democratic lawmakers say spending cuts alone won't balance California's budget. Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata says the governor also has to consider raising taxes.
Senator DON PERATA (Senate President Pro Tem): I didn't come up here to decimate the things that have made California great: education, care for the elderly, care for our children. We will have none of that. Can't cut $14 billion out of the budget and survive. We just can't.
GONZALES: Schwarzenegger still hopes to hold onto some of his big ideas, such as expanding health care coverage for millions of uninsured Californians. But he may have to take drastic steps to save money, like ordering early release for 22,000 low-risk prison inmates. The stage is set for some tough political bargaining this year, and with Democrats and Republicans dug in on opposite sides, Schwarzenegger will have to be the peacemaker.
Richard Gonzales, NPR News, Sacramento.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
The presidential election may be a big national story but it has to compete with another big story in the nation's capital. Washington residents love their football team. You may not realize just how much they love it until you walk the streets some warm fall afternoon and you hear the sound of the Redskins Broadcast coming out of window after window. Now, the city is absorbing the news that Coach Joe Gibbs is retiring.
Mr. JOE GIBBS (Former Head Coach, Washington Redskins): I loved it. I think it's one of the all-time great opportunities in the world, is to be the coach of the Washington Redskins. The greatest sports franchise in the world. The greatest fans in the world and a place where football is really, really important.
INSKEEP: Joe Gibbs coached the Redskins twice. The first time around, he won three Super Bowls. Gibbs' second time was tougher. This past season, star player Sean Taylor was shot and killed in midseason. The team recovered to make the playoffs. And players said their coach was a strong leader for the football family during a difficult time. Joe Gibbs says it's time to pay attention to his own family now. His three-year-old grandson has been diagnosed with leukemia.
Mr. GIBBS: This job and the only way I know to do it is you're going after it night and day. And I think the thrill of it is just that - it's how hard it is. My family situation being what it is right now, I just - I did not feel like I could make the kind of commitment that I need to make going forward this year. I felt like that they needed me.
INSKEEP: A local television station played Gibbs' comments, as football highlights played in the background, and there were many highlights to show. Though he faced criticism this season, the Redskins in recent decades won more often with Joe Gibbs than without him.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
The fix was definitely not in for some of the people we'll hear from next. They are candidates who did not win yesterday's New Hampshire primary.
Here's how John Edwards framed a third-place finish.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): Last week, I congratulated Senator Obama when he finished first and I finished second in Iowa. One race down. Tonight, I congratulate Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. Two races down. Forty-eight states left to go.
(Soundbite of cheering)
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Like other candidates, Edwards emphasized how much of the presidential campaign is still to come. Rudy Giuliani finished fourth among Republicans. All along his campaign, he's been putting its money on future primaries in Florida and elsewhere.
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York; Presidential Candidate): We were prepared for this from the very beginning. It fits into how we looked at this from the very beginning, about there being at least 29 primaries and caucuses between January 3rd and February 5th. And now we're off to the next group of them with the renewed vigor, renewed spirit and some great new proposals about how to make America safer, how to make America stronger, how to make America more prosperous.
INSKEEP: One other candidate may have been expecting to make a statement like that. Just before the New Hampshire vote, we asked Hillary Clinton if she could afford to lose.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): I've always intended to run a national campaign and I have prepared to do so from the very beginning. So we'll go right through the February 5th states.
MONTAGNE: That was Senator Hillary Clinton playing down the New Hampshire primary when it seemed she would lose. When she won last night, she paused to savor a comeback rather than dwelling on the states to come.
You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
INSKEEP: And I'm Steve Inskeep.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
A man named Virgilio Cintron died of natural causes in New York. And that left his roommate staring at Cintron's Social Security check. Police say the roommate wanted to cash that check. So with an accomplice, he allegedly hoisted the dead man on an office chair. They wheeled him through the streets to a check-cashing business. Police stopped them just as they were about to roll in the body for a creative conversation with the cashier.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
While change has trumped experience as the key word of the election primaries, subprime was 2007's Word of the Year for the American Dialect Society. Runners-up include green and waterboarding. Besides its conventional use in the mortgage crises, subprime has taken on new meanings. A spokesman for the group says students now use the word to refer to tests — as in I subprimed this, or messed it up.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
Twenty-four hours ago, almost any political analyst believed that our next guest would be the winner of the New Hampshire primary. Instead, Senator Barack Obama finished second. He fell behind Hillary Clinton in a vote with record turnout. And he is on the line this morning.
Senator, good morning.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois): Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: Why do you think the election changed so quickly at the end?
Sen. OBAMA: Well, you know, polls are notoriously unreliable, especially when you're seeing big turnouts like this. You don't know how things are going to play themselves out. We did very well. I mean, our votes were where we expected them to be. And, you know, Senator Clinton ran a good race. What is inspiring, I think, both about Iowa and New Hampshire, is to see how intensely people are following this campaign, how people who may not typically vote are coming out to vote. I think this is going to be a hard-fought contest all the way through February fifth.
INSKEEP: Although you pointed out elsewhere this morning that there were a lot of late-breaking votes. Why do you think, at that last moment, significant numbers of people would choose to vote for someone other than you?
Sen. OBAMA: Well, you know, it's very hard to gauge. I'm sure that people are going to analyze it. Clearly, Senator Clinton did better among women than she had anticipated - many of the pundits had anticipated. How that played itself out during these last several days is hard to gauge. What I know, though, is that we've really shifted the political terrain. It's indisputable now that people want a different kind of politics. They are hungry for change in Washington. I think our message of bringing people together and pushing against the special interests and really trying to be straight with the American people about how we're going to solve problems, you know, that's the right message. And I've just got to make sure that we are delivering that message and translating that into concrete terms for the people in Nevada and South Carolina and the other states that haven't voted yet.
INSKEEP: Which we're going to talk about in a moment. I'd like to ask, though, whether you believe it's fair or not - do you believe that Hillary Clinton and - to some degree - Bill Clinton have succeeded in raising some doubts about your readiness to be president?
Sen. OBAMA: No. I mean, keep in mind, you know, those were all arguments that had been made in Iowa as well - and had been made vigorously. You know, I think that, right now, the American people are narrowing the field. They have focused on several strong candidates. We're in that mix. And, you know, they're going to be, you know, lifting the hood and kicking the tires over the coming weeks to figure out who is going to be able to best deliver on the change that they want. And the argument that I'm going to keep making is that we can't get that change unless we have a working majority that can attract independents, attract some Republicans. And that is something that I think I can do most effectively as the nominee and, ultimately, as the president.
INSKEEP: President Clinton - former President Clinton - also raised questions about whether your record was really so different on a key issue - Iraq. He said it was a fairy tale, as you know, that your voting record was any different than Hillary Clinton's when it came to Iraq. And he said there was some doubt as to whether you've even been that strongly against the war in the beginning.
Sen. OBAMA: Well, you know what? Former President Clinton has continued to mischaracterize my record on this. And we're going to have to call him on it. You know, the press has already pointed out that he's wrong about this. But he keeps on repeating it. And at some point, you know, we're just going to have to keep drilling away at the fact that it is indisputable, I opposed this war from the start - in 2002, 2003, 2004. And that the fact that I voted for funding for the war once I got in the Senate is perfectly consistent with my position that it was important to make sure that our troops had the equipment and the tools that they needed at a time when things were very dicey.
INSKEEP: And when Clinton claims that in 2004, after the war had begun, you said you didn't know how you would have voted on the Iraq war resolution. Is he misquoting you?
Sen. OBAMA: Well, he's partially quoting me. This is an interview that I did with "Meet The Press" at the 2004 convention. When Tim Russert, after having shown a clip, where I explicitly opposed the war, then said, how is it that you seem to anticipate all these problems and your nominees, John Kerry and John Edwards, did not? And, you know, out of an interest in supporting my nominees, I said, well, look, I don't know exactly how I would have voted if I'd been in the Senate. What I do know is that, from where I stood, the case was not made. Now, Bill Clinton always leaves that second part out, which is convenient. But I think that anybody who has examined this issue recognizes that my position on Iraq has been consistent.
INSKEEP: And the next place you'll be tested - or one of the next places, anyway, that you'll be tested - would be South Carolina - first southern state; also the first state with a significant black vote. Do you think that you have proven to black voters that if they back you - instead of Hillary Clinton, with whom they have a long past - that they'll be backing a winner?
Sen. OBAMA: Well, I think that there's no doubt that we are in a very strong position to win. And I think even if you talk to the Clinton camp, they would say that we are in a strong position to win, as they are. We are seeing enormous numbers of people - first-time voters, younger voters -participating in the process. And, you know, I'm reaching out not just to the African-American community but to people from all walks of life, saying we can put together a coalition that we haven't seen in a long time to actually move a progressive agenda forward. And that's what I'm going to be trying to do over the next few weeks and then, hopefully, over the next eight years.
INSKEEP: I assume you'll still be talking about change.
Sen. OBAMA: Well, change, but in very specific terms. I mean, I think that one of the thing - points that I've been trying to make over the last several weeks is that when I talk about change, it's not some gauzy pie-in-the-sky change. I'm talking about making sure we have a health care system where every American can get health care that's as good as the health care I have as a member of Congress.
INSKEEP: Oh, that's something - just to take that specific goal, that's something people have been trying for years and have had only incremental success.
Sen. OBAMA: Well...
INSKEEP: Can you name one concrete thing you can do that other candidates would not do to move things forward in Washington?
Sen. OBAMA: Well, it is going to require the American people, enlisting them in putting pressure on Congress to make it happen. This is part of the point that I've been trying to make, Steve. There's no shortage of plans out there. There's no shortage of policy papers. This is not a technical problem. It's a problem of politics. It's a problem of getting a big enough coalition of people who are organized, inspired, mobilized and will then put pressure on those who are elected, in combination with a president who is able to lead, in order to get it done. There's no magic solutions here. And the problems that we face - whether it's climate change or health care or making college more affordable or dealing with our foreign policy - is less a problem of, you know, getting the perfectly calibrated policy. It has to do with, you know, are we able to get people to work in the same direction? And that's what I can do.
INSKEEP: Senator Obama, thanks very much.
Sen. OBAMA: Great to talk to you, Steve.
INSKEEP: Barack Obama is running for the Democratic nomination for president. He is in New Hampshire.
STEVEN INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne. The polls were wrong. The conventional wisdom was wrong. As you've probably heard, Hillary Clinton won last night's New Hampshire primary. And this morning, her campaign is back on track after a rocky few days. Terry McAuliffe is the chairman of Hillary's Clinton's campaign, and he joins us on the line to talk about it. Good morning.
Mr. TERRY McAULIFFE (Campaign Chairman, Hillary Clinton Campaign): Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: As you know better anybody, things weren't looking good for the Clinton campaign as this week began. One of the was your specialty: fundraising. How is the money looking this morning?
Mr. McAULIFFE: Well, since last night, we have raised about $750,000. We have - and that's all online. We've been getting, oh, about 500 hits per minute. But going into yesterday, our campaign had raised a record $110 million. We had over $25 million in the bank. So, you know, we're very good on the resources. As I've always said, Renee, this going to be a 25 state - what we have to go through between now and February 5th, when I think it'll be over on the evening of February 5th when 23 states actually go vote. So we have the resources to do what we need to do.
MONTAGNE: We're going to look ahead in a moment. But just briefly, much has been made of the moment when Senator Clinton - pretty uncharacteristically for her - teared up while talking to some supporters about the pressures of campaigning. What difference do you think that made, if any?
Mr. McAULIFFE: Well, I think they were two separate, significant events. I think the first, Renee, the debate - I think that what became clear is there is a difference on the record between Senator Clinton, Senator Obama...
MONTAGNE: That was the Saturday debate there in New Hampshire.
Mr. McAULIFFE: Saturday debate. I think people how watched that debate thought Hillary was very specific on the issues and foreign policy deal with Pakistan and others. In talking the record, Hillary was very specific. And then I agree. I think that moment when she was in that diner in the morning and they asked her about, you know, what is like on the campaign trail and how do you deal with this every day? People saw the human side of Hillary, the side that I've known for 27 years. But ultimately, I think the voters in New Hampshire made the decision that Hillary has the most experience to deal with all the myriad of issues that are going to face the next president of the United States.
MONTAGNE: Now, you're headed for Nevada and South Carolina, important primary states for Democrats. Senator Clinton and her husband - former President Bill Clinton, of course - took a more aggressive tone in the final days in New Hampshire. They targeted Barack Obama in particular. He was characterized as a talker, not a doer who offered false hope and - in former President Clinton's words - told a fairy tale about his positions on Iraq. Is this the kind of language voters should expect to hear from here on out?
Mr. McAULIFFE: Well, Renee, and I do think it is now a two-person race. I think with John Edwards coming in a distant third, it's now a race between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. And I think the contrast on the issues is what this election is all about. And I think what the debate should be as we move forward - Senator Obama has always said that you ought to have a good, healthy debate on one's record and really want to take the country. And I think what President Clinton had talked about was obviously shifting the votes as it relates to Iraq and the funding and so forth with Senator Obama, but, you know, these are the public votes. And they ought to be up for discussion, just as all of Hillary's votes ought to be up for discussion. So as we move forward, as long as you don't ever make it personal - I think that's very important...
MONTAGNE: Well, wait, wait, wait. You don't - sorry. You don't think fairy tale and talker not a doer is personal?
Mr. McAULIFFE: Well, I don't think it's a personal attack on Senator Obama. I think it's dealing with his record. You know, I think the president was referring to, you know, you can say a lot of things, but you got to back it up with your record. Hillary backs up what she says with her record. And if Barack Obama doesn't agree with what Hillary says on an issue, he should feel free to go out and challenge her on the record on, you know, what she has done over the last 35 years of her life.
MONTAGNE: Terry McAuliffe is the chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Thanks very much for joining us this morning.
Mr. McAULIFFE: Thank you, Renee.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The word last night from the supporters of John McCain was Mac is back. He won the New Hampshire primary, handily beating fellow Republican Mitt Romney. Just six months ago, people were writing off Senator McCain's bid for the presidency. His campaign was nearly broke. He was laying off staff. Then he poured all of his energy and resources into New Hampshire. Steve Schmidt is a senior communications advisor for Senator McCain, and he joins us on the line from Grand Rapids, Michigan, the state where the next contest is. Hello.
Mr. STEVE SCHMIDT (Senior Communications Advisor, McCain Campaign): Hi. Good morning. It's great to be with you.
MONTAGNE: Now, can Senator McCain continue to run the same kind of campaign, given all the primaries coming at him over the next few weeks - this sort of intense, tireless campaigning that he's been doing?
Mr. SCHMIDT: Well, we've planned for, and we're ready for it. We're in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There's a thousand people here waiting for Senator McCain to come out and talk to them. We're able to do it. It's on to South Carolina after that, then to Florida. And, of course, we have a de facto national primary day on February 5th. But Senator McCain has the momentum in this race. We feel very, very good about our chances of winning here in Michigan. It's a state that John McCain won eight years ago. He's ready to be commander-in-chief. He has plans for the economy. He's going to fix a broken system in Washington. He's running a positive campaign, telling people the truth. And he was rewarded for it last night in New Hampshire with that magnificent victory.
MONTAGNE: Michigan may have belonged to John McCain four years ago - or the last time around. But Mitt Romney thinks he owns Michigan this time around. His father was governor.
Mr. SCHMIDT: We'll see. It's - Mitt Romney was saying that he was going to win in Iowa, that he was going to win in New Hampshire. And, you know, I think that people are getting sick and tired of the negative campaigning, and I think that's hurt Mitt Romney very badly. It's been a bombardment of negative ads, outspending, you know, both Governor Huckabee in Iowa and Senator McCain in New Hampshire. And I think people are tired of it. And I think that John McCain has been to Michigan many times. He has a worker retraining program. He has policies to help the people in Michigan where there's a deep, deep recession, and a lot of hard-working people have lost their jobs. The economy's in tough shape. And Senator McCain has prescriptions and answers for it.
MONTAGNE: Well, let's go briefly to South Carolina, where Senator McCain did not win in 2000. He lost. Mike Huckabee would seem to appeal to conservative Christian voters there. What's he going to do there?
Mr. SCHMIDT: Well, South Carolina, of course, is going to be a tough contest. It's eight years later. We have a lot of support from a lot of key leaders in the political establishment in South Carolina that Senator McCain didn't have eight years ago, led by the great senator from that state, Lindsey Graham. Fred Thompson is down in South Carolina, also. So it's going to be a three-way race, assuming we win against Governor Romney here in Michigan. So we're excited. We're looking forward to South Carolina. We'll be in South Carolina. Senator McCain'll be in South Carolina later today.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for joining us.
Mr. SCHMIDT: You bet. Thank you.
MONTAGNE: Steve Schmidt is a senior communications advisor to Senator John McCain's campaigning. He joined us just now on the line from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
One of the most distinctive voices in jazz went silent for 20 years. That's how long Andy Bey stayed away from the music scene. Yet all these years later, people still remember his music and now they have a chance to hear it again because Andy Bey released a new album.
Music journalist Ashley Kahn has this story and Andy Bey's unique voice and unique career.
(Soundbite of song, "Someone to Watch Over Me")
Mr. ANDY BEY (Singer): (Singing) There's a saying old, says that love is blind…
ASHLEY KAHN: It's said that if you truly want to hear a musician's talent, slow down the tempo.
(Soundbite of song, "Someone to Watch Over Me")
Mr. BEY: (Singing) Still, we're often told seek and ye shall find.
KAHN: Andy Bey sings some of the slowest tempos today. Listening to him can be like looking over an artist's shoulder as he puts paints to canvas.
(Soundbite of song "Someone to Watch Over Me")
Mr. BEY: (Singing) Someone to watch over me, over me.
You know, I like to take my time, I like, it can be very slow but it can be filled with an edge. I'm always trying to get a groove, but it's always about getting in the pocket. So slow is all right with me because slow can be very suspenseful.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. BEY: (Singing) See what you, see what you, see what you can do for me.
KAHN: But Bey is not just about singing slow and calling him simply a jazz singer misses the point. There's the passion of gospel in his baritone voice, plus an operatic sense of drama.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. BEY: (Singing) Ooh, ooh, woh, you, you, you know how to reach me.
I'm a lot of things. What I mean, I don't mind being called a jazz whatever. But it's broader than that. Anybody can put a name on thing. But it's about music.
KAHN: At the age of 68, Bey has been developing his sound for decades. Here he is in 1953 singing the blues as a teenager.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. BEY: (Singing) I'm a little boy who got the blues. Momma's little boy got the blues…
KAHN: And here he is at 25 harmonizing in his family group Andy and The Bey Sisters.
(Soundbite of music)
ANDY BEY and THE BEY SISTERS (Singers): (Singing) Everybody love my baby, but my baby don't love nobody but me. Nobody but me.
KAHN: And by 1974, Bey was singing funky.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. BEY: (Singing) There's a whole lot of experience. There's whole lot of experience.
I didn't get any record date for the next 22 years.
KAHN: In the music world, it's called woodshedding - the time a musician spends away from performing, finding, and perfecting his sound.
Mr. BEY: I was working with my voice. In fact, I was studying with classical teachers because I wanted to learn, understand more about falsetto and trying different ways to utilize the, you know, the soft palette and all that stuff.
KAHN: What do you man by soft palette?
Mr. BEY: The breath.
(Singing) La la la la la la la.
You know, singing with airs with a volume.
(Singing) La la la la la. La la la la la.
KAHN: For two decades, Bey worked at controlling the volume of his voice with precision, and extending his range lower and higher.
Mr. BEY: I'm not so much trying to prove anything with range. I'm just trying to find, you know, find a certain kind of sound. You can sing a blues at a whisper and you can belt it, and you can use both dynamics within each song.
KAHN: Can you give us an example of where you're using the soft versus belting?
(Soundbite of song "It Ain't Necessarily So")
Mr. BEY: (Singing) It ain't necessarily so. It ain't necessarily so. The things that you love to read in the Bible. It ain't necessarily so. Moses was found in a stream.
KAHN: The title of Andy Bey's new CD is "Ain't Necessarily So."
(Soundbite of song "It Ain't Necessarily So")
Mr. BEY: (Singing) He floated on the water. Till Ol' Pharaoh's daughter, she fished him, she said, from that stream.
KAHN: These live performances were recorded in 1996, the year Bey returned to the jazz scene.
(Soundbite of applause)
Mr. BEY: Thank you very much. Thank you.
KAHN: One of the distinguishing features of the new album is that it highlights his piano playing as much as his voice.
(Soundbite of piano playing)
Mr. BEY: Me without the piano wouldn't feel right - it's like me without singing. I needs them both. It's like a conversation between the two. But it's like one supports the other.
(Soundbite of song, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?")
Mr. BEY: (Singing) Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
KAHN: The CD also features a number of standards Bey has sung over the years including this one that comes from the Depression era. It's the standout track on the album.
(Soundbite of song, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?")
Mr. BEY: (Singing) Once I built a railroad, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
KAHN: One of the most enduring ideas in the mythology of music is the artist who disappears and returns years later, having mastered his instrument.
(Soundbite of song, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime")
Mr. BEY: (Singing) Brother can you spare a dime?
KAHN: Andy Bey's voice is his instrument — and his album captures the in-the-moment thrill of a master.
(Soundbite of song, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime")
Mr. BEY: (Singing) Say, don't you remember, my name is Al. Brother, brother, can you spare a dime? Brother.
INSKEEP: That report comes from Ashley Kahn, author of "A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album." Andy Bey's new CD is "Ain't Necessarily So." To hear songs from throughout Andy Bey's career, go to our new music Web site npr.org/music.
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
The U.S. effort in Iraq over the past year had one overriding goal - to buy time. The hope was that more troops would provide more security, which meant more time for a political solution. It would also mean more time to prepare Iraq to take over its own security. So this morning we'll conclude our reports on the so-called surge by asking how Iraq's security forces have used the time.
NPR's Corey Flintoff recently spent some time with the Iraqi army and police.
(Soundbite of marching band)
COREY FLINTOFF: Plumes of dust scut across the parade ground at Camp Besmaya, an Iraqi army base in the desert south of Baghdad and smokes from the boots of soldiers passing in review before Iraq's Minister of Defense Abdul Qadir al-Mufriji.
(Soundbite of marching band)
FLINTOFF: The troops march in the close ranks of a newly formed brigade, trained, equipped, and according to U.S. officers, ready to take the field as part of the country's 152,000 member army.
Major ALSTON MIDDLETON (U.S. Marine): We have a long way to go, make no mistake.
FLINTOFF: Alston Middleton is a marine major.
Maj. MIDDLETON: But I also see the training that's going on, and the units that are coming through are getting a lot more confident, and they're really starting to put a good army together.
FLINTOFF: Training was a key problem listed in the so-called Jones Report, an assessment of the Iraqi security forces that was led by retired Marine General James Jones.
The report said in September that Iraq's army wasn't ready to defend the country and wouldn't be ready for more than a year. But it said the army was getting better.
One of the VIPs watching the ceremony is Brigadier General Robin Swan, the commander of the Military Assistance Training Team. He says the Iraqi army has come a long way since September.
Brigadier General ROBIN SWAN (U.S. Army Commander, Military Assistance Training Team): The brigade that just preceded this one was formed and trained in about a month and a half, and they are currently in the area of operations in Baghdad, and they're conducting patrols, they're working with coalition forces, and they're doing quite well.
FLINTOFF: Defense Minister Mufriji told reporters that his immediate goal was to build Iraq's military to the point where it can replace the U.S.-led occupation forces without leaving any gaps in security. Mufriji told his troops at the graduation ceremony that what he wants from them is performance and fidelity to a unified Iraq, welded together by all its ethnic groups.
Mr. ABDUL QADIR al-MUFRIJI (Iraqi Minister of Defense, Iraq): (Unintelligible)
FLINTOFF: The new brigade commander leads his troops in an oath of loyalty to the state.
Unidentified Man: (Speaking in Arabic)
(Soundbite of crowd)
FLINTOFF: While the Ministry of Defense and the Iraqi army got a mixed grade in the Jones Report in September, the investigators had no reservations about the Ministry of Interior and its national police force. The reviews were uniformly bad.
To quote a key passage: "The Ministry of Interior is a ministry in name only. It's widely regarded as being dysfunctional and sectarian and suffers from ineffective leadership."
For the past year and a half, the leadership of the ministry has been provided by the Shiite politician Jawad al-Bolani. Bolani acknowledges that the ministry hasn't always had clean hands, but he insists that he's been making steady progress.
Mr. JAWAD al-BOLANI: I'm telling you the cleaning process is going on.
FLINTOFF: Bolani also argues that his ministry manages tens of thousand of police and firefighters who've been front-line responders to every terrorist attack. He says his men have taken the brunt of casualties.
Bolani inherited a lot of problems, the greatest of which may have been the 25,000-member national police, a quasi-military organization designed to fight terrorism and help counter the insurgency.
The Jones Report said the national police was too riddled with crime, too deeply intertwined with Shiite death squads to ever be reformed.
Major General ALESSANDRO POMPEGNANI (Italian Army): General Jones say that the national police should be disbanded for many reasons, including corruption, including infiltration and so on, which probably was true at that time.
FLINTOFF: This is Alessandro Pompegnani, a major general in the Italian army and the deputy commander of the NATO training mission in Iraq.
Maj. Gen. POMPEGNANI: We are confident that the national police could not be disbanded, but differently educated.
FLINTOFF: Pompegnani wears confidence the way he wears his sweeping white mustachios, but he's backed up by trainers from one of the toughest police forces in Europe, Italy's Carabinieri.
Even though he didn't accept the Jones commission's recommendation to disband the national police, American commanders such as Lieutenant General James Dubik say Interior Minister Bolani has been aggressively cleaning house in his police agencies.
Lieutenant General JAMES DUBIK (U.S. Army): He just, in October alone, fired almost 200 policemen. He's changed out the commanders of both national police divisions, nine of 10 brigade commanders, either retired them or not.
FLINTOFF: The U.S. general says the interior minister is paying a steep price for his reforms. Some of his key assistants have been assassinated.
Dubik argues that it will take time to root out corruption and sectarianism in the police. It may take a lot more time to change the perceptions of ordinary Iraqis, many of whom have learned to fear their national police.
Ahmed Ali Nasr is a former army officer, but at 47 he's now unemployed. He rejects claims that the national police are being reformed.
Mr. AHMED ALI NASR (Former Iraqi Army Officer): (Through translator) This is just something they say for the media. They claim 15,000 police have been dismissed. That's a lie. You show me one policeman who's been kicked out because of corruption.
FLINTOFF: Not everyone agrees. Radwan Shakir is 24 and he operates his own small grocery story. He says he's more inclined to trust the national police than he used to be.
Mr. RADWAN SHAKIR: (Through translator) We used to avoid national police checkpoints, but now the police are bringing in good people and getting rid of the bad ones.
FLINTOFF: Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani issues an invitation and a challenge to General Jones.
Mr. BOLANI: (Through translator) I'm calling upon Mr. Jones again to come over here and to check about his report - the last report - and right now, because right now it's a huge difference has been made.
FLINTOFF: The timing of the invitation is symbolic. Yesterday was Iraq's Police Day, a yearly holiday to honor law enforcement.
Earlier this week, Iraqis also saw a larger-than-usual turnout for marches and events marking National Army Day, a day that was marred by a bombing that killed several soldiers and civilians at a commemoration ceremony.
Iraqis have been waiting a long time for something to honor in their security forces.
Corey Flintoff, NPR News, Baghdad.
INSKEEP: You can hear other stories in this series about the effects of the U.S. troop surge and you can also read an analysis of President Bush's January 2007 speech announcing that strategy simply by going to our Web site, npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Speaking of drugstores, it's time for Your Health. These days, the making of a young smile can go beyond whitening your teeth. For those who have the means and the inclination, cosmetic dentists offer subtler improvements such as lengthening or reshaping your teeth.
NPR's Allison Aubrey reports.
ALLISON AUBREY: I've always been a people watcher. So of course I notice the difference between an old face and a younger face. But this week I have caught myself catching slightly too long glimpses of people's mouths, trying to see how much of their upper teeth are showing. It goes back to what dentist Dan Deutsch told me in his Washington office just a few days ago.
Dr. DAN DEUTSCH (Dentist): One of the things that makes you look older is every decade over the age of 30, you show a millimeter less of your front teeth. So you could see, this gives someone an old...
AUBREY: Wait, wait. Hold on. Why is that?
Dr. DEUTSCH: Well, first of all, everything sags a little bit. You know, the elastic tissues in your upper lip aren't exactly the same.
AUBREY: So as gravity pulls its weight, more of the bottom teeth show. Deutsch says, without naming names, look at the presidential candidates.
Mr. DEUTSCH: The ones that look younger, when they're talking and smiling, you'll see their front teeth. And the ones that look older, you'll see as they're talking and they're smiling, you'll see mostly their lower teeth.
AUBREY: There is a way to reverse the older look, or at least slow down the inevitable. He shows me photos of a recent patient who opted for porcelain veneers on her front teeth, making them slightly longer.
Mr. DEUTSCH: This is a young look. I gave her back a young look by just giving her the right length. You know, so - and this makes people feel better about themselves.
AUBREY: Another of Deutsch's patients, Alison Smith, says her parents' generation was mostly concerned with just keeping their teeth from falling out.
Ms. ALISON SMITH: I think we all have higher expectations. And as much as we take care of our, you know, our hair and our skin and do all of those things to sort of make ourselves look better, your teeth are an important of that.
AUBREY: Smith says at 53 she is not aiming for perfection or a Hollywood look. Mostly, she wants her teeth straight. They used to be. She had braces as a teenager. But one of the other bummers of aging is that the teeth, it turns out, have a good memory.
Orthodontist Garrett Djeu explains there are tiny fibers that connect teeth to bone in the mouth.
Mr. GARRETT DJEU (Orthodontist): Those fibers tend to want to pull the teeth back to where they came from. And so that's why you commonly get relapse.
AUBREY: To solve the problem, one company has popularized invisible braces called Invisalign. They're transparent plastic molds like retainers, and this is what Alison Smith has opted for. Over the next six months, she'll get a new retainer every 10 days or so, each one pushing her teeth a little closer to being straight. She's onto her second retainer this week.
Ms. SMITH: When I first put them in, it was sort of a couple of days of Advil, just to get used to it.
AUBREY: Clear braces are hugely popular, but there's not a lot of research to demonstrate the success rate of Invisalign. Orthodontist Garrett Djeu did do a small study comparing Invisalign to traditional braces.
Mr. JEW: Invisalign works very well in certain types of cases.
AUBREY: But not for buck teeth, overbites or crossbites. He found it is good at closing small gaps and correcting mildly crowded teeth.
For dentists, the ability to straighten teeth is a big draw. But patients also pay top dollar to get a beautiful, luminescent white smile.
Thanks to innovations in ceramics, 42-year-old Andrea Johnson is getting a crown on her front tooth that looks absolutely real. Johnson watches through a mirror as Deutsch's staff ceramicist paints the porcelain to add subtle bits of color.
Mr. DEUTSCH: It made a big difference. So now you see the difference between...
Ms. ANDREA JOHNSON: Yeah, yeah. It looks great.
Mr. DEUTSCH: It looks great, right?
Ms. JOHNSON: Looks great.
AUBREY: The only thing that hurts, Andrea says, is the cost.
And what is the price tag?
Ms. JOHNSON: For just the tooth, it's about two grand. Now, imagine if you had to do a couple of them, which I don't, thank God.
AUBREY: The cost of veneers can also run a couple thousand dollars per tooth, and invisible braces range for about two to 6,000.
Allison Aubrey, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
When driving rains slammed the West earlier this week, there was fear and celebration, fear of mudslides, celebration for all that water. In western residential areas, much of it will run off and go to waste. And Brad Lancaster is on a crusade to keep that from happening. He lives in parched Tucson, Arizona and has written a book of tips on how you can harvest rainwater. We called him to find out exactly what that means.
Mr. BRAD LANCASTER (Author, "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond"): It could mean one of three things. The easiest is if you just harvest that water in the soil and use the soil as your tank. You create these bowl-like shapes in the landscape that collect water. You mulch the surface and plant them so the water quickly infiltrates. And then the plants become your living pumps. So you then utilize that water in the form of a peach, a pomegranate, an apple, wildlife habitat and beauty.
MONTAGNE: What would be the second way that water is harvested?
Mr. LANCASTER: Well, number two would probably be what most people think of. And that's the harvest of rainwater from a roof into a tank or a cistern. The third would be then harvesting our household wastewater. That would be our gray water - the water from our shower, bathtub, bathroom sink, washing machine. That's an excellent source of water that we can reuse to passively irrigate our landscapes in times of no rain.
MONTAGNE: Yeah. There is a statistic that you cite that is pretty astonishing as to how much drinking water is used for landscape irrigation, generally.
Mr. LANCASTER: Yeah. Thirty to over 50 percent of the potable drinking water currently consumed by the average single family home in America is used for landscape use. And we found that you can provide all or at least 95 percent of the irrigation water needs just with rainwater and gray water.
MONTAGNE: Does this make sense in our cities that are not in, say, real dry areas but may be going through droughts? And I'm thinking here of Atlanta, Georgia, and the whole Southeast where it's been in the middle of a drought. Is this viable for these places when really, at some point, the drought will be over?
Mr. LANCASTER: Absolutely. Because the great thing about rainwater harvesting is that it works in both wet and dry contexts. In the wet context, it greatly reduces flooding downstream. And then in the dry context, it buffers the droughts of the dry seasons.
MONTAGNE: How hard is it to start harvesting rainwater?
Mr. LANCASTER: Well, I don't think it's...
MONTAGNE: What's the start-up cost? What's involved?
Mr. LANCASTER: Yeah, the price of a shovel, basically.
MONTAGNE: Oh, no. It's at least the price of a big barrel.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. LANCASTER: No. No. No. You can start just by changing the topography of your yard. Just create some basins around your trees. Or if you don't have any trees yet, create some basins beside which you can plant a couple low-water use native trees. That's the easiest way to start. And then if you want to step up, then you can put in a barrel or a tank. But there is a risk if you do this. You'll get so excited that even if it rains at 3:00 a.m., you'll likely find yourself running out in the pouring rain in just your underwater just to watch the tanks and earthworks fill up.
MONTAGNE: All right. Now, you're speaking from experience?
Mr. LANCASTER: Oh yeah, absolutely. I've got a bit of a reputation in the neighborhood.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MONTAGNE: Well, Brad, thank you very much for talking to us about this.
Mr. LANCASTER: You bet. Thank you.
MONTAGNE: Brad Lancaster is the author of "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond."
(Soundbite of music)
MONTAGNE: To see how Brad Lancaster turns Tucson's 12 inches a year of rain into 100,000 gallons of water on his property alone, check out npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
John Durham is the man tapped to investigate the CIA's destruction of tapes of the interrogations of terror suspects. It's a politically sensitive case that has Durham's critics and supporters looking back to another complicated and politically-charged case that he investigated. That case involved a former FBI agent tied to the mob. A notorious moment in FBI history. The agent, John Connolly, had cultivated two leaders of the south Boston mob and convinced them to become informants. Then he got too close.
One of those mobsters was James Whitey Bulger and Stephen The Rifleman Flemmi. He convinced them to become informants. Then he got too close.
One of those mobsters was James Whitey Bulger - who would eventually lend his name to the investigation into the FBI's ties to the mob. As federal prosecutor, John Durham handled that case.
NPR's Dina Temple-Raston has this look back.
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON: John Durham had worked with the FBI for years, prosecuting organized crime cases in Connecticut when former Attorney General Janet Reno asked him to lead a special federal investigative task force. She wanted him to look into the unusually close relationship between the mob and the FBI in Boston. Former FBI agent John Connolly ended up being a target in that probe.
Samuel Buell is a former assistant U.S. attorney who worked with Durham on that case.
Mr. SAMUEL BUELL (Former Assistant U.S. Attorney): Durham had a very strong case on John Connolly. He was clearly the most culpable individual involved in this. We had a former senior, very powerful FBI agent convicted of racketeering and sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. That is unprecedented.
TEMPLE-RASTON: From the start, prosecutors said there were other agents and police officials involved. But just how much corruption existed in Boston's law enforcement ranks never really came to light. The task force convicted just three people: Connolly, a Boston cop, and a state policeman.
Former FBI agent Robert Fitzpatrick was in charge of the organized crime squad at the Boston Field Office at the time. He says Durham pulled his punches.
Mr. ROBERT FITZPATRICK (Former FBI Agent): We're left with the fact that Connolly did the whole thing. I find that ludicrous. I really do. I can't live with that. I can't live with the fact that Connolly was the only guy involved. And so we put Connolly in jail and the whole thing is over. I just don't believe that.
TEMPLE-RASTON: At the time, even U.S. Attorney Mike Sullivan seemed to suggest that Connolly was only the beginning. Here he is at a press conference right after Connolly's 2002 conviction.
Mr. MIKE SULLIVAN (U.S. Attorney): No, Connolly was not alone in the mishandling of informants and assisting them in carrying out these crimes. It makes Connolly no less responsible.
TEMPLE-RASTON: The other shoe never fell. Connolly was the only agent Durham ever convicted. Another agent died while awaiting trial. Durham promised a report detailing what he'd found, but it was never released. The Justice Department won't even confirm that they have received it.
Boston Police Detective Frank Dewan was in charge of the department's intelligence squad at the time. He says there could be lots of reasons why the report never surfaced.
Mr. FRANK DEWAN (Detective, Boston Police): Perhaps there are things that couldn't be corroborated that would smear people. Perhaps the statute of limitations had run out on people. You just don't know what's behind the scenes. I think that John would do whatever is right all the way around.
TEMPLE-RASTON: The unreleased report aside, Durham's reputation in Boston was that he went where the facts led him. During the Bulger investigation, he discovered secret FBI documents that indicated four men had been framed for murder and wrongly imprisoned. He turned the documents over to their lawyers. And a civil suit followed. The families of the men won a $101.7-million judgment against the government. Dewan says that bodes well for the CIA investigation.
Mr. DEWAN: John is a fine investigator and a man that's full of integrity. What he finds, he'll go after. And if it is not there, he won't go after it. I think he'll do things right down the line.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Durham has his work cut out for him. His latest case is about more than just the CIA possibly obstructing justice. Durham and a team of FBI investigators will end up putting the Bush administration's terrorism strategy under a microscope.
The FBI has been saying for months that harsh interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding or controlled drowning, don't work. Now, they are launching an investigation that may testify to that. Durham will be in the middle of a classic inside-the-Beltway political case.
Samuel Buell says that won't be a problem.
Mr. BUELL: Nothing gets dirtier and uglier than Boston politics. And the Bulger and Connolly matters were all tied up with Boston politics, both within law enforcement and within the state government. And John Durham was able to navigate his way, you know, quite successfully, through that. So I don't think that there is going to be anything about Washington that is going to catch him unawares.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Both civil liberties groups and members of Congress cautiously welcomed Durham's appointment. But what they really wanted was an independent prosecutor, and Durham won't be independent. He will be reporting his findings to the deputy attorney general at the Justice Department.
Dina Temple-Raston, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep. Good morning.
You get a sense of how the Republican presidential candidates are tweaking their strategies by following the latest moves of one. Mitt Romney lost in Iowa and New Hampshire. He really wants to win Michigan, which votes next week, and he's cutting back his efforts in another early contest. Romney has pulled his ads in South Carolina, which is not ideal ground for several candidates but it's hard for them to entirely ignore. All the Republican contenders do show up in South Carolina tonight for a chance to debate on Fox News.
NPR's Brian Naylor reports in the first southern state to vote.
BRIAN NAYLOR: In South Carolina, the Republican presidential candidates face a much different climate from that of Iowa and New Hampshire. Arriving in Spartanburg yesterday, Mike Huckabee was quite happy about that.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): We haven't seen anything but ice and snow for the past three weeks, and it sure is good to get down to the South, ladies and gentlemen...
(Soundbite of cheering)
Mr. HUCKABEE: ...see some green grass.
NAYLOR: For Huckabee, the political climate may be warmer as well. Independents won't be able to take part in the primary and the dominant block among the state's registered Republican voters is that of evangelical Christians - the same kind of voters who strongly supported the former Baptist minister in Iowa. So Huckabee, who led in the most recent polls here, has good cause to be optimistic.
Mr. HUCKABEE: Because I believe that here in South Carolina it's going to be the place where we'll continue the momentum that we've seen in this campaign and we're going to take it all the way from here on to Florida and ultimately the White House. But South Carolina is going to be a turning point in this nomination process, and you're going to be a part of a great piece of history.
(Soundbite of applause)
NAYLOR: The candidate coming into South Carolina with the most momentum - Senator John McCain - winner of the New Hampshire primary, may also be the one with the most to lose here. He spoke at the Citadel in Charleston last night.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): This election here in South Carolina will play a major, major role in who the next president of the United States is. And for a long, long time now, the selection of the people of South Carolina have been the determining factor. So I'm asking for your vote. I won't let you down.
NAYLOR: But South Carolina also has a history of being inhospitable to McCain. Eight years ago, as now, he came here after winning in New Hampshire. And that time he lost to George Bush after a nasty campaign characterized by vicious personal attacks. This time McCain's biggest problem may not be a rival candidate but an issue: immigration. Analysts say it's the hot button issue here, and McCain has angered many Republicans by supporting an immigration proposal in the Senate that critics charged was amnesty.
Fred Thompson has also been active in the state, embarking on a two-day bus tour and taking on rival Mike Huckabee by name, linking him to a well-known teachers union, the National Education Association.
Mr. FRED THOMPSON (Former Republican Senator, Tennessee; Presidential Candidate): We're going to get a little - in a little discussion here the next few days, you know, as to who's the true conservative, I guess, as far as our record is concerned. And Governor Huckabee and I have had some discussions, and all I say is that I received the national endorsement of the National Right to Life folks and he received the national endorsement of NEA. I rest my case.
(Soundbite of applause)
NAYLOR: Thompson's aides hope the former Tennessee senator's folksy drawl and deliberate pace will find favor among his fellow Southerners. In the end, says Walter Edgar, director of the Institute for Southern Studies at the University of South Carolina, McCain's fate may rest with the undecided.
Professor WALTER EDGAR (University of South Carolina): These undecided voters may decide to jump to him, because a lot of the undecided, I think you would say, are the suburban Republicans, some of whom would have been from McCain before but, you know, some might be backing Giuliani, but there's not a - I can't say a real enthusiasm for Giuliani here.
NAYLOR: One Republican South Carolina voters won't be seeing much of is Mitt Romney. He had been running ads in the state as recently as Tuesday, talking about trade and economic issues. But after his loss in New Hampshire, Romney decided to place all his eggs in Michigan, where his father was an auto executive and three-term governor. Michigan holds its primary Tuesday, just four days before South Carolina's.
Brian Naylor, NPR News, Charleston, South Carolina.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The two leading Democratic candidates, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are on the road campaigning today. Obama has a midday rally in Charleston, South Carolina, and Clinton heads to Nevada.
NPR's David Greene has been on the bus with both of these two candidates over the past several days, and he joins us this morning to talk about the next phase of the campaign.
Good morning, David.
DAVID GREENE: Hey, Renee.
MONTAGNE: And have Hillary Clinton and/or Barack Obama had a chance to catch their breath?
GREENE: I guess as much as they can, they certainly starting to get used the life away from snowy Iowa and New Hampshire now. Hillary Clinton took a day away from campaigning yesterday and she went home to chat Chappaqua, New York to pick up clean clothes, as one of her aides put it us. But she also did some television interviews from her house and she went down to Washington to thank her campaign staff members for what they've done so far.
Now, Barack Obama spent time right in Hillary Clinton's backyard. He held a big rally in Jersey City right outside New York and he told a big crowd that was packed into a gymnasium that he's already shaken off the loss to Clinton in New Hampshire. So here's a little of Obama.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois): Yesterday in New Hampshire, we - my vote came up just a little short, but the turnout was enormous. The passion, the energy, the volunteers who are going door to door, stomping through the snow.
GREENE: And Renee, I was down in New Jersey, and as you can hear, there were some very serious supporters there and there were some people who were just wanting to get their first look at a candidate they've been reading so much about. But a lot of people, about 3,000 inside the gym and more than a thousand were locked out by the fire marshal, and Obama made a spontaneous move to get outside and greet them on the sidewalk.
MONTAGNE: Well, with all that energy, focus, outpouring of interest going into two states, Iowa and New Hampshire, now we're looking ahead to nearly two dozen. How does that change the strategy for these candidates?
GREENE: It could feel very different. You know, there are two important states coming up, caucuses in Nevada that work similar to Iowa, and we have a Democratic primary then in South Carolina. But the way this race is marching along, I think it's going to feel like in no time we're at February 5th, when 22 states have a nominating contest.
And so suddenly, you know, you're not having these candidates in one place for voters to concentrate and compare. They'll be spread out. And these different states have different advantages for the candidates.
Hillary Clinton has done well with actual Democratic voters, so she might focus on states that allow only Democrats to vote in the primary. Barack Obama has been drawing independents out in force.
So a state like California that allows independents to vote only in the Democratic primary, not the Republican primary, could be a big focus for him. Absentee ballots are also expected to be very decisive in a state like California, so the campaigns say they're going to be looking there.
I mean, if you compare this to a play, there's just not one state now. The campaigns have to ship their surrogates all over the country. There's more ground for them to cover, and this is going to make advertising more important, and also money. And both campaigns are trying to brag about how well they've done in fundraising.
The Clinton campaign says their Web site was getting 500 hits a minute yesterday after the New Hampshire victory and set a one day record for online fundraising. And Obama was in Manhattan last night, right in Clinton's state having a big fundraiser. He raised $700,000. He told his donors he knew everyone was surprised that he lost in New Hampshire, but that his message has been consistent. And there was one joke. One of the people in the room, when Obama was talking about how sort of drained he is from the campaign, said don't cry. And that was a reference, of course, to Hillary Clinton's swelling up at a New Hampshire event a few days ago.
MONTAGNE: Right. Which is turning into a classic campaign moment.
GREENE: It really is, and you know, the Clinton campaign has been very careful to say that was a spontaneous moment, but they also say it really helped her connect with voters, and they're saying they need a really good decision in New Hampshire to have her taking so many questions and having these personal interactions from voters. But now the question is - and they acknowledge - we're spreading out to so many states, how many opportunities she'll actually have to do that.
MONTAGNE: Okay, just - we have a few seconds left. We heard about the Republicans field being a free-for-all. The Democrats are different. Two strong candidates now and a narrowing field. Tell us about who's gone and who may be out.
GREENE: Well, John Edwards, the other major candidate in the Democratic race, seems very weakened, although he's still going at it. Bill Richardson, it sounds like we're getting reports he may drop out. So a dynamic with two candidates focusing on one another, and it could get very negative. And Barack Obama said he's ready for rough and tumble politics that he would use to in Chicago if it goes that way.
MONTAGNE: David, thanks very much.
GREENE: Thanks, Renee.
MONTAGNE: NPR's David Greene.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
The Internet giant Google may do business in the virtual world but it's altering a very real landscape - Seattle's so-called Eastside on the eastern flank of Lake Washington. That's a center for high-tech. Microsoft makes its home there, along with wireless companies and software developers and game studios, not to mention a sizeable presence from Yahoo and Google, which is expanding its Eastside presence, building a corporate campus in the city of Kirkland.
For many residents, this is a mixed blessing, as the one-time quiet bedroom community changes into a trendy urban village.
NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports.
WENDY KAUFMAN: The challenges facing Dave Ramsay, the city manager of Kirkland, are challenges many city officials across the country can only dream of - how to manage a booming city economy and a downtown that's bustling with vitality.
Mr. DAVE RAMSAY (City Manager, Kirkland, Washington): You say what happened the last 10 years - all of these buildings, all have come in the last 10 years. And the amount of people living in our downtown is wonderful, but it's a whole new look and feel.
KAUFMAN: From the corner of Lake Street and Kirkland Avenue, we see tall new office buildings and condo developments, many with water views. At street level, there are restaurants, clubs and toney retail stores.
Professor RICHARD MORRILL (University of Washington): It's changed surprisingly fast, but eventually it had to happen.
KAUFMAN: Richard Morrill, an emeritus professor at the University of Washington, explains that the urbanization is in line with countywide development plans that aim to put more people and jobs in close in communities and leave more open space in outlying regions.
But the transformation of Kirkland is not without problems and concerns. With a beautiful lakefront location close to the university and Microsoft, Kirkland has long been a desirable place to live. And as more and more high-tech firms began to locate here, the cost of housing and commercial real estate has skyrocketed. The commercial district now caters primarily to those who are young, hip and affluent. Some longtime residents feel left out.
Ms. LUCIA HENDRY(ph): I'm getting to where I'm not very happy with it. Now all you see is condos, condos, condos.
KAUFMAN: Lucia Hendry and her husband hitchhiked to the Pacific Northwest and settled in Kirkland in 1942. She bemoans that the neighborhood department store, hardware store, even the drugstore have moved away.
Ms. HENDRY: All of that is gone. And people are starting to go out to the malls and doing their shopping. And they don't - well, there's nothing here in Kirkland to really shop.
KAUFMAN: A pricy pet boutique is of no use to her, nor are trendy women's stores, coffee houses and art galleries. And therein lies one of the biggest challenges for city manager Dave Ramsay.
Mr. RAMSAY: The first challenge is to grow gracefully.
KAUFMAN: But how do you do that, given the economic and political pressure to grow and to make the city hip and attractive to companies like Google? How do you ensure that the friendly small town atmosphere that helped make Kirkland so attractive in the first place remains?
(Soundbite of vehicle)
KAUFMAN: Driving up the hill from downtown toward Google's new corporate campus, the challenges stand in stark relief.
Ms. ELLEN MILLER-WOLFE (Economic Development Manager): Here you are seeing a lot of mega-house development. Okay. I think I'm going to come out where I want to come out here.
KAUFMAN: Ellen Miller-Wolfe is Kirkland's manager of economic development.
Ms. MILLER-WOLFE: So here it is. This will all be occupied by Google. Huge, huh?
KAUFMAN: The campus of two and three-story buildings now under construction is expected to house about seven or 800 Google employees. And the city hopes and expects that Google will continue to add to its Kirkland workforce. To accommodate that, the city would require still more new office space, and the urbanization of Kirkland would intensify.
One developer's solution calls for a quadrupling of the office space in a downtown complex, a development that would dwarf anything else in the city. While the project is highly controversial, it would provide badly needed underground parking, additional open space, and if the economics work out, longtime residents might get some of the little niceties they no longer have, like a drugstore.
Wendy Kaufman, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
This next bit of news had a television talk show host smiling. Four words - Stephen Colbert, Vice President.
(Soundbite of TV show, "The Colbert Report")
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): Stephen, please, be my running mate.
Mr. STEPHEN COLBERT (Host): Yes! Yes, a thousand times, yes!
INSKEEP: I think that means yes. That's Mike Huckabee sealing the deal on "The Colbert Report" last night. Stephen Colbert enthusiastically agreed for the fourth time, by the way, to be Huckabee's running mate.
South Carolina's Democratic Party did not allow the comedian to enter its primaries a presidential candidate. But if the former Arkansas governor gets the Republican nomination, Colbert could make the ballot after all.
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
In our business news today, a new ultra-cheap car for the masses.
It's been dubbed the people's car and generated enormous buzz in the auto industry for a country not known for cars - India.
Unidentified Woman: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for being with us at this historic occasion.
MONTAGNE: It was finally unveiled today in New Delhi with a price tag of $2,500. The Indian company Tata is behind it. It's called the Nano.
Murad Ali Baig is an automotive journalist. He was at the press conference this morning where the Nano was presented the world. Good morning.
Mr. MURAD ALI BAIG (Automotive Journalist): Good morning.
MONTAGNE: So Nano, I guess meaning, as in nanosecond - teeny tiny little car?
Mr. BAIG: Nano technologies, micro-technologies, whatever name they've given it, it is currently the lowest cost complete car in the world.
MONTAGNE: Well, complete. Why don't you describe it to us? People have been waiting - breathlessly waiting for this car.
Mr. BAIG: It's not half a car. It's not the sort of car lacking in anything. It's got space. It's got comfort. It's got the optional air-conditioning. It's got a 35 horsepower engine, which won't give you any phenomenal performance, but will give you up to about 60 miles per hour.
MONTAGNE: But that 35 horsepower engine, to put it in perspective, I think that's about a third the size of the smallest car that we here in the United States would have on the road.
Mr. BAIG: You're quite right. I've seen it. It seats four large adults quite comfortably.
MONTAGNE: Does it have a trunk, a boot?
Mr. BAIG: No. It's a rear engine, so there is - it's like the old Volkswagen Beetle. There's not a lot of room in trunk.
MONTAGNE: What is the buying public that Tata Motors is aiming at?
Mr. BAIG: Well, this will open a new segment because this will be half the price of the smallest car in India at the moment. And about three times the price of an average motorcycle.
MONTAGNE: The motorcycle market there in India - it's people who are families, who would like to have a car perhaps but can't.
Mr. BAIG: Absolutely. For many people there is nothing between a second-hand car and a motorcycle.
MONTAGNE: Now, environmentalists are not too happy about the prospect of possibly millions of new cars hitting the road.
Mr. BAIG: We haven't yet seen any test reports, but according to the chairman of the company, the emission level should be about half that of an average new motorcycle.
MONTAGNE: Is the car nice looking?
Mr. BAIG: It's very pretty.
MONTAGNE: Very pretty?
Mr. BAIG: Yeah.
MONTAGNE: Come in different colors?
Mr. BAIG: We only saw three colors.
MONTAGNE: Yeah.
Mr. BAIG: A yellow, a red and a silver. But I mean, that's the least of the problems - I mean to give a dozen colors is no big deal.
MONTAGNE: How has Tata, the company making this car, managed to make a car for $2,500?
Mr. BAIG: Well, they have done a lot of what is called frugal engineering. They have set up a plant in a backward area of Bengal, which has attracted quite a few tax concessions. It has also got a lot of their suppliers of components and parts to set up factories next door to them so that they can reduce the transit costs of transport from different plants all over the country. So they have done a number of steps to shave pennies off the pound.
MONTAGNE: When does this Nano hit the road?
Mr. BAIG: It was vaguely said halfway through next year. So I would imagine we can expect something like September, October this year.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for talking with us.
Mr. BAIG: Thank you.
MONTAGNE: Murad Ali Baig is an automotive journalist speaking to us from New Delhi, where the new people's car, the Nano, was unveiled today.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Americans may want to take a look at that new super-cheap car, if they have jobs that are especially sensitive to changes in the economy. Yesterday, a top Wall Street investment bank warned that a recession is coming, though according to this forecast it will be a mild one.
NPR's Jim Zarroli reports.
JIM ZARROLI: The report from Goldman Sachs said the recession probably wouldn't be too severe, more like recession light. But it is coming this year, and it will probably last a quarter or more. Not every economist agrees with that assessment. Some say the economy's resilience will keep it expanding, if only slightly. But Goldman's preeminence made a lot of people take notice yesterday.
Commerce Bank's Joel Naroff said there is no question that pessimism has grown. One big reason, he says, was the spike in unemployment in December from 4.7 to five percent.
Mr. JOEL NAROFF (Chief Economist, Commerce Bank): If we don't get job growth, we don't get income growth. We don't get consumer spending, and we do get a recession. So I think that it's the employment report that has created real uncertainty now where the economy is going.
ZARROLI: Equally disturbing, he says, was a recent report from the Institute for Supply Management showing a big drop in manufacturing activity. It suggested that troubles in the housing market have infected other parts of the economy. The bad news has worn away at stock values, and Naroff said it's led to a debate at the Federal Reserve.
It is a familiar debate. Is the economy growing so weak that the Fed needs to be relaxing interest rates to encourage investment and keep people spending? Or will that just make inflation worse?
Mr. NAROFF: I think that battle is still on. But I think the recent weak economic data has probably tipped the scales more in favor of the concern about a recession.
ZARROLI: A lot of people seem to agree right now. Reuters released a survey yesterday of 20 major economists. And every single one thinks the Fed will cut rates. The only question is how much. Eight of the 20 think a big cut is coming, such as a half a percentage point.
Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And today's last word in business is for women entrepreneurs across the country who want a government contract. And the word is cabinetmaking.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The Small Business Administration has issued a new proposal for contracts going to firms owned by women. The agency designated four industries in which women-owned businesses are underrepresented, and they're therefore eligible for contracts set aside just for women.
INSKEEP: In addition to cabinetmaking, there is also engraving, intelligence, and certain motor vehicle sales. Women business owners are furious at this plan because they say women-owned firms are disadvantaged in many other areas, not just those four.
MONTAGNE: Take munitions, for example. Norma Byron runs the only woman-run munitions design firm in the country. She told the Washington Post she faces gender bias despite her extensive background in firearms and ammunition. Most people, she says, think her husband is the real owner of the firm. But he is just a photographer.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: I believe it's possible - not only possible, I believe it's going to happen, if there'll be a signed peace treaty by the time I leave office.
MONTAGNE: That was President Bush on his trip to the Middle East. Many people are skeptical that he can make great strides towards peace, although the president isn't. In a moment, we'll hear how the Arab media are covering this visit.
We begin with NPR's Michele Kelemen on a bus in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Hello, Michele.
MICHELE KELEMEN: Hi. How are you?
MONTAGNE: As we've just heard, President Bush said a Mideast peace treaty will be completed by the time he leaves office. That's a pretty bold prediction.
KELEMEN: It was a bold prediction, and he was quite optimistic throughout this news conference today with President Mahmoud Abbas. I mean, part of this was really to boost Abbas, who is a weak leader here in the West Bank and doesn't control Gaza, which is the other part of the Palestinian territories now controlled by Hamas, which the U.S. and Israel considers a terrorists organization.
So this was really a time to show that the Abbas way, the negotiation way is the way for Palestinians to get a Palestinian state. And we heard a lot of optimism despite all the skepticism in the region that Mr. Bush said that a Palestinian state will emerge. He is confident that when it does, it will be a major step toward peace. And he said the status quo is unacceptable.
MONTAGNE: Now, I gather there was heavy fog there today so that - Mr. Bush had to travel by land from Israel to the West Bank. What would he have seen on that journey, if he was looking out the window?
KELEMEN: Well, he was supposed to come by helicopter and instead he did go by this motorcade - the same route that we took in here. You actually pass, you know, the concrete wall that's part of this barrier that Israel is building in and around the West Bank. You pass Israeli checkpoints, Israeli settlements and even - heard of a bunch of trailers that a new outpost that - the kind of outpost that President Bush said have to go. That was a comment that he made yesterday when he met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
MONTAGNE: And in Israel, there's a lot of fondness for what they call their great friend, President Bush. He's forged a close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
KELEMEN: That's right. I mean, even today with Abbas, the president seemed that he's - and they seem to have a good rapport, but nothing like Olmert where - who was phrasing Bush, even to the point where President Bush looked quite embarrassed yesterday. But Olmert welcomed Mr. Bush as a trusted ally and a confidant. The two have a strong relationship over the past couple of years.
MONTAGNE: What, though, about Mahmoud Abbas - he did say that President Bush's visit gives - I'm quoting here - "gives our people great hope." But if the Palestinians perceive the U.S. as a staunch ally of Israel, as many do, is there a sense that he can actually be an architect of a breakthrough of any kind?
KELEMEN: Well, there's lot of skepticism about that here, for sure, but you did hear him talking and saying the right words today, saying that an eventual Palestinian state can't (unintelligible) with cheese and has to be continuous. That he understands the concerns about Israeli settlements and even said that he's made clear to Israel that it shouldn't hinder the Palestinian efforts to build up its security forces. So there were some strong signals to the Palestinians that President Bush brought with him today.
MONTAGNE: And where to from here, Michele?
KELEMEN: The president has more meetings with the Palestinians, and he is planning to visit Bethlehem to go to the church in the nativity before returning to Jerusalem tonight.
MONTAGNE: Thanks very much.
NPR's Michele Kelemen traveling with the president on the West Bank.
KELEMEN: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
So just there's a little bit of the news coverage of the president's trip to the Middle East. Let's see how the trip is playing in the Middle Eastern media.
We turn to Ramez Maluf, professor of journalism at Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon and a regular guest on this program.
Welcome back, sir.
Professor RAMEZ MALUF (Journalism, Lebanese American University, Lebanon): My pleasure.
INSKEEP: Are people closely watching the president's visit?
Prof. MALUF: It's receiving adequate coverage. It's not leading the news, but it's obviously on the front pages. But it's not really seen as the most important news item on the news broadcast or on the front pages.
INSKEEP: Would that be because few people, at least in the Middle East media, seem to expect much substance to come out of this visit?
Prof. MALUF: Yeah, exactly. It's being met with a lot of skepticism. In fact, Al-Ahram, which is Egypt's largest newspaper and it's owned by the state, describe him, in Arabic, using the expression lame duck president, unable to muster serious support for any initiative within his own country so he would like to (unintelligible) advance in the peace process, Al Ahram says. But he, himself, must recognize that this comes at the wrong time. The Israeli government cannot deliver any difficult decisions and neither can George Bush. So I think that's the overall climate.
INSKEEP: That's what's being written in an Egyptian newspaper owned by the government of Egypt, which is, at least…
Prof. MALUF: Right. This is the…
INSKEEP: …nominally an ally of the U.S.
Prof. MALUF: Yes, it's owned by the government. And I think this is the, you know, overall feeling. I think no one here really expects much out of it.
INSKEEP: Now, the president has, in addition to his other statements on this trip, made some statements that could be seen as critical of Israel. Yesterday, he held a press conference inside Israel. He was asked about Israeli settlements in the West Bank. And he criticized small settlements, which, he said, were an impediment to peace. Has that received any coverage in the Arabic language media?
Prof. MALUF: Yes, it has. The Jordanian newspaper Rai points that out - that this, you know, favorable statement, something they appreciate - and so did (unintelligible) today in Lebanon. But even Al Rai, which, again, is also partially state-owned newspaper in Jordan, is critical with the visit and thinks that nothing much is going to happen as a result of it. It says George Bush does not have serious interlocutors in Israel, that Prime Minister Olmert is unpopular. And the Palestinians are divided among themselves, so they cannot deliver anything either.
INSKEEP: Has Iran come up very much in the coverage of this trip so far?
Prof. MALUF: Yes, let me give an example. Now, one of the newspapers that is very frequently quoted, albeit that it has a small distribution is Al-Kabas - says that one of the purposes of this visit is to show support for his allies against Iran, meaning, of course, both Israel and Saudi Arabia.
And he has used this opportunity, right from the start, want to threaten to Iran. And further more, to affirm the Jewish character of Israel, as he did yesterday. That means - Atwan(ph) wrote in his editorial today - that he has closed the door on any discussion on the right of return of the Palestinian refugees and has reinforced the doctrine that the Middle East should be an area governed by religious governments, rather than by democratic governments as he claims he would like to see.
So I think one of the marked statements of George Bush in this visit is the affirmation of Israel as a Jewish state. A lot of people have taken note of that.
INSKEEP: Amid all this skepticism and doubt about the president's motives, do you see any signs in the Arabic language media of, well, the United States building up any good will as a result of this effort?
Prof. MALUF: To be honest, I haven't seen anything. I have looked at a number of newspapers or Web sites and television, a lot of people think this is coming too late - and in his tenure as a president.
You know, the rise of (unintelligible) tied to the Letter of welcome to President Bush, writer Salahadin Hafas(ph) said Mr. Bush, who was thankfully now in his last year in office, was welcomed to our land of which he knows little about - knows nothing about its history, knows nothing about its culture or the depth of its civilization and misunderstood its patience in front of decades of oppression until it finally blew in the face of its oppressors. So this is what I have been reading, both from state-owned public media and commercial media.
INSKEEP: Ramez Maluf is professor of journalism at the Lebanese American University in Beirut.
Thanks again.
Prof. MALUF: My pleasure.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Next, let's investigate some crime in agriculture. Farmers are benefitting from a run-up in commodity prices. The price of corn, for example, has doubled in the last year. Soybeans dropped more than 50 percent. And wheat is trading it three times what it was a couple of years ago. But this boom has brought problems. In western Kansas, police are investigating almost a dozen incidents where thieves using tractor trailers stole wheat from grain elevators.
NPR's Jason Beaubien reports from Kansas City.
JASON BEAUBIEN: The thieves had at least four grain elevators near the western Kansas down Syracuse and made off with more than $50,000 worth of raw wheat.
Terry Bertholf with the Kansas Farmers Service Association, which ensures several of the elevators, says wheat elevators, particularly at this time of the year, are often unmanned. Bertholf says the thieves knew how to operate the augers to offload the grain. They then drove the wheat to other grain elevators in the area and resold it.
Mr. TERRY BERTHOLF (Lawyer): We don't even know for sure that $50,000 is all that was taken. We may never know.
BEAUBIEN: Bertholf says large-scale wheat thefts, like the ones being investigated now, are unheard of in western Kansas. In the past, he says, there were occasionally problems with someone stealing a few bushels. But it never involved semis. Now, with tractor trailer loads of wheat fetching as much as $5,000 a piece, this crime is far more lucrative.
Just last year, wheat was selling at $3 a bushel. But now, this year, it's worth almost $10 a bushel and it's much harder to come by.
Mr. BERTHOLF: Most of the grain has been milled into bread, which is why the - one of the reasons why the price is so high. Plus, less - wheat is being produced because acres are being diverted to corn and for ethanol and livestock.
BEAUBIEN: When prices for any commodity rise rapidly, whether it's wheat or scrap metal, security measures often lag behind. Danielle Rau with the California Farm Bureau says the same thing happened in her state when almond prices hit a record high.
Ms. DANIELLE RAU (Director of Rural Crime Prevention, California Farm Bureau Federation): Last year, we had a huge problem when the price of almonds was as high as it was, thieves coming in and stealing entire tractor trailer loads of almond totaling $250,000 a piece. And these guys were stealing them right out of the yard.
BEAUBIEN: Investigators discovered that the thieves were trucking the nuts to Canada and selling them there. The police still haven't made any arrests in the wheat thefts, and are urging grain elevator operators to step up security measures at the hundreds of silos that dot this part of the Great Plains.
Jason Beaubien, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
A national wildlife refuge in Southern Colorado may soon have oil and gas drilling rigs on it. That has allowed people upset because four years ago, the federal government paid $33 million to establish the refuge on private land. The goal was to create a preserve. Now, it turns out a Canadian company owns the right to drill there.
NPR's Jeff Brady reports.
JEFF BRADY: The Baca National Wildlife Refuge is at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Nearby in the foothills is the small town of Crestone.
(Soundbite of dog barking)
BRADY: Aside from a couple of dogs, it's quiet - that's one reason more than a dozen spiritual groups have moved here. Christian Dillo heads the Crestone's Spiritual Alliance and he directs a local Zen Buddhist center. His group is asking the federal government to stop plans to drill test wells on the refuge.
Mr. CHRISTIAN DILLO (Director, Crestone Spiritual Alliance): Now, there are two drilling sites proposed, but what if they really find something? Then, you know, people will come in and this could start to be a, yeah, an oil - a gas field.
BRADY: This part of Colorado has largely escaped the gas boom that's awakened many sleepy towns in the Rockies. But that may be about to change. The company that owns the mineral rights under the refuge, Toronto-based Lexam, believes there may be huge gas reservoirs there. When the federal government bought the Baca ranch a few years back, there was an unsuccessful effort to buy the mineral rights too. Since there hadn't been drilling in the area, most locals assumed there wouldn't be in the future.
(Soundbite of footsteps)
BRADY: Getting to the refuge requires a short walk on the snow this time of year. Christine Canaly is with the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council.
Ms. CHRISTINE CANALY (Director, San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council): We're now standing right next to the Baca National Wildlife Refuge and we're not allowed on the refuge yet because there's no management plan in place.
BRADY: Developing that plan involves extensive surveys of what plants and animals are there and what needs protecting. But when someone owns the mineral rights underground, they have a legal right to access those minerals by crossing over the surface property. Separate ownership of surface and minerals is called a split estate, and this exists all over the West. It can leave a surface property owner feeling helpless as big trucks and tall drilling rigs trample their fields. But Canaly says there are protections for surface owners.
Ms. CANALY: We do have rights and we have the rights to protect our resources, and they don't need to be sacrificed at the expense of somebody else getting their resource.
BRADY: Canaly's group filed a successful legal challenge last year, and now the drilling proposal must go through a more thorough environmental analysis. She hopes, eventually, the federal government will find a way to bar any drilling. But Refuge manager Michael Blenden says that's seems unlikely because the law is clear on the rights of mineral owners.
Mr. MICHAEL BLENDEN (Project Leader, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service): We're not in the position saying yes or no. We are in the position of working with the mineral company to minimizing those surface disturbances.
BRADY: Blenden is with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He also lives in this borough community. So this is a battle with his neighbors.
Mr. BLENDEN: It's challenging when we have an issue like this where all of the sudden, you're faced with trying to explain subtleties of law to people that really aren't interested in subtleties because they just don't like things.
BRADY: Meantime, drilling opponents hoped money can be raise to buy the mineral rights and then retire them, but that's assuming the company is even willing to sell them.
Lexam declined an interview request for this story. It's already began the expensive geological testing, perhaps clearing the way for drilling rigs to make their way here soon.
Jeff Brady, NPR News, Denver.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
Enough about Iowa and New Hampshire. Other states now get their chance to influence the presidential race. And this morning, we'll survey two starting with Nevada, which holds caucuses a week from Saturday. The people watching will include Kenneth Fernandez of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Welcome to the program.
Professor KENNETH FERNANDEZ (Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas): Good morning.
INSKEEP: What are the big issues in Nevada right now?
Prof. FERNANDEZ: Well, I think like most states were into the economy, the war, of course, and immigration.
INSKEEP: How is the economy?
Prof. FERNANDEZ: Well, generally, Nevada has a lower unemployment rate than the nation. We've been one of the fastest-growing states for the last 50 or so years. So - but still, again, the trends do affect us.
INSKEEP: You mean, fewer people - well, I mean, gambling pretty much stays strong regardless, doesn't it?
Prof. FERNANDEZ: It does. I mean, 9/11 really hit the tourist industry, but we have bounced back remarkably well.
INSKEEP: Nevertheless, people are concerned about the future?
Prof. FERNANDEZ: Absolutely. I think all the states are interested, just as Nevada is.
INSKEEP: Now, a different candidate seemed to find different states important. Who's focusing on Las Vegas, Reno - places like that?
Prof. FERNANDEZ: Well, most of the Democrats. The Democrats decided to move up Nevada to kind of, you know, add a little more spice to the primary system. Nevada is very different from Iowa and New Hampshire with a very a large Latino population, almost about 25 percent. So we're sort of an interesting state. And we're learning from what happened in Iowa, what happened in New Hampshire.
Clinton, in the December poll, had a double-digit lead. But again, Obama's done well. The culinary union here has just endorsed Obama. That's going to take a little bit of pressure off of his loss as well.
INSKEEP: Is that a big deal to get the culinary workers' endorsement?
Prof. FERNANDEZ: It's the largest union here. And again, we have a caucus - not a primary. And if the unions can get out to vote, that can be influential.
INSKEEP: Professor Fernandez, stay on the line. We want to go to another state - one of the first big ones to vote. Florida is voting at the end of the month.
And Richard Scher is a political science professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
Welcome to the program.
Professor RICHARD SCHER (Political Science, University of Florida, Gainesville): Good morning. Thank you.
INSKEEP: Okay. We heard that Democrats are focusing on Nevada. They're not campaigning at all in Florida because it went too early for the taste of the Democratic Party in the other early states. What about Republicans?
Prof. SCHER: Well, Mr. Giuliani has been here really regularly for quite a long time. And as you probably know, Mr. Romney pulled out yesterday. He pulled his ads out. But this is pretty much a Republican state and it's a goldmine for the party, so they'll be here in earnest. And quite frankly, the Democrats will come very soon as well.
INSKEEP: Giuliani has been counting on Florida after poor performances in other early states and not really trying in many earlier states. Should he be counting on Florida?
Prof. SCHER: It's a gamble. It's definitely a gamble. He's counting on the urban big state, parallels with New York and, of course, there's so many ex-New Yorkers here. He's very well known in the state. He has lots of money in the state. But it is a risk because his numbers have been falling very, very rapidly since about the first part of December. And Mr. Huckabee is really a very much on the rise. And with Mr. Romney bailing out, it could turn into a two-man contest with McCain in the third spot and could be a spoiler.
INSKEEP: Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani. As people consider those candidates, what's one of what I'm sure many issues that you think are in Floridians' minds?
Prof. SCHER: The economy and, especially, housing. The state floats on real estate and with the collapse of the real estate market, the candidates on both sides are going to have to start talking about what we're going to do about the housing market and the mortgage crisis.
INSKEEP: We've been hearing about lots of empty buildings in Miami.
Prof. SCHER: Absolutely. It's a disaster.
INSKEEP: Hmm. Well, now, let me ask you both very briefly, both Florida and Nevada are newcomers to voting this early. Has that changed help the state do you think?
Prof. FERNANDEZ: Well, in the case of Florida, at least, particularly the Democrats, are rearing to go because I think, they smell blood. This is definitely going to be a swing state. They've been sort in the background for the last eight years, and I think Democrats are really rearing to go. Republicans may be a little more subdued but still not completely out of the loop.
INSKEEP: Do you feel like Florida is getting more or less attention for having gone so early?
Prof. FERNANDEZ: Much, much less at the moment. But it's too important. It will get more important as we get closer.
INSKEEP: Or much less because the Democrats wrote you off and other states have gotten the attention so far.
Prof. FERNANDEZ: That's right. But on the other hand, Florida is going to be a key state for whoever is going to be nominee.
INSKEEP: Kenneth Fernandez, we just got about 10 seconds or so. Are Nevadans excited to be this early?
Prof. FERNANDEZ: Absolutely. This is the first time in our history and we're very excited about it. You know, Nevada is a swing state where evenly divided on registration of Republicans and Democrats. And even though we only have five Electoral College votes, it could come down to that.
INSKEEP: Okay. Well, Richard Scher and Kenneth Fernandez, thanks to you both.
Prof. FERNANDEZ: Thank you.
Prof. SCHER: Thank you.
INSKEEP: They've been giving us the update on Nevada and Florida.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And we'll soon find out at pollsters and pundits and forecasts future primaries any better than they did the last one, you remember New Hampshire?
Here's NPR's David Folkenflik.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK: Here's the tally for the media in New Hampshire, zero delegates and one, big, fat black eye. It was just a few days ago when you heard a lot of talk like these from people like ABC's Charlie Gibson.
Mr. CHARLIE GIBSON (News Anchor, ABC): Well, there is anxiety in the Clinton camp. Hillary…
FOLKENFLIK: Or CBS's, Chip Reid.
Mr. CHIP REID (Capitol Hill Correspondent, CBS): The big news here in the polls, they're showing Barack Obama surging into the lead and leaving Hillary Clinton in his wake.
FOLKENFLIK: And then yesterday, you're hearing a whole mass of this, in this instance, from the Fox News channel.
Unidentified Woman: Good morning to you Senator Clinton and congratulations.
FOLKENFLIK: So what happened?
Ms. JACKIE CALMES (Political Reporter; National Correspondent, The Wall Street Journal): I would argue and I remain confident that the polls were right at the time they were taken.
FOLKENFLIK: That's the political reporter Jackie Calmes. Those polls would be the same ones that showed Barack Obama ahead by anywhere from five to 13 points and propelled Calmes' front-page story in The Wall Street Journal that was headlined: Clinton Braces for Second Loss. Ouch.
But lest we judge her too quickly, Calmes was far from alone this week and did a lot of reporting beyond the polls. Obama was about to get a big union endorsement. Clinton was running out of money and some Clinton advisers told Calmes they might urge the senator to withdraw if she lost big on Tuesday.
Ms. CALMES: So you put all these together and then confirmation from the Clinton people that they expected to lose, you know, how do you not report that?
FOLKENFLIK: Especially when all your competitors are rushing to report the results before they happen. Well, most all. Among those pleading for restraint is John Walcott. He's the Washington Bureau Chief of the McClatchy chain of 31 newspapers, which include The Miami Herald and The Sacramento Bee.
Mr. JOHN WALCOTT (Washington Bureau Chief, McClatchy Co.): We concentrate too much on the horse race. We are too quick to tell people how things are going to turn out before they've had the chance to weigh in.
FOLKENFLIK: Walcott says readers typically ignore disclaimers that polls are just a snapshot in time quite literally, which can change in a matter of days or even hours.
Mr. WALCOTT: People do read poll stories as predictive when, in fact, they're not. And I think those of us in the media tend to play to that.
FOLKENFLIK: Old hands say polls are best at illuminating how voters feel about candidates and issues, but not always how they'll actually vote. Take it from Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. His essay on Hillary Clinton appears in the Newsweek edition that's on the stands right now. And it sure didn't talk much about a Clinton inaugural address.
Mr. JONATHAN ALTER (Senior Editor and Columnist, Newsweek): I had sensed that she was increasingly, and the entire Clinton idea, was increasingly receding into the rearview mirror and that we were in the midst of generational change.
FOLKENFLIK: Yet things are now looking up for Clinton. Even so, Alter doesn't retract his column's premise. In large part he says because he doesn't want to lurch too far to the other direction and write off Obama prematurely either.
NPR's polling czar is Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center.
Mr. ANDREW KOHUT (Director, Pew Research Center): This is a surprise and what pollsters have to do is figure out why.
FOLKENFLIK: A Stanford professor suggested Obama did poorly because the alphabetical listing of candidates put him so far down the ballot after Clinton. Kohut is testing a different theory. He recalls past elections when black candidates running against the white opponents earned weaker support than the polls would have suggested.
Mr. KOHUT: We're doing some experiments on our surveys this week to look at the race issue.
FOLKENFLIK: Wouldn't you know it? The one way the polling profession promises to remedy its failure is to ask a lot more voters a lot more questions.
David Folkenflik, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
The honorary mayor of Hollywood, who inducted scores of stars unto the Walk of Fame, has joined the stars of the firmament. For 50 years, Johnny Grant was Tinseltown's biggest booster.
Mr. JOHNNY GRANT (Honorary Hollywood Mayor): I told people, you know, I'm the luckiest guy in the world to have the name Hollywood attached to mine.
MONTAGNE: Mr. Hollywood, Johnny Grant, also brought the stars to soldiers at war on dozens of USO tours. He was 84.
The news is next.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
You can get a look at the mortgage crisis at the street level by walking around Reservoir Hill in Baltimore. A year ago, you would have to dodge the construction crews bringing the neighborhood back to life. Now city housing Chief Paul Graziano says in parts of Reservoir Hill it's like a set for a movie.
Mr. PAUL GRAZIANO (Baltimore Housing Commissioner): You know, where you walk through and some horrible event occurred and all of a sudden there's nothing here. There's no life. There's just nothingness.
MONTAGNE: On many blocks there are rows of empty houses and for sale signs. That's because the people who bought these houses can't afford to finish or keep them. The leaders of Baltimore are so mad, they're going to try and hold one of those subprime lenders responsible for the mess.
NPR's Libby Lewis reports.
LIBBY LEWIS: What the city's mayor and city council are doing is suing lending giant Wells Fargo, one of the biggest lenders in Baltimore. They say the wave of foreclosures has cost the city millions in lost property taxes and public investment.
They're alleging the company discriminated against black borrowers and helped bring about those foreclosures. This isn't about lenders discriminating by denying credit to borrowers because they're black.
Mayor Sheila Dixon believes what Wells Fargo's been doing in Baltimore is just the opposite.
Mayor SHEILA DIXON (Democrat, Baltimore): You know, years ago we talked about redlining. We talked about it as it relates to targeting certain communities and neighborhoods, geographic areas. Well, now we're talking about reverse redlining.
LEWIS: That is, lenders targeting borrowers for credit on unfair terms because they're black. In its lawsuit filed in federal court, the city alleges Wells Fargo did just that, charging black borrowers higher fees and higher rates than it charged white borrowers.
A city analysis found that 65 percent of Wells Fargo's black borrowers got high-rate loans, compared to 15 percent of white borrowers in 2006. And in Baltimore, Wells Fargo's black customers have filed for foreclosure at a rate nearly four times that of its white borrowers in the city.
John Relman is a fair-housing advocate and lawyer helping represent the city.
Mr. JOHN RELMAN (Lawyer): We're talking about a pattern here of conduct, a pattern with a foreclosure rate that is four times greater in minority community. That doesn't happen unless something is going terribly wrong.
LEWIS: Wells Fargo spokesman Kevin Waetke says the city's charges are not true.
Mr. KEVIN WAETKE (Wells Fargo): Race is not a factor in Wells Fargo's pricing. We do not tolerate illegal discrimination against or unfair treatment of any consumer. Our loan pricing is based on credit risk.
LEWIS: Larry Platt is skeptical about the city's lawsuit, to put it mildly. He's a lawyer who represents other lenders who face similar lawsuits.
Mr. LARRY PLATT (Attorney): They're just throwing mud against the wall to see if it sticks.
LEWIS: He says the only way to tell if a lender is discriminating against borrowers based on race is to dig through every file of every borrower of that lender.
Mr. PLATT: We're finding in some of the cases on which we're working now that there's explanations that are all over the board on why in a particular case a particular borrower received a particular price or a particular type of loan product.
LEWIS: Reasons, he said, that usually boil down the credit risk and that don't have to do with race. Well, says Gary Klein, there's only one way to find out for sure, and that is to let the city of Baltimore see Wells Fargo's files. Klein's a lawyer who's representing minority borrowers in similar lawsuits against lenders, including Wells Fargo.
Mr. GARY KLEIN (Lawyer): We believe that the data will show that after you control for credit risk, that there is still discrimination here.
LEWIS: For now, the question is, will the city of Baltimore get a judge who will allow them to get that far?
Libby Lewis, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Let's talk next about an event that shapes the mindset of many people in Pakistan. People in that country, which is so important to the war on terror, often say they're embattled, and that's partly because they're next door to India. It's also partly because they once lost a huge section of what they consider their country.
Bangladesh used to be called East Pakistan. That ended during a war for independence in 1971. And that war is the subject of the first novel by Tahmima Anam. The book tells the story of a family led by a widow named Rehana. And the inspiration for that character was Anam's grandmother and the small but remarkable role she played in the war.
NPR's Lynn Neary reports.
LYNN NEARY: The child of a diplomat, Anam grew up far away from her native Bangladesh. But she heard about the war for independence from her parents and their friends.
Ms. TAHMIMA ANAM (Author, "A Golden Age"): Even though we lived outside of Bangladesh, they told me so many stories about the war and I found it incredibly exciting.
NEARY: When she decided to write a novel about Bangladesh, Anam says she could not imagine writing about anything else except the war. But, initially, she had a different kind of book in mind.
Ms. T. ANAM: I thought I would write a sort of epic, a very muscular narrative that had battle scenes and political rallies and all the sorts of big moments that you see in war novels. But actually, when I sat down to write, I ended up really thinking about what it was like for ordinary people to survive that war.
NEARY: To research the story, Anam interviewed people who had lived through the war. In 1971, the long-simmering hostility between East and West Pakistan began boiling over. Separated from West Pakistan by language, culture and the expanse of India, East Pakistan - home of the Bengalis - chafed under the dominance of the West. When East Pakistan's Awami Party won an overwhelming victory in national elections, leaders in the West refused to allow a new parliament to convene. East Pakistani nationalists took to the streets to protest.
Tahmima Anam's mother, Shaheen, was 19 years old at the time.
Ms. SHAHEEN ANAM: We had no inkling that we'll go into a war. But we thought that if we demonstrate, if we protest, if we have rallies, if we have all these non-cooperation movement that we were doing, we are going to be able to convince them. So every day we were out in the street, we were talking, we were singing, we were, you know, having meetings, and it was very, very exciting.
NEARY: In early March of 1971, at a massive rally in Dhaka, the leader of East Pakistan's majority party delivered a fiery speech, calling on Bengalese to fight for their independence.
(Soundbite of crowd demonstration)
Unidentified Man: (Speaking in foreign language)
(Soundbite of cheering)
NEARY: In response to the unrest, the Pakistani army moved in on the 25th of March and began killing people indiscriminately.
Zahedul Khan(ph), a young man at the time, was stunned and angered by the massacre.
Mr. ZAHEDUL KHAN: I saw dead bodies and blood all over Dhaka. And we decided to go out, four of us - four friends together. We went out, and there was only one motto at that time: We have to liberate this country.
NEARY: One of those four friends determined to liberate the country was Tahmima Anam's uncle, Shaheen's older brother. He asked his mother if the resistance fighters could stay at her house, and also asked if they could hide weapons in her garden.
Khan says Tahmima's grandmother was an unlikely candidate for the resistance.
Mr. KHAN: I still remember when they first brought the arms, and it was - we didn't tell her everything. But she sensed it, but at the same time she allowed us to do because she was having the same - you can call it patriotism, you can call it the same ideas and everything, and she allowed us to do that. I thought it's incredible.
NEARY: Tahmima's grandmother provided food and shelter for these young fighters. While the young men went off on missions, Shaheen Anam stayed home. The atmosphere in the house, says Shaheen, was more exhilarating than terrifying. But one morning, the Pakistani army came, looking for her brother.
Ms. S. ANAM: I woke up to a man standing just over me with a gun. I woke up, I opened my eyes and I saw this man standing with a gun and I said, you know -and it was amazing how calm I was. I said, please leave the room, I need to dress. So he left.
NEARY: The family managed to survive that incident, but it is stories such as this that inspired Tahmima Anam to write her book. The character, Rehana, based on her grandmother, is a widow with two children. In this section, read by Tahmima, Rehana's son, Sohail, comes to her to ask if she will allow a house she owns to be used for the resistance.
(Soundbite of Novel, "A Golden Age")
Ms. T. ANAM: (Reading) She wanted to be more angry and less proud, but she found herself wanting to say yes, not just so that she would have so Sohail's confidence, but because she could not blame anyone but herself for making him so fine, so ready to take charge. This was who she had hoped he would become even if she had never imagined that her son or the world would come to this.
NEARY: Rehana's reasons for giving over her house are more complex than mere commitment to a cause. Early in the book, we learn that she once lost custody of her children. After she got them back, her devotion to them was boundless. That devotion is tested, when in the midst of war, Rehana falls in love.
In the character of Rehana, Tahmima says, she found a way to show what happens when war intrudes unexpectedly on the normal rhythms of life.
Ms. T. ANAM: I suppose the idea that I had was that people brought their histories, their personal histories, their personal struggles, their familial struggles into that war. So it's not just that their political ideals motivate their participation in the war. They have all kinds of personal histories, especially Rehana, when she becomes a nationalist. All of these things kind of play into her actions, and ultimately affect very deeply the decision that she takes at the end of the war, and at the end of the book.
NEARY: Tahmima Anam's grandmother is still alive, and Tahmima asked a friend to read the book to her. Tahmima says it was slow going at first because her grandmother kept stopping to correct the facts.
Ms. T. ANAM: She says, oh, I had four children not two during the war, and why has she changed my husband's name? But, of course, when the love story came about, she was quickly - she quickly distanced herself from the character and said oh, no, this is a work of fiction. That's really not me.
NEARY: Anam says she worried about getting the story of the Bangladesh war right, both for those who lived through it and for her own generation who may not know much about it.
And she says she hopes the book will be a way for other people to learn about Bangladesh. This native daughter, who writes in English because she is not comfortable writing in the language of her own country, is nonetheless determined to tell its story. "A Golden Age" is the first book in a trilogy Anam plans to write about her homeland.
Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.
INSKEEP: You'll find an excerpt from "A Golden Age" at npr.org/books.
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's Friday morning, which means it's time again for StoryCorps. At recording booths across this country, Americans are sharing stories that have shaped their lives. And today, we'll hear a story from one of the deadliest U.S. airline accidents. In 1989, United Airlines Flight 232 crashed just outside of Sioux City, Iowa. One hundred eleven people died. Of the survivors, only 13 walked away unscathed. Martha Conant was one of them. And here, she tells her daughter-in-law, Brittany Conant, about that day.
Ms. MARTHA CONANT (StoryCorps Contributor): There was a jerk. The airplane really lurched. And the pilot said, we've lost an engine. No problem. DC-10s can fly perfectly well on two engines. Sorry for the disturbance. I hope you enjoy the rest of your lunch.
The flight attendants were picking up the dishes and one member of the flight crew came back to look out the window at the wings. But he was calm, he was talking to people. So there was confidence that this was just a hitch; that we were going to be fine.
It was 40 minutes from the time that the plane lurched until we - I'm going to say landed rather than crashed because we were intending to land. And I remember the pilot told us over the P.A. that it's going to be the roughest landing you've ever experienced. And he yelled, brace, brace, brace.
The next thing was a huge influx of air and debris. And my body was being bounced around so much, I was out of control. I lost consciousness. And when I came to, I remember saying to myself, oh, I'm still alive. Then the motion stopped and the plane was still.
Ms. BRITTANY CONANT (Martha Conant's Daughter-in-Law): Do you think that there is a reason that you survived unharmed?
Ms. M. CONANT: Well, I have asked myself that question so many times. When survivors were being fed and cared for, I ended up talking to a young man who was a social worker. And he said, God must have had a reason for saving you. You haven't finished your life's work yet.
And I was quite troubled. It felt like I was saddled with a lot of responsibility to figure out, what is this work I'm supposed to be doing? And then the flipside is God didn't have anymore work for all those other people, and I don't believe that. I decided to live with as few regrets as possible: Not leaving home in the morning being upset with someone, not passing up a chance to tell my husband or one of the boys how much I love them.
It was hard to do that because it wasn't the habit. But whenever I thought, oh, this is hard, then I'd think, well, I might not be coming home tonight. It's not that hard.
That event was like being picked up by the scruff of the neck and shaken and God says, this is your only life. Just be grateful that you've got these days and these hours and these wonderful people in your life. Just be grateful for that.
And one of the things that has followed me, surrounded me, wrapped me, I think, is that feeling of gratitude.
INSKEEP: Martha Conant, who survived the crash of United Airlines Flight 232 in 1989. She was interviewed by her daughter-in-law Brittany in Greeley, Colorado. And their interview will be archived along with all the others at the Library of Congress. You can read Martha's story in "Listening is an Act of Love," the new StoryCorps book. And you can hear more at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning, I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
Pressure is building on the Bush administration to avoid a recession if it can. The chairman of the Federal Reserve is already saying he's ready to act. He's giving a strong signal that the Fed is ready to cut interest rates again soon. Ben Bernanke gave that signal in a speech in which he outlined growing risks to the economy; oil prices are up, so is unemployment, and manufacturing is declining.
NPR's Jim Zarroli has more.
JIM ZARROLI: It was about as unequivocal as a Fed chairman can be. Bernanke warned that things could change quickly, but at this point he said energy costs, falling house prices and a wobbly stock market look like they're going to take a toll on consumer spending. Bernanke spoke during a question and answer session after a speech to two finance groups.
Mr. BEN BERNANKE (Federal Reserve Chairman): The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession. We are forecasting slow growth. There are downside risks, and therefore it's very important for us to stand ready to take substantive action to address those risks and provide some insurance against those negative outcomes.
ZARROLI: In Fed-speak, insurance means cutting interest rates again, making money more available, and prodding the economy forward.
That a rate cut is coming didn't take anyone by surprise, but the tone and timing of Bernanke's remarks suggested he's ready to get aggressive. Economist Mark Zandi said Bernanke's assurances were unambiguous.
Mr. MARK ZANDI (Chief Economist, Moodyseconomy.com): So I think it's very, very important to not only lower rates, but to send a strong signal that, yeah, we understand that this economy is very fragile, could slip away, and we're going to do whatever is necessary to make sure that it doesn't happen.
ZARROLI: But after last Friday's weak employment report and bad news on the manufacturing front, there's a growing sense among economists that interest rate cuts aren't enough. The Bush administration is said to be considering a series of steps to stimulate growth.
The Brookings Institution yesterday hosted a forum to talk about what kinds of steps can be taken. Among those participating was Martin Feldstein, former head of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan. Feldstein said he wasn't sure the economy is in a recession yet, but the country needs to do what it can to get ahead of the problem.
Professor MARTIN FELDSTEIN (Harvard University): I think we're all here because we are concerned that the U.S. economy could slip into a recession and that the recession could be a long, deep, severe one.
ZARROLI: The steps that the Bush administration is said to be considering include a package of tax cuts and rebates that would give consumer spending a bump up. The question is how to design a stimulus package that would work quickly enough and not get mired down in Washington's partisan warfare.
Brookings' Doug Elmendorf noted that some Republicans may try to tie the stimulus package to efforts to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Whatever the merits of such a move, he said, it wouldn't do much to address the risks of a recession this year.
Mr. DOUG ELMENDORF (Brookings Institution): Making the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent would hardly provide a timely boost because they will take effect several years from now.
ZARROLI: Likewise, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said the economy faces big long-term problems with a budget deficit and infrastructure investment. But they aren't going to be solved overnight. Rubin said it was important not to let the discussion about a stimulus package get sidetracked. But he also told Feldstein he doubted that could get done in the political stalemate that is Washington.
Mr. ROBERT RUBIN (Former U.S. Treasury Secretary): Seems like the political system (unintelligible) is kind of mired or bogged down or - for whatever set of reasons. I have great respect for many of the people involved in that system, but it doesn't seem to be able to move forward.
ZARROLI: Still, there's a building concern that Washington needs to address the slowdown, and soon. Among the proposals reportedly being weighed by the administration is an idea to make any new tax cuts conditional. Congress could approve them now, but they would only be triggered if the economy declined by a certain amount; if, for instance, job growth turned negative for three months.
Proponents say that would appease people worried about inflation, but also send a message to consumers that the government can intervene quickly if things get much worse.
Jim Zarroli, NPR News, Washington.
INSKEEP: And you can find out which proposals are in the mix for stimulating the economy by going to npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Our business news starts with home loan giant Countrywide saved from bankruptcy.
Bank of America has announced it's buying the struggling mortgage lender for $4 billion in stock. Countrywide is the country's biggest home loan company and it's been hammered by the housing crisis. Its stock is down more than 80 percent since last year.
This morning's deal saves Countrywide from a messy collapse that many feared would drag down the economy. The deal also makes Bank of America an even bigger mortgage lender than it already is.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
All this week, we've been tracking the success of the U.S. troop surge in Iraq. An announcement yesterday brought one more sign it's working. The U.S. military will hand back to the Iraqi government al-Anbar province - for years the most dangerous region in Iraq.
And while Anbar may now be stable enough for local control, the 25,000 Marines there will remain. Come next month, they'll be led by Major General John Kelly, who takes control over all multinational forces in western Iraq. General Kelly joined us on the line from Camp Pendleton in California to talk about it.
Good morning.
Brigadier General JOHN KELLY (U.S. Marine Corps): Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: How different do you think Anbar will be compared to the last time you were in Iraq?
Brig. Gen. KELLY: Well, I can give you some insights as to how it is today because I traveled there in September and spent about two weeks in the same province. I'd left almost three years previously. And the change on the ground, the security situation on the ground, is nothing short of remarkable. I mean, I went places in September last without a helmet and flak jacket on, without drawn guns. And when I was there three years ago, I mean, you were in a gunfight going in and a gunfight coming out. Remarkable change.
MONTAGNE: And that change, is there anything that you would attribute it to other than the surge?
Brig. Gen. KELLY: It's been a continuous process of winning over the hearts and minds of people and defeating what predominantly were al-Qaida fighters. I think al-Qaida overplayed their own hand. As they moved in into the province after the fall of Baghdad, the al-Qaida were not only fighting us but they were trying, at least, to force the locals into their form of extremism, and over time we believe their excessive use of force drove the people into at least considering that perhaps the Americans - the coalition - was there to help. Once the locals started openly cooperating with coalition forces, telling us where the insurgents were, that became the big turn.
MONTAGNE: How much of that had though to do with relationships that Marines had developed with the local Sunnis, these sheik leaders, and how much had to do with the sheer numbers of forces coming into Iraq in the surge?
Brig. Gen. KELLY: It has everything to do with the relationship with the people. Our constant drumbeat, since we got to that part of Iraq, was if the security situation improves, then we can start delivering the goods and services, if you will, that you and your people all want so badly.
MONTAGNE: So how much of your mission when you get there will be having your Marines, as you put it, delivering the goods - reconstruction, that sort of thing?
Brig. Gen. KELLY: Much of my mission will be training Iraqi young men into their army and into their police forces. We have a very, very robust training program for both their army and for the police forces that are in the cities. We engage constantly with the local sheiks and the provincial government. And so the engagement is from absolutely the grassroots level all the way up to the governor in Ramadi. And then we - I'll have people - they have people there now who then kind of help the Ramadi provincial government bridge the gap to Baghdad.
MONTAGNE: Bridging that gap and getting the Shiite government to take in the Sunni forces or Sunni young men who want to be in the military has been difficult. The reporting that we've been hearing is that the Shiite-led government doesn't trust them.
Brig. Gen. KELLY: You know, again, it's hard, I'm not there yet. But certainly that was the case earlier on. Now, you got to remember, the overwhelming number of people that live in the province are Sunni, and your recruit base is all Sunni. But there are increasing numbers, and this is certainly what the Marines are doing out there right now, trying to increase the numbers of Shia into those units, and the government in Baghdad that may have been somewhat hesitant about, you know, a couple of Sunni divisions, they seem to have overcome that because the logistical supply coming out of Baghdad to those divisions, as I understand it, is approaching normal levels - vehicles, things like that.
But I think probably the biggest indicator is the central government deciding to deploy brigades out of the Al-Anbar province for temporary periods of time to hotspots to fight along side predominantly Shia units. And of course those decisions are not made by U.S. commanders. These are made by, you know, the central government in Iraq, and that's a huge indicator, I would think, of how the trust is beginning to build.
MONTAGNE: There is expected to be drawdown of U.S. troops in this coming year, following what might be the end of the surge. How does that fit into your mission there in Al Anbar?
Brig. Gen. KELLY: You know, one of the constant drumbeats, again, I think from certainly the policymakers in Washington have been that as Iraqi police and army forces, if they are taking more and more of the battle space over, will make some decisions down the line. And certainly I won't make those decisions. I'll probably make some recommendations. But I think General Petraeus is due to make some recommendations in March or April about force levels, and you know, obviously, we'll salute whatever we're told to do. But I think the whole process here is we work ourselves out of the job.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for talking with us.
Brig. Gen. KELLY: Okay, Renee.
MONTAGNE: That's Major General John Kelly. He will begin commanding the multinational forces in Anbar province next month. He spoke to us from Camp Pendleton, California.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And it's time again to read from your comments. Our presidential primary coverage has been your primary topic this week.
Patricia Cox(ph) of Kansas City, Missouri, writes: The Hillary Clinton is on the rocks take after the Iowa caucus was just as ridiculous as the overwrought rhetoric about her comeback less than a week later in New Hampshire. You really need to calm down.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Listener John Mesco(ph) thought we were a little too calm when it came to the vote for Republican Ron Paul. Mesco writes: Fred Thompson got mentioned with only one percent of the vote. Yet with Ron Paul at 8 percent, you didn't even mention it.
INSKEEP: Yesterday, we mistakenly said that independents will not be able to take part in the Republican primary in South Carolina next week. And that prompted a correction from Barbara Kurtz(ph), the secretary of the York County, South Carolina Democrat Party. She writes: We do not register by party in South Carolina. At times, she writes, I have voted in Democrat primaries and at other times in Republican primaries. One just can't vote in each primary in the same election cycle.
MONTAGNE: The mention of an upset in this year's college football season got one listener upset about our pronunciation. Dan Nathan(ph) cringed when he heard a winning college football team referred to as Appalachian State.
INSKEEP: Mr. Nathan says that where he lives in North Carolina, people say Appalachian, and the other pronunciation, quote, "sounds like a twisted perversion." Those of us who've lived in different parts of the eastern mountain range say it's actually pronounced different ways in different places.
MONTAGNE: So it may depend on where you live in Appalachia-lachia.
INSKEEP: And also in sports, we have a clarification to Frank Deford's commentary this week on baseball pitcher Roger Clemens. Deford spoke of a conversation that Clemens had taped with his former trainer, Brian McNamee.
In a report from Major League Baseball, McNamee said he had injected Clemens with banned performance-enhancing drugs. Deford noted that on several occasions, during the taped conversation, McNamee pleaded, quote, "What do you want me to do?"
MONTAGNE: Deford concluded, quote, "wouldn't an innocent man with the tape secretly running say just tell the truth," unquote.
While Roger Clemens never replied to McNamee's questions in those exact words, Clemens did elsewhere in that taped conversation say several times that he wanted the truth out and in one instance told McNamee, quote, "I just need you to come out and tell the truth."
INSKEEP: Here at MORNING EDITION we believe you can handle the truth, and you can always let us know what you think, and we'll try to handle it too. Go to npr.org and click on the button that says Contact Us.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Hillary Clinton picked Nevada for her first public appearance since winning the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday. Nevada holds its caucuses a week from tomorrow. It is the next big task for Democratic candidates and the first state to hold a contest in the West. The state was also thought to be a major target of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. He's Hispanic and he'd hoped to make inroads with the Nevada's large Hispanic population. But Richardson withdrew from the race yesterday. Maybe it's no coincidence that Clinton began her swing through Nevada in a Latino neighborhood in Las Vegas before heading to a local Mexican restaurant.
NPR's Carrie Kahn reports.
CARRIE KAHN: In this year of compressed primaries and caucuses, Hillary Clinton didn't have much time to savor her New Hampshire victory. Late Thursday afternoon she was greeting residents and posing for pictures in the low-income Latino neighborhood North Las Vegas.
Unidentified Man #1: (Spanish spoken) Hillary Clinton.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): Hello. I'm very glad to see you.
Unidentified Man #2: (Spanish spoken)
KAHN: The sun have long set by the time she made it to Gilberto Santana's living room, as his four-year-old daughter sucked her thumb and twiddled with Clinton's beaded bracelet. Santana talked about everything from Social Security to the war in Iraq. He ended his chat by asking Clinton what she was going to do about the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.
Mr. GILBERTO SANTANA: Are we going to be able to get them legalized in a way so they can work and they won't have to have that fear of then, of...
Sen. CLINTON: I'm going to do everything I can to have comprehensive immigration reform. You know, we do have to have, you know, good security at our borders.
Mr. SANTANA: Definitely.
Sen. CLINTON: We know that. And I think we should have - give people a chance - the chance to come out of the shadows, so to speak.
KAHN: Flanked by some of Nevada's prominent Latino officials, Clinton said she is confident of a win. And she said she was very proud of the support she has, showing little concern about the news of the day - that Barack Obama had picked up the endorsement of the last Democratic presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry, who made the announcement in South Carolina.
Senator JOHN KERRY (Democrat, Massachusetts): Who better than Barack Obama to turn a new page in American politics so that Democrat, independent and Republican alike can look to leadership that unites to find a common ground.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Sen. KERRY: That's what this is about.
KAHN: It was one of two big endorsements for Obama; the other came from Nevada's largest and best organized labor group, the Culinary Workers Union, which represents employees in the casino industry.
In Las Vegas, a union official chided the mostly white electorate from New Hampshire, where Obama trailed Hillary Clinton. He said in Nevada there is more than just Wonder Bread; there is pumpernickel, whole wheat and rye. Not to be deterred, Clinton went courting tortillas.
Unidentified Woman #1: The next president of the United States.
(Soundbite of cheering)
KAHN: At a local Mexican restaurant, Clinton munched on tortilla chips and listened to stories about the state's troubled economy, made worse by the growing number of foreclosures, the highest in the nation.
Sen. CLINTON: Everything is connected. You know, we're all connected and all of our problems are interconnected. And yet we treat them as though, you know, one is guacamole and one is chips. Well, you know, they're - they're - they may look different, but they're all connected.
KAHN: Clinton says she wants a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures and plans to introduce a stimulus package to boost the economy. She was short on details, but promised more today in a speech in Los Angeles.
Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Las Vegas.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
President Bush ended his visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories by describing basic principles of a peace agreement.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967. The agreement must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people.
MONTAGNE: The president promised to return this spring and wants the two sides to agree within a year. But something is missing from that discussion; there may be more than two sides. In addition to Israel's leaders and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, there's also the Palestinian group Hamas. It controls the Gaza Strip, home to one and a half million Palestinians. And the Islamist group has called the peace process, quote, "the big lie."
NPR's Eric Westervelt has more.
ERIC WESTERVELT: In his first joint press meeting with President Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this week waxed optimistic about new peace talks. But he mixed that with a stern warning to the Palestinians about the daily barrages of rocket and mortar fire into Israeli towns bordering the Gaza Strip.
Prime Minister EHUD OLMERT (Israel): Gaza must be part of the package. And that as long as there will be terror from Gaza, it will be very, very hard to reach any peaceful understanding.
WESTERVELT: But how will Gaza be part of the package? Prime Minister Olmert's negotiating partner, President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority, no longer hold power in Gaza. Hamas violently ousted the Palestinian Authority in the coastal territory last June. Their bloody takeover, Hamas officials say, was in response to what the Islamists call Israeli and U.S. backed efforts to overturn Hamas's election win two years ago - an election the U.S. encouraged the Palestinians to hold.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri yesterday in Gaza called peace talks between Olmert and Abbas a fantasy.
Mr. SAMI ABU ZUHRI (Hamas): (Through translator) The West Bank leadership is under deep illusions and they will pay the price from our people for running after these fantasies.
WESTERVELT: President Abbas calls Hamas's Gaza takeover a coup d'etat and the Palestinians' darkest moments since Arabs lost the 1967 war with Israel. Abbas's senior adviser, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, says a peace deal with Israel is the only realistic response to Hamas and the Gaza problem. And he warns that if there's no deal, Hamas could sweep away moderates like him from the West Bank.
Mr. SAEB EREKAT (Chief Palestinian Negotiator): If we can produce an agreement and tell Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, look, guys, this is it (unintelligible) we're going to have 80 percent and more and Hamas will be gone. If we don't do this, we will disappear from Jericho and Ramallah.
WESTERVELT: Prime Minister Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, agrees, arguing that moderates will eventually prevail over Hamas only if Gazans see the daily economic lives of their West Bank counterparts improving in the wake of a peace agreement.
Mr. MARK REGEV (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs): You'll have an East Germany/West Germany type situation, where Palestinians could understand that the path of moderation, the path of pragmatism, the path of negotiation serves Palestinian interests much more than the jihadists ever could.
WESTERVELT: So far, Israel's main response to Hamas and the ongoing Gaza rocket fire has been deadly military strikes from the air and ground. Here are Hamas militants battling Israeli infantry forces last week in the El-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
(Soundbite of gunfire)
WESTERVELT: But the Israeli attacks have done little to stop the rocket fire. And few Israelis think peace talks with Abbas will deliver Gaza.
Professor BARRY RUBIN (Israeli Political Analyst): Who is your partner? What can they deliver? The fact is, you can't make a peace deal about the future with the West Bank alone.
WESTERVELT: Israeli political analyst Barry Rubin says the Israeli strategy is based on wishful thinking that Hamas's deep base of support will easily crumble in the face of an emboldened West Bank Palestinian Authority.
Prof. RUBIN: Let's say that the two sides reached an agreement. There will be a Palestinian state. They'll get all this money. And then you have a government in the Gaza Strip says, we don't accept that, we're continuing the war - which is exactly what's happening.
WESTERVELT: Meantime, the divide between the West Bank and Gaza has only grown wider in the last year, a chasm that will make it harder for President Abbas to sell Gazans on any peace deal he might be able to get.
Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Jerusalem.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
People in Italy may need a peace deal to end the garbage crisis. The city of Naples is buried under mountains of uncollected trash. Yet residents are protesting the reopening of a dump that's believed to be a serious health hazard. Now a government trash czar has been given four months to fix this problem.
NPR's Sylvia Poggioli tells the story of garbage, the environment, and the local mafia.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: This is Pianura, a suburb just north of the Naples City center. It looks like a war zone. The stench in the air is unbearable. Thousands of plastic bags of rotting garbage cover the streets in places rising above the ground floor of apartment buildings.
Garbage collection in the Naples region stopped on December 21st because all landfills are full. Here in Pianura, cement blocks and tree trunks form improvised barricades, blocking all traffic except motorcycles.
The barricades are manned by local residents. At night, they're replaced by gangs of youth who often clash with police. Antonio Tufano(ph) points to a nearby hill where the grass is yellowed and trees looks stunted.
Mr. ANTONIO TUFANO: (Italian spoken)
POGGIOLI: They promised to create a national park here, Tufano says. It was supposed to be the lung of Naples. But actually, he adds, for 40 years this was the garbage bin of the Naples region and for northern industries. It's an ecological time bomb. The dump was closed 11 years ago. Since then, tennis courts and horse stables have been built nearby. But the dump has never been cleaned up.
Medical research shows local residents are getting very sick at unusually high rates. A middle-aged woman, Nuncia Marcella(ph), says every family around here has at least one relative who have died of cancer.
Ms. NUNCIA MARCELLA: (Italian spoken)
POGGIOLI: My mother died of leukemia, she says. My 28-year-old nephew died of leukemia. My sister and my aunt both died of liver tumors. A 2007 World Health Organization report documented a sharp increase in cancers and an 80 percent increase in fetal defects among those living near waste dumps in the region compared to the national average. There is little doubt who's to blame.
Neapolitan investigators single out the Camorra, the local equivalent of the Cosa Nostra mafia in Sicily, which anti-mafia magistrate Rafael Le Cantone(ph) says has turned garbage into gold.
Mr. RAFAEL LE CANTONE (Anti-mafia Magistrate): (Italian spoken)
POGGIOLI: The Camorra is involved in every aspect of the waste management cycle, he says - collection, transportation and disposal. The Camorra has buried an enormous quantity of toxic waste from northern industries in the region. Cantone says its profits are enormous, millions of euro a year.
Proper disposal of industrial waste is expensive. By offering cut-rate prices to northern companies, Camorra gangs dumped their toxic waste in both the region's legal and many illegal dumps. The gangs are also involved in stocking massive quantities of bales of waste destined to be burned in high-tech incinerators which still have not been built.
The National Anti-Mafia Parliamentary Committee also blames collusion between politicians and Camorristi, which has eroded residents' faith in the authorities.
In the 14 years since the crisis began, nearly $3 billion has disappeared into this pit of crime and corruption. After years of silence, Neapolitans have had enough.
(Soundbite of protest)
POGGIOLI: Wednesday evening, 10,000 people took to the streets to protest plans to reopen the Pianura dump and to vent their anger against local and national politicians. Some demonstrators picked up trash bags from the piles in the streets and placed them in front of government buildings.
Sabino Genovesi(ph) lives in the toney residential area he says has been spared the garbage crisis. But he worries the long-term repercussions will affect everyone and even the food chain is at risk.
Mr. SABINO GENOVESI: (Italian spoken)
POGGIOLI: My wife and I have stopped buying mozzarella made in areas near waste dumps, he says. Now we buy Parmalat milk, hoping that it really does come from Parma.
The garbage crisis has already damaged the local economy. There's hardly a tourist in sight in Naples. Foreign orders for regional food products from canned tomatoes to Limoncello liqueur have already dropped by 30 percent.
Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Naples.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
NPR's business news starts with credit cards and the slowdown in swiping.
One of the country's biggest charge and credit card companies says the slowing economy is hurting its business. American Express says credit card charges began to tail off in December. It's warning Wall Street that its profits will be lower as more cardholders fail to make payments. The CEO of American Express says card-spending is still strong, but he pointed to problems among consumers in California, Florida and other parts of the country most affected by the downturn in housing.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
This is a Friday morning, which is when we talk about your money. And today, we begin with the IRS, saying sorry - about the way it may investigate your income. The IRS might even pay taxpayers when it bungles their cases. This is just a proposal, one of many that the nation's taxpayer advocate took to Congress this week.
And NPR's Wendy Kaufman has more.
WENDY KAUFMAN: As part of her annual report to Congress, taxpayer advocate Nina Olson said the IRS should issue apology payments when the agency excessively burdens or harms taxpayers. It's an idea that's already in use in Britain and Australia. Taxpayers would have to pay when they lose essential documents or failed to respond to issues of vital importance. Olson says the payments, which are not intended as dollar-for-dollar compensation, would range from 100 to $1,000.
Ms. NINA OLSON (National Taxpayer Advocate): These payments are symbolic. We are recognizing that we blew it. We imposed a burden on the taxpayer that was extremely unnecessary.
KAUFMAN: The program would be capped at $1 million, so as Olson puts it, you have to think about what kinds of cases would warrant the apology payment. The taxpayer advocate's report highlights the most serious problems facing taxpayers. Number one on the list: what happens when changes to the tax code are made late in the year? Because the IRS has to reprogram its computers, the filing season, and those all-important refunds so critical to low-income consumers, are delayed. Olson says for taxpayers claiming certain deductions this year, delays will again be a problem.
Ms. OLSON: Taxpayers who are living for their refund in that last week of January, that first week of February, can't even file this year until February 11th.
KAUFMAN: Another problem associated with changing the tax code late in the year is that changes aren't reflected on IRS forms. Taxpayers don't always know what exemptions they're entitled to, so some taxpayers end up paying more than they should have.
Wendy Kaufman, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Now is about the time your mutual fund statements begin rolling in, telling you how much you've made or lost in 2007. Calculating how much your investments have made is critical to making smart investing decisions, but it's a lot harder than it would seem.
Joining us, as he often does on MORNING EDITION, to talk about this is Jonathan Clements. He is the personal finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
Good morning.
Mr. JONATHAN CLEMENTS (The Wall Street Journal): Good morning, Renee. It's great to be with you.
MONTAGNE: Don't most brokers or mutual fund show how much investors have made on their total investments?
Mr. CLEMENTS: Generally, when you get that end-of-year portfolio statement, all it's going to tell you is, you know, how much you had at the end of the year, probably it will tell you how much you added or withdrew at various points during the course of the year, and it might tell you the beginning of the year balance. In terms of the actual total portfolio return, that's a relatively complicated number for individuals to calculate on their own, which is why you'd like the mutual fund companies and the brokerage firms be doing that calculation for you. Very few brokerage firms and mutual fund companies give that information to investors.
MONTAGNE: Why don't brokers put that rather simple for them to calculate number right there on the front?
Mr. CLEMENTS: Well, a few of them do, but most don't. And the reason is obvious. I mean, if people really knew how their portfolio is performing, they would start to ask awkward questions about how much they're paying in investment costs and about how competent their money managers really are.
MONTAGNE: But how can someone who's listening to us right now and thinks I want to calculate my portfolio's return, how can that person do it?
Mr. CLEMENTS: What you want to do is take that beginning-of-year portfolio value and the end-of-the-year portfolio value but make some adjustments to that end-of-the-year number. Add back any money that you withdrew during the course of the year, or conversely you want to subtract the new savings that you made during 2007. If you do that and then you compare the beginning-of-the-year and end-of-year portfolio values, you'll have a rough idea of how your portfolio has done in 2007. You can then go and look at how some of the broad market indexes have performed and say, hey, did I keep up or maybe I haven't done so well. What you want to be concerned about is if you do that calculation and you discover that you've lost money in 2007, there's a lesson there.
MONTAGNE: What's the biggest mistake people make?
Mr. CLEMENTS: Well, unfortunately, when it comes to managing money, Renee, most of us are pretty much delusional. You know, we boast about our winners and we conveniently forget about our losers. You know, we scratch them from our mental calculations. But if you do all of that, you won't have a good handle on how good a job you or your financial advisers are doing of picking investments. So yeah, you really want to know what your portfolio performance number is.
MONTAGNE: Well, if you - if your investments are lagging, what do you do?
Mr. CLEMENTS: Well, you've got a couple of different options. I mean, you could go out and buy market tracking index funds. That will give you the market's return guaranteed every year. You could turn over your money to, let's say, a (unintelligible) financial planner and gets some good investment advice. Or alternatively you could go to one of the major mutual fund companies. They all offer these target-date retirement funds, which offer you sort of fixed investment mixes in a single mutual fund. You buy one of these target-date retirement funds, you put all your money into it, and then you go off and do something better with your life.
MONTAGNE: Jonathan Clements is the personal finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
Thanks for joining us.
Mr. CLEMENTS: It's my pleasure, Renee.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
We might be delusional about our bad investments, but it is hard to ignore how much money we're pouring into our gas tanks. So our last word in business is GPS. A company that makes those navigation devices says its newest technology uses real-time gas prices to help you find the cheapest gas station on the map, so you can go there and shave dollars off your next gas bill and save money - after you've spent $500 for the device.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
Republican presidential hopefuls generally minded their manners during last night's debate in South Carolina. That state holds the first southern primary a week from tomorrow. Candidates discussed the economy, foreign policy and the political legacy of Ronald Reagan.
NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY: South Carolina likes to think of itself as a kingmaker in Republican politics or, at least, a mandatory ticket punch. No GOP candidate has won his party's nomination without carrying South Carolina since the state began holding primaries in 1980.
South Carolina is also where former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson hopes to finally make his mark after finishing well behind the leaders in Iowa and New Hampshire. Thompson came out swinging last night against his fellow southerner, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
Mr. FRED THOMPSON (Former Republican Senator, Tennessee; Presidential Candidate): He would be a Christian leader but he would also bring about liberal economic policies, liberal foreign policies. He believes we have an arrogant foreign policy and the tradition of blame America first. That's not the model of the Reagan coalition, that's the model of the Democratic Party.
HORSLEY: Huckabee, who won Iowa with the help of evangelical voters, hopes to do well in South Carolina, too. He took the criticism as a sign of success.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): The Air Force have a saying, says that if you're not catching flak, you're not over the target. I am catching the flak. I must be over the target.
HORSLEY: Huckabee insists he does believe in the so-called Reagan coalition of social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and defense hawks. But more than the other Republicans in the race, Huckabee offers a populist appeal to blue-collar voters. Many of whom are nervous about the state of the economy.
Mr. HUCKABEE: Over the years, sometimes Republicans have thought that one part of that coalition was more important than the other. I think they're all important, and we need to recapture them. But we need to make sure that we communicate that our party is just as interested in helping the people who are single moms, who are working two jobs, and still just barely paying the rent as we are the people at the top of the economy.
HORSLEY: Arizona Senator John McCain, who is hoping to build on his New Hampshire victory, passed up an invitation to criticize Huckabee. But he did spar with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney over the same change versus experience issue that's come to characterize the Democratic presidential race.
Romney, who paints himself as a turnaround specialist, says, even though McCain's experience carried New Hampshire, voters are still anxious for something different.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): I know how to bring change, and I will change Washington. I will take it apart and put it back together simpler, smaller, smarter.
HORSLEY: McCain insists he is also a change agent despite 26 years in Congress.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): I've been one of those involved in one of the most important changes that we could have ever have made and that is reverse a losing strategy in Iraq.
HORSLEY: McCain was a vocal critic of the administration's early war strategy in Iraq, and a strong supporter of the military surge, which marked its first anniversary yesterday.
Most of the candidates defended the U.S. Navy for showing restraint over the weekend when confronted by aggressive Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani says it's a reminder that Iran is still a threat despite intelligence findings that it's halted work on its nuclear program. And Thompson said the naval encounter easily might have escalated.
Mr. THOMPSON: I think one more step, you know, and they would have been introduced to those virgins that they're looking forward to seeing.
HORSLEY: That kind of rebuttal alarmed Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who had a blimp floating over the debate hall last night and the noisy cheering section inside. Paul likened the incident to the Gulf of Tonkin engagement that was used as a justification for expanded military action in Vietnam.
Congressman RON PAUL (Republican, Texas; Presidential Candidate): Let's put it in a perspective. We have five small speedboats attacking U.S. Navy with a Destroyer? They could take care of those speedboats in about five seconds. And here we are ready to start World War III over this?
HORSLEY: Most polls show either Huckabee or McCain leading in South Carolina. But Huckabee was asked how well he might compete outside the Bible belt. As an ordained minister, Huckabee signed on to a controversial 1998 newspaper ad, praising the Southern Baptist Convention for his policy saying a wife should submit herself graciously to her husband.
Mr. HUCKABEE: You know, it's interesting everybody says religion is off limits, except we always can ask me the religious questions. So let me try to do my best to answer it.
(Soundbite of applause)
HORSLEY: Huckabee offered some biblical context for the ad, and said anyone who has met his wife, Janet, knows she is anything but submissive. He also joked that if the debate is going to dwell on church matters, he'd like to pass a collection plate because his fledgling campaign is sorely in need of money.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Next on the presidential calendar is Michigan, which holds its primary on Tuesday. For the Democrats, this is not a contest. They have avoided campaigning in the state because Michigan moved its primary to January and violation of Democratic Party rules.
There is no such reticence on the Republican side as NPR's Don Gonyea reports.
DON GONYEA: We've gone from the farms of Iowa to the snows of New Hampshire. And now, it's to the factory gates of the economically troubled state of Michigan, where the Republican race is extremely close among Mike Huckabee, John McCain and Mitt Romney. All want a win here, but it's Romney who needs one. Having lost in Iowa and New Hampshire, Michigan has now become critical to the Romney campaign. After all, he's almost a favorite son here. He was born in Detroit. His dad, George Romney, was an innovative auto executive turned popular governor in the 1960s. But Romney's homecoming has been mixed, featuring questions like this in an interview on WWJ all-news radio in Detroit yesterday.
Unidentified Woman #1: So if you don't win the Michigan primary next week, are you toast?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): No. Certainly not.
GONYEA: Now, Michigan represents a very different test for the candidates than did either Iowa or New Hampshire. Unlike those states, it's big and diverse in population, geography and economy.
Ed Sarpolus is a pollster for EPIC-MRA research.
Mr. ED SARPOLUS (Vice President, EPIC-MRA): You cannot focus your whole time talking about religious issues, talking about tax issues or war in Iraq.
GONYEA: And while those issues won't be ignored in Michigan, when you ask people what's most on their minds, you'll more than likely get answers like these.
Unidentified Man: Jobs. Absolutely. Economy is just really bad.
Unidentified Woman #2: Jobs. Unemployment.
Unidentified Woman #3: Jobs. Everybody needs job in Michigan. There's not enough to go around.
GONYEA: As the automobile industry has struggled in recent years with massive blue and white-collar job cuts, the impact has spread throughout the Michigan economy. The current jobless rate is a worst in the nation's 7.4 percent in December - well above the national rate of 5 percent.
And the candidates' messages in the state reflect that. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is offering empathy in a new TV ad.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): When you grow up and life is a struggle, you have a whole different understanding of what most people are going through. We're losing manufacturing jobs. Homeowners face a credit crisis. High fuel costs are spiraling and families are hurting.
GONYEA: Huckabee still hopes to tap into a large group of Christian conservative voters here, but his approach is as more of an economic populist.
John McCain, meanwhile, won the Michigan primary against George W. Bush eight years ago, thanks to a strong support from independents and crossover Democrats. He hopes to do the same this time.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): I've been coming here for years and years. And I've got to look you in the eye and tell you that some of those jobs aren't coming back. But I am here to look you in the eye and tell you that we are a nation that doesn't leave our people behind. We've got to help these people. We've got to give them retraining. We've got to give them education. We've got to get them jobs.
GONYEA: Mitt Romney, meanwhile, is stressing his business experience. This is from the interview on WWJ radio.
Mr. ROMNEY: We are way under investing in basic science and technology, particularly in the automobile field and that can be a licensed to our car companies for next to nothing so that they can be more competitive and spend more of their money marketing, manufacturing and producing cars that the world is going to be snapping up.
GONYEA: Whoever is the Republican Party's eventual nominee this year will also face a tough challenge in Michigan in November. It's been closed, but the state has gone Democratic in each of the last four presidential elections.
Don Gonyea, NPR News, Detroit.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
A dramatic scene yesterday in the Colombian jungle. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC freed two women hostages. The women had been held in the rebels' jungle camps for more than five years. They were some of FARC's highest profile hostages, and the release was a major victory for the man who brokered it - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.
NPR's Juan Forero is in Bogota, Colombia, and he joins us to talk about it.
And describe the scene for us. I gather that the two women were escorted out by rebels clutching rifles.
JUAN FORERO: Yes, Renee. Well, the helicopters arrived in a clearing in the jungle in the southern state of Guaviare. And the rebels came out of the jungle in single pile. It was several women and male rebels. Venezuelan officials, the Cuban ambassador to Caracas, and also Red Cross officials left the helicopter and they greeted the guerrillas. They greeted the two hostages, and then they left.
MONTAGNE: And, of course, these women have been held by these rebels for years. Did they bid farewell to them?
FORERO: They did. The women kissed the female rebels and they shook hands with the male rebels. And then the guerrillas went back into the jungle. And the women left. They left the jungle for good.
MONTAGNE: One of the hostages, Clara Rojas - she was an aide to Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. The two of them both were kidnapped while out campaigning in 2002. Now, Ingrid Betancourt, she's still being held. Does this mean that she might be released?
FORERO: Ingrid Betancourt is still in the jungle, and Ingrid Betancourt is the most high profile and the most valuable hostage that the FARC rebels have. For that reason, it's unlikely that she's going to be released anytime soon. Clara Rojas said that she had been with Ingrid Betancourt, but it had been many years. So she really wasn't able to provide much information about Ingrid's state of mind or how she's doing in the jungle.
MONTAGNE: There are hundreds of other captives still languishing in those secrets in the jungle - really inaccessible - and among them, three Americans - contractors who were captured. Does this raise hopes for any of them?
FORERO: Hopes have been raised. Hopes have been raised that through negotiations and possibly with the involvement of President Hugo Chavez, the guerrillas might give up other hostages. They hold almost 800 hostages. Some of them have been in the jungle for 10 years. So these are people who were basically rotting in the jungle and feel that they've been forgotten. But in the past, the guerrillas have rarely made these kinds of unilateral gestures. They're asking for a lot more. And the Colombian government is bucking. The Colombian government has been at war with the guerrillas for many, many years.
MONTAGNE: And finally, Hugo Chavez was able to make this happen in large part due to his leftist ideology, which helped in his role mediating with the rebels. What does this mean for him politically?
FORERO: For Hugo Chavez, this is a much-needed victory. He's had a very, very tough year. And in December, he lost an important election. So he was able to show some keen leadership skills here. And he was able to get what he wanted.
MONTAGNE: Juan, thanks very much.
NPR's Juan Forero speaking from Bogota, Colombia.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
California is a place where people can appreciate a blizzard like the big snow-filled winter storms that unloaded on the state's Sierra Mountains last weekend. Mountain snow is a major source of water for California, and last year in the midst of a record drought, there wasn't much of it.
This winter, as NPR's John McChesney reports, there's new hope the state's tap won't run dry.
JOHN McCHESNEY: Last May, I went up to the Sierras to meet Frank Gehrke, the man who measures the California snowpack for the state Water Resources Department. We met at what's called the fill up station, one of the places the state has taken snow measures for years.
Usually, Gehrke plunges a tube into the snow here and takes a core that measures not only the depth, but the snow's water content. But not on this sunny day, last May.
Mr. FRANK GEHRKE (Snow Survey Chief, California Department of Water Resources): On average at this location this time of year, we should have about 16 inches of water content and that would represent about three feet in snow depth. And right now, it's bare. It's zero.
McCHESNEY: Not a hint of white, just a bare brown field bordered by wind-blown pines. It's so warm, the frogs are singing. Just what fill up station will look like this coming May is still unknown.
But recent storms here have raised hopes that California may not face a water crisis, at least this year. But Dave Hart, an engineer with the state Water Department, says media reports of 11 feet of snowfall were exaggerated.
Mr. DAVE HART (Engineering Associate, California Department of Water Resources): With all the press coverage that last storm it was not that huge.
McCHESNEY: About average for this time of year, Hart says still, things are looking better.
Mr. HART: We're in very good shape right now. It's all about what's out there that no one can really predict, which is storm activity more than a week out or more than 10 days out.
McCHESNEY: The next 68 weeks will tell a story, an immensely important story because the state of California is absolutely dependent on its Sierra snowpack. Between May and October, there's almost no rainfall here, so the snowpack acts as a vast reservoir during the dry months, gradually letting its water drain into the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers - the aorta of the state's water circulation.
Or as Dave Hart puts it…
Mr. HART: Snowpack, obviously, is a sort of a time-release pill, if you'd like, for our water woes.
McCHESNEY: Inevitably, events like snowpack reduction raised questions about global warming and just as inevitably, scientists respond that annual weather variations are not reliable indicators of climate change.
But California is watching long-term climate conditions very carefully. The Sacramento and the San Joaquin rivers supply water to more than 20 million people, over half the state's population and most of its thousands of farms.
Michael Anderson, the water resource department's chief climatologist, takes the long view.
Mr. MICHAEL ANDERSON (Chief Climatologist, California Department of Water Resources): We've seen a decrease in April through July runoff in both the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems.
McCHESNEY: Over what period of time?
Mr. ANDERSON: This is over the 20th century between 10 and 20 percent.
McCHESNEY: A trend that's hard to ignore in the nation's thirstiest state.
John McChesney, NPR News, San Francisco.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
This morning, we're remembering the man who was the first to reach what's been called the Third Pole. There's the North Pole and the South Pole, and then there's Mt. Everest.
Climbers had been trying for decades to get to the top of that mountain, when in 1953, a 33-year-old New Zealand beekeeper named Edmund Hillary made it to the top. Years later, he told an audience in Washington, D.C., that the climb defined his attitude to life.
(Soundbite of archived speech)
Sir EDMUND HILLARY (Mountaineer/Beekeeper): I believe that if you set out on an adventure and you're absolutely convinced you're going to be successful, why bother starting?
INSKEEP: Edmund Hillary died at the age of 88. We've called Phillipa Tolley, a reporter with Radio New Zealand.
Welcome to the program.
Ms. PHILLIPA TOLLEY (Reporter, Radio New Zealand): Hello. How do you do?
INSKEEP: Was he considered a national hero to New Zealanders?
Ms. TOLLEY: Absolutely. I mean, Sir Edmund has been described as the greatest living hero for New Zealand of the 20th century. He was a absolutely iconic figure for the country. He was hugely important.
INSKEEP: We just called him a beekeeper, which he often referred to himself as, giving himself a relatively modest title.
Ms. TOLLEY: Indeed. And he was hugely self-effacing. He seems to epitify(ph) a lot of what are typically seen as New Zealand attitude of gritty, can-do, great determination, but not overly effusive in self-promoting. He even described himself as not very bright, you know, I was just a beekeeper. I wasn't even very bright. But there were some things I want to do, you know, I had this great determination to sort of get to the top and achieve the feat of climbing Mt. Everest.
INSKEEP: Well, let's listen to Edmund Hillary's words as he describes that moment of determination. He's describing what the prospect was like as they prepared to climb Mt. Everest.
(Soundbite of archived speech)
Sir HILLARY: And we really didn't know it was humanly possible to set foot on top of Everest, even using oxygen. All the physiologists had warned us that it might be impossible. We had nobody to help us. We just had to do it ourselves.
INSKEEP: How huge was this accomplishment?
Ms. TOLLEY: Well, since then, there were all sorts of records that have been broken. But you know, this was a time when technologically things weren't very advanced. People weren't even sure that individuals could survive as they got to the top of the Everest and he talked about this huge psychological barrier. But, you know, he did it with his Sherpa colleague and obviously they had a great bond. They worked together. And it wasn't just an achievement for a New Zealander. It was one of those big challenges for explorers and adventurers around the entire world.
INSKEEP: What did he do after 1953?
Ms. TOLLEY: He was given a knighthood by the British Queen, almost before he, you know, got down the end of the mountain - from when he conquered Everest. Later on in the '50s, he made a dash to the South Pole using a tractor. He was the first person to take, and I think probably almost the only person, to take tractors to the South Pole…
INSKEEP: You mean like a farm tractor? He went to the…
Ms. TOLLEY: Indeed.
INSKEEP: …South Pole?
Ms. TOLLEY: Absolutely. Tractors that were used on New Zealand farms, he had great faith in them, hugely reliable, and that was just in the late in the '50s. He was also given a diplomatic post to India and did a search for the source of the Ganges. So he continued to be an adventurer and explorer. But the most important thing for him personally was the trusts that he set up in Nepal itself, in the 1960s.
And those thrusts were to improve education, to improve health for the local people, to improve access. They built small bridges, some airstrip and he himself - this is what he wants to be remembered for, his humanitarian work. It was very important to him. So he wasn't just a man who had one great achievement and then sat on his laurels.
INSKEEP: That's New Zealand journalist Phillipa Tolley, speaking with us about the death of climber Sir Edmund Hillary who died today at the age of 88.
I'm here at npr.org looking at the Web site, looking at photographs of Edmund Hillary as a young man, as he was climbing Mt. Everest. You can see them, again, at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
As we just heard, there was no fancy technology available to Sir Edmund Hillary, to help him conquer Everest. Things like GPS and other high-tech equipment that climbers take for granted today. Equipment that is on display in abundance this week at the Consumer Electronic Show, or CES. And a big theme at this year's show has been environmentally friendly products.
NPR's Laura Sydell looked at just how green these gadgets are.
LAURA SYDELL: No, it doesn't look green, 1.7 million square feet of show space with hundreds of flat-screen TVs, stereo systems, computers and cell phones sucking energy. But green is the color many manufacturers are wrapping themselves in, at least metaphorically.
Dave Conrad heads the environment division of Nokia North America.
Mr. DAVE CONRAD (Head, Environment Division, Nokia North America): I got consumers and customers coming to us and asking us for environmental performance in this way or that way and it makes my job a whole lot easier and a lot more fun.
SYDELL: The Nokia booth has an exhibit about every stage of life of a Nokia phone.
Mr. CONRAD: We're talking about supply. We're talking about manufacturing and R&D, where we've got design for environment engineers that are doing some of the things that you see behind me.
SYDELL: Things like using less packaging, recycling metals from their products, and putting a message on their phone screens that tells consumers to unplug the power pack when it's fully charged.
The organizers of CES are stressing the green theme this year. There's a special zone for more traditionally green tech, like solar-equipped briefcases for charging your laptop and hydrogen fuel cells for powering your phone. Then, there's the whole itself.
Mr. PARKER BRUGGE (Senior Director, Consumer Electronics Association): We've looked from everything, to the cleaners in the bathroom to the utensils being used for the food.
SYDELL: And every item is non-toxic and can be recycled, says Parker Brugge, senior director and environmental counsel for the show's sponsor, the Consumer Electronics Association. Even the carpet here is recycled.
Despite all the talk about being green, consumer electronics are using more of the nation's energy supply every year, says Noah Horowitz, a senior scientist at the environmental group NRDC. He says, in many homes, consumer electronics are responsible for between 15 to 20 percent of the electricity bill.
Mr. NOAH HOROWITZ (Senior Scientist, Natural Resources Defense Council): And why is that? Homes have one, two or three computers in their home where they didn't have any before? Your TV used to be 25 inches, now it's 50 inches. Now, you have a TiVo box, a game console, and so forth.
SYDELL: Horowitz says many game lovers leave their consoles on day and night because when they are in the middle of a game, they can't save it if they turn it off. TiVo boxes are always consuming power even when not in use, and a 50-inch plasma TV uses about as much energy in a year as a refrigerator.
Still, back on the floor at CES, plasma TV makers tout environmental credentials.
SYDELL: I'm standing in front of Panasonic's area at the Consumer Electronics Show, and they have, right here, a sign that says eco ideas, and they advertise that we will produce energy-efficient products. However, Panasonic is also the company that has the largest television screen here. We're going to take a look at that.
Unidentified Man: Panasonic ideas…
SYDELL: It's Jeff Holman's(ph) job to sell this TV for Panasonic.
Mr. JEFF HOLMAN (Salesman, Panasonic): I am 6 foot 3 and it takes two of me to reach from one end to the other, and it's a little bit taller than I am in height.
SYDELL: That's 150 inches of plasma TV, and it draws one of the biggest crowds at CES. I asked Panasonic vice president, Jeff Cove, exactly how much power it uses.
Mr. JEFF COVE (Vice President, Panasonic): I don't know.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SYDELL: But Cove assures me Panasonic has already decreased the amount of power needed to support their TVs, and power efficiency is getting better with every new model. There is a sense, among environmentalists, that the electronics industry is truly becoming more conscious of its impact on the environment.
Jeff Omelchuck, executive director of the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool or EPEAT.
Mr. JEFF OMELCHUCK (Executive Director, Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool): The problem continues with consumers is how would a consumer know whether a product is green or not.
SYDELL: EPEAT rates PCs and puts a stamp of approval on them. The new federal energy bill will eventually require labels on electronics that say how much energy it uses. Still, many here say that the first question customers ask when buying a TV set is not how green, it is how good is the picture.
Laura Sydell, NPR News.
MONTAGNE: To see some of the technologies creating a buzz at this year's CES, stop by npr.org.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
Years ago, I attended a wedding at the same time as an Indiana University basketball game. People secretly listened to the radio in church. There is nothing secret about it when a Wisconsin couple gets married this weekend. Their long-planned wedding coincides with tomorrow's pro-football playoff between the Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks. So the happy couple decided to put a TV in the church. People can watch even as the groom kisses the bride.
It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
No dessert unless you eat your vegetables - pretty basic rules for kids. An elementary school in Connecticut is going a step further. Glenville School has banned the sale of cookies and ice cream. The principal says that kids were throwing away lunches and heading straight for dessert. The students are still screaming for ice cream. But all they'll find in this cafeteria is fruit and yogurt.
You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
You won't read many books that open with a more arresting passage than the new one by Sudhir Venkatesh. So let's just ask him to begin.
Professor SUDHIR VENKATESH (Author, "Gang Leader for a Day"): (Reading) I woke up at about 7:30 a.m. in a crack den - Apartment 1603 in Building Number 2301 of the Robert Taylor homes. Apartment 1603 was called the roof since everyone knew that you could get very, very high there, even higher than if you climb all the way to the building's actual rooftop.
As I opened my eyes, I saw two dozen people sprawled about, most of them men asleep on couches and on the floor. No one had lived in the apartment for a while. The walls were peeling and roaches skittered across the linoleum floor.
The activities of the previous night - smoking crack, drinking, having sex, vomiting - had peaked at about 2 a.m. By then, the unconscious people outnumbered the conscious ones. And among the conscious ones, few still have the cash to buy another hit of crack cocaine. That's when the Black Kings saw diminishing prospects for sales and closed up shop for the night.
I fell asleep, too, on the floor. I hadn't come for the crack. I was here on a different mission. I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, and for my research I had taken to hanging out with the Black Kings, the local crack-selling gang.
SIMON: Sudhir Venkatesh is now a professor of sociology at Columbia University. And he's the author of this new book, "Gang Leader for a Day." He joins us from studios at the Columbia School of Business in New York.
Thank you so much for being with us, professor.
Prof. VENKATESH: It's a pleasure. Thank you.
SIMON: The first people you met on the south side of Chicago with the group you ran with here - not only write about but ran with here, the Black Kings - they assumed you were Mexican.
Prof. VENKATESH: Yeah. This was the late 1980s and there was a lot of antagonism among Mexican American and African-American street gangs in Chicago. And I was a graduate student doing a survey and I walked into this housing development that I didn't know was officially going to be closed down and...
SIMON: This is the Robert Taylor homes.
Prof. VENKATESH: This is the Robert Taylor homes. And they started calling me Julio.
SIMON: I have to ask you to share the question you asked them because this could be from a "Saturday Night Live" routine. Academic - University of Chicago academic walks into a store and asks...
Prof. VENKATESH: How does it feel to be black and poor? They laughed. And they offered a response that, I have to tell you, it's a profanity and it wasn't one of the choices that they had on the questionnaire.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: Yeah. But that's how you met the Black King later known as J.T. From the first, he impressed you with something.
Prof. VENKATESH: When the words came out of his mouth that he had a college degree, I was floored. The last thing that I had expected to hear was a major street gang leader, a person in this community, having a college degree. He was working at a downtown corporate firm, in sales, and he decided to go back to his community, into the housing developments and sell drugs because he felt an African-American could not get ahead in corporate America at that time and he wanted to go somewhere else to make his money and make his life.
SIMON: Now that we're talking in 2008, does a representation like that seem particularly ludicrous now that somebody from the south side of Chicago stands a very good chance of being president?
Prof. VENKATESH: Well, on the one hand, it would seem that we have come a long way from that time when I met J.T. in the 1980s. The first African-American mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington, had just died, and the city was in a turmoil, and conflicts among African-Americans and white ethnics in the city was at its - was at a high. And J.T. felt like there is absolutely no chance for him in the city and that you probably represented the taste and the opinion of the majority of African-Americans at that time.
SIMON: In your description, the Black Kings in the Robert Taylor homes and other gangs for that matter, they moved in to places because they provided city services that the official city agencies stop providing.
Prof. VENKATESH: Here, we have the street gang that was a philanthropist. They gave money to children for back-to-school clothing, and they ran basketball leagues, and they provided security and escorts for the elderly to go to the store. It was a very strange world for me to come into.
SIMON: Remind us, though, how the Black Kings made that money.
Prof. VENKATESH: They had several hundred people. They were selling, primarily, crack cocaine in the housing projects in Chicago. And they were tied into other street gangs in other parts of the city. So they were part of a citywide drug-dealing operation.
SIMON: Tell us about the day you turned to J.T. and said, I think you're overpaid.
Prof. VENKATESH: I saw the street gang. It was relatively early on in our relationship and I didn't see him doing anything. I saw him delegating orders and telling people where to stand, and go get him a coffee or coke or something like that. I said, you know, you're not really doing anything. I think you're overpaid. And he said, well, why don't you try it for a day?
And we had ground rules. I couldn't fire a weapon. I wouldn't deal drugs. But it gave me a chance to understand some of the complex decisions that he had to make, and it was just fascinating to see the kind of managerial prowess that he had, again, in a very illegal and dangerous world. But he had to manage a complex operation that I think any business person out there could probably understand some of the difficult decisions that he had to make.
SIMON: There - sitting there in the studios at the Columbia Business School, share some of those business decisions with us that you saw, some of which you learned.
Prof. VENKATESH: A guy comes to you and will sell you crack cocaine at $100 today when it normally sells for 125. But you have to pay him a higher price in the future so he's going to give you a discount now. Another guy says pay me a higher price now and you can lock in a lower price months later. What would you take? And I'm thinking rationally. I'll take the lock in a cheap price later.
J.T. says you can't. There is no later in this world. You have to take what's now because the future doesn't exist.
SIMON: I have to ask you about what I found just about the most shocking part. You participated in a beating once yourself.
Prof. VENKATESH: Yeah. It was - there was a young woman named Tanisha(ph), a very pretty young woman who have been doing modeling and her boyfriend, Bebe(ph), was upset at her because he thought that she was getting business and not giving him his 15 or 20 percent. And so he beat her up and he cut her up and...
SIMON: You say doing business, this was of sexual services?
Prof. VENKATESH: Sexual services, modeling, everything. And then he felt he had a right to claim part of her income. And so he beat her up and he cut up her face and it was an awful situation. And because these folks in this community could not rely on the police, often what they do is they round up squatters who lived in the building as a sort of militia.
And so they rounded up three people and said, okay, we're letting you live in this building illegally. You need to find this guy, Bebe. So Bebe's running down the stairs, they're chasing him in the building and he comes after the squatters and they get him in a hold. And Bebe's a big, big man and strong man. And he's got one of the squatters in a choke hold, and I'm the only one who sees this and "I'm observing this," quote, end quote. I'm a neutral, partial observer. And that line was crossed immediately when I kicked Bebe in the stomach. And so that he let go of this guy and the choke hold went away. And immediately, I just realized, boy, I'm starting to get involved in something just a little too deep. And they eventually took Bebe and they beat him up.
And I remember telling one of the elder tenants in the community that I feel bad. This is - I did something awful. She said to me, well, you're just like us. You're just going to have to live with it.
But then I understood, firsthand, what it means when you can't rely on the police. When you can't rely on folks to help you, you have to help yourself.
SIMON: On your way home to Hyde Park, you'd stop at a pretty famous bar there called Jimmy's(ph) and find yourself getting angry about people like yourself...
Prof. VENKATESH: Oh, man.
SIMON: ...which is to say sociologists.
Prof. VENKATESH: Jimmy's became my resting place on the way home. And, you know, like many other people who'd go to bars, I'd sit alone and try to wash off what I've saw or just try to find a way to come to grips of what I was feeling. And the anger that I was experiencing was in part driven by the fact that sociologists, social scientists had - were not really seeing this world or choosing to ignore it and were really not taking the time to figure out exactly what was going on in these inner-city communities.
You know, most of them would, in a responsible way, ask a survey, here and there, ask few hundred people, and then, turn their backs. And I struggle to figure out what value I could offer if I didn't spend the time. And then there are the ethical questions. Okay. Now, I'm spending the time and now, I'm just trying to get involved and this - these lines I have to cross. And I struggle to figure out exactly what my contribution could be. And it's taken me a long time. And I still struggle with that question of exactly how to be a good sociologist.
SIMON: Professor, thank you so much.
Prof. VENKATESH: Thank you for having me.
SIMON: Sudhir Venkatesh. His new book is "Gang Leader for a Day." And to read an excerpt from his book, you can come to our Web site, npr.org/books.
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Fifty years ago, Daniel Pollack was a graduate student in piano studies at Vienna's prestigious Hochschule fur Musik. And one day, he noticed a sign on the bulletin board about a piano competition in Moscow. He decided to enter.
(Soundbite of song, "Nocturne Number 20 in C Sharp Minor")
SIMON: This is a recording of his performance of the Chopin "Nocturne Number 20 in C Sharp Minor" at that competition. It was the first annual International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, at the height of the Cold War, in an unthawed Moscow into which Americans rarely ventured.
(Soundbite of song, "Nocturne Number 20 in C sharp minor")
SIMON: Another American, Van Cliburn, won first place, helping to make both the award and himself famous. But Daniel Pollack won a prize, too. He was invited to tour all over the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries. He also became the first American to record an album for the Soviet Melodya label.
Daniel Pollack, who's just recorded a new album called "Colors," joins us from his home in Los Angeles.
Mr. Pollack, thank you so much for being with us.
Professor DANIEL POLLACK (Music, Thornton School of Music; Pianist): I'm delighted to talk with you today.
SIMON: What a story, and it's hard to know where to begin. But let's begin 50 years ago. What possessed you to enter the competition?
Prof. POLLACK: Well, the professor I was with brought me a brochure and it was all in German. And it was the first time they were going to have an international competition in Moscow in the name of Tchaikovsky. And I thought, why not?
And so he rattled off the program that I'm supposed to do, and this was at the end of December, so I had barely two months to prepare.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Prof. POLLACK: And normally, for international competitions, one takes a year, if not, longer to put all the pieces together. But I went ahead and learned all the repertoire and only found out in Moscow when I got there that I had the wrong program.
SIMON: Well, tell us that story. As I've read, you were at dinner that first night.
Prof. POLLACK: Yeah, I came into Moscow. Remember, it's the height of the Cold War and I'm traveling by train through Czechoslovakia then Poland then through the Soviet Union.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Prof. POLLACK: And it was - you could say kind of scary.
SIMON: Yeah.
Prof. POLLACK: But when I realized when I came - and I was talking to one of the contestants and they said, well, I'm playing Schumann and Mozart and Chopin. And I said - and he said, what are you doing? And I said, oh, Miaskovsky and Metner and Shostakovich. And all he said, well, why are you doing all these Soviet, Russian pieces. And I said, that's what was required. And he said, no. You only have to have one of them, including Prokofiev sonata.
SIMON: Hmm.
Prof. POLLACK: So I offered to withdraw.
SIMON: For those of us who've never been to an international music competition, is this the equivalent of the recurrent dream some of us have that we show up for the big test and we aren't wearing our pants?
Prof. POLLACK: You could say that, yes. But anyhow, Shostakovich was alerted who was the chairman and...
SIMON: This is Dmitri Shostakovich.
Prof. POLLACK: Yes. And they decided they would let me go ahead and compete as it was. And I made it through the finals. And, of course, the excitement in Moscow at that time was unbelievable.
SIMON: Help us understand what it was like for a couple of Americans, you and Van Cliburn, to win a music competition in the Soviet Union. Was it as shocking to Russians as, let's say, Yuri Gagarin getting shot into space was just a few years later for Americans?
Prof. POLLACK: Yes. It was a terrible shock for them because they thought that one of theirs was going to be a winner. In fact, Sviatoslav Richter, the very famous pianist who was on the jury, said this is not a competition for everybody here but basically between two Americans, which was a shocking statement for a jury member to make, in fact, during the time of the competition.
SIMON: Everybody had to play one piece from their country of origin.
Prof. POLLACK: That's correct.
SIMON: And you played...
Prof. POLLACK: I played the premiere of the Barber Piano Sonata, which was I would say 8 years old at that time. It was premiered in the United States by Vladimir Horowitz. And, of course, this was something the Russian audiences never knew about.
SIMON: I wonder if we could hear a little of it.
Prof. POLLACK: I can play a tiny bit of it, yes.
(Soundbite of song, "Barber's Piano Sonata")
SIMON: Now, you and Van Cliburn, as I understand it, had both studied with the same legendary teacher.
Prof. POLLACK: Yeah, Madame Rosina Lhevinne. We were both students of hers at the Juilliard School.
SIMON: Now, she'd been - was it the Moscow Conservatory for years?
Prof. POLLACK: She herself was a graduate of the Moscow Conservatory. She married then Josef Lhevinne. They were great pianists. And they were friends with Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky and Scriabin. And you think of an era that is amazing and it's not that far removed when you actually consider it.
In fact, Russians later called me their musical grandchild. And they allowed me to go on tour and perform after the competition.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Prof. POLLACK: And record for Melodya several recordings.
SIMON: What was it like to spend time and then travel in the old Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc in the late '50s?
Prof. POLLACK: Well, it wasn't easy because a lot of my tours, especially in winter, were by train, train trips that take up 24 hours and 30 hours. And several - I come off the train and I barely have time to go to the hotel. When it's time for me to give the concert, I have to rush to the hall. Sometimes, I couldn't even get to the hall because it was already packed with people. And I just had to come out and play and they would clap in rhythm and throw flowers and write me notes of what pieces they would like me to play in. Very loving and very affectionate at the time when it was most, most difficult I realized for them.
SIMON: I have to ask living as you do, there are so many Russian immigrants in Los Angeles and you get recognized and treated like you're George Clooney.
Prof. POLLACK: I get recognized. Then, if I say my name, everyone knows me from that time in Russia. It's still amazing to me. I'll come in and they'll say, you're the one who played the "Barber Sonata," or you're the one who played the "Prokofiev 7," and it's like I'm a household name to them.
(Soundbite of song, "Prokofiev: Sonata Number 7 - Precipitato")
SIMON: Mr. Pollack, when you're a judge at one of these international competitions, what do you listen for? What do you hear in a piece of music or in a performance?
Prof. POLLACK: That's a very good question. I myself on a jury, feeling very much for the contestant because I know I was there myself.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Prof. POLLACK: I'm looking for a contestant whose feeling in the music goes beyond the music that's in the score. Many are playing the notes and don't say anything to me. Or stylistically, I'd like to know that Chopin sounds like Chopin and not somebody else. And the architecture of the piece, many just sort of meander through the piece and I don't know really where they're going, and I don't know really what they're saying. So what crosses the footlight and projects its emotion to me is what I'm listening for.
(Soundbite of song, "Schumann: Carnaval - Preambule")
SIMON: Mr. Pollack, what a pleasure. Thank you so much.
Prof. POLLACK: My pleasure.
SIMON: You can hear more of Daniel Pollack's music and that of many other artists in our new music Web site, npr.org/music.
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
President Bush continued his Middle East trip today, shifting his focus from the Arab-Israeli conflict to the war in Iraq. He was in Kuwait, in the sprawling U.S. military base there, where he met General David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador.
The president is now in Bahrain, as is NPR's Michele Kelemen.
Michele, thanks for being with us.
MICHELE KELEMEN: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: And after the meetings, the president talked about troop drawdowns and how he believes the war is going now. What did he tell the troops? What did he say?
KELEMEN: Well, he didn't say much to the troops actually. He spoke to reporters before he came out to speak to the troops. And what he talked about is, you know, it's been a year since he's sent in all these combat - extra combat troops and changed the mission. He says now hope is returning to Baghdad. He says it's a different place than it was a year ago. But he said the long-term success will require active U.S. engagement that outlasts his presidency.
As for a drawdown, you know, he talked about what he's announced before that an Army brigade has left - the Marine Expeditionary Unit has left. But he's taking his cues from his commander on the ground, David Petraeus. And he says if he doesn't want to continue to this drawdown, then that's fine with me.
We pressed General Petraeus a little bit afterwards on this, and he said that, you know, they are talking about the pace of the reduction, the timing of the reduction. They're considering all these scenarios. They didn't talk about numbers, when he met with President Bush today. But it's all going to depend really on when they first started drawing down what that does, whether it leads to more violence or whether it's the same or less.
SIMON: And I gather that Iran's influence in Iraq was also a theme.
KELEMEN: It was a major theme. David Petraeus said that they've been seeing mixed indicators, and it's very hard to read what's happening with the Iranian influence in Iraq. The U.S. has seen a decline in attacks by militias that it says is getting support from Iran. And it's also seen a decline in attacks that used the weaponry associated with Iran. But he said in the last week and a half, these sophisticated explosive devices that the U.S. believes have come in from Iran that these sorts of attacks have been on the rise in the past 10 days. So he says it's really hard to read.
Ambassador Ryan Crocker was also there, and he was talking about the political side of that. He's been meeting with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad. And he said he's ready to do it again, but they haven't heard back from the Iranians.
SIMON: About 3,000 troops had a chance to hear the president, and I know you had a chance to talk with some troops. What did they tell you? How would you describe how they're feeling?
KELEMEN: Well, you know, a lot of them were disappointed that they had waited a couple of hours outside for the president and he came out and he gave a fairly perfunctory speech, I mean, thanking them and talking about how he thinks that history will look back on this war as a victory. But he didn't really say much - didn't offer anything, for instance, about a drawdown. And that's something that they really want to hear.
One guy told me that he had to come. He said I was "voluntold" to come here. Others said they, you know, wanted to hear more about where this war is heading and how it might end. And that wasn't what the message that was coming from the president. In fact, they got a little bit more hyped up beforehand, singing, you know, classic Queen song.
(Soundbite of song, "Bohemian Rhapsody")
SIMON: NPR's Michele Kelemen in Bahrain.
Thanks very much.
KELEMEN: Thank you for having me.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
The first two rounds of the election season are over, and this much is known. Time will tell. And time now marches on as the electoral battle spreads across the country.
Next up: Michigan on Tuesday. The Democrats aren't contesting this one. The National Party punished the state for moving up the date of the primary and says that its delegates won't be seated. But it's certainly a different story on the Republican side.
We're joined by Bill Ballenger, publisher of Inside Michigan Politics, who's on the campaign trail in Flint this morning.
Thanks for being with us, Mr. Ballenger.
Mr. BILL BALLENGER (Publisher, Inside Michigan Politics): My pleasure, Scott.
SIMON: And it's been a few days now since attention has been paid to Michigan, where Republicans have been making appearances. What are they going for? Who are they appealing to?
Mr. BALLENGER: Well, they're appealing on the Republican side to some kind of a evangelical Christian right base as they were, to a certain extent, obviously in Iowa are so-called Christian right here is probably half or a third the size of Iowa. So thereby, no means the entire constituency that Republican candidates want to get votes from there is kind of a more moderate electorate here in Michigan than there is in both Iowa and New Hampshire, and we're obviously way more spread out geographically. This is the biggest state in land mass east of the Mississippi.
SIMON: Mm-hmm. And according to polls, what's on the minds of Republican voters there in Michigan?
Mr. BALLENGER: The economy, the economy, the economy. It's dismal here in Michigan, and it has been for half a dozen years. We've never really emerged from the 2000, 2001 recession.
SIMON: Of course, this is being seen as a particular test for Mitt Romney. He grew up in the state. His father, George Romney, was the governor. His mother ran for senator. He was, after all, governor of Massachusetts. Is this really is home state?
Mr. BALLENGER: It's hard to say that it is. Obviously, his father was governor almost 40 years ago. A lot of people joke that the people in Michigan who remember his father probably all in Arizona now, if they're still alive. He's got the Romney name, which is certainly a better name than any other candidate running right now, with the possible exception of John McCain, who won the state in a big upset over George W. Bush just eight years ago. So he has said that, you know, he plan to make it the third leg on his troika of wins at the beginning of the process - Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan. And of course, he's lost Iowa and New Hampshire, so he just about has to win Michigan or, I think, he may be cooked.
SIMON: You, of course, mentioned Senator McCain's victory there in the 2000 primary. Is the political landscape still favorable to him?
Mr. BALLENGER: I think it is. In fact, polls taken in the last few days in the wake of New Hampshire show him with leads anywhere from seven to 11 points. In Michigan, you can cross over and vote in the Republican primary if you're an independent or a Democrat. We do not register to vote by party here in Michigan, so anybody can go into the Republican Party if it wants to next Tuesday and vote.
And John McCain got the lion share by far back in 2000 against George W. Bush of those voters, and the expectation is he will get those voters again this time compared with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, who's also making a big play here in Michigan.
SIMON: So in theory, Democrats who want to play the game can walk into the poll and vote Republican.
Mr. BALLENGER: Absolutely. In fact, because the Democratic contest is virtually meaningless, with only really Hillary Clinton on the ballot as a major candidate, there's a lot of speculation that if you're a Democrat and you want to participate, the only game in town is a Republican primary.
SIMON: Bill Ballenger, publisher of Inside Michigan Politics, thanks very much.
Mr. BALLENGER: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
The next test for Democrats is Nevada - holds caucuses a week from today. There, it's essentially a two-person race. John Edwards, who came in second in Iowa and third in New Hampshire, is short on money, focusing his attention on South Carolina. That leaves Nevada to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who campaigned there all week long.
NPR's Carrie Kahn has been following them around Las Vegas.
CARRIE KAHN: The line to get into Barack Obama's town hall meeting at Del Sol High School last night snaked through the expanse of parking lot out to the street and around the corner. Many had waited hours to see him, but by the time Obama arrived, it was clear not everyone was going to fit into the school's gym.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Democratic Presidential Candidate): If you could not get in today, I don't want you to think that you are not precious to this campaign. We need you caucusing for us. We need you standing up for us.
KAHN: Obama stood on an improvised stage, and gave those who weren't getting in the "Reader's Digest" version of this familiar time-for-a-change speech. Despite its brevity, Mary Ann Lynn(ph) said the Obama speech got her to switch her allegiance from Hillary Clinton.
Ms. MARY ANN LYNN (Resident, Nevada): I have thought about it for a while and I've changed my mind. Yeah. Right now.
(Soundbite of laughter)
KAHN: Right now, you've changed your mind?
Ms. LYNN: I changed my mind, and this is definitely right now, why we have to do it.
KAHN: This was Obama's first appearance in this state since placing second in New Hampshire. Mindful of Nevada's new prominence in the condensed primary season, Obama has been racking up endorsements here from major labor unions to yesterday's nod from Arizona's Democratic governor.
Sen. OBAMA: And since I'm in Las Vegas, I just want you to know that I hit the jackpot. My bet is paying off because America is ready for change. They are responding all across this nation. They're ready for something new.
KAHN: Talking for more than an hour and taking questions, Obama touched on everything, from pulling the troops from Iraq to raising teachers' salaries and demanding higher fuel standards from domestic cars.
Sen. OBAMA: There is nothing we cannot do. If you decide you want change, we will have change. Yes, we can.
Unidentified Group: (Spanish spoken)
KAHN: The message was in Spanish, but the same at the Culinary Workers union hall across town where Obama formally picked up his endorsement from the prominent labor group.
Sen. OBAMA: We're going to show America that what happens in Vegas is not going to stay in Vegas anymore.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
KAHN: Obama stressed his experience as an organizer in Chicago in his humble working-class roots. But the Illinois senator wasn't the only one trying to show a humbler side in Nevada. After canvassing a Latino neighborhood in North Las Vegas, Thursday night, Hillary Clinton is now running ads in Nevada, showing off her new softer side after that misty moment in New Hampshire.
(Soundbite of Hillary Clinton ad)
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Democratic Presidential Candidate): Over the last week, I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice. You helped remind everyone that politics isn't a game.
Unidentified Group: Hillary, Hillary, Hillary...
Sen. CLINTON: Thank you.
KAHN: Yesterday, Clinton showed off that new voice at a rally near Los Angeles. She proposed an economic stimulus package for the country, and took questions at length from the audience about soaring energy costs, which the New York senator said would be fixed once she replace the current occupants in the White House.
Sen. CLINTON: So we're not going to make progress on a lot of these tough issues until we realize that we've got to get the two oilmen out of the White House and begin to change direction.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
KAHN: Clinton heads back to Nevada today with stops in Reno and Las Vegas.
Carrie Kahn, NPR News, Las Vegas.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Coming up, newly released documents from the National Security Agency about the war in Vietnam.
But first, New Hampshire primary voters, this week, reiterated their biggest concern is the economy. The stock market went up and down this week. Tech and communication stocks, including AT&T, plunged. Major retailers announced they had their worst holiday season in several years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell another 246 points on Friday. That caps a 5 percent free fall since the beginning of the year.
All of these and more has prompted Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to vow that he would take some kind of decisive action, as he called it, to protect the economy from recession.
Art Hogan is the managing director and chief market analyst at Jeffries Investment Bank. We spoke with him on Friday from his very noisy office in Boston.
Mr. Hogan, thanks very much for being with us.
Mr. ART HOGAN (Managing Director; Chief Market Analyst, Jeffries Investment Bank): Well, thank you very much for having me.
SIMON: When we talk about impending recession or hoping to avoid an impending recession, how does that translate in very practical terms as to the kind of the cautions that people will have to apply to their lives?
Mr. HOGAN: I don't technically think we need to get into a recession to feel like we're in one. We're going to have an economic slowdown. That means that some folks that we know won't be - won't have jobs. It means that the - some businesses that we know about will go out of business. Some businesses that we know won't make as much money. That's going to affect some things like corporate earnings. Some of the companies that we might hold on our mutual funds won't make as much money.
But at the end of the day, what it really means is a psychological thing. That we sort of have to work our way beyond because 50 percent or 60 percent of what's going on in the economic slowdown pinches on whether or not consumers remain confident and continue to spend money.
SIMON: On Friday, the Bank of America announced a $4 billion buyout of Countrywide Financial. That's a lender that's kind of become poster child for toppling credit institutions. Does that suggest to you that the worst of the mortgage crisis is over?
Mr. HOGAN: We're not going to see the worst of the credit crisis until we start seeing two things. We're going to see very big write-downs, like the billions of dollars we've heard about. In agri(ph), we've seen about $80 billion in write-downs from some of the major financial institutions. And then we also need to hear some of the weaker players being bought out by some of the stronger players. So Bank of America buying Countrywide, JP Morgan perhaps buying a Washington Mutual, and more consolidation like that, which is likely to be talked about over the next couple of weeks, is a very important part of the process. And then we can clearly say that the worse is behind us.
SIMON: And what about the cheap dollar?
Mr. HOGAN: The cheap dollar is part of the process, but it's not always to be blamed because there's not a constant relationship. And an important thing to remember about the weak dollar is that it helps our exporters. And to put that in perspective, if you look at the S&P 500, which is a broad spectrum of companies in America, about 40 percent of them receive a majority of their revenues from overseas. So the weak dollar is helping, you know, almost half of the S&P 500 companies.
SIMON: But we had a rising unemployment figures this month, too, though, didn't we?
Mr. HOGAN: We saw a 5 percent number for the first time in two years. So meaning that unemployment rate had been under 5 percent for the last two years. Now, if you were to go back for the last 10 years, the average has been between 5.5 and 6 percent. So we've seen extremely low levels of unemployment that really weren't natural.
It's difficult for our economy to work with the unemployment rate below 5 percent. Believe it or not, we think full employment really stands at about 5.25 or 5.5 percent. And when we get below that, we really have some wage price pressure. It's very difficult to get new employees for new roles as you roll out new businesses. And I don't think a 5 percent unemployment rate is an unhealthy thing at all.
SIMON: Mr. Hogan, what are you going to pay particular attention to, let's say, over the next two weeks?
Mr. HOGAN: Well, unfortunately the next two weeks are going to give us some relatively disturbing news, and we know that. The major financial institutions here are reporting earnings in next week. The billions of dollars they need to write off because of the subprime mortgage, credit that are in big problems that are out there. We give a couple of reads on inflation next week. There's a Producer Price Index, and it's a price index that gets reported next week. And of course, we're always watching the price per barrel of oil because that sort of plays into just about everything.
SIMON: Art Hogan, managing director and chief market analyst at Jeffries Investment Bank in Boston. Thanks so much.
Mr. HOGAN: Thank you very much for having me.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Residents of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire are proud to be the first people to vote in the first state to cast votes. The polls open at midnight in Dixville Notch. The whole town, which has 74 residents, lines up for the vote. Those first votes are often widely reported during prime morning news hours.
So when Duncan Hunter, the California congressman running for president on the Republican primaries, was told that someone in town planned to vote for him, Mr. Hunter decided to travel 170 miles north, from Manchester to Dixville Notch, to shake hands with his supporter.
Mr. Hunter's supporter is married. He and his wife have a young child, but they don't always vote the same way. The couple flipped a coin to decide who would vote and who would babysit. The Hunter-voter husband lost and stayed home. He tried phoning the congressman in his car, but cell service in the White Mountains is spotty.
He showed up at midnight only to learn that none of the 17 votes cast was for him. John McCain finished first among Republicans with four votes; Barack Obama won with seven on the Democratic side. Congressman Hunter drove all the way back to Manchester and reflected on the tidal wave that might have been set off had he won a vote in Dixville Notch. Imagine how today would have gone, he reportedly told people sitting nearby at a diner where he stopped for breakfast, decided by a coin toss the story of my career.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
A newly released history by the National Security Agency details flawed intelligence, military hoaxes and potential cover-ups that occurred during the war in Vietnam. The history spans two decades. It includes information on subversive intelligence efforts to try to stymie Viet Cong intercepts, and the NSA's own mishaps with interpreting messages.
John Prados is a historian and senior fellow at the National Security Archives at the George Washington University. He's been studying this newly released history. His most recent book is "Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA." He joins us in our studios. Thanks very much.
Mr. JOHN PRADOS (Senior Fellow, National Security Archive, Washington University; Author, "Safe for Democracy: The Secret War of the CIA."): My pleasure.
SIMON: Let me ask you about, I think, what have been cited as the two biggest mistakes that NSA made. The first would be that that Gulf of Tonkin attack, the second attack in August of 1964.
Mr. PRADOS: Absolutely.
SIMON: Well, tell us exactly what happened and what some people said happened.
Mr. PRADOS: At the Gulf of Tonkin, on the 2nd of August, 1964, a U.S. Navy destroyer that was on an electronic intercept mission collecting North Vietnamese material was attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The Johnson administration responded to the attack on the American destroyer by sending that ship back accompanied by another destroyer. And two nights later, declared that they had been attacked again by North Vietnam, and used that as the pretext for gaining congressional passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which subsequently served as its justification for the Vietnam War. It turns out...
SIMON: But we should explain, the Tonkin Gulf resolution empowered the administration to act to defend - yes.
Mr. PRADOS: To use force in Southeast Asia. That's right. It turns out that a full examination of the intercepts that were taken from the North Vietnamese not only shows that the August 2nd attack happened, but it also shows pretty clearly that the August 4th attack did not happen.
SIMON: How do we know for sure that that second attack didn't happen?
Mr. PRADOS: The research of the NSA historian who worked on these documents uncovered the fact that there had been mistaken translations. Two different NSA intercept posts had gotten the same message, had translated it differently and said to get out at different times led people in Washington to conclude that messages that referred to the August 2nd attack actually...
SIMON: Which was the one that did occur.
Mr. PRADOS: Which was the one that did occur, actually presaged a brand new attack, and thus set them up to believe that the second attack happened. The United States government very quickly, because of the Tonkin Gulf resolution, got itself locked into a posture of assuring that the second attack had in fact happened, so that even in subsequent reviews and chronologies that were compiled for the record, the National Security Agency people continued to maintain the fiction recreating a false chronology that excluded all these other data, which has now turned up.
SIMON: Who created the fiction? Is that clear?
Mr. PRADOS: The whole fiction of the Gulf of Tonkin, I believe, was created at the Department of Defense, and then within the United States Navy. But this particular piece of the fiction, this National Security Agency effort to reinforce the fiction was created at the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland.
SIMON: Let me ask you about perhaps the biggest revelation this material, it has to do with the Tet Offensive that was launched in January of 1968. This is often seen as a turning point in the war, certainly in U.S. public opinion of the war. Despite the fact - because it's often now pointed out that militarily the U.S. actually won that battle - this history, I guess, disclosed that despite the fact you had - 10,000 NSA cryptographers and signal personnel stationed in the region, literally listening to the traffic in the Ho Chi Minh trail, they did not predict Tet Offensive.
Mr. PRADOS: For many years, National Security Agency has worn a feather in his cap saying that, in fact, they did predict the Tet Offensive, and there exists in NSA communications messages in which they talk about the North Vietnamese intention to attack in Vietnam at about that time. But their real predictions revolved around the place in Northern - South Vietnam called Khe Sanh. They did not believe in the Tet Offensive that actually occurred. And to the extent that they were thinking that Hanoi might attack throughout South Vietnam, they were off on the timing because what they predicted was an activity that might happen after Tet, not, in fact, at Tet itself.
SIMON: Did the North Vietnamese simply make a particularly brilliant effort of keeping their preparations quiet or were there things that the NSA was misinterpreting?
Mr. PRADOS: No. I think, in fact, we fell victim to deception, Hanoi's deception. The North Vietnamese gave us something to believe in. The idea that they were about to attack Khe Sanh was built into Hanoi's plans for the Tet Offensive and, in fact, we went for it and we believed it.
SIMON: You have been familiar with this material for some time...
Mr. PRADOS: That's right.
SIMON: ...as I understand it. What's your understanding now of how the NSA declassifies its own data?
Mr. PRADOS: I think that there are problems in general with U.S. declassification of information. Different agencies take different approaches. The National Security Agency has been among the least responsive in terms of declassifying information, and it's evident even in this document that we've gotten in the past few days. This document deletes a lot of material about the South Vietnamese government, which does not exist any longer, and there is no secret to protect there. It deletes a lot of material about day-to-day activities of the NSA in Vietnam, deletes a lot of material about the operational activities, especially of the NSA in Vietnam. Even within the NSA's own history, the full story isn't being let out to the public right here.
SIMON: John Prados, a historian and senior fellow at the National Security Archives at the George Washington University.
Thank you very much.
Mr. PRADOS: My pleasure.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
There's a life-in-the-big-city question: Where do you stay when your apartment is being fumigated? Hotels can be pricey, friends get tired pulling out their couch for you - there's always Ikea.
Mark Malkoff, a comedian in New York, called the Ikea in Paramus, New Jersey and asked if he could stay in their store while his apartment was being fumigated. They said yes. Mr. Malkoff has been there all week. He joins us from - what department?
Mr. MARK MALKOFF (Comedian): I'm just right now in a bedroom set. I have my own bedroom set, so I'm in the bathroom that doesn't work.
SIMON: What do you about, you know, bathroom stuff?
Mr. MALKOFF: Bathroom stuff is tough. I go to the - where all the other customers go. Everything is fake - the washer, dryer, toilet, two sinks, microwave. I can't make cookies in my oven - that's fake too. So it's really nice to look at, but it's all fake.
SIMON: How do you order your day?
Mr. MALKOFF: I get up. I put in my bathrobe and I walk through customers to get something to eat. So I stood in the cafeteria, customers just kind of stare and point...
SIMON: In your bathrobe.
Mr. MALKOFF: Yes. I'm in my bathrobe and my pajamas and then I head back to a shower that they set up for me.
SIMON: My memory of the cafeteria - I actually had some of the Swedish meatballs there. Are they good?
Mr. MALKOFF: The Swedish meatballs are a staple of Ikea. Unfortunately, I've been a vegetarian since I was a little kid, so Ikea is working on the first-ever tofu meatball. And I think they should name it The Mark Malkoff.
SIMON: By the way, there's a small child behind you that either is caught in an escalator or is throwing a tantrum.
Mr. MALKOFF: Yeah. That's a thing about living in here. It's constantly - people are all around me and there's - people are going through my bedroom, going through drawers. They don't know I live here. Then they see my boxer shorts.
SIMON: Are you alone at night?
Mr. MALKOFF: I am with my security guard, Jarvis(ph). He's not my security guard, but he's the store security guard. So when no one's here, we've been rollerblading, playing laser tag. We had a grocery cart race the other day that he won. And - you also have to remember that the fluorescent lights here are on in my bedroom set, about 21 hours throughout the day. The lights actually come on at 4:15 a.m. The construction normally begins around, like, I don't know, like, 6 a.m. People building furniture and sets about 20 feet from here, so, you know, I put earplugs in, but it still isn't really helping me sleep.
SIMON: Well, what's your Guide Michelin rating for the Ikea in Paramus?
Mr. MALKOFF: I think this place in incredible. I mean, every night, when people are leaving at 10 o'clock, I get on the PA system and they let me make whatever announcement I want. Normally, I say, this is the king of Ikea, Mark Malkoff, please get out of the store, I want to go to sleep.
SIMON: And you'll be moving out at midnight, Saturday, huh.
Mr. MALKOFF: I'm moving midnight. I might crash with you.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. MALKOFF: I hope that's okay with you...
SIMON: Of course it is.
Mr. MALKOFF: ...and your loved ones.
SIMON: My wife and children, we'll leave a key under the doormat, all right?
Mr. MALKOFF: Okay. I love it. It's so nice talking to you.
SIMON: Nice talking to you, too.
Mark Malkoff, speaking from the Ikea store in Paramus, New Jersey. To see video of his Ikea adventure, you can come to our Web site, npr.org.
This is NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Coming up, why violent movies may actually reduce crime, at least for a couple of hours.
But first, 50 years ago this month, Willie O'Ree took the ice for the Boston Bruins and became the first black player in the National Hockey League. It was over a decade after Jackie Robinson have broken baseball's color barrier, but it was a full two years before the Boston Red Sox baseball team signed its first African-American player. Next week, the Boston Bruins will host a Willie O'Ree night to honor the 50th anniversary of his first game.
Willie O'Ree joins us from Berkeley, California.
Mr. O'Ree, thanks so much for being with us.
Mr. WILLIE O'REE (Former Ice Hockey Player, Boston Bruins): Well, it certainly is a pleasure to be here.
SIMON: What was it like 50 years ago when you took the ice for a black player in the NHL?
Mr. O'REE: It was rough going. And not when I was playing in Montreal or Toronto, but when I went to the states, in Chicago, in Detroit and in New York, you know, I experienced the racial slurs and remarks that were directed towards me. But, you know, I had geared myself up for that and I told my self, Willie, you're a black man and be proud of who you are. Just go out and play hockey and try to represent the hockey club to the best of your ability.
SIMON: You grew up in New Brunswick, right?
Mr. O'REE: Fredericton, yes, my hometown.
SIMON: You grew up with a hockey stick in your hand?
Mr. O'REE: Yes. I started skating at the age of 2. My dad made a rink for me in my backyard. I remember skating and pushing a chair with a double rollerblades on. And at the age of 5, I started playing organized hockey. And when I was 14, I decided I want to be a professional hockey player.
SIMON: Mr. O'Ree, may I ask, when you were growing up, did anyone ever say to you, you can't play in the NHL because you're black?
Mr. O'REE: Yes. I had some people tell me that. But I set my goal. I just worked hard, hoping, you know, one day I get that opportunity. I played junior hockey for two years. My last year playing junior, I had an unfortunate accident. I was playing on the ice. I'm in front of the net and the puck struck me in the right eye and I was operated on. I'm in my recovery room and the doctor comes in and says, Mr. O'Ree, as I'm sorry to inform you, the impact of the puck completely shattered the retina in your right eye and you're going to be blind and you'll never play hockey again.
SIMON: I have been told this and I find this just about the most remarkable feature of your story. A lot of people lying in that hospital bed would have said, well, there goes that, you can't play hockey with just one eye.
Mr. O'REE: You know, I kind of slumped back in my hospital bed and I said to myself, gosh, what am I going to do, you know, the dreams that I had and the goals that I had set for myself? So I got out of the hospital. I was out of commission for about eight weeks. And I started back skating again. And I was a left hand shot, playing left wing. So to compensate, I had to turn my head all the way around to the right to pick the puck up with my left eye because I couldn't see out of my right eye. You know, the 21 years I played professional, I played with one eye.
SIMON: Our researchers instruct me that in the 90-year history of the National Hockey League, only 40 players have been black. That's a small and distinctive number, isn't it?
Mr. O'REE: Small, yes. But everybody says, well, why have there be more black players? You have to take in the consideration the geographical and where you're born. I mean, I was born in Canada. I had the availability of ice every day. I skated to school. There were ponds, lakes, rivers, creeks that you could skate on. The more rinks that are going to be constructed is going to make it possible for more kids to get that opportunity.
Hockey is a very unique sport. I mean, you could take a basketball and you could even dribble in this room, or you could take a soccer ball and kick it around. You can take a football and make some passes. But hockey, you need to get on the ice. You need to develop your skills that are on the ice. And if you don't get on the ice, you won't become a hockey player. I predict that there's going to be more, not only black players, but players of color coming into the league in the upcoming years.
SIMON: Thanks so much, Mr. O'Ree, and happy Willie O'Ree night next week.
Mr. O'REE: Well, thank you very much. A pleasure.
SIMON: Willie O'Ree, who was the NHL's first black player. His first game was 50 years ago this month.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Conventional wisdom has long held that watching brutality and mayhem in a movie screen makes at least some people in the audience get violent themselves.
Two economists have done a study that says violence in the movies may actually drive down crime rates - at least for a while.
Gordon Dahl is the lead author of the study. He's a visiting professor at Princeton University and joins us from there.
Professor Dahl, thanks very much for being with us.
Professor GORDON DAHL (Economics, Princeton University): Well, thank you.
SIMON: Explain to us how you reached what I'm sure will strike many as a fairly flabbergasting conclusion.
Prof. DAHL: The conventional wisdom is based on a variety of psychology experiments which are, I think, quite convincing, which is if you expose subjects to a violent film clip versus a non-violent film clip, they have a lot more laboratory aggression. And so the purpose of our study was to see whether or not this increase in laboratory aggression actually translated into increased violence in the streets, when people actually watch movies outside of the laboratory.
Our study is based on looking at dates when blockbuster violent movies are released versus weekends when there is no blockbuster violent movie in the theater.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Prof. DAHL: And what we find is that on weekends where there's a large number of people watching a violent blockbuster movie, like "Hannibal," that would be about 10 million people watching the movie on its opening weekend, violent crime actually falls compared to what, well, compared to a weekend when there is no such big blockbuster violent movie in the theater.
SIMON: Now, is that just simply because people are in the theaters as opposed to on the streets?
Prof. DAHL: It's because at least during the movie, people are in a relatively safe environment and they're not drinking alcohol.
SIMON: Is the same effect achieved if there's a blockbuster that's anything but violent like "Nemo"?
Prof. DAHL: That's a very good question. "Nemo" probably won't do it. But a movie like "Spiderman," which we would call mildly violent, has about the same reduction in violence. And what that tells you is it's not the violence on screen that's causing the reduction in violent crime, it's really that you're putting people in safe environment once again.
Now, why doesn't "Nemo" work to reduce violence? Well, what we show in the paper is that strongly violent movies attract a particular demographic. They attract young men, those who are most at risk for committing violent crime. "Nemo" doesn't attract those types of people into the theater. But you can get a movie like, say, "Waterboy" or Austin Powers in "Goldmember," which has almost no violence in it.
SIMON: You mean Adam Sandler and Mike Myers.
Prof. DAHL: Exactly.
SIMON: Yeah.
Prof. DAHL: If you can attract the same young men with a silly young men movie, then you will reduce violence as well.
SIMON: So it wouldn't have the same effect if you're watching the same violent film in somebody's apartment on cable.
Prof. DAHL: Well, that's an open question, right? If you drink while you're watching it on cable, you may well be more prone to violence, but you're also in a relatively safe environment, in a house...
SIMON: Yeah.
Prof. DAHL: ...potentially.
SIMON: Well, what happens, though, when they leave the movie, the safe confines of the violent movie in the theater, and go to a bar?
Prof. DAHL: Crime also drops then, too. After people leave the movie theater, they're apparently not drunk. And so what we find is that alcohol-related assaults especially fall after movie attendance is over. So between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m., crime falls a lot. But it's mostly a drop in alcohol-related crime, which kind of says people aren't going to bars after they finish a movie. They're either going home or doing something else.
SIMON: Did - that something else wouldn't include an act of violence.
Prof. DAHL: Or is much less likely to include an act of violence.
SIMON: I must say the way you describe it, Professor Dahl, it sounds as if the most influential figure in trying to tamp down crime in this country would be Adam Sandler or Mike Myers. I mean, if we can just get them to make a movie a couple of times a year, it could have a terrific effect on the crime rate.
Prof. DAHL: I think that that's certainly one implication of our study. Now, you don't - I don't know how far I want to push that...
SIMON: Yeah.
Prof. DAHL: ...but let's even push it a little further which is, is there other activities besides movies which would attract potentially violent demographic? Would midnight basketball work?
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Prof. DAHL: This study would suggest maybe that's not such a bad idea either.
SIMON: Gordon Dahl, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, now, a visiting professor at Princeton. Thank you so much.
Prof. DAHL: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
A surprising win in the New Hampshire primary this week for Senator Hillary Clinton and a comeback victory for Senator John McCain. President Bush goes on a five-country tour of the Middle East, seeking Arab support for Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
NPR senior news analyst Dan Schorr is here. Hello, Dan.
DAN SCHORR: Hi, Scott.
SIMON: And certainly, let's start with politics this week...
SCHORR: Of course, what else.
SIMON: ...in the primary of New Hampshire. Senator Clinton, her victory surprised some people. I won't even elaborate on what we might have said on this show a few times, leading up to the primary.
SCHORR: Mm-hmm.
SIMON: And of course, Republican Senator John McCain, seemingly revitalized after his campaign had been written off by a number of people, with his win there. Now looking ahead, the next contest is in Michigan, which is most important for the Republicans.
SCHORR: Right. Yes. Before we do go on to Michigan, just one word about New Hampshire.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
SCHORR: It is said that Hillary Clinton's chances improved because she was seen with a tear in her eye. I recall, 1972, Senator Edmund Muskie had a tear in his eye and was counted out - had been the frontrunner.
SIMON: He said snowflakes, if I'm not mistaken.
SCHORR: He said snowflakes. Other people said a tear. But I have come to the conclusion that men are not allowed to cry and women must.
(Soundbite of sobbing)
SCHORR: Okay.
SIMON: Go ahead, Dan.
SCHORR: All right. No. Having said that, I think, yes, it's onwards to Michigan, where the economic slowdown - what they - they won't let us see it for a recession - may have a certain impact.
Michigan is also terribly important to Mitt Romney simply because his father was a longtime governor of Michigan, and if he were to lose Michigan, that wouldn't look very good. One more point about the coming races - as we go on to Nevada, as we go on to South Carolina, I think we may begin to see more of the impact of minorities on the election. That is to say in Nevada, you have Hispanics; in South Carolina, you have African-Americans; and we may begin to see whether that makes a difference.
SIMON: What about the significance of the what's called Super Tuesday, February 5, which will include California and Florida?
SCHORR: Well, that's where you could (unintelligible) lots and lots of delegates.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
SCHORR: All these fights, so far, and in Iowa and in New Hampshire have been for minimal numbers of delegates. As you go on to your big states, you get the real issue of how many delegates can each pile up. So this is all really getting ready for the big contest.
SIMON: As the Democratic, maybe even Republican contest become a little more confusing from state to state to state, with no clear candidate established in dominance yet, does interest increase in New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg making an independent move?
SCHORR: Bloomberg is a very interesting case. Bloomberg showed up with a group of people, 17 in total, in Norman, Oklahoma, last weekend, launching a big movement against partisanship and demanding bipartisanship. And the mayor apparently joined in that, and the people wondered why. Is this possibility that he might be running as independent or third-party candidate.
He says he's not running. Everybody around him says, yes, but he may run. It may well be that the whole purpose of Bloomberg is to scare the daylights of the candidates about what a third-party candidacy might do and make them give the pledge of bipartisanship with members of the other party added to the cabinet and so on.
So the answer to your question is I don't know if Bloomberg is really considering running. But it's certainly is something that people have their eye on.
SIMON: President Bush is traveling on the Middle East this week. He visited Israel and the West Bank. He met with President Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Olmert.
SCHORR: Separately.
SIMON: Separately, yes, although they've met, though, plenty of times, those two men. What does he hope to accomplish with this trip?
SCHORR: What he would certainly to accomplish before the end of his tenure, by the end of this year, is that he will get an agreement, and that will be two states - an Israeli, a Palestinian state. If there's any movement in that direction, it was not visible from what was going on. But he seems to enjoy it an awful lot. I mean he's walking in footsteps of Jesus Christ. He's been at the Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial, where he wore a yarmulke. And he gives every sign of enjoy, and he says he's coming back. He'll come back in May for Israel's 60th anniversary. And then he says maybe more times. I think he likes to travel.
SIMON: Maybe it's the hummus.
SCHORR: Maybe.
SIMON: Is he staking the administration to have him something to show for his time in office in the Middle East?
SCHORR: Yes. But, you know, Bill Clinton was in the similar situation that he came toward the end. He tried very hard to get some agreement between Israelis and the Palestinians. In the end, it failed, but people gave him, yes, for trying. And I guess, as far as President Bush is concerned, even if he doesn't succeed - and at the moment, it's hard to see how he can - well, they'll say, well, he spend his last year trying hard for peace, and that doesn't sound bad.
SIMON: What do you make of the conflicting accounts that the United States and Iran are giving about what happened last weekend, during an apparent confrontation of some kind between Iranian speedboats and U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf.
SCHORR: Well, it's clear now that the United States and Iran are vying with each other to establish their influence over the whole Middle East. And so I can imagine that every once in a while, just to show they have a few speedboats, there's an American destroyer coming through the straits of Hormuz, which are fairly narrow anyway, but international waters. They come out with a few speedboats, they make some noise, and then everybody gets very excited. And Iran, at very low cost, shows that they can make trouble.
SIMON: Thanks very much, Dan Schorr.
SCHORR: Sure, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Presidential candidates aren't the only ones who win or lose on election night. Some reporters get to cover the big story. Others, the also-rans.
In New Hampshire, NPR's Robert Smith was assigned to fourth-place finisher Rudy Giuliani. And on Tuesday night, sounds like Robert had extra time to write his reporter's notebook.
ROBERT SMITH: You know the feeling when you arrive at a party and nobody else is there? Well, I was already eyeing the exit door of the empty ballroom, when one of Rudy Giuliani's aides spotted me and put a press credential around my neck. They'd already spent a few million dollars coming in fourth place, and they weren't going to spend any extra on this party. Two words: cash bar.
The reporters assigned to Rudy on primary night looked a little depressed. I don't want to call them the B-team because, well, you know, I was there. But let's just say some of the journalists looked like interns.
(Soundbite of music)
SMITH: Normally, as a reporter, you try to estimate the crowd - I simply counted them: 71.
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York; Republican Presidential Candidate): Thank you very, very much.
SMITH: Hey, at least it was quick. The polls closed at 8. Giuliani came to the stage 10 minutes later.
Mr. GIULIANI: First of all, I congratulate the winners of tonight's primary.
Unidentified Woman: Who is it?
SMITH: That was a woman, calling out, who is it, who is the winner. The only thing Giuliani knew was that it wasn't him.
Mr. GIULIANI: I can't call the winner. I have to leave that to the networks to call the winner. But you can be sure, when they do, I will call and congratulate them.
SMITH: Now, while this is happening, the reporters in the room are frantically calling our producers and editors, urging them to cut away, to take the speech live on TV and radio. This was our moment of glory - such as it was. But nobody wanted to hear from Mr. Fourth Place.
Mr. GIULIANI: And maybe we've lulled our opponents into a false sense of confidence now, right?
(Soundbite of laughter)
SMITH: By 8:30, Giuliani and his campaign were on the way to the airport, headed for Florida. My producer joked that the ballroom must have been reserved for a bar mitzvah at 9.
To Giuliani's credit, I've been at plenty of these parties where the loser prolongs the painful evening, waiting for miracle votes that never come. Rudy treated it like pulling off a Band-Aid. Of course, we reporters have to stick around just in case. The TV crews begged the campaign, do not take down the signs and turn off the lights. Just because you're covering an empty ballroom doesn't mean it's allowed to look like that on TV.
Before I left, a few Giuliani supporters wandered in late and looked around. Where is Rudy, they asked, where is the party?
Florida, I had to tell them. But, you can still make it to the McCain party. Winners never close early.
SIMON: NPR's Robert Smith.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This week, in the wake of the New Hampshire primary, it became clear that for most of the year, much of America, even the world, will be gripped by a fierce rivalry.
Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent; loyalties will be tested. People will be asked to rise above preconceptions. Both sides are well funded. Both, at one time or another, have been considered prohibitive favorites, suffered unexpected reverses and are trying to rebound. Who will prevail: Starbucks or McDonald's?
This week, McDonald's announced it will install coffee bars in many of its locations, serving the kind of sweet, frothy coffee-accented drinks that turned Starbucks from a funky local roaster into a worldwide beverage, music, books and style colossus. McDonald's is even hiring baristas, the Italian word for bartender, which Starbucks borrowed for a title to bestow on the people behind their counters who whip and froth.
Now in a sense, McDonald's decision is a response to what Starbucks did several years ago when it began to put instantly available portable food on its shelves. So now, you can get food fast at a coffee house and soon, you'll be able to get a half-caf skinny pomegranate latte at a fast food place.
Now, you have to be careful about making comparisons between politics and the retail food business. But please, let me rush in. Both are retail enterprises. If the public doesn't buy what they have for sale, they have to sell something else or the public will find someplace or someone else. A few years ago, Starbucks saw that people who wanted coffee in the middle of the day but couldn't get a fast snack might be tempted to go someplace like McDonald's. And now, McDonald's has determined that people who want a snack but also a fancy frothy coffee drink might go someplace like Starbucks. So, two different enterprises begin to feature some of the same-sounding products and even some of the same language.
Political candidates who may have wildly different ideas studied the same public opinion polls, which may be why candidates who have opposing views begin to express them in the same language, deploying code words like hope and change to describe policies that have as much in common as a Quarter Pounder and a half-caf.
There's been a wide range of impressive candidates in this presidential election season, representing a variety of experience and opinions. But as the campaign goes on and the choices narrow, we are more likely to hear different voices saying the same thing: Vote for hope, vote for change - whatever that is. And if you don't like that, I'll come up with something else.
(Soundbite of song, "Merry-go-Round")
Mr. PETE SEEGER: (Singing) The donkey is tired and thin. The elephant thinks he'll move in. They yell and they fuss, but they're not fooling us. They're sisters under the skin. Because it's the same old merry-go-round, which one will you ride this year? The donkey and elephant bob up and down on the same old merry-go-round.
SIMON: This is NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Coming up, Jared Diamond on what makes ethnic differences sometimes turn into ethnic violence.
But first, pollsters and pundits are still trying to figure out how they got the pre-election polls in New Hampshire so wrong on the Democratic side. In recent history, most pre-election polls have been accurate in predicting outcome. This case, though, seems to have been an unprecedented failure. Even the candidates' own polls were apparently wrong. The director of polling for ABC News, Gary Langer, has been trying to figure it out and agrees to let us put him on the grill. He joins us from New York.
Gary, thanks very much for being with us.
Mr. GARY LANGER (Director of Polling, ABC News): You bet, Scott.
SIMON: None of your polls are wrong, were they?
Mr. LANGER: That's what I like best about the problem and that it wasn't part of it.
SIMON: Let me go through some of the theories that have been booted around, okay, and just get your response to them one by one.
Mr. LANGER: Sure.
SIMON: One theory holds that a lot of people made up their mind at the last minute, especially because of Senator Clinton's performance in the debate and her manifest emotion.
Mr. LANGER: Yeah. It's one you hear a lot in - I don't think that works in this case for a couple of reasons. One, there were nine pre-election polls - all wrong. All had Obama ahead - he lost. But three of them were done right through Monday night. And if there had been any shift to Clinton after that event, we would have seen it in those polls and we didn't. And the exit poll itself asked people when they made their decision. And people who said that made their decision on election day were no better for Clinton than the group overall. So again, there's no support for that theory in the data we see so far.
SIMON: Mm-hmm. Another theory: ballot order. In New Hampshire, they list candidates alphabetically. Clinton was higher on the ballot than Obama.
Mr. LANGER: Really interesting. This work by Professor John Crosnik(ph) at Stanford University, who's found that when the ballots are listed in, in this case, alphabetical order, the best-known candidate toward the top gets perhaps about three points more support than he or she would otherwise. The pre-election polls almost all randomized the order of the candidate. That might have contributed to their own misstatement. It can't have accounted for all of it, but it could be some.
SIMON: Mm-hmm. Another theory, of course, holds that there's a history of black candidates polling higher than the number of people who actually support them.
Mr. LANGER: The problem with this theory, I think, is that it stems from six elections, many years ago, 15 to 25 years ago, in which polls, pre-election polls, understated support for white candidates in a white versus black candidate race. And this led to suggestions that maybe some whites are reluctant to express support for a white candidate perhaps for fear of being received as racist in a biracial race. You know, there's one study in 1989 that suggested maybe there might be something there. I'd like to see more than that.
Another problem is that there've been plenty of races since with a black versus white candidate that were perfectly accurate in terms of pre-election polling, six such races in Senate and governor contests in 2006 alone. That seems to me right now as theory in search of data.
SIMON: Was there an Iowa effect - I mean, people, if I may, in your business were saying, well, you know, the New Hampshire primary follows so closely. It used to be that the candidate winning in Iowa would come out with a bump, that it would have a chance to go down, but not this time.
Mr. LANGER: Yeah. You know, this one is probably the most appealing to me personally. Iowa happened right on top in New Hampshire and it could be that there is a wave of enthusiasm after that for Obama, among his supporters in New Hampshire and maybe some demotivation among Clinton supporters. They may have been deflated, perhaps less likely to express their support for her and it might have kept them out of these likely voter models.
SIMON: Is it possible that all of these theories could be insufficient, but each of them explains 1 percent of the vote then you have the reasons.
Mr. LANGER: You know, that itself is the perfect storm theory and it's also entirely possible, that it can be a little piece of each one of these that we're talking about. I think we will have solid answers. Hopefully, the pollsters that were involved in these estimates will give out their data sets and let them be subjected to some really close scrutiny. Every of the scenarios we've discussed can be tested in an empirical way and I think we will come to an answer. And I think, again, it's essential that we do.
SIMON: Gary Langer, director of polling for ABC News.
Gary, thanks so much.
Mr. LANGER: You bet, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Just a few months ago, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani was considered to be the frontrunner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. He did finish sixth in Iowa and fourth in New Hampshire - but he barely campaigned there. He seems to be putting all of his hopes for change, if you please, in the first big state holding a primary: Florida, January 29th.
Ask NPR's Greg Allen to find out how the mayor is doing.
GREG ALLEN: For Rudy Giuliani, Florida is a friendly place, especially in the southern part of the state, there are a lot of former New Yorkers, people like Tim Hale(ph). He moved to Coral Springs 18 years ago, but still thinks highly of what Giuliani accomplished as New York mayor. And Hale says, for him, there's one issue that's most important.
Mr. TIM HALE: National security, and that's why I do like Rudy. He did a great job and, you know, we had - Mohamed Atta lived here, blocks away.
ALLEN: 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta did, for a time, rent an apartment in Coral Springs. And because of the state's history with hurricanes, Floridians are more concerned about emergency preparedness than voters in some other states. For those and other reasons, polls have given Rudy Giuliani a big lead in Florida.
In recent weeks, though, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Arizona Senator John McCain have began to challenge that lead. So this week, while Huckabee and McCain have concentrated on South Carolina's GOP primary on January 19th and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has been looking to Tuesday's Michigan caucuses, Giuliani has been looking farther down the road.
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York; Republican Presidential Candidate): There's only 18 days until your big primary here in Florida and we want to make sure that Florida counts.
ALLEN: When he was the frontrunner, for Giuliani, Florida was his firewall, the state where he'd show his popularity. Increasingly, though, as he's dropped in national polls and as he waits for his first win, Florida is beginning to look like his last chance. This week, the Giuliani campaign began running an ad statewide with a clear message to voters in the Sunshine State: Don't be swayed by what's happened in earlier primaries and caucuses.
(Soundbite of political ad)
Unidentified Man: The media loves process. Talking heads love chatter. But Florida has a chance to turn down the noise, and show the world that leadership is what really matters.
ALLEN: Giuliani's Florida ad campaign is reportedly costing some $600,000, and it comes at a time when his resources appear to be running thin. This week, many of his campaign staff voluntarily agreed to forgo paychecks. Giuliani said it was to make sure there was enough money to pay for all the airtime his campaign needs in Florida. At a campaign event yesterday, he was asked if he'll have anything left after Florida.
Mr. GIULIANI: Yeah, we'll have some. But frankly, you know, Florida is really important to us, so we're going to put if not everything into Florida, almost everything.
ALLEN: This week, Giuliani is crisscrossing the Sunshine State. Yesterday, he was in Coral Springs, north of Fort Lauderdale, for a campaign event at a highly rated charter school. He talked about education and his strong support for charter schools and vouchers. He also discussed his tax-cut plan unveiled this week, which he said would stimulate the economy. But this being in Florida, he also brought up an issue as popular here as ethanol is in Iowa - a proposal for national catastrophe fund that would help lower insurance rates for homeowners.
Mr. GIULIANI: The federal government has to be a backstop for making sure that people have insurance. The risk has to be apportioned properly. The risk has to be apportioned fairly. But the federal government has to make sure that if there's this once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe or a once-in-a-decade catastrophe that we're helping each other.
ALLEN: Today, Giuliani is holding campaign events on Florida's Gulf Coast before kicking off a three-day bus tour that begins Sunday in Miami. But he'll soon have company. After South Carolina, both the Huckabee and McCain campaigns say they're headed to Florida.
Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Senator Barack Obama is running hard for president of the United States, but this week he made time to lend his voice to try to stop the violence in Kenya, the home of his late father. Senator Obama recorded an appeal for the Voice of America, saying, now is not the time to throw a strong democracy away. Now is the time for this terrible violence to end. He has phoned opposition leader Raila Odinga and is reportedly still trying to get a call through to President Mwai Kibaki.
There's a special poignance to Mr. Obama's interest - he has family in western Kenya, an area that so far has not been touched by the violence. His grandmother, Sarah Hussein, told a Reuters reporter this week, I know my grandson will be number one because he is very bright.
Senator Obama's father was a member of the Luo tribe, like Raila Odinga. President Kibaki is Kikuyu, the tribe that has dominated Kenyan politics and independence. There is a joke among Kenyans that America will have a Luo president before Kenya does.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
At least 500 people have died in the violence since Kenya's December 27th presidential elections. And the United Nations now says 500,000 Kenyans may need humanitarian assistance. There are at least 40 different tribal groups in Kenya - for the most part, they've gotten along well since independence more than 40 years ago. But after charges that the election, which was very close in any case, was stolen by the incumbent, parts of the country exploded.
Jared Diamond is a professor of geology and physiology at UCLA. His latest book is "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." He joins us from his home in Los Angeles.
Thanks for being with us, professor.
Professor JARED DIAMOND (Geography and Physiology, University of California, Los Angeles): It's a pleasure to be with you.
SIMON: Recognizing that no one answer can possibly apply to all societies, Rwanda, Iraq or even the former Yugoslavia, what are some of the reasons as to why societies that seemed to be pretty successful can be brought to split along ethnic lines?
Prof. DIAMOND: People often talk about tribal conflict in Kenya and in other places. Tribal conflict is one piece of us-versus-them conflict. The us-versus-them can be tribes versus tribes. It can be ethnic groups versus ethnic groups and it can be religious groups versus other religious groups.
SIMON: And what are some of the factors that can aggravate it?
Prof. DIAMOND: Well, here is one interesting factor to start off with. That is the percent of the total population made up by the largest group. By that I mean that in Kenya, the largest group, the Kikuyu, make up about 15 percent of the population. In the former Yugoslavia, which is notorious for its genocide, the largest group, the Serbs, made up 44 percent of the population. If you make up 15, 20, 30, 40 percent of the population, you have a reasonable chance of dominating the country, and so it's not totally irrational to set out to dominate and kill off your opponents.
But in a country where the biggest group is only a tiny fraction of the population, even that biggest group is never going to dominate the country. So, for example, in Papua New Guinea, where I do my field work, the biggest single group among the thousand different tribal groups in Papua New Guinea numbers only 3 percent of the population. And they know perfectly well there's no way they're going to take over the country. So while there is fighting and unease between adjacent tribes, there's not tribal conflict on a national scale.
SIMON: But how do you explain the fact that people did not perceive there to be this kind of problem or at least the kind of problem that could result in wide-scale violence in a place like Kenya before something about the election apparently irritated it?
Prof. DIAMOND: That's right. I see at least three factors involved, of which the size of the largest group is only one. One other factor has to do with the population density or poverty. If there are lots of people crammed into a small space with not much resources, then people get desperate and they're more likely to go kill each other.
Whereas if you're in a rich country, it doesn't make sense to kill each other. You're already satisfied. So, for example, Switzerland, with four major ethnic groups, one of which, the Schwyzerdutsch, dominate the population. Switzerland has not had major ethnic violence in recent history because everybody is rich and happy.
Now, Kenya is one of the most densely populated countries in Africa with a relatively high population growth rate, and that makes for trouble in Kenya compared to Tanzania. And then Kenya's neighbors, Rwanda and Burundi, have the highest population density in Africa, so they are especially desperate and that's why they also have the worst genocides in Africa.
SIMON: You mentioned a third reason, I think.
Prof. DIAMOND: Yes, the third reason is the form of government. Among dictatorships, if you have a dictatorship with really firm control, it's not going to permit ethnic violence. So, for example, the former Soviet Union, in Stalin's days, did not have ethnic violence. It's when you have a weak or threatened dictatorship that you are more likely to have ethnic violence. So, for example, Rwanda exploded under a dictator who was afraid of losing power.
SIMON: And some people will cite that as an argument to say what you need is a strongman.
Prof. DIAMOND: I would not draw that conclusion because examples of democracies that have quite comfortable ethnic relationships are Papua New Guinea, which is a functional democracy. Interestingly, in Papua New Guinea, there are democratic elections and the government almost always loses the election. Unlike the case in Kenya, it gracefully retires from power and immediately starts scheming to get back in power and win the next election.
SIMON: Jared Diamond, a professor of geography and physiology at UCLA and author of "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed."
Thanks so much.
Prof. DIAMOND: You are welcome.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
It's a new era at the Maryland State House after a four-year hiatus due to a -what amounted to a death in the family. The capitol's shoeshine stand is back in business with a new proprietor and a new attitude.
Joel McCord of member station WYPR has the story.
JOEL McCORD: The reopening was such a big deal that House Speaker Michael Busch and Senate President Mike Miller drew a gaggle of reporters when they mounted the twin chairs.
Mr. DINO WRIGHT (Entrepreneur): ...back old times, sit there a number of times.
McCORD: The stand has been sort of a memorial to Jimmy Chambers who ran it for 50 years. When he died, statehouse officials kept the stand intact and placed a framed copy of Chambers' obituary on one of the chairs. Then delegate Michael Vaughn spotted Donald Dino Wright's shoeshine stand at a Washington hotel last spring and asked him if he was interested in another location.
Mr. MICHAEL VAUGHN (Maryland State Delegate): I just think that when we're here in session, oftentimes we are meticulously dressed, and part of good grooming is having a good shine on your shoes.
McCORD: As Wright was setting up this week, he referred to his predecessor as the legendary James Chambers.
Mr. WRIGHT: I never met him, but I've heard often heard a lot about him and I'm honored to succeed his legacy.
McCORD: Now, Wright is a far cry from what you might think of as the guy at the shoeshine stand. For one thing, he has a liberal arts degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo and he is immaculately dressed in a pinstriped suit and tie with a coordinated pocket square.
Mr. WRIGHT: I've always been on a mission to dispel the stereotypes and the way this particular service has been typecast historically over the years.
McCORD: As a customer mounts the elevated chair, Wright sheds his jacket and leans into his work.
Mr. WRIGHT: Now, scramble the water on the saddle soap. Take a dabber and a mix with soapy solution here and kind of do that, you know?
McCORD: And he uses only thin coats of wax before he turns to the brushes. When he's finished, the shoes look as good as if they were new.
For Maryland lobbyists and lawmakers alike, it's a relief to hear the pop of the polish rag and the swish of the brushes again.
For NPR News, I'm Joel McCord.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Coming up, American musicians defy the iron curtain and dazzle Soviet audiences.
But first...
(Soundbite of typewriter)
SIMON: ...your letters.
(Soundbite of music)
SIMON: We got many e-mails after our interview with Larry Ashmead about his recent book, "Bertha Venation: And Hundreds of Other Funny Names of Real People."
Betsy Taggarth(ph) in Austin, Texas, writes: The book reminds me of two partners in my father's radiology group many years ago, Dr. Watts(ph) and Dr. Volts(ph). Winniford Newcome(ph) of Saint Paul, Minnesota, also attracts which she calls career names. The Boston Fire Department employee name Murash(ph), the former Massachusetts Racing Commissioner named Furlong(ph) and a former president of the fund for animals named Ferrell(ph). Chip Overclock(ph) of Denver, Colorado adds, I know a Park A. Studebaker(ph).
Finally, Kim Johnson(ph) of Old Town, Maine, writes: Was it only an interesting coincidence? At the same show featuring a book about funny names also included conversation about a book called "The Geography of Bliss" by Eric Weiner. Yes.
Now, our correction. My - I said last week about race and politics I said seven of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices are Roman Catholic. That was wrong. There are actually five Catholics on the court, two are Protestant, two are Jewish.
Our conversation with Charlie Cook, editor and publisher of The Cook Political Report looking ahead at New Hampshire primaries prompted George Arnold(ph) of Nashville, to write: Mr. Cook made a not surprising but still disturbing observation, talking about Barack Obama's momentum coming out of Iowa. Mr. Simon asked if Obama might receive more scrutiny, Mr. Cook said, the news media loves a good story.
I appreciate the honesty, but I wonder about the apparent lack of concern of media-determined good stories; the amount of time and space devoted to them. Mr. Cook's uncritical acknowledgement of a self-appointed media role just might indicate that old news needs to be an ongoing good story.
Listeners criticized our conversation with John Carlisle of the National Legal on Policy Center about his group funding investigative journalism while U.S. media outlets are reducing the number of their investigative reporters.
Greg Masco(ph) of Sherman Oaks, California, writes: When your guest cast thinly veiled aspersions on similar efforts by liberal groups, we should call them out on it and I wish you'd pointed out that the dividing line between these efforts on either side and propaganda is a very slippery blurry one. Investigative reporting, the valuable service that traditional journalistic organizations can provide by playing gatekeeper against blatant propaganda and providing fact-checking and verification to what they choose to print.
(Soundbite of music)
SIMON: Please write to us. You can go to our Web site, npr.org. Click on the link that says Contact Us and please tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Benjamin Franklin was a brilliant, often vain man, who liked to play the role of the avuncular Everyman. He helped demonstrate that electricity could be captured and used. He devised bifocals. But despite his contributions to science, he's been viewed as a poor mathematician.
Paul Pasles, who teaches math at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, looks at Mr. Franklin's math skills in a new biography that's called "Benjamin Franklin's Numbers."
Of course, we outsourced the reading to our own math guy, Keith Devlin of Stanford University, who joins us from the studios there.
Keith, thanks for being with us.
Professor KEITH DEVLIN (Mathematics, Stanford University): Hi, Scott. Thanks for inviting me.
SIMON: Of course, he didn't spend much time in school, so his math had to be self-taught.
Prof. DEVLIN: Yeah. This I think is where this story came about that he wasn't good at mathematics because he actually, in his autobiography, he wrote about his schooling, and I quote, "I acquired fair writing pretty soon, but I failed in the arithmetic, and made no progress in it."
SIMON: As you read the words of Franklin or read this new biography called "Benjamin Franklin's Numbers," do you, Keith, reading this as a mathematician, apprehend some mathematical knowledge on Franklin's part?
Prof. DEVLIN: Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a couple of great examples. Franklin had a lifelong interest in magic squares. Now, they are - they go back thousands of years but they were sort of numerical precursors to Sudoku. The idea is you enter numbers into a rectangle, into a square grid of 3-by-3 or of a 4-by-4 and you have to do them so that every row and every column and every major diagonal, all add up to the same number.
Now, to the outsider these look like just doodling with numbers but, in fact, to construct one of those things, you have to get deep into the mathematics and into the patterns. And Franklin did, in his lifetime, spent a lot of time constructing these things and you can only do that if you have a certain deep feeling for numbers.
The other example is what we find in his political and business writings. He is very early, much early than many other people in realizing that you could use what we would now call basic statistics in order to make political and business decisions.
SIMON: Of course, it's Jefferson who's usually adjudged to be the great ranking intellect among that group of men and women...
Prof. DEVLIN: Yeah.
SIMON: ...called the Founding Fathers.
Prof. DEVLIN: Right.
SIMON: I was figuring Dolley Madison in there too, and surely some others.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: But...
Prof. DEVLIN: Yeah.
SIMON: But people have suggested over the years that Franklin was perhaps the intellectual heavyweight of that group.
Prof. DEVLIN: Yeah. There's one or two examples of that one. Certainly, Franklin, he wrote an article in - let's see, I made a note of it here - in 1751 called Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind and the Peopling of Countries. And that was really one of the first ever works in what we now call demographics, using mathematical techniques to look at how populations grow and how people move and how societies develop.
In fact, Franklin was the first person who speculated that populations probably increase exponentially. Now, we always associated that with Thomas Malthus, who was the one that demonstrated that. But, in fact, Malthus had already read Franklin's work and cited it when he did his work.
And now that you've mentioned Jefferson. The other example that I think is interesting - and this is somewhat speculative but Pasles makes this speculation in his book. We know that Franklin had a copy of Euclid's classic geometry textbook "Elements." Now, what Euclid did in "Elements," was show how you could develop mathematical truth starting with axioms, which mathematicians always describe as self-evident truths.
Now, if you look at Thomas Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence, what it says is we hold this truth to be sacred and undeniable that all men are created equal. Then along come Franklin and Adams and they work on it. And they redraft it. And that phrase, sacred and undeniable, has turned into self-evident. Now what Pasles speculates, and I think this is a reasonable speculation, is that, influenced by the way that mathematics builds sure truths on self-evidence assumptions, he thought it would be great if a nation was founded on axioms, i.e. self-evident truth.
SIMON: January 17th is his birthday, right?
Prof. DEVLIN: Absolutely. And as a mathematician, I now have an extra reason to celebrate his birthday.
SIMON: Keith, thanks so much.
Prof. DEVLIN: Okay. My pleasure, Scott.
SIMON: Keith Devlin, our master mathematician friend from Stanford University.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
After almost a year, Iraq's parliament has finally a measure to ease restrictions on members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.
The U.S. government had pushed Iraq's Shiite-led government to pass the law in an effort to bring more Sunnis into the political process and ease sectarian tensions.
NPR's Anne Garrels joins us from Baghdad. Anne, thanks for being with us.
ANNE GARRELS: I'm delighted, Scott.
SIMON: And why is this seen as such a benchmark?
GARRELS: Well, basically, Sunnis who were the majority of the Baath Party felt they've been collectively punished under the de-Baathification decree that had been passed during the early days of the U.S. occupation. The U.S. initially promoted de-Baathification, but later claimed it had gone way further than ever anticipated, fueling sectarian tensions.
The initial decree gutted ministries of key technocrats and bureaucrats who were needed to help rebuild the country.
The government spokesman, today, said he hopes the new law will provide a balance, preserving the rights of the Iraqi people while also benefiting innocent members of the Baath Party. And the U.S. Embassy immediately applauded passage of this long-awaited bill.
SIMON: How do the provisions in this bill differ from the early de-Baathification decree that you mentioned that was passed under Paul Bremmer?
GARRELS: Well, it still bans the most senior Baath Party members, those who are in the four top ranks from government work. But unlike the previous law, they will now be allowed to claim a state pension. That means money.
Those who are going to benefit the most though are thousands of junior Baathists who had been in the fifth rank of the party. And, you know, this include bureaucrats, teachers, tens of thousands of people. Those who didn't commit crimes are no longer banned from government service. They'll be permitted to return to their jobs or an equivalent position.
SIMON: But what about people who were in the security services?
GARRELS: The repressive security services, i.e. the intelligence services, the Muhabarrat - you know, they are - they're not going to get a pension and they can't come back to work.
SIMON: How big was support for opposition to the law and parliament?
GARRELS: Well, the bill was passed by a unanimous show of hands, but that's only sort of part of the story. Out of 275 members of parliament, only 150 showed up, and that's barely a quorum. So it's hard to say it had unanimous support. A small group of Sunnis did walk out, saying the law is too vague and it's going to open the way, yet again, for a revenge.
Some Shiites, on the other hand, say it's too lenient on Baathists, but they still voted for it.
SIMON: And Anne, what do you project right now will be the result, let's say, over the next month or a year from now?
GARRELS: Well, it really depends on how the new commission and judiciary respond to charges against former Baathists, and how fair the new law is seen. The old commission was widely criticized as being capricious.
The new law certainly allows thousands of former Baath party members to get their jobs back. Will they get them back? That's a big question. And it does give the prime minister the option of hiring any former Baathist he wants if he gets permission from the three-man presidential council. But this is just one benchmark law and by no means probably the most important.
There are more laws to be passed on oil, on elections, on regulating the relationship between the center and the provinces. And there's been no real movement on any of those.
SIMON: NPR's Anne Garrels in Baghdad. Thanks very much.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Imagine if you could put 30,000 years of art on your coffee table. Well, thanks to Phaidon publishers, you can.
Their new book tells the story of human creativity around the world, from 28,000 B.C. to the present. It weighs 13 pounds and features 1,000 pieces of art.
(Soundbite of music)
HANSEN: Amanda Renshaw is the editorial director for "30,000 Years of Art." Here's an essay in which he describes a striking example of Saharan rock art in Niger that dates back to 4,000 B.C.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. AMANDA RENSHAW (Editorial Director, "30,000 Years of Art"): The Sahara Desert isn't the first place you might expect to find giraffes. But if you're in the Niger and you head towards the Air Mountains, and then go west to one particular rocky outcrop, this is exactly what you will find.
Engraved on a gently sloping rock face known as the Dabous rock, there are hundreds of them. These graceful animals are around 20 feet tall and must have taken a certain amount of skill to make; however, we know very, very little about who made them. We can only guess that this specific site was chosen because of the way the rock slopes, so that at certain times of the day, when the sun is low in the sky, dramatic shadows form on the red sandstone, displaying the mighty figures to their best advantage.
HANSEN: Unlike the typical art book organized by stylistic themes or epochs, "30,000 Years of Art" is in strict chronological order. But open the book anywhere and you'll see a work of art on the left page and one on the right. Although the works were created at the same time, they came from different places and different cultures. For example, early in the book, on the left page, there's a sculpture of a man with a lion's head, dating from 28,000 B.C. in what is now Germany. On the right, there's a stone figure of a woman found in Austria dated 25,000 B.C.
Amanda Renshaw.
Ms. RENSHAW: The lion man is interesting. It was very difficult to find a figure of a man that existed - a human man with a human head. There are many figures from that period of women but very few of men. And I think that this hybrid man-lion is very interesting in that how did we perceive ourselves all those millennia ago. It's interesting that women are very, very lifelike in sculptures - are very, very lifelike - and the men aren't. So there's something there about power, about, perhaps, domination of man - I would imagine - and a hunter - man the hunter. And that's how the book starts, with a typical image of how man may have been perceived, and woman.
HANSEN: Talk about some of the more surprising entries. On page 792, there's a wine cup that was made for the shah who built the Taj Mahal. But on the opposite page is this famous painting by Velazquez, "Las Meninas." That must have surprised you.
Ms. RENSHAW: Yes, I love that spread. It's great. I think it's a fantastic spread and it really encapsulates what the book is about. About 350 years ago, an artist, yes, called Diego Velazquez, was painting a family portrait for the king, King Philip II of Spain. And this painting was called "Las Meninas." And it's considered one of the masterpieces of Western art.
It's an enormous canvass. It measures about 10 feet high by, I think, 9 feet wide. And it shows Philip II of Spain's blond-haired daughter, the Infanta Margarita, who's at the center of the composition. And she's in this beautiful white dress with a blue and red trim, and she's surrounded by her attendants and mains all fussing over her.
And reflected in the mirror on the far wall at the back of the painting are Infanta Margarita's parents, the king and queen. And in addition to all these members of the royal family and different attendants, on the left-hand side of the picture, there is somebody standing very proud, holding a paintbrush in one hand and a palette in the other. And this is Velazquez - Velazquez himself. He included himself in this royal family portrait. And I think it was a very, very conscious decision that he made to emphasize his importance within the royal family and his social standing, and the importance of the status of the artist in 17th century Spain.
Now, on that opposite page, where you have this beautiful, delicate wine cup. While Velazquez was being fated as a great and important painter in Spain, four and a half thousand miles away in India, a man whose name we will probably never know was crouched on the floor of a workshop in India and with, also, incredible skill and dexterity, he carved an exquisitely delicate cup which is small enough to hold comfortably in the palm of your hands - the size is very different and status of the art is very different. It's made of very precious white jade. It has a goat's head for a handle and a stand that's similar of a shape of a lotus flower. It's translucent. It's a beautiful vessel. And it was also destined for one of the world's most powerful leaders of the time. And you said, this was the man who created - the Shah Jahan was the man who created the Taj Mahal.
So there are two extremely different things that were made at the same time, both for very, very important rulers.
HANSEN: To just look at the intricacy of detail in each one of these different pieces of art - I mean, the detail on this very small piece of jade is as intricate as the detail in Velazquez' masterpiece.
Ms. RENSHAW: Absolutely. And I think that you only know that by seeing them together because normally you would never ever consider them in the same book, let alone the same pair of pages opposite each other.
HANSEN: Moving to the 19th century now, and the very famous painting by Edvard Munch, "The Scream" where, you know, you have the - that elongated head with the two hands up against in the open mouth. This one is juxtaposed with a mask from Equatorial Guinea. And the one thing that I can find in common is that they both have elongated faces.
Ms. RENSHAW: Yes. Well, there was period in Western art when a lot of artists, expressionists - and Munch was one of the first expressionists. And also Picasso did the same thing. They were very interested in looking at African sculpture, and art historians have often described how that Munch comes from the pain and the angst that is also - can be found in African masks. And we were very lucky that when we made the chronological mix that these two actually fell on the same spread so that they are opposite each other when you open the book.
So the subject matter is in a way very similar but of course the painting is very expressionistic, the brush strokes are very rough and wild and the color is extreme. And the Equatorial Guinea mask is extremely minimal and calm. So two things that actually, physically look very, very similar but again they're treated in very, very different ways.
HANSEN: Amanda Renshaw, editorial director of the book "30,000 Years of Art" published by Phaidon.
We end with her essay about a tiny Middle Eastern sculpture dating back from 2,500 B.C.
Ms. RENSHAW: (Reading) With the head of a lioness and the muscular body of an Amazonian woman, this tiny, hard limestone sculpture is small enough to fit comfortably in your hand. At around three and a quarter inches tall, its size does nothing to reduce its power and physical presence. This sculpture was found at an archeological site near Baghdad in Iraq. It seems that she was created by the Proto-Elamite culture who lived in what was then Mesopotamia and is now Iran. This hybrid of human and feline features rears up on her hind legs.
She stands with her front paws clenched together over her muscular torso, her head turned in profile, gazing impassively over her heavy left shoulder. This pose, and the holes drilled into the back of her head, suggest that she was designed to be worn around the neck, perhaps as a charm to ward off evil spirits. For some 60 years the Lioness has been on display at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, however late in 2007 she was offered for sale at auction and sold for $57 million, making her the most expensive sculpture sold at auction -fitting for a piece described by one art historian as the finest sculpture on Earth.
HANSEN: You can see images from "30,000 Years of Art" and hear more essays from Amanda Renshaw at our Web site npr.org.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen.
Let's listen in to a class on cyber law.
Professor JONATHAN ZITTRAIN (Internet Governance and Regulation; Director of Graduate Studies, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford): So, report of submission, time stamped; the evidence is presented, the comments are made.
HANSEN: We sent a producer to the basement of Griswald Hall at Harvard Law School to record this lively group of students and their professor as they discuss their most recent assignment. Their task is to resolve disputes taking place on the Web site Wikipedia.com.
(Soundbite of a class discussion)
HANSEN: This month, we're reporting on cyber crime. This week, our series continues with the issue of cyber law. It's a rapidly growing field. Cyber security expert Jim Lewis says as companies, individuals and governments increasingly use the Internet, they're entering unfamiliar legal territory.
Mr. JIM LEWIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies): They move their activities. That means there's legal problems. That means there's value. That means there's disputes. We're in a period of transition, and part of that transition is adjusting both our laws and our legal workforce to be able to deal with the new environment.
(Soundbite of a class discussion)
HANSEN: Jonathan Zittrain knows a lot about that new environment. He also knows about preparing the legal profession. Zittrain has been teaching students about law in the Internet for the past decade. Currently, he's a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and he took a moment from his class to explain cyber law to us.
Prof. ZITTRAIN: There was a period in the late 1990s, when cyber law was: How do I make a lot of money on the Internet? So electronic commerce came to the fore, venture capital funding - all of these elements of building a business in a hurry and taking it public, that became part of cyber law. I think now, cyber law is being thought of more holistically as what are the distinct ways in which the networks and the objects hooked up to them are empowering people, both to do great new things, and to hurt each other terribly and how can we maximize the former and minimize the latter.
HANSEN: What do you consider to be the most pressing cyber law issues?
Prof. ZITTRAIN: The most pressing cyber law issues to me have to do with what I call maintaining a generative network, and by generative, I mean open to innovation and creation by outsiders. When we look at some of the most interesting innovations that have happened on the Internet, they've surprisingly been from corners that weren't well funded, that weren't planned out and they weren't incumbents.
The man named Jimbo came out to you in 2001 and said I've got a great idea. It's an encyclopedia that will be rivaling Britannica in quality and timeliness, and it will be edited by anyone in the world. Anybody can add or delete or edit an article. I think any of us might have said, Jimbo, you're nuts. And yet, somehow, here's Wikipedia and it's working.
HANSEN: But doesn't it bring up certain issues, for example, if someone's biography is up there and you…
Prof. ZITTRAIN: Absolutely.
HANSEN: …get someone changing it?
Prof. ZITTRAIN: Absolutely. We could very quickly doctrinally say, why, that's defamation. That's harm someone's reputation. That's spreading lies about them. And just as if you were to publish a newspaper article defaming somebody and then have to pay for it, I suppose somebody creating a Wikipedia article about somebody to defame them might have to pay. You'd have to find them and hope that they're not 12 and/or poor. I think it turns to intermediary liability.
Under what circumstances could we say to Wikipedia and others in Wikipedia's position, you have a legal duty to police what others are putting up about people and to make sure either that you tell us who they are when they get into trouble or that you police the content of the articles themselves.
HANSEN: I want to talk a little bit about the social networks, the sites like Facebook or MySpace. This is where people voluntarily put up a lot of personal information about themselves. And once that information is out there, they don't really own it anymore. So what problems do you foresee that these users are likely to encounter?
Prof. ZITTRAIN: I think we've just seen the tip of the iceberg on the privacy problems. In my view, the real problems are going to come as we deploy a little bit more technology. And I don't think it's unrealistic or science fiction to say that as you - or a tourist, and you go about taking pictures of your family around the world, those pictures that you take are flowing immediately up to a Web site like Flickr or Facebook. They're getting tagged automatically with the identity through facial recognition, not only of your family in foreground but of other people in the restaurant in the background and then will be able to create a database and say who came into and out of this restaurant between this hour and this hour, or who was in front of this Planned Parenthood clinic, or who was participating in this demonstration or this rally for a political candidate.
And it's these sorts of things that I don't think we've fully confronted yet that really will lead to a level of transparency, ironically, not being brought about by Big Brother government or even by big snoop credit-reporting agency or business but by an army of the world's tourists - ourselves - for completely innocuous reasons.
HANSEN: Zittrain says the fact that society is still trying to figure out how to deal with the legal minefield of the Internet is a healthy thing. He also says that innovations and technology, as well as social networks on the Internet itself, may help solved some of the problems.
In his current class, Zittrain has a couple of teaching assistants who help pull up slides and often facilitate discussion. The students took his class last year. We asked one of them, Elizabeth Stark(ph), what she'd learn from her experiences with cyber law.
Ms. ELIZABETH STARK: The digital space provides a new context in which to examine all of these other areas of laws. So I think the one thing that I've taken with me is that we do - we need to reexamine law in the context of the technologies that will enable you to copy anything, to communicate insidiously.
(Soundbite of a class discussion)
HANSEN: In a typical class, Professor Zittrain covers subjects ranging from ownership of the Internet to self-governance online. To supplement his lectures, guest speakers are often invited to share their expertise. So we introduced a guest of our own to Elizabeth Stark. We put her on the phone with Kevin Mitnick, who was once America's most famous computer hacker. He spent nearly five years in prison and now works as a cyber security consultant.
Ms. STARK: Very cool. I've seen a movie about him actually. Kevin, hi.
Mr. KEVIN MITNICK (Cyber Security Consultant, Mitnick Security Consulting): Hi, Elizabeth.
Ms. STARK: I'm actually wondering, has your very vast experience in the field of hacking caused you to change your mind or take stances on issues regarding, say, freedom on the Internet, cyber security, pretty much anything regarding activism or policy with technology.
Mr. MITNICK: Well, for example, the - this, you know, I disagree with the policies about allowing the National Security Agency basically to data mine American citizens' telephone calls and Internet usages. I believe that our civil liberties and the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure are really important.
HANSEN: Professor Zittrain also had the chance to ask Mitnick a question.
Prof. ZITTRAIN: For the listener who is about to put holiday photos online and do banking and buy stuff and all those other great stuff and is wondering whether that's a dumb idea, what's your advice?
Mr. MITNICK: Well, I do online banking. I pay my credit cards online. I do everything online. I think there's more of a benefit to using the tools on the Internet rather than the fear of being compromised. With the important advice I could have is don't become the low-hanging fruit for the attacker out there.
HANSEN: We'll hear more from Kevin Mitnick as our cyber crime series continues. Our thanks to Jonathan Zittrain, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
And joining us is puzzlemaster Will Shortz. Hi, Will.
WILL SHORTZ: Hi, Liane.
HANSEN: Welcome back from Jamaica.
SHORTZ: Thanks a lot.
HANSEN: How was the wedding?
SHORTZ: The wedding was informal and very nice. I got to go around the island a little bit. We spent a day in Ocho Rios, which I had previously known only from crosswords.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: You finally get to see the place that the word defines, right?
SHORTZ: That's right.
HANSEN: Glad you're back in New York. So remind us of that challenge you gave us last week.
SHORTZ: Yes. I said take the phrase, Yeshiva Center, which is a place of Jewish studies, rearrange these 13 letters to name a classic movie.
HANSEN: And what movie is it?
SHORTZ: Well, before I tell you answer, I wanted to mention an NPR listener's Web site. He made 13 Scrabble tiles with these letters and he formed funny answers with them and then photographed them. And like - answers like Try Heaven's Ice and I've Cheery Ants. And if you do a Web search on puzzle me this plus NPR, you can find it. Anyway, the correct answer is "Seven Year Itch," with Marilyn Monroe.
HANSEN: You bet - and Tom Ewell. Well, we had over 800 entries from people who solved this puzzle. And our randomly selected winner is Lauren Zentz from Tucson, Arizona.
Hi, Lauren.
Ms. LAUREN ZENTZ (Language Expert): Hello, Liane and Will.
SHORTZ: Hi.
HANSEN: What do you there in Tucson?
Ms. ZENTZ: I'm in the Department of Language, Reading and Culture, working on my doctorate.
HANSEN: Oh, very nice. Well done. Oh, a language expert. Boy, I think I'm going to able to use you as a team player today, huh?
Ms. ZENTZ: I hope so. I hope so.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: Well, glad you're with us. Glad you're here to play. Are you ready?
Ms. ZENTZ: I'm ready.
HANSEN: As ready as we'll ever be. Will, meet Laura, and let's play.
SHORTZ: All right, Laura. And this week's puzzle involves cars. Every answer is a familiar two-word phrase in which the first word starts with C-A and the second word starts with R.
Ms. ZENTZ: Okay.
SHORTZ: For example, if I gave you the clue basis for computing insurance rates, you would say calculated risk. All right, number one is what a store clerk uses to ring up purchases.
Ms. ZENTZ: A cash register.
SHORTZ: Good. A trip by a taxi.
Ms. ZENTZ: Car ride?
SHORTZ: No, a taxi.
Ms. ZENTZ: Cab ride.
SHORTZ: Cab ride, is it. A walk-on part in a movie?
Ms. ZENTZ: Cameo role?
SHORTZ: Uh-huh. Place where they use branding irons?
Ms. ZENTZ: Cattle ranch.
SHORTZ: Cattle ranch is right. The first James Bond book and recent movie remake.
Ms. ZENTZ: Okay. Don't let - need a little help on that one.
HANSEN: This one - I'd know. "Casino Royale."
SHORTZ: "Casino Royale," is it, good. Oriole who's set the record for the most consecutive games played.
Ms. ZENTZ: I guess Cal Ripken on that one.
SHORTZ: That's it. Dancing fruit in an old TV commercial. An odd word. You're not old enough, Lauren.
HANSEN: They heard it through the grapevine - any hint.
SHORTZ: That's it.
Ms. ZENTZ: Okay, California Raisins.
HANSEN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: Yeah, you are old enough. Good.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SHORTZ: Part of a typewriter that allows you to go from the end of one line to the start of the next.
Ms. ZENTZ: Yeah. Something return. The…
SHORTZ: Yes.
HANSEN: Can I help you out?
Ms. ZENTZ: Yes, you can.
HANSEN: Carriage return.
Ms. ZENTZ: Carriage return
SHORTZ: Carriage return is it.
HANSEN: You know, that's going to go out pretty soon with computers.
SHORTZ: That's another one.
HANSEN: No one's going to know from typewriters.
Ms. ZENTZ: Exactly.
SHORTZ: Exactly. Try this one. A kind of tube, as in a TV or radio.
HANSEN: Again, we're in the ancient ages.
Ms. ZENTZ: Gosh.
HANSEN: Any idea?
Ms. ZENTZ: I've got the radio part but…
HANSEN: It's ray, right? Cathode ray?
Ms. ZENTZ: Oh, cathode ray.
HANSEN: Yeah.
Ms. ZENTZ: Cathode ray.
SHORTZ: Cathode ray is it, good. Mountains in Alberta and British Columbia?
Ms. ZENTZ: The Cascade Range up there?
SHORTZ: No, the Cascade Range - it does go there but they change the name when it gets into Canada. I'm looking for a more generic term.
Ms. ZENTZ: Oh, the Canadian Rockies.
SHORTZ: Canadian Rockies, is it. John Steinbeck novel set in Monterey.
Ms. ZENTZ: Nope, I don't know that one.
HANSEN: "Canary Row"?
SHORTZ: "Canary Row" is it.
Ms. ZENTZ: Okay.
SHORTZ: How about The Beatles label before Apple? Well, I think, you know this…
HANSEN: You like taking us…
Ms. ZENTZ: You know, that's the - I don't know. I don't know.
HANSEN: Capital Records.
SHORTZ: Capital Records is right. How about a division of an army on horseback?
Ms. ZENTZ: Cavalry…
SHORTZ: Yes. Division of an army.
Ms. ZENTZ: Regiment?
HANSEN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: Regiment. Good. Good. Baptism and first communion.
Ms. ZENTZ: Catholic rites?
SHORTZ: That's good. Non-profit group devoted to finding foster homes for dogs. And first, you want to think of a word that means relating to dogs.
Ms. ZENTZ: Canine…
SHORTZ: Yes.
Ms. ZENTZ: …rescue. Canine rescue?
SHORTZ: Canine rescue, good. And your last one, lakefront or riverfront business that offers paddles.
Ms. ZENTZ: Canoe rental.
SHORTZ: Canoe rental, nice work.
HANSEN: Boy, I think we…
Ms. ZENTZ: All right.
HANSEN: …yeah. I think we both had our brain stretched by this one.
Ms. ZENTZ: Yeah.
HANSEN: Yeah. Well, you did well and you're a great teammate, really…
Ms. ZENTZ: We had good fun.
HANSEN: …for playing our puzzle today. Yeah, it was fun, that's the point. And you get some things. You'll get a WEEKEND EDITION lapel pin, the 11th edition of "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus," the Scrabble Deluxe Edition from Parker Brothers, "The Puzzlemaster Presents" from Random House volume 2, Will Shortz' "Little Black Book of Sudoku," and "Black and White Book of Crosswords" from St. Martin's Press, and one of Will Shortz' "Puzzlemaster Decks of Riddles and Challenges" from Chronicle Books.
Lauren, tell us what member station you listen to.
Ms. ZENTZ: KUNZ in Tucson, Arizona.
HANSEN: All right. Well Lauren Zentz from Tucson, Arizona, good luck on your doctorate and thanks a lot for playing the puzzle with us today.
Ms. ZENTZ: Thanks so much for having me.
HANSEN: All right.
Will, a challenge for everyone to play for the next week.
SHORTZ: Yes. This week's challenge comes from listener Larisa Kuhar of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Name a famous American novelist whose last name contains nine letters. Drop the first and last letters. The remaining seven letters can be rearranged to name another famous American novelist. And here's a hint: The first author is male, the second one is female.
So, again, a famous American novelist whose last name contains nine letters. Drop the first and last letters. The remaining seven letters can be rearranged to name another famous American novelist. Who are these authors?
HANSEN: When you have the answer, go to our Web site npr.org/puzzle and click on the Submit Your Answer link. Once again, that's npr.org/puzzle. One entry per person, please. Our deadline this week is Thursday, 3 p.m. Eastern time. Please include a phone number where we can reach you at about that time because we'll call you if you're the winner and you'll get to play puzzle on the air with the puzzle editor of the New York Times and WEEKEND EDITION's puzzlemaster, Will Shortz.
Thanks a lot, Will.
SHORTZ: Thanks, Liane.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
Republican political eyes are on Michigan, which holds its primary on Tuesday. It's mostly a Republican event because the National Democratic Party stripped Michigan of its delegates for trying to hold its primary before Iowa and New Hampshire. The election is a chance for John McCain to build momentum and a possible last ditch effort for Mitt Romney.
Our political coverage begins with a report from Michigan Radio's Tracy Samilton.
TRACY SAMILTON: Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the nation by far, so the economy is taking center stage at every campaign stop.
Here is Michigan native and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in Grand Rapids.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): I've watched with concern as I've seen Michigan go through a one-state recession. That's just not right.
Unidentified Woman: No.
Mr. ROMNEY: And we need to have somebody who cares very deeply about this thing, and I do.
SAMILTON: Michigan is close to a must-win state for Romney who finished second in Iowa and New Hampshire. Arizona Senator John McCain wants a Michigan victory to keep his momentum after the win in New Hampshire. Despite the high stakes, he's still telling it like it is.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): Some of the jobs that have left the state of Michigan are not coming back. They are not, and I'm sorry to tell you that. But I believe that we can develop a plan to take care of these workers who have lost their jobs. We cannot abandon them, my friends.
SAMILTON: Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has moved on to South Carolina after campaigning earnestly here. McCain and Romney will battle it out in Michigan through Monday.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is the only frontrunner on the ballot -another side effect of the controversy over the early primary date. Those who support Barack Obama or John Edwards will have to cast a vote for uncommitted.
For NPR News, I'm Tracy Samilton in Ann Arbor.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
After Michigan's primary comes Nevada's caucus on Saturday. It's the first Western state in the 2008 presidential nominating process.
In the Rocky Mountain West, Republican loyalty used to be taken for granted. But the picture is no longer red or blue but rather a mixture - think mauve, so says Larry Swanson, director of the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana in Missoula.
Dr. LARRY SWANSON (Director, O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West, University of Montana): One of the things about the interior west, well, we don't have a lot o big cities - we've got Denver and Salt Lake City and places like Boise and Spokane - but we have quite a few small cities. And that's where a lot of the growth over the last 15 years is concentrating, and that's starting to also turn the political culture into much more of an urban one and what most people from a distance might think in terms of a rural political culture.
HANSEN: What's the difference?
Dr. SWANSON: You know, within these cities you're finding that people are less and less sort of in the box, you know, I'm just categorically going to vote Republican or I'm categorically going to vote Democratic. I think it's much more issue-oriented, it's much more what are the candidates is saying, and then you tend to get a fairly even split vote. Most of the time, the voting margin in those urban areas can be either candidate is going to get less than 55 percent. We have 56 counties in Montana, for example, in our recent U.S. Senate race that the winning Democratic candidate only won in 16 of those 56 counties.
HANSEN: What do you consider to be some of the most pressing issues for Western voters?
Dr. SWANSON: The biggest, sort of, umbrella issue of the interior west is growth and change. A lot of people are gravitating to what they believe to be the wide-open spaces, the clean air, the nice communities and what have you. But our economy is also changing and we're moving away from a, sort of, a narrow dependence on logging and mining and agriculture, to an area where the fastest growing piece of the region's economy is professional and business services, and that's been the case for the last 15 years or so.
HANSEN: In terms of the economy, how is that playing into the presidential election?
Dr. SWANSON: You know, our part of the country will also have a very tight labor market, and there's increasing emphasis on workforce development and education, so we're almost entering a golden age for education out here. That's a complete change from the past.
HANSEN: What do you mean by a golden age of education?
Dr. SWANSON: Well, in this part of the world I think most politicians have thought when you talk about state funding for education - the idea was that education was a cost that needed to be minimized. But in the kind of economy that's emerged in our region, more and more businesspeople are understanding that investing in education is investing our economic prosperity. So that's changing a very important, sort of, political dimension here, where you always had one party sort of running against spending for education and one party running for more spending on education. Increasingly, you're not going to find a candidate running in this part of the country who's not for spending more on education.
HANSEN: Given what you've said about the fast-growing areas and the tight labor market, how do you think then that would affect Western voters on the immigration issue?
Dr. SWANSON: I think the immigration issue right now is sort of for Democratic candidates' too-hot-to-handle. You're not exactly sure how that one is going to cut among voters and so you just kind of avoid it. Like on the Republican side it's more, well, we're going to take the hard edge on the immigration issue, and that still appeals to a lot of people. But the reality is, with a very tight labor market that we have in this region and our fast-growing economy, we will pulling more and more workers into the region from outside, and that's going to mean increasing number of Hispanic workers, most certainly, and we're finding that all around the region, particularly with the construction sector being so fast-growing in this part of the country.
HANSEN: How important are environmental issues to voters in the interior west?
Dr. SWANSON: That one has basically turned 180 degrees over the last 15 years. If you go back to the '80s when economically we were primarily sort of natural resource industry based the environment and the protection of the environment was something viewed as being at odds with economic progress.
Today, most of our economic growth throughout this region has been amenity-driven, its people coming to the region for quality of life. And that economy is basically one that says protecting the environment is one that translates into protecting our economy. You know, you're hard pressed to find a politician that's going to make those old arguments about environmental protection in this region. If they are making those old arguments, they're just out of step.
HANSEN: Is either party now placing any more emphasis on the interior west?
Dr. SWANSON: The parties are waking up to it. You're going to have at least a couple of these states that are going to be increasingly in play in presidential politics.
HANSEN: Larry Swanson directs the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana, Missoula. He spoke to us from member station KUFM.
Thank you so much.
Dr. SWANSON: My pleasure.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
And with the presidential election just 10 months away, NPR senior news analyst Daniel Schorr says, once again, the specter of a third party and the fear of a spoiler are beginning to loom over the campaign.
DANIEL SCHORR: Last Monday, in Norman, Oklahoma. Former senators David Boren and Sam Nun assembled a group of 17, mostly former senators and officials of both parties, to launch a campaign for bipartisan unity. They stressed the urgency of working together to address issues from health care to global warming. They proposed a creation of a unity government, including members from both parties, and they demanded a pledge of bipartisanship from the candidates in the current presidential campaign.
How do they plan to enforce their demands? Well, one on this group is New York mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg. And that brings up the question of whether Bloomberg will enter the presidential campaign as a third-party candidate. Even to raise that idea is to send shudders through both parties. The most recent third-party candidate was Ralph Nader in 2000, who may well have caused Al Gore to lose the election.
History reminds us of other independent candidates turned spoilers by their foes - the Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, who failed to unseat President Truman in 1948; the same with former Alabama governor George Wallace, who took votes away from Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey in 1968 - Nixon narrowly won anyway. And then there was Ross Perot in 1996. He took 8.5 percent of the vote at the expense of both Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, but that didn't alter the outcome.
And now, how about Bloomberg, who is joining this group of unity advocates, acting like a potential third force? He keeps denying that he's a candidate, but the possibility that he might run serves as a form of pressure on the current campaign. Boren says deadpan that Bloomberg is a good American and would not close the door to running if he thought it was his duty. Candidates, take heed.
This is Daniel Schorr.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Another story we're following today is a report that U.S. National Intelligence Chief Mike McConnell says waterboarding would be torture if it happened to him. McConnell told the New Yorker magazine that if the government officially decided the technique was torture, there'd be a huge penalty against whoever used it. But the intelligence chief declined for legal reasons to say if waterboarding should be considered torture by the U.S. government. Last month, the House approved a bill that would prevent the CIA from using waterboarding.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
This week, the North American International Auto Show opens in Detroit. The event comes after a bruising year for American car companies which have lost billions of dollars. U.S. carmakers hoped that a new commitment to green will help propel them toward recovery.
NPR's Anthony Brooks reports.
ANTHONY BROOKS: For at least the past decade, American automakers have counted on big pickup trucks and full-sized SUVs to define their success; weight, power and muscle were the operative words. But now, the industry is embracing a new word.
(Soundbite of TV ad)
ELMO (Sesame Street Character): (Singing) It's not that easy being green.
BROOKS: This new ad from Ford features the green Muppet, Elmo, struggling up a cliff until he reaches the top and finds a brand new Ford Escape, a hybrid SUV that runs on gas and electricity.
(Soundbite of TV ad)
ELMO: (Singing) It's not that easy…
Unidentified Man: No.
ELMO: (Singing) …being green.
BROOKS: Maybe not easy but certainly necessary, now that gas costs around $3 a gallon and after Congress raised fuel efficiency standards for the first time in 32 years - a little surprise then that this week in Detroit, the North American International Auto Show will be all about green. Here's how Ed Peper, general manager of GM Chevrolet, introduced the new Chevy Volt at the L.A. auto show last November.
Mr. ED PEPER (General Manager, GM Chevrolet): Plug it in overnight then drive 40 miles without burning any gasoline. The onboard engine is only for recharging the battery, allowing you to go hundreds of miles on a single tank.
BROOKS: This year, in Detroit, carmakers will be tripping over each other, hyping their greenness. Besides the Chevy Volt, Chrysler will show off three green vehicles, including a hybrid Jeep with a lithium battery, an electric station wagon and a car fueled by hydrogen. But don't expect to see any of these at your local dealer yet. These are so-called concept cars, imaginary vehicles still being developed. But even skeptics say they do show that Detroit is finally changing its ways.
Mr. PAUL EISENSTEIN (Publisher, The Car Connection): A couple of years ago, I probably wouldn't have taken the U.S. automakers very seriously when they started talking green.
BROOKS: That's Paul Eisenstein, who publishes The Car Connection. He says he now believes that Detroit is serious about going green.
Mr. EISENSTEIN: A lot of it has to do with simple market realities. Consumers want the industry to go green, and they're starting to shift where they spend their dollars.
BROOKS: A great example of that is the hybrid Toyota Prius, now the best-selling green machine on the market. But Eisenstein points out a lot of other hybrids aren't selling very well. And despite the green hype at this year's show, sales of the big pickups and SUVs are still way ahead of more fuel-efficient hybrid. Again, Paul Eisenstein.
Mr. EISENSTEIN: We are seeing a sort of schizophrenia in the business. The big trucks and SUVs remain a mainstay for Detroit. There's a big push for performance, but there's also a big push for green-minded technology.
BROOKS: So in one corner, there's a new Detroit, with all those hybrids and green concept vehicles. And in the other, there's old Detroit, rolling out a brand new Corvette, $100,000 muscle car with a V8 engine that goes 200 miles an hour. And Ford and Chrysler will continue the horsepower chase with newly designed big pickup trucks. All of which makes people like Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, question just how seriously to take Detroit's green conversion.
Mr. CARL POPE (Executive Director, Sierra Club): We can take seriously that there's nothing like $100 a barrel of oil would focus the attention of the auto industry.
BROOKS: But if they were really serious, Pope says automakers wouldn't have fought to weaken fuel efficiency mandates in the recently passed energy bill. And he says they wouldn't be fighting California's strict auto emissions law.
Mr. POPE: That was the signal that they're not serious yet about the long-term.
BROOKS: But David Cole disagrees. Cole is the chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Michigan and says Detroit is committed to green. And he says automakers deserve credit for past accomplishments like the development of the catalytic converter and unleaded fuel.
Mr. DAVID COLE (Chairman, Center for Automotive Research): It's, by several orders of magnitude, the most significant invention that has ever been done for the environment. When we write the history of this industry, we're not going to see Detroit as laagered but Detroit as one of the primetime players. And progress that's being made today is really pretty amazing.
BROOKS: Cole says that progress includes new lithium batteries and new biofuels, which could make those concept cars reality within a year or two. If so, that might help revive a struggling U.S. auto industry. So a big theme of this year's auto show is recovery. And the big hope is that green can lead the way.
Anthony Brooks, NPR News.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Tens of thousands of Apple computer fans will be in San Francisco this week for the annual Macworld Conference and Expo. Comments have already been posted about Apple's new products on a popular Web site.
David Kushner, who covers digital culture, has more on the origins of that site.
DAVID KUSHNER: Dexter, Michigan - population: 3,242 - isn't the sort of place you'd expect to be the center of geek culture. But inside an unmarked beige warehouse, in a dorm-like suite of "Star Wars" posters and programming books, you'll find a team of young guys choosing the tech news story that half-a-million geeks will read that day.
The Web site they run is called Slashdot.org. It's a name they deliberately chose to annoy anyone who types up the Web address. Launched long before blogs and news aggregators ruled the Internet, Slashdot has spent the past decade cherry-picking and linking to what the site bills as news for nerds. Those are the cool and crucial science and technology stories that founder Rob Malda and his crew of nine think you must know about; a massive cave found on Mars, artificial intelligence used to train firefighters.
The site has run more than 78,000 articles since it launched in 1997. And it has built one of the most feverishly loyal and influential communities online. Each day, it gets about 500,000 visitors who view some 2 million Web pages. Getting a link from the site - getting slashdotted - has a viral impact. Just ask anyone who's experienced the so-called Slashdot effect, which can sometimes be too much of a good thing.
Slashdot is the 800-pound gorilla of discussion sites. And a single mention there can generate enough traffic to overwhelm a small site servers, jamming it with attention. The Web site serves its geeky audience so well because Malda himself is one of them. It's people who like to write code and love technology, he says.
A 31-year-old with a pointy beard and glasses, Malda was a brainiac from the start. Growing up in a small town of Holland, Michigan, he started coding on his RadioShack TRS-80 computer in fourth grade and never looked back. He spent so much time writing computer games and surfing bulleting board networks that his mother once grounded him by locking his keyboard in the truck of her car.
The value of Slashdot in the age of online social networks like Facebook and Digg is a fact that techies, whether astrophysicist or toy designers, can count on Malda and his discerning squad to sift through the Web for the worthy nuggets. Every day, I want to tell my friends about the 15 things that matter most, says Malda. If we pull that off, then we're doing our job.
Considering that Slashdot has become the default bookmark for generation nerd, they're succeeding.
HANSEN: David Kuchner covers digital culture for Rolling Stone, Wired and other publications.
This is NPR News.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
If you love the cosmopolitan feel of a large city with a diversity of food options but pined for the fresh grown local produce of a rural setting, then food writer Braiden Rex-Johnson has the place for you. She says the best of both worlds can be found between Washington's Puget Sound and the Cascade Mountains.
Rex-Johnson is a former food editor of Seattle Homes and Lifestyles magazine and is inspired by the region's bountiful seafood produce and family-owned wineries. Her newest cookbook, "Pacific Northwest Wining and Dining," covers favorite recipes and wines from Portland, Oregon to Vancouver, British Columbia.
Braiden Rex-Johnson is in the studio of member station KUOW in Seattle.
Welcome.
Ms. BRAIDEN REX-JOHNSON (Author, "Pacific Northwest Wining and Dining"): Thank you very much, Liane. Happy to be here.
HANSEN: I'm hungry just doing the introduction to you.
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: Good. That's what we want.
HANSEN: Now, I understand you're a Philadelphian native. And Philadelphia is known for its food, its seafood, it's got the local farms out Lancaster County. Why did you move out West?
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: Well, I really credit my parents for developing in me this love of food and wine early on because my mother did take me to the farmer's market with the Amish people. I did eat lots of wonderful oysters and Manila clams and those sorts of things. But I lived there for 17 years, in Texas for 17 years, and now we've been out in Seattle 18 years. So I've really sort of divided my time in three different parts of the country and I just happen to love the Pacific Northwest the best.
HANSEN: Why Seattle? What makes that such a culinary hotspot?
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: Oh, I think a number of things, Liane. The basic thing we have is great produce, great seafood, wonderful meats. And that's the starting point for Northwest cuisine. And then we add the interesting touches from the Native Americans and the Mediterranean people and the Scandinavians, and even more recently the Asians and the Latinos that give Northwest cuisine its very interesting notes and nuances.
HANSEN: One landmark in Seattle is Pike Place Farmer's Market and you've written a couple of books about it. What is it do you think that makes that market so special?
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: I like to say that it's an anachronism because it was built in 1907 and it's pretty much the same way as it's always been due to the historical commission and the, you know, rather tough guidelines to keep it a working farmer's market and incubator of small businesses and a place where people can really try out new ideas. We have about 100 farmers, about 250 permanent businesses and about 200 artisans, and that makes sort of a very interesting mix on a daily basis.
HANSEN: So how does Seattle seafood compare, say, to the seafood in other coastal cities?
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: I think that the thing that you think about when you think of Seattle seafood specifically would be our salmon. And, of course, we have five different species out here. When we moved out from Dallas, I just didn't even know that there was more than one type of salmon, you know, salmon, salmon. And now, I live for the various runs that, you know, begin in the spring and go throughout the fall. And it's just a very seasonal way of life we have out here.
HANSEN: What about some other places in the region? I mean, how would you describe, for example the food and culture in Portland, Oregon?
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: I think Portland, because perhaps the land prices aren't quite as high, you know, I think the chefs down there can take a few more chances and be a little more daring. I think that Seattle has been doing it a little while longer, and I don't want to get myself in trouble of course. We're also taking chances, but I think you can do that a little more down in Portland. Vancouver is just more of everything. It's such a cosmopolitan city. I really think when people are out here, they need to make a point to go up to British Columbia. They will be astonished at what they find up there.
HANSEN: Let's talk a little bit about food. And I want ask, if you were going to cook one authentic dish from your new hometown, Seattle, what would it be?
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: I would have to cook salmon. It really is, to me, the prototypical dish. And in one of my books and - I guess actually several of my books now - I've said that Tom Douglas - of course, one of our star celebrity chefs - has a dish on his menu at Etta's Seafood, and it's a cold smoked wild salmon with a cornbread pudding and shiitake mushrooms. And because of the way it's lightly smoked and then grilled, it just, to me, is the prototypical dish. If you're going to eat one dish in Seattle, that would be the one that I would eat.
HANSEN: I've turned to page 34 in your book and I'm looking at your recipe for wild king salmon with macerated cherries and smoked almond beurre noisette.
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: Yes. That's another really good dish. And again, that might almost knock Tom off the block. This is from Kevin Davis at the Steelhead Diner which has been open just about a year. It opened last February and has been taking the market, the city, the region by storm. Many of his purveyors are from the Pike Place Market. He uses spring vegetables and (unintelligible) sausage on his menu. And this dish is really great because it only has eight ingredients, if you don't count the kosher salt and the freshly ground black pepper.
HANSEN: At the end of the recipe, there's a little paragraph that says cook's hint, and it's talking about the high fat content of the Yukon River king salmon, and explaining that it's going to flame up if it's cooked too fast and, you know, have a water bottle handy just in case, things like that. Can you give us a few more tips on, say, cooking fish and oysters?
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: Sure. Well Kevin brings up a good point too and that's called carry-over cooking with fish. And so, many of us out here like to eat our fish medium rare, so that's still little bit translucent in the center. People in older generations think if you don't cook your fish all the way through, it might kill you. But so far, that hasn't proved to be the case, thank heavens. So we to like to pull it off the grill or out of the skillet a little bit sooner than you might otherwise and just let it sit there. It just also lets the seafood rest. It's sort of like when you take a turkey or a chicken out of the oven and you let it sit there for a little while longer so that the juices can go back into the meat.
The main thing with seafood is get a good fish purveyor. Trust your fish monger. You really need to go in there and say, what's good today? What are we eating? And if for some reason you don't have a good experience, take it back or tell them about it, and often times they'll give you your money back or give you something you want.
HANSEN: It's recommended that pinot noir be served with this wild king salmon. Wine pairings are always an interesting topic of conversation, and your book has a wine to go with each one of your recipes. What do you do - what makes a good wine pairing?
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: I think when the food makes the wine taste better and the wine makes the food taste better. You know, that's the short and simple answer. I really think that there are certain rules. For example, I think if you have a big, heavy, oaky cabernet sauvignon, it's going to absolutely kill something like lightly poached trout in a lemon ber blanc sauce. I'm sorry, those two things just do not go together. The weights of the food and the wine are wrong, the flavors are wrong, the acidity in the lemon ber blanc is going to really, you know, have a train wreck in mouth with that cab. So I think that there really are rules that you should try to follow, if at all possible.
HANSEN: In - basically what might a rule be, I mean, if you're eating something creamy then drink something with a little more acid in it, something like that?
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: Well, you need to really consider things like acidity, so higher acid wines really pair better than things like, you know, less acidic wines, chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. I'm sorry, I know chardonnay is the most widely drunk varietal in the world, but there are problems with it because of the oakiness in many of the ways that it's made. Same with cab, it's heavy, it's tannic, it's dark, it's rich - it doesn't really go well with a wide variety of food. Which is why I like to drink Rieslings and pinot gris and pinot blanc and pinot noir which have higher acidity, which cut through the flavors in the food and refresh your palette every time you have a sip.
HANSEN: All right. So what does the Pacific Northwest have that the East Coast didn't?
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: Well, we have some wonderful shellfish. And this may come as a surprise to some of your listeners, but we're actually growing an East Coast oyster in the West Coast and doing a better job of it in my opinion.
HANSEN: Mm-hmm.
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: That would be the virginica oyster, and they are this beautiful, lush mineral-finish oyster that has a beautiful little bite and just crisp and crunchy, and I could just east a million of them.
HANSEN: Okay, oysters. I mean, yeah, you don't have those big fat pretzels with salt and mustard in the Pacific Northwest.
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: No. But I have to say we spent eight days in New York over Christmas and we went to the Union Square market and I had to have one of those Pennsylvania Dutch pretzels and some freshly pressed pear juice that was yummy.
HANSEN: That sounds like a great pairing.
Ms. REX-JOHNSON: It was. No wine but, okay, we can forego the wine every now and then.
HANSEN: Braiden Rex-Johnson is a food writer and wine-pairing specialist. Her new cookbook is "Pacific Northwest Wining and Dining." And there's more information available at northwestwininganddining.com.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
NPR's Daniel Zwerdling is known for his hard-hitting and award-winning investigative stories. We decided to give him a break - and let him report on one of his favorite subjects: food.
DANIEL ZWERDLING: Food was one of my first passions. When I came to NPR many, many, many, many, many years ago, I wrote a lot about farmers and agriculture and the food industry and cooking and chefs. So when I heard that you were having an occasional food segment here on WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY, I thought this would be the place where I could say in baritone tones the sauce was smoking(ph).
(Soundbite of laughter)
ZWERDLING: Just kidding, of course.
HANSEN: Coming soon on our food segment, Daniel Zwerdling gets to the bottom of cheese sambouseks.
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
In the United Arab Emirates today, President Bush addressed the people of the Middle East.
(Soundbite of speech)
President GEORGE W. BUSH: These lands have seen the rise and fall of great civilizations. And in the 21st century, these lands are once again playing a central role in the human story. Today, your aspirations are threatened by violent extremists who murder the innocent in pursuit of power. These extremists have hijacked the noble religion of Islam, and seek to impose their totalitarian ideology on millions. Iran is today the world's leading state sponsor of terror. It sends hundreds of millions of dollars to extremists around the world while its own people face repression and economic hardship at home.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Joining us from Abu Dhabi is NPR's Michele Kelemen who's been traveling with the president.
Michele, another warning from President Bush on the dangers posed by Iran. How much of this is posturing by the president, given that he's visiting Arab states who do feel threatened by the strength Iran has gained in the region over the past few years?
MICHELE KELEMEN: Well, it was an important message for them. I mean, one of the issues is that after the National Intelligence Estimate that the intelligence community put out that said Iran halted a nuclear weapons program back in 2003, there was a lot of concern in the region, wondering, you know, what is the Bush administration's policy. Mr. Bush went out there very strongly today talking about the threat that he sees Iran posing. But he also talked about how - he's here in the region to strengthen these relationships in the Gulf, sort of to counter that before it's too late, as he put it. Very strong words, but it's going to be a very tough message here.
I mean, this is a region that's very dependent on business from Iran. So if the president is trying to get them to cut ties that way, that's going to be something they're going to be very leery of doing right here. And there's also concern in the region that the U.S. might do something militarily, and that's something people here have been warning him against.
HANSEN: We also heard the president talked a lot about freedom and democracy, something he considers one of his - the platforms of his administration's policy in the Middle East. So these are some similar themes he's talking about.
KELEMEN: Yeah, but it was interesting today because he also focused much more on the development issues and economic development, which is much - a little bit different from what he's been focusing on before. He talked about here -for instance in United Arab Emirates, he said, you have succeeded in building a prosperous society out of the desert, that there are women in high positions, that they've had election to a federation - federal national council, and even called it a modern Muslim state. So he was - had high praise for a lot of these oil-rich nations around here in the region.
HANSEN: The president also continued on the strip to talk about the Middle East process. But he's a lame duck president, how much can he really achieve and did he wait too long to do this?
KELEMEN: Well, you know, in some ways, it sounds like he's out here trying to build his legacy, to change his legacy in the region. But on the other hand, he does keep talking about these same themes. You know, he talks about democracy and what democracy can bring, and praised Palestinians, for instance, for voting for Mahmoud Abbas, and he didn't mention the fact that they'd also voted for Hamas. So, you know, I think people in the region sort of look at this like we've heard this before and are waiting for him to move on.
I should also point out that he's making these statements in an incredibly ornate palace, the Emirates Palace, where he's staying tonight. This place was - the White House put out briefing notes about it and said that it's reputed to be the most expensive hotel in the world - bil. That it was a price tag of three - over three billion, and that is billion with a B, dollars.
HANSEN: NPR's Michele Kelemen in Abu Dhabi. She's traveling with the president. Thank you very much, Michele.
KELEMEN: Thank you.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
In the United Arab Emirates, there are mixed feelings about President Bush -who is both deeply unpopular and a vital military ally.
For a view from that country, we turn to NPR's Ivan Watson in Dubai.
IVAN WATSON: On the eve of Bush's visit to the UAE, the Dubai-based Gulf News newspaper published an open letter to the American president on its front page. It condemned his human rights record and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, adding that Mr. Bush has no moral right to lecture others on freedom and democracy.
Professor ABDEL-KHALIQ ABDALLAH (Political Science, Emirates University): This president comes at a time when respect for him personally is at its lowest.
WATSON: Abdel-Khaliq Abdallah is a professor of political science at Emirates University. He sits in one of the countless shopping malls that have sprung up across Dubai, which has emerged as the new commercial capital of the Middle East. Abdallah had scathing words for a country he has long looked to as a protector.
Prof. ABDALLAH: America has become, number one, militarist in its approach towards Iran and towards the Gulf. It chooses military to solve political problems, and worse yet, America has become unilateralist in its approach. If it wants to do something, it does not consult with your friends, your allies. We are supposedly friends and allies. It goes invading Iraq and it did not listen to us.
WATSON: Though the Bush administration is deeply unpopular here, the UAE and the other wealthy oil states of the Persian Gulf continue to depend on the U.S. military to protect them from more powerful neighbors like Iraq and Iran. The U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet is headquartered in nearby Bahrain, and Dubai is a frequent port of call for American warships.
Mustafa Alani, of the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, says Gulf Arab rulers have little choice but to maintain strong ties with Washington.
Dr. MUSTAFA ALANI (Senior Adviser, Gulf Research Center): These small countries understand the United States as major force on their security, or rely on the United States' support and protection.
WATSON: In recent years, the UAE has watched with concern as Iran's power has grown throughout the Middle East and Persian Gulf.
Again, Abdel-Khaliq Abdallah of Emirates University.
Prof. ABDALLAH: Iran has always been a challenge to us, okay? It's a huge country, has a large population; it has a large army; it has a radical tone that comes with it.
WATSON: But while Iran has long been viewed as a potential military threat, it is also one of the UAE's biggest trading partners.
(Soundbite of noise)
WATSON: On the busy waterfront in downtown Dubai, Iranian merchants stack boxes of tea, which will soon be loaded on one of the countless cargo ships that make the 10-hour trip across the Persian Gulf to Iran every week.
WATSON: Many Emiratis have watched with alarm as tensions have escalated over the past year between Washington and Tehran. Just last week, the Pentagon says American warships came close to opening fire on speedboats from Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, when they allegedly swerved to within a few hundred yards of a U.S. Navy convoy steaming through the nearby Strait of Hormuz. Iran denied the accusation. And each side has broadcast its own video version of the incident inspection of the American warships.
Unidentified Man #1: This is coalition warship 73. Roger. Over.
Unidentified Man #2: Coalition warship 73, this is (unintelligible) 16. Over.
Unidentified Man #3: (Unintelligible)
Unidentified Man #2: This is coalition warship 73. I read you loud and clear. Over.
WATSON: Many Emiratis fear that if a war breaks out between Washington and Tehran, it would bring an end to the incredible economic growth their country has enjoyed, as oil prices have hit record highs of more than $100 a barrel. Mustafa Alani, of the Gulf Research Center, predicts Emirati officials will urge President Bush to use diplomacy and coalition-building in his confrontation with Tehran.
Dr. ALANI: The message that Mr. President is going to get is that we don't want any military confrontation, and we prefer the internationalization of the issue rather than a fight between Americans and Iranians, and we're going to be forced to take side.
WATSON: As one UAE official put it, we can't afford to publicly stand beside a weak American president against our close Iranian neighbor. Meanwhile, as Emirati rulers meets and greet President Bush, they are also closely watching the U.S. presidential elections in America, and hoping that the next American leader will be less controversial than the current one.
Ivan Watson, NPR News, Dubai.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Stories from the Middle East have preoccupied writer Gina Nahai all her life. Nahai is the best-selling author of "Caspian Rain" and a blogger for the Huffington Post. Nahai says if the West wants to create peace within the Middle East, it needs to learn about the values of both cultures. She sent this audio blog.
Ms. GINA NAHAI (Author, "Caspian Rain"; Blogger, The Huffington Post): In the Middle East, unlike in the United States, the choice is not always between good and bad. Often, it's between bad and worse. For most people, success is never whole - expectations are tailored not to what is ideal but to what is possible. Reform has always worked better than revolution. And it has come not at the point of the sword but through the slow and painstaking labor of education.
Ideas, cultural exchanges - real learning take years, sometimes decades, to come to fruition. But if you look closely enough, you will see that American arts and literature - its film and fashion and music, its technology and science - have long ago found a way into the hearts of the people of the Middle East. You can resist the invasion of an army, Victor Hugo said, but you can't resist the invasion of an idea whose time has come.
We have wasted precious years and resources, chasing quick fixes in the Middle East. It's time we learn to accept our own limitations, came to appreciate the power of arts and education, and invested in planting the seeds of ideas that will grow and blossom in their own good time.
HANSEN: An audio blog from Gina Nahai. She's the best-selling author of "Caspian Rain" and teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
Tonight, a lot of us would have been glued to our televisions to watch the stars parade down the red carpet at the annual Golden Globes Awards in Hollywood. But actors refuse to cross the picket line in support of the striking writers, so the ceremony has been cancelled.
And as NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates reports, that's been a costly decision.
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES: Cancellation of the Golden Globes means more than just a good time lost for the celebrities involved and fans that like to watch them. Jack Kyser, chief economist for the L.A. County Development Corporation, says some serious money has just gone down the drain.
Mr. JACK KYSER (Chief Economist, Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation): The Golden Globes' enormous ceremony will generate about $60 million for the L.A. County economy.
BATES: Kyser says, besides the show's actual production cost, there are other expenses.
Mr. KYSER: Studio spending on ad campaigns, star perks, in-town parties.
BATES: Because all the major parties associated with the Globes have been cancelled, Kyser says a lot of people who never appear in movies or on television will also be feeling the pain.
Mr. KYSER: The banquet staff at the Beverly Hilton and the people serving at all of the parties, because they can generate a lot of tip income. Limo services, people providing valet parking, security services, flower shops, even dermatologists.
BATES: Oh, no Botox. Madeline Leonard manages Cloutier, a top-tier agency that provides stylist, hair and makeup artists to Hollywood's A-list celebrities. With no famous clients to service for the Golden Globes, Leonard says the phones at Cloutier have been ominously silent.
Ms. MADELINE LEONARD (Head of Operations, Cloutier): Award show weekends are the busiest weekends of the year. And the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes have always been the two busiest weekends for hair and makeup.
BATES: One awards tradition is holding steady despite the fact that the Golden Globes have gotten bust, and that's the swag sweep. Swag stands for Stuff We All Get.
Unidentified Woman: This one retails for about 6,000. So, it's 18-karat gold diamonds and really unique.
BATES: Melissa Lemer owns Silver Spoon, an entertainment marketing business. At Voda Spa in West Hollywood, celebs are happily shopping for freebies at long tables of jewelry, cosmetics, clothes and accessories as Lemer's security looks on. Lemer says she felt obligated to support sponsors who've already shelled out for the event in the hopes that celebrities will be seen in their wears eventually.
Ms. MELISSA LEMER (Co-founder, Silver Spoon Entertainment Marketing): A lot of people, unfortunately, have pulled out so many things. I mean, people are losing so much money on advertising that, for me, to turn to all the sponsors and say we're not doing it, that'd be a waste of their money. I can't do that to them.
BATES: One of Lemer's celebrity guests would normally be too busy to be here. Melissa Rivers is usually coordinating last-minute details for red carpet coverage with her mother, Joan, heard here at last year's Golden Globes.
(Soundbite of archived Golden Globe Red Carpet Coverage)
Ms. JOAN RIVERS (Actress): Mark Anthony and Jennifer Lopez, just another simple girl in a dress.
Ms. JENNIFER LOPEZ (Actress): How are you, Joan?
Ms. RIVERS: Whose dress?
Ms. LOPEZ: This is Marquesa.
BATES: This year, says Melissa, both Rivers ladies are staying home.
Ms. MELISSA RIVERS (Actress): My mother has not crossed the picket lines. She will not - she has not done any of the shows that have had picket lines in front of them. And you have to support the people that have supported you all those years. And the Writer's Guild was the first guild she ever belonged to.
BATES: Performers' support of the writers pretty much guaranteed the show wouldn't go on. It's meant that NBC has lost several million dollars in advertising; that magazines like Us and In Style won't have the awards show fashion coverage their readers crave; it means that restaurants and clubs that normally do very well being rented out for private parties won't receive ad income.
If there's a silver lining to the Globe's wreckage, Cloutier's Madeline Leonard says, it might be this.
Ms. LEONARD: I think it's kind of a wake-up call, and it will push people to resolve this prior to the Oscars.
BATES: Which are six short weeks from now - not that anybody is counting.
Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
If you happened to be on the subway yesterday in New York or Chicago or even Adelaide, Australia, you might have seen something shocking - people stripped to their knickers for the seventh annual No Pants Subway Ride.
NPR's Allison Keyes tagged along with a group in Washington, D.C.
Unidentified Woman: (Unintelligible) bottom up across the gallery place.
Unidentified Man #1: (Unintelligible)
Unidentified Woman: And don't forget to take your pants off.
ALLISON KEYES: Dozen showed up at Dupont Circle, bound or determined to drop their pants for the cause or no cause at all.
Gwendolyn Elizabeth(ph) couldn't quite explain why she was stripping down to her boy shorts.
Ms. GWENDOLYN ELIZABETH: There is no reason. I am pretty much here, just heard about it through friends and now I'm here all of a sudden.
KEYES: Dean Mason says he didn't know the New York-based Improv Everywhere group started this to bring scenes of chaos and joy to the masses. The grey-haired man says he just likes not wearing any pants.
Mr. DEAN MASON: I'm a very expressive type of person who is open to nudity in the right situations.
KEYES: Like the subway?
At least the flame-haired woman, claiming her name was Anne Doe(ph), had good reason for standing here in a mini-skirt and cowboy boots, ready to drop trou(ph). She's turning 40 this year and says she felt like doing really stupid stuff.
Ms. ANNE DOE: I didn't want to have to de-boot and de-pant at the same time, so I figured I'd wear something that would be easy to get off over cowboy boots.
KEYES: De-booting and de-panting at the same time could be awkward.
Ms. DOE: In public, yeah. At home, it's fine. I do it all the time. But in public, it could probably be a little embarrassing.
Unidentified Man #2: Yeah. It's a great idea. When I say we ban pants worldwide?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Unidentified Man #2: This could be something big.
(Soundbite of crowd chatting)
KEYES: At least Ayal Damala Okusinde(ph) was fashionable. He matched his purple underwear to his purple undershirt to the purple pin stripes in a suit, and he followed directions: board the train, drop your pants and act nonchalant.
Mr. AYAL DAMALA OKUSINDE: It's just a regular day for me, you know? I get up. I decide to went - I'm going to work. So that's where I'm going right now.
KEYES: The nonchalant part wasn't easy with a gaggle of photographers -professional and otherwise - tagging along. The intrepid Dean Mason nearly got left alone in his tighty-whitey's.
Mr. MASON: Well, I'm having trouble following the group, but I don't want to, like, you know, be by myself doing this.
KEYES: Nobody got in trouble, and most bemused commuters were simply amused. Erik Tearing(ph) admitted feeling a little sheepish for not joining in.
Mr. ERIK TEARING: I feel a little guilty just being an observer, but I'm not about to take my pants off.
(Soundbite of laughter)
KEYES: Chicken?
Mr. TEARING: I'm in bad need of doing laundry so all of my best underwear isn't available right now.
KEYES: Wearing my pants, Allison Keyes, NPR News Washington.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
In 1996, Carol Gilligan was named one of Time magazine's 25 most influential Americans. Her pioneering work in gender studies and psychology changed the way society views women. After her revolutionary book "In a Different Voice" was published in 1982, women finally began to be included in research studies in education and medicine among other disciplines. Gilligan became the first chair of Harvard University's Gender Studies Program. She's currently a professor at New York University and she's written her first novel, "Kyra," which will be publish this Tuesday.
Carol Gilligan is in our New York bureau. Welcome.
Dr. CAROL GILLIGAN (Psychology, New York University; Author, "Kyra"): Thank you, Liane.
HANSEN: Give us a brief thumbnail biography. Who's Kyra?
Dr. GILLIGAN: Kyra is an architect. She's an urban designer. She's a woman who grow up in Cyprus and she's - at the time the novel opens, she's living in Cambridge in Boston and she has this opportunity to design a new city on one of the islands off the coast of Massachusetts.
HANSEN: There is another character that plays an important part in the plot - Andreas. Who is he?
Dr. GILLIGAN: Andreas is a theater director, an opera director who does these very inventive productions of operas, and he also has come out of Europe. And both these people are embarked in trying to make changes in the world. They are creative, artistic people and neither intends to fall in love. So that's where the novel starts, is when they meet each other.
HANSEN: And fall in love.
Dr. GILLIGAN: And fall in love, yes.
HANSEN: And leave.
Dr. GILLIGAN: Yes. Well, they fall in love with each other, which is such a huge risk for both of them because they've both come out of a history, where his wife has disappeared in Budapest, she was presumably arrested and killed, and her husband had been shot. So for the two of them, to fall in love in again is - it's a huge risk for them. And at a certain point, Andreas abruptly leaves and goes back to Budapest and then Kyra is left with the question: was it real, what happened between them?
HANSEN: What was the inspiration for your plot?
Dr. GILLIGAN: I was reading the New York Times book review one Sunday and a review of a new translation of Virgil's "Aeneid." And the reviewer singled out this passage in the underworld, where Aeneas goes in search of his father and comes upon Dido. And he says to her I could not believe I would hurt you so terribly by going. And I thought how come he didn't know that? How could such a sensitive, intelligent man not know the effects of his action on someone he loved, and then, for the woman involved how crazy-making that kind of experience is when what she's experienced, what she's known in her body is suddenly called into question.
Was it true? Was it real? I thought how would this play out in a contemporary situation, because, you know, I knew from - when I started that Kyra was not going to kill herself. I mean, she wasn't going to do what Virgil's Dido does. And being a modern woman, I thought, she's going to end up in therapy, you know?
HANSEN: With Kyra and Andreas both being affected by, in Andreas' case, the disappearance of his wife during the Hungarian protests while the Soviets were still in Hungary. And for Kyra to lose her husband it was during the conflicts in Cyprus, and her husband was shot by her half brother. So both of them have lost a spouse - two difficult and dramatic circumstances. So in some respects they're both on the same place and they're both afraid of getting involved in a relationship because they were afraid about how it's going to end. Was the idea, to a certain extent - by putting them both in the same place to explore how a man and how a woman would react differently to that situation?
Dr. GILLIGAN: Oh, if I took out the word differently it would be exactly it. I was interested in how a man and a woman - how do these two people would respond to being, in some sense, captive of that kind of terrible past and so many people's lives in this time have been shattered by similar kinds of losses and violence. And how do they go on from that point and take the risk of loving again and learn to trust? Those were the question. How do you get out of that kind of old story? That's the question that interested me.
HANSEN: A lot of opera occurs, mainly because Andreas is conductor and he works with the opera. And he Kyra play this little game where they go to some of the main plots of, you know, both Shakespeare and opera and they play this what-if game, you know?
Dr. GILLIGAN: Oh, right, the game of change the ending.
HANSEN: Change the ending. That somehow works into their own relationship. They don't see it but it sort of, what would happen if?
Dr. GILLIGAN: Do you want to know what are the oddest things - it's that when I wrote that, I had no idea of how in a way it's a little microcosm of the whole novel. And it's only recently that I thought, yeah, that's exactly what they're trying to do. You know, they've come out of this terrible history and they don't want to repeat it but that means you have to find the place where you can move in a different direction, and that's really what they struggle with with one another, and it's also what they're both doing in their work.
HANSEN: You've made it clear that this is - book was written by the fiction writer Carol Gilligan, not the academic Carol Gilligan. But I wonder how do you think the academic Carol Gilligan…
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: …would react to what this fiction writer Carol Gilligan has done?
Dr. GALLIGAN: I would think the academic Carol Gilligan would be delighted by this. I mean, first of all, she'd be delighted that the fiction writer took the risk. And the characters in the novel would interest her. I think she'd go, hmm, you know?
HANSEN: Hmm, just hmm.
Dr. GALLIGAN: This is where the two starts to coalesce in this division, because the questions that interests me about people's lives and the risks people take and don't take and what enables people to, you know, do the things that they love and that kind of boldness that's in both Kyra and Andreas, and also the fear and the conflict.
She would appreciate the freedom of the novel. I mean, the fact that you can use metaphors to capture, you know, emotions that are so complicated and layered. I don't feel an internal division in myself between these two parts of myself. I've really enjoyed doing both kinds of writing.
HANSEN: Carol Gilligan. Her first novel "Kyra" is published by Random House on Tuesday, January 15th. She joined us from our New York bureau. Thanks so much, Carol.
Dr. GILLIGAN: Thank you, Liane. It's just been a pleasure.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Now, a love story from a different species. Every year at this time, after months at sea, hundreds of northern elephant seals return to the beaches along the California coast where they were born. It's an amazing spectacle, and the subject of a new documentary, "A Seal's Life."
Drew Wharton produced and directed the documentary. Dr. Burney Le Boeuf is an expert on elephant seals and a scientific adviser for the film. And both of them are joining us from the Ano Nuevo State Reserve in California.
First of all, Drew, I know you're there. Welcome.
Mr. DREW WHARTON (Director and Producer, "A Seal's Life"): Thank you, Liane.
HANSEN: Are the seals there?
Mr. WHARTON: Yeah, we're actually within just the first couple of weeks of many of the seals returning from migration. We're standing in the middle of about a thousand animals right now.
HANSEN: Well, I mean, describe what you see.
Mr. WHARTON: Well, you know, a typical male is three, 4,000 pounds, 15 feet long. Right now, they're - they essentially come ashore and since they've -they've just swam probably 5,000 miles, they're little on the tired side. So everybody is resting. You're going to hear males fighting. The females are kind of resting and laying next to their pups, if they've already given birth, and yeah, there's just a lot of big animals out here on the beach right now.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: Would you put Dr. Le Boeuf on the line?
Mr. WHARTON: Absolutely.
Dr. BURNEY LE BOEUF (Research Professor, Biology, University of California Santa Cruz): Hello.
HANSEN: Hi, Dr. Le Boeuf.
Dr. LE BOEUF: How are you?
HANSEN: I'm well. Thank you. What kind of shape are the seals in now? I mean, they've been out for several months.
Dr. LE BOEUF: Oh, they're in great shape. The males have done some bench feeding in the Aleutians for about 40, 50, 60 days. Then they had a long migration back to the rookery here in central California. And of course, the females are in good shape too. They have been feeding for eight months over the course of their pregnancy. So six days after the females arrived, they'd give birth to a single pup, which they nurse for four weeks. At the end of this time, they copulate, go back to sea and feed and start all over again and basically are pregnant most of their adult lives once they start breeding.
HANSEN: Is this almost, in many ways, like a family reunion?
Dr. LE BOEUF: Well, I wouldn't call it that. It's a traditional breeding place. I don't want to call it a bar and make an analogy with humans.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. LE BOEUF: But let me put it this way, there are few places where there's a live sandy beach where females can gather, give birth and raise their pups, and these are scattered along the coast. The males have learned to predict exactly where the females would be and they'd come here for one reason alone, and that is to mate with the females. And now the whole social organization is arranged around securing as many copulations as possible.
HANSEN: It really does sound like a seal's singles bar.
Dr. LE BOEUF: I agree.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. LE BOEUF: And the best fighters are the best lovers, if you will.
HANSEN: Now, you don't dim the lights and play soft music or anything like that, right?
Dr. LE BOEUF: No. An elephant seal don't dance either. They just go straight to it with no fancy now.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: They don't even get a dinner out of it. They've already eaten, right?
Dr. LE BOEUF: They don't get a dinner. I guess another question would be: What are the females get out of it? There's an interesting thing that happens. Usually when a female is accosted by a male, she says no. And she says this with a very forceful vocalization.
If, however, the male who's accosting the female is high-ranking, well, she can reject as much as she wants to because the male will continue. At a certain point, she may decide, hey, this is a high-ranking male. If I'm going to have offspring, I want them to be the sons or the daughters of a male who is well placed. I may as well mate with him. And so they may change their minds.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: And what a load of noise they're making too, huh?
Dr. LE BOEUF: Yes. And if you want to talk about the noise, I can tell you that. You'll hear three principal sounds, if you can dissect one out from the other. The principal sound is the threat vocalization of males.
(Soundbite of a male elephant seal)
Dr. LE BOEUF: And they're (unintelligible) each other to establish a dominant hierarchy, which gives them access to females. And they recognize each other's voice, which demands a certain level of intelligence, because this - you may have to remember as many as a hundred other males. That's one sound. The second sound is females making a pup attraction call.
(Soundbite of a female elephant seal)
Dr. LE BOEUF: They give a peculiar kind of call, which enables the pup to recognize the mother and the mother recognizes the pup's voice in return. The last call you'll hear quite frequently is what we call a female's rejection call, a female who's being accosted by a male who is saying no, I'm not interested. I don't want to do this.
(Soundbite of a female elephant seal's rejection call)
HANSEN: A noisy lot, this crew.
Dr. LE BOEUF: A noisy lot, indeed.
HANSEN: Would you put Drew back on the phone, please?
Dr. LE BOEUF: Yes. Here he is.
Mr. WHARTON: I'm back.
HANSEN: Elephant seals, if I'm not mistaken, were once on the brink of extinction. Are they…
Mr. WHARTON: Yeah.
HANSEN: …still threatened?
Mr. WHARTON: You know, at a turn of the century, you know, there were, as you said, hunted to the brink of extinction, basically, for their blubber, their oil. And with only a handful of animals alive around 1900, the population continues to rebound with protections that both our government and the Mexican government years ago put in place as well as all the fine work that agencies like the California State Parks System, and all those national marine sanctuary program. I think the numbers today are somewhere around 150,000 animals.
I think Burney would concur that - I think one of a - the remaining concerns would be the lack of genetic diversity. You know, with only less than 50 or a hundred animals, you know, at the turn of the century when they started their rebound, there are some concern as to their adaptability in the years to come and whether there may be some weaknesses genetically with elephant seals.
HANSEN: Let me speak to Dr. Le Boeuf.
Mr. WHARTON: Okay. Sure.
Dr. LE BOEUF: Hello.
HANSEN: Hi. Does the health of the seals that you're observing there now tell you anything about the health of the ocean?
Dr. LE BOEUF: Yes, it does, indeed. We did a study that encompassed about 40 years. Starting about 1970, it had a very warm period in the ocean. Ocean warming is a great concern. Throughout this warm period which lasted until the late 1990s, the mean weight of the pups decreased significantly. And it was aligned with a very strong El Ninos, which is warm water over the ocean. Its fair assumption of mean weight is highly positive and correlated with survival.
And we know why the mean weight went down. When the ocean is warm, such as during a strong El Nino, the females have more difficulty finding food. They have to spend more effort doing this, and they gain less weight. And there's a direct connection between what a females weighs when she arrives and the birth weight of her pup and how much nutrients she has to feed up to weaning over a four-week period. There's a direct connection.
HANSEN: So when do the seals return to the sea?
Dr. LE BOEUF: It depends on the sex and age. The females do all of their business in about 34 days. They give birth, nurse their pups, copulate and then they're gone back to sea. It feeds for two months. They come back to the same (unintelligible). This takes month. And then they spend eight months at sea over the course of pregnancy, then they breed again.
Males are slightly different. Males - a dominant male may be over here fasting throughout the breeding season for three, three and half months then it goes to sea and feeds for about three months, comes back to molt for a month and then goes back to sea again for another five-month period before starting the whole process over it. So, essentially, both sexes are at sea twice a year or on land twice a year.
HANSEN: But sometimes they're not together.
Dr. LE BOEUF: No. They're never together. They're only together during the breeding season. They go to sea singly. Even individual males or acting as individuals, they never go in a group, or the same thing is true for females.
HANSEN: And they only get together again on the beach twice a year.
Dr. LE BOEUF: During the breeding season for the annual party.
HANSEN: Dr. Burney Le Boeuf is associate vice chancellor for research and research professor of biology at the University of California Santa Cruz. Drew Wharton directed the documentary "A Seal's Life," which is available on DVD and will screen in selecting as an education institutions across the country. Both of the men joined us from the Ano Nuevo State Reserve in California, scene of elephant seal breeding season.
Thank you so much and do thank the seals for us, too. If you can get a word in each of us.
Dr. LE BOEUF: Thank you very much.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Pam Fessler has the first of three stories about one of the government's biggest overhauls.
PAM FESSLER: When President Bush signed legislation creating the new department, everyone knew it would be a long haul, that such a massive reorganization would be tough. But there was also agreement after 9/11 that something had to be done.
FESSLER: The Department of Homeland Security will focus the full resources of the American government on the safety of the American people.
FESSLER: The president told a packed White House audience that the department would close gaps between government agencies - gaps that had allowed the terrorists to succeed. He said the next attack would be met with a unified response. But the seeds of trouble for the new department were planted even before it was up and running, and some were evident that day at the White House.
MONTAGNE: I received a phone call from Secretary Ridge, personally inviting me to the signing, and - which I appreciated, but I told him when he first asked me that I did not think I would attend.
FESSLER: Colleen Kelley is president of the National Treasury Employees Union. She represented thousands of customs employees about to be absorbed into Homeland Security. There had just been a bitter fight in Congress setting up the agency, and unions were upset that the president had broad new powers over working conditions. Tom Ridge, the president's choice to head Homeland Security, wanted to patch things up, but Kelly was wary.
MONTAGNE: It was clear to us that the actions they were going to take were not going to be in the best interest of employees and that they really had not listened to the input of the employees and of the unions.
FESSLER: Kelly did, in the end, attend the signing, but says after some initial attempts to work together, the relationship soured. Indeed, high employee turnover and low morale continue to dog the department. Last year, Homeland Security had the lowest job satisfaction rating out of 36 government agencies. Department leaders say they're trying to improve the situation. But in the hectic earlier days, there were many other concerns.
MONTAGNE: Recent reporting indicates an increased likelihood that al-Qaida may attempt to attack Americans...
FESSLER: Just two weeks into the new department, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the government was raising its color-coded alert level to orange. That meant a high risk of attack. But the announcement was confusing. People were told something terrible could happen, but that they should still travel and go shopping. Officials in the new department tried to help. They advised people to prepare for an attack by stocking up on, among other things, duct tape. That sent the new department's credibility into freefall.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
MONTAGNE: I know that we all feel a lot safer now that Homeland Security is in place.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
FESSLER: Comedians such as Lewis Black had a field day.
MONTAGNE: The only way duct tape protects you from a chemical attack is if you have enough that you could wrap it around yourself and suffocate.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
MONTAGNE: Yeah, we took a little bit of a public relations beating.
FESSLER: Tom Ridge, who left the department three years ago and is now a consultant, says some of the earliest setbacks were due to the sheer magnitude of the job - trying to create a huge new agency while also worrying about another attack.
MONTAGNE: We had little time to begin the integration process that is necessary for any such aggregation of people and assets and technology. If we would have been in the private sector, we'd probably had a year or a year and a half to prepare.
FESSLER: Perhaps most importantly, says James Jay Carafano, a Homeland Security expert at the Heritage Foundation, people began to work together.
MONTAGNE: You can walk in any port in America today and if you grab a young Coast Guard lieutenant and walk around the port, he'll call everybody by their first name. Everybody knows who everybody is. That wasn't that way six years ago.
FESSLER: He says if your expectations for the first five years are realistic, the department hasn't done such a bad job.
MONTAGNE: It was easily the most complicated reorganization of the federal government that's ever been done.
FESSLER: Homeland Security grants to state and local governments led to almost laughable results - money used to buy air-conditioned garbage trucks, for example. Big- city mayors such as New York's Michael Bloomberg complained that it made no sense to cut their funding so money could go elsewhere.
MONTAGNE: When you stop a terrorist, they have a map of New York City in their pocket. They don't have a map of any of the other 46 places or 45 places.
FESSLER: Ridge's replacement, Michael Chertoff, promised to fix things when he took over in 2005. He said he'd focus the agency's limited resources on the most serious risks. But then just six months into his tenure, the department met its first real challenge and failed.
U: We got kids, we got babies, we need medicine and all that. Nobody came down here to help us.
FESSLER: Clark Kent Ervin is the department's former inspector general.
MONTAGNE: Often they will cite as an accomplishment simply the fact of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Well, it takes more than a department called Homeland Security to secure the homeland. The department has to work, and the department doesn't work.
FESSLER: Recognizing that Rome wasn't built in a day, and this department's not going to be built in a day, I think we've made a lot of progress.
FESSLER: Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff says the agency has been held to unrealistic standards, that the goal was never perfect security but the best the country can get without crippling the economy or civil liberties.
FESSLER: To me, I think we're achieving our result because we are in fact making it quite a bit harder for someone to come in from overseas and carry out an attack. And we're making it very much harder to carry out a catastrophic attack.
FESSLER: Pam Fessler, NPR News.
MONTAGNE: At npr.org, you can explore key moments that shaped the Department of Homeland Security, plus hear more from key voices in the debate over how to make the country safer.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
He shared his enthusiasm with NPR's Michael Sullivan on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN: First, what artist Bradford Edwards insists he is not.
MONTAGNE: I am not a Vietnam Zippohead, really. I'm not a Zippo collector. I'm not somebody into the Zippo per se.
SULLIVAN: On the other hand...
MONTAGNE: There are other people who've collected Zippos. There are other people who know a lot, but I could say with some certainty probably not many, if anyone, who knows more than I do.
SULLIVAN: It's an expertise that comes from having examined, by his own estimate, more than 100,000 Zippos along the boulevards and in the back alleys of the city formerly known as Saigon, and an expertise that comes in handy in the late afternoon on Dong Koi Street in the heart of the city. As we peer into the display case of one souvenir shop where there are probably more than 100 Vietnam War-era Zippos on display, some are obvious fakes. Others look authentic. But not one of them, Edwards says, is the real deal.
MONTAGNE: No. There are some very good original fakes, but there are not any ones that I see that I can identify as what I'd call double original, meaning a period lighter with a correct period carving.
SULLIVAN: It's those carvings - those personalized inscriptions - that have fueled Edwards' obsession with the Zippos left behind by American servicemen during the war, an obsession that began shortly after he arrived in Vietnam as a tourist in 1992.
MONTAGNE: I'm not into it because really of the war, or because of memorabilia, or any real, I would say, direct historical aspect. I'm in it for the artistic sensibility and the direct emotional expression that you see via text or images.
SULLIVAN: Edwards calls the Zippos left behind pure art without ambition - personal narratives that capture the mixed emotions of a confusing time and place.
MONTAGNE: You find everything on these lighters, and what you find mostly is this general feeling of young male Americans, people who were not happy about coming and were even less happy about being here. Feelings about the war, about the military, about how they were feeling personally, missing their girlfriends, drug use, sex, everything was on the lighter. There it was, a miniature little canvas, and there was an etching table, a vendor, and you just had whatever you wanted inscribed on it.
SULLIVAN: Edwards has incorporated the Zippo into his own art, in sculpture, lacquer-ware and mother-of-pearl - with the help of Vietnamese artists and craftsmen, using traditional Vietnamese techniques, an attempt, he says, to make the lighters contemporary and relevant beyond their value as collectibles. That series is now finished, Edwards says. And so, he claims, is his Zippo addiction.
MONTAGNE: Dude, I have almost 300 of the best examples that I've seen over the past 15 years, and I'm done. I've made the artwork, it's over.
SULLIVAN: If we were sitting here and you found one here that was as good or better than the 300 you have in your collection, what would you do?
MONTAGNE: To be honest, if it was a spectacular lighter that was really hot - yeah, I'd probably pull out the 80 bucks.
SULLIVAN: You'd have to have it.
MONTAGNE: Probably. I've been in a long period of rehab, but if you put the right lighter in front of me, I could break.
SULLIVAN: Michael Sullivan, NPR News, Ho Chi Minh City.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
As part of our series Climate Connections with National Geographic, NPR's Joe Palca visited the delta and reports on why this will be a hard problem to solve.
JOE PALCA: For the past two and a half years, there's a group of researchers at the University of California-Davis who've been meeting every Wednesday to try to figure out what to do about the delta. And the only thing they've been able to conclude for sure is it's not going to be easy.
D: The delta of today is not sustainable even under today's conditions, never mind climate change.
D: Climate change really accelerates the problems that we would have had otherwise.
D: It's going to cause us politically and economically, quite a lot, about 7 billion or possibly more.
D: It's pretty much guaranteed that whatever choice we make will be a mistake.
PALCA: But the situation is shaky now, and it's only going to get worse. With climate change, sea level will rise, there will be more rain and less snow in the mountains, meaning more water in the rivers. Lund says something has to be done because he's certain what will happen if nothing is done.
D: The levees will fall down, saltwater will come in, and you will not be able to pump water from the delta.
D: That's correct.
D: That's it.
D: It is in a nutshell.
D: Yeah.
D: It's Jeff Mount. That the forces arrayed against those levees are inexorable. They will inevitably go.
PALCA: And even now, there are signs of trouble. Peter Moyle is the ecologist in the group. He says there are constant reminders about how fragile the levees are, including one in the spring of 2004.
D: This was a nice June day, on a levee that had been inspected the day before. It collapsed.
D: It's a beaver. Probably a beaver did it. I mean, how are you going to fix that?
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
D: I'm sorry, and then the state spent between $75 and $100 million to restore about $22 million worth of real estate.
PALCA: And it's partly economics that makes raising the levees impractical.
D: Just to raise the levees one inch in this delta costs you more than a hundred million dollars in just materials.
PALCA: One possibility is to build something called the peripheral canal.
D: You mean, the peripheral canal that....
D: The dreaded peripheral canal, yep.
PALCA: Right now, freshwater flows through the delta. But you can capture most of that freshwater before it even enters the delta. And if you move that around the delta, then you wouldn't have to worry if the levees failed. They'd no longer be part of the water supply equation.
D: That was political poison for more than 20 years. You just simply did not talk about that as an option.
PALCA: California voters killed the peripheral canal in 1982, largely because northern Californians saw it as an attempt by southern Californians to rip off their water. But if the peripheral canal solves the water-supply problem, it doesn't solve the flooding problem for the delta itself. And delta residents worry that once people get their water, they won't care what happens to the delta levees.
MONTAGNE: My name is Marci Coglianese. I've lived in Rio Vista 40 years.
PALCA: Only about 4,500 people live in Rio Vista, and Coglianese says getting the state to pay attention to the levees that keep her town dry isn't easy.
MONTAGNE: I understand that we are outgunned completely by powerful economic and political forces. And the reason we're terrified of the peripheral canal is that if we feel we're not counting for much now, we're absolutely certain we won't count for anything if that canal is built.
PALCA: Coglianese says you can't use accounting tools to judge the value of a community like Rio Vista.
MONTAGNE: We don't have movie theaters. We don't have malls. We have each other, basically, and it isn't fancy, it's plain, but it's a unique part of American life that is gone from almost everywhere. When you travel across the country, everything looks the same until you get to the small towns, and they have an intrinsic value and need to be preserved and honored.
PALCA: There is a process under way in California to come up with a plan for the delta.
MONTAGNE: Okay, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. This is the meeting of the Deltavision Blue Ribbon Task Force.
PALCA: Phil Isenberg chairs the panel, and Isenberg is a veteran of these California water wars.
MONTAGNE: When voters are unhappy, they put measures on the ballot themselves, or interest groups do, and they just pile them on top of each other and have since 1911, and God, at the end of the road you look at it and it's not a wonder nothing happens rapidly, it's a wonder anything happens at all.
PALCA: Isenberg says California's competing water interests are known as the water buffalos. You've got the farm industry, the urban water districts, the land developers, the environmentalists. Their biggest concern is that this giant earthquake that everybody's been worried about hitting Northern California is going to come, and that's going to turn the delta into a disaster area. They aren't really focused yet on climate change.
MONTAGNE: Global warming is a new kid on the block. And the really funny side effect is to watch all of these water buffalos acknowledge that global warming's there, and then explain that's why their prior positions are now even more necessary than they were before.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR ENGINE)
PALCA: For the time being, life in the delta rolls along.
MONTAGNE: Hello, Lester. Everything going, okay?
LESTER: Yeah.
MONTAGNE: Doing good. Doing good.
PALCA: That's Steve Mello. He's a farmer in the delta. Lester is clearing away some brush along the side of a levee protecting some of Mello's pear fields. Mello hates the idea of a peripheral canal. But he predicts it won't be built. Because even if Governor Schwarzenegger decides a canal is what he wants, he won't be around long enough to see the project through.
MONTAGNE: When he is out of office, the next governor will come in, and what will happen? It depends upon the political winds that are blowing then. But it's all about money, and water is money. John Wayne's got a very, very good quote: "The whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting over."
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
PALCA: Joe Palca, NPR News.
MONTAGNE: On the more general subject of why global warming will raise sea levels around the world, got to npr.org/climateconnections. While you're there, you can also find the latest Climate Change features from National Geographic magazine.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
We sent NPR's Julie Rovner to find out.
JULIE ROVNER: The original question came from a listener. Ruth Lezotte of Okemos, Michigan, wondered, with all the candidates' policy talk about health insurance, what happens when they get sick?
MONTAGNE: How do the candidates get their health insurance?
ROVNER: It turns out that this year, many of the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in the race are sitting members of the U.S. House or Senate and thus, eligible for taxpayer-subsidized coverage through the federal employee health benefits plan. But not all of the presidential candidates depend on that coverage exclusively. Like many Americans over age 65, Republican Senator John McCain has a variety of health plans available to him.
S: You know, I'm eligible for veterans' care because of having served in the military, and I'm most proud of that. I have the Senate Health Insurance Program, and I'm also part of my wife's supplementary insurance that she has.
ROVNER: In fact, says Marilyn Moon, director of the health program for the American Institutes for Research, the federal employees program available to members of Congress really isn't all that gold-plated.
MONTAGNE: It's clearly a good plan; it covers all types of services that people would need, including prescription drugs, for example. But you pay co- pays and deductibles, just like most Americans who get their health care from employers.
ROVNER: But all that wasn't really what Ruth Lezotte wanted to know. She was more interested in the handful of candidates who don't have access to employer- provided coverage.
MONTAGNE: I mean, John Edwards' wife has cancer. He's not employed. Giuliani, I don't know if he's employed or not, he's had cancer. Where do these people get health insurance?
ROVNER: Actually, it turns out that Edwards does get his health coverage - and coverage for his wife, who's being treated for a recurrence of breast cancer - at work.
MONTAGNE: Our family gets our health insurance through the campaign, and it's Blue Cross.
ROVNER: Indeed, almost all the Democratic candidates offer health insurance to their campaign workers. The lone holdout, ironically, is Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who advocates the most generous tax-funded health plan of any candidate.
MONTAGNE: We haven't been able to do that, because, you know, we have kind of a low-budget campaign, but we're actually looking into that right now. It's something we want to do.
ROVNER: It's a shame those candidates won't talk about their own coverage, says health policy analyst Marilyn Moon. Because knowing what kind of coverage they have would help illustrate how the health-reform plans they're proposing for everyone else - plans that rely more on having individuals buy their own insurance - might or might not work.
MONTAGNE: One of the difficulties in terms of assessing these health care plans is actually illustrated by the situation of these candidates. Not all of them might qualify for good coverage under the plans that they have offered.
ROVNER: That's because Giuliani and Thompson are, like McCain, cancer survivors. And in the individual insurance market, says Moon, at least under current rules, people who have had cancer or another serious disease often can't buy health insurance at any price.
MONTAGNE: Having the money to pay for a plan is not enough. You also need to be able to get a plan if you have a history of health problems.
ROVNER: Julie Rovner, NPR News, Washington.
MONTAGNE: If you want some details, names of insurers and type of coverage from those candidates who responded, and also why Julie found the answers so hard to come by, go to npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Peter Kenyon reports from the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
PETER KENYON: General Mansour al-Turki, spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry, says security forces have been able to thwart a series of attacks in recent years in part because of much more active assistance from the public.
MONTAGNE: They have recognized that al-Qaida ideology is just an ideology to inflame terrorism rather than trying to set up a new approach for Muslim societies and so on.
KENYON: But Turki also says communication in other areas remains poor. Last week, for instance, the national security adviser in the U.S.-backed government in Iraq announced that hundreds of Saudis had been arrested in Iraq on suspicion of militant activities and were ready to be returned to their homeland. But Turki says Saudis learned about that announcement in the media, because except for an occasional conference, the two security forces rarely communicate.
MONTAGNE: We haven't actually had any normal, regular talks with the Iraqi security people, and sometimes we're surprised, you know, that a Saudi could be arrested in Iraq and then released again inside Iraq.
KENYON: After 9/11, Saudis say, it was the invasion of Iraq that has had the most profound effect on U.S.-Saudi relations. Saleh al-Mani, dean of the college of law and political science at King Saud University, says that invasion and the way it was handled led inevitably to the current crisis with Iran, by removing Saddam Hussein and his Sunni bulwark against the regional ambitions of the Shiite Iranian leadership.
D: The invasion of Iraq has really disturbed the balance of power in the region, absolutely. So we have now a problem with Iran having so much influence in the region and in Iraq.
KENYON: Many Saudis say they're frankly baffled by U.S. policy toward Iran, but they're most worried about another military conflict on their doorstep. Al-Mani says the U.S. would be wise to let diplomacy and sanctions have their full effect because Iranians appear to be getting fed up with hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his allies.
D: There is a strategic change going on in this part of the world, whereby Iran is really trying to play the big card. But they're playing big card, you know, on the military level - and they're losing. It's costing them economically. We have one year left in Ahmadinejad's administration, so I think perhaps the next administration would be much more cooperative, like a Khatami and so on.
KENYON: Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Riyadh.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
And Michele, we'll just start with you. Yesterday, the president gave a lecture on democracy in Abu Dhabi, but Iran seems to have been the main focus of his talk. Yesterday, he called Iran the world's leading state sponsor of terror.
P: Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. So the United States is strengthening our longstanding security commitments with our friends in the Gulf and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late.
MONTAGNE: And what response does the president hope to get from rhetoric that's anti-Iran?
MICHELE KELEMEN: Well, the president - he's said a lot these things before, but it was doing it here, so close to Iran, that was to send a signal that he's still worried about Iran and he wants this region to pay attention to it.
MONTAGNE: How important is the United Arab Emirates to the U.S. strategy against Iran?
KELEMEN: Dubai also is - it's interesting because this is also sort of a listening post for the State Department on Iran. They've beefed up the embassy here to have more Iran experts because there's such a big, not only trade, but a lot of Iranians who live here.
MONTAGNE: And turning to you, Ivan, you've been spending time talking to folks there in the Emirates, you know, on the street. What's their response both officially and unofficially to the idea that Iran is a threat?
IVAN WATSON: Well, Renee, I think that officials in the UAE will be, to some degree, reassured. They tell me, in confidence, that they are worried about Iran. One UAE official says that he believes, in fact, that Iran is working on a nuclear program. But at the same time, they blame the Bush administration's policies and what they say are mistakes in the region for setting up a situation that Iran has capitalized on, as one political analyst I talked to put it. He said that President Bush was only half-right in his speech yesterday. He was correct in assessing the Iranian threat to small, wealthy Arab oil kingdoms like the United Arab Emirates, but he said that that threat is the product of America's mishandling of the region over the past seven years.
MONTAGNE: Generally, what is the response to President Bush's visit?
WATSON: Well, he's pretty unpopular here among Emiraties, even though...
MONTAGNE: Although it's not traditionally anti-U.S. there.
WATSON: And in addition to that, though, the rulers have unrolled the red carpet. They've showed President Bush everything from tents out in the desert to prize hunting falcons to a future community that's supposed to be carbon-free. And they have declared this a national holiday in Dubai. They've stopped all traffic in and out of that city as a security precaution, and that has prompted some residents to make the somewhat tongue-and-cheek congratulation to each other, Happy Bush Day - an example of local Emirate humor.
MONTAGNE: That was NPR's Ivan Watson and Michele Kelemen, both speaking to us from the United Arab Emirates.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continue to find themselves in a skirmish over race. It started with a comment made by Clinton before last week's New Hampshire primary. She was describing the role of President Lyndon Johnson in getting a civil rights law passed, something championed so memorably by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
S: Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, presidents before had not even tried. But it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality. The power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president who said we're going to do it and actually got it accomplished.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Audie Cornish reports from Columbia, South Carolina.
AUDIE CORNISH: The back-and-forth controversy over race extended to NBC's "Meet The Press," where Hillary Clinton objected to any interpretation of her comments as criticizing Dr. King.
(SOUNDBITE OF "MEET THE PRESS")
S: Does he deserve the lion's share of the credit for moving our country and moving our political process? Yes, he does. But he also had partners who were in the political system. And I think it is such an unfair and unwarranted attempt to, you know, misinterpret and mischaracterize what I've said.
CORNISH: But it didn't end there. In a conference call with the media, Barack Obama called Clinton's initial remarks ill-advised, and John Edwards took his concerns directly to a sanctuary full of black parishioners at the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Sumter, South Carolina.
MONTAGNE: I must say, I was troubled recently to see a suggestion that real change that came not through the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King but through a Washington politician. I fundamentally disagree with that. Those who believe that real change starts with Washington politicians have been in Washington too long and are living in a fairy tale.
CORNISH: Edwards' line about a fairy tale was an indirect shot at an earlier Bill Clinton comment about Obama. While John Edwards is still fighting to win the nomination, he has clearly placed himself alongside Obama as a so-called agent of change in opposition to what he sees as the status quo candidacy of Hillary Clinton. He made that clear in yesterday's comments.
MONTAGNE: But as someone who grew up in the segregated South, I feel an enormous amount of pride when I see the success that Senator Barack Obama is having in this campaign.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
MONTAGNE: And someday - and I'd be less than honest if I didn't say some days I wish he was having a little less success.
CORNISH: This time around he's thought to be not just in third place among voters overall but a distant third among black voters in particular. Even at Mt. Zion Missionary, where the senior pastor is a longtime friend and Edwards supporter, it's clear the former senator faces huge obstacles.
MONTAGNE: I'm considering Obama because I believe in his beliefs, and I'm leaning toward Hillary also. So it's - right now it's a toss-up between the two.
MONTAGNE: There's not much difference in the candidacy, but I think Obama is a lot more enthusiastic in what he says. Edwards has a message of change also, and that's why I'm between the two right now in who I'll vote for.
MONTAGNE: I'm just really not sure. It's just like if I could take a part of Senator Barack, a part of Senator Clinton, a part of Senator Edwards and put it together and be that perfect person - but that's not life.
CORNISH: Another voter, Joanne Taylor(ph), says she's especially intrigued with Obama after having watched him win over white voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.
MONTAGNE: Out in those states, it's more the other people than us, so if they leaning for him, then we might as well lean for him, too.
CORNISH: But nearly everyone in this unscientific sampling of voters said Edwards was their second choice, and that gives his campaign hope. The Edwards people brush off questions of whether he has the resources to make it past the next round of primaries and caucuses, and Edwards says no matter what happens in South Carolina, he insists it won't be his last hurrah.
MONTAGNE: The last hurrah is going to come when the election happens. And I am completely convinced that I will first be the Democratic nominee and that I will the general election.
CORNISH: Audie Cornish, NPR News, Columbia, South Carolina.
MONTAGNE: For an overview of what's at stake in the upcoming presidential primaries and the issues on voters' minds, go to npr.org/elections.
I: From Georgia Public Broadcasting, Susanna Capelouto reports.
SUSANNA CAPELOUTO: Georgia is the latest battleground for one of the NRA's top priorities. The NRA has been on the issue since 2004, after an Oklahoma company fired employees when guns were found in their vehicles. NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre says businesses shouldn't fall prey to the anti-gun lobby.
: There is an active campaign on the part of some of the anti-Second Amendment groups to encourage every corporate human resources department to post every business in the country off-limits to firearms.
CAPELOUTO: LaPierre worries that people with concealed weapons permits could be left with no place to take their guns. The Georgia Chamber of Commerce opposes the bill. Chamber lobbyist Joe Fleming says while Georgia is considered a gun-friendly state, it's also one that values private property rights.
: Business should be able to make decisions about whether or not firearms are allowed at their workplace. And that's not a government decision, it's a business decision.
CAPELOUTO: For NPR News, I'm Susanna Capelouto in Atlanta.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
And today at the U.S. Supreme Court, there will be one more judge.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "JUDGE ALEX")
U: Judge Alex.
MONTAGNE: NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg explains.
NINA TOTENBERG: Judge Alex will not be in costume today, no robe. He's not appearing as a judge, but as a litigant. In case you've never heard of Judge Alex, here's how they introduce him on TV.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "JUDGE ALEX")
U: As a trial lawyer he fought for the truth, and as a criminal court judge he commanded authority. Now he returns to preside over America's courtroom - Judge Alex.
TOTENBERG: And here's what his show sounds like.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "JUDGE ALEX")
U: He says that when he split up with his ex, she split with his ride.
MONTAGNE: Were any punches being thrown or anything?
U: Yes.
U: A whole lot.
U: A whole lot.
TOTENBERG: Truth be told, the legal facts and questions in this case are horrifically boring. Judge Alex Ferrer and his one-time agent are in a money dispute, and the question is whether state or federal law applies.
MONTAGNE: We're done.
U: All rise.
TOTENBERG: Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
The music label behind the Rolling Stones and the Beastie Boys is slashing a third of its workforce. British papers are reporting that EMI plans to cut up to 2,000 jobs. It's part of a big restructuring by the company's new owners. A private firm bought EMI last year and is trying to improve its profits in the face of falling CD sales and illegal downloads. EMI's owners say thousands of artists could also lose their contracts. Some of their biggest acts, including singer Robbie Williams and rock band Coldplay, plan to protest the changes.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Cyrus Farivar has a look at what's in store.
CYRUS FARIVAR: Jason Snell, editorial director of Macworld magazine, explains.
MONTAGNE: You'd be trading off that size and sort of accepting that there's another computer in your life and that this is sort of your main computer sidekick, and you'd take it with you when you need to go on the road, but that you know you're always going to come back to the main computer, which is where you're keeping all of your stuff. So I think that's the scenario for a flash-based laptop.
FARIVAR: For NPR News, I'm Cyrus Farivar, San Francisco.
MONTAGNE: China isn't so dazzled by Apple's iPhone, it seems. Apple and China's largest mobile phone company have called off plans to launch the iPhone there. A spokesperson for China Mobile only said her company has terminated talks with Apple, but did not say why. Experts had predicted that the two companies could end up in a standoff over issues like how to share revenues.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
But as Dustin Dwyer of Michigan Radio reports, the real kings of the roads are still gas-guzzling pickup trucks.
DUSTIN DWYER: Auto sales analyst Rebecca Lindland of Global Insights says these trucks are still incredibly popular.
MONTAGNE: They're still a huge percentage of the market, you know, and they're a huge percentage of their financial performance also. And it's an American icon.
DWYER: And perhaps the most iconic of them all is the Ford F-150 pickup. For 31 years straight, the Ford F series has been the top-selling vehicle in the country. Yesterday in Detroit, Ford unveiled its latest F-150. The new truck comes with a beefier front grille, and Ford says it's loaded with a whole slew of new features like a fold-out step to make it easier to climb into the bed of the truck.
MONTAGNE: Pull it out. Let out the step.
DWYER: Matt O'Leary is the chief engineer of this new pickup. He says to keep its lead in sales, Ford is trying to anticipate what truck buyers want before they know they want it.
MONTAGNE: Customers didn't tell us they wanted the tailgate step. We just know from looking at them that there are people who like to get up into the box and don't like just crawling up on the back of the tailgate and getting up, and especially if you're carrying something, right; it gives you a lot more flexibility.
DWYER: Yesterday Dodge's parent, Chrysler, hired a team of cattle ranchers from Oklahoma to herd 120 longhorn steer through downtown Detroit. Chrysler's Jim Press was at the mic as the herd parted to make way for the new Dodge Ram.
MONTAGNE: Ladies and gentlemen, here it is, the full-size pickup that separates Dodge from the herd. The new 2009 Dodge Ram.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DWYER: Now he says a hybrid Dodge Ram could have a more significant impact on the environment than the Toyota Prius.
MONTAGNE: If you look at the CO2 emissions or the fuel use, which vehicle uses more, a little car or a big truck? Big truck does. So we're actually saving a lot more per mile driven than on a small car, which is a marginal save.
DWYER: Press said the hybrid engine would improve the Ram's fuel efficiency by 40 percent. That means the truck would get roughly the same mileage as a four-door car. That could give truck fans one more reason to buy. But in the short-term, analyst Rebecca Lindland says she expects truck sales to drop 10 percent this year, as gas prices remain high and the housing market continues to stall.
MONTAGNE: Really tough market to come into, but they don't really have a choice. They just have to make the best of it.
DWYER: For NPR News, I'm Dustin Dwyer in Detroit.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
And our last word in business is...
(SOUNDBITE OF TIGER'S ROAR)
MONTAGNE: It's the latest in wildlife technology. The National Zoo in Washington, D.C., is bringing calls of the wild to your cell phone. It's selling animal ring tones. In addition to the Sumatran tiger you just heard, your incoming calls can sound like an anteater...
(SOUNDBITE OF ANTEATER)
MONTAGNE: ...or a bunch of North American river otters...
(SOUNDBITE OF OTTERS)
MONTAGNE: And if you really need a good laugh, have someone call you after you've downloaded this.
(SOUNDBITE OF HYENA)
MONTAGNE: This is MORNING EDITION. I'm Renee Montagne.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne. Good morning.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Cokie Roberts is tracking those polls and joins us now. Good morning.
COKIE ROBERTS: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: These two polls, New York Times/CBS and Washington Post/ABC, show the same front-runners, but the big change appears to be on the Republican side.
ROBERTS: That's right. John McCain up ahead in both polls and that is a big change. In the ABC poll, he is at 28 percent and last month was at 12 percent. Both also show Huckabee in second place, big difference between the two, though, after that. Romney in third place on the ABC poll, Giuliani in the New York Times poll. So still a lot of fluidity in that Republican race. That's really what we're seeing there. Both also show Hillary Clinton continuing to lead. Interestingly, the New York Times poll has Obama way behind her at 27 percent. The ABC poll has him virtually tied with her at 37 percent, so movement there as well.
MONTAGNE: So in a sense, pick your polls. Although, Cokie, a lot of people are going to be thinking, hey, they were really wrong in New Hampshire.
ROBERTS: For instance, what issues are the voters concerned about. And these polls tell us that voters are very concerned about the economy, much more so than they were six months ago. And tomorrow night there'll be another big Democratic debate and you'll see that addressed much more because of the polls. It also tells you who's going where. And these polls say that the independents are the big supporters of both John McCain and Barack Obama. That could be a problem for both of them in closed primaries where only Democrats and Republicans can vote. They also show a big shift in the African-American community in the ABC poll. In last month's ABC poll, Hillary Clinton was leading among blacks, 52 to 39. In today's ABC poll, Barack Obama is leading among blacks by a big margin, 60 to 32. And that comes, Renee, of course, as the issue of race has been raised in this campaign. So that's something that everybody will be watching.
MONTAGNE: As we've been reporting this morning, sharp exchanges between the Obama and Clinton campaigns on the subject of race.
ROBERTS: And it's mainly been by the surrogates. But yesterday, Senator Clinton went on NBC to defend herself on the subject. Let's listen to Senator Clinton.
ROBERTS: You have an African-American, an extraordinary man, a person of tremendous talents and abilities running to become our president. You have a woman running to break the highest and hardest glass ceiling. I don't think either of us want to inject race or gender in this campaign.
ROBERTS: But of course, both have been injected into the campaign. And Senator Obama directly answered yesterday the charges of the Clinton campaign, that he was distorting what Senator Clinton had said, that Martin Luther King could not have accomplished what he had accomplished without President Johnson. Obama said, I didn't - I never said anything about any of that. It's all come from her. So we're going to see a lot more back-and-forthing here on this issue, particularly going into primaries where there are huge African-American votes.
MONTAGNE: Cokie, thanks very much. News analyst Cokie Roberts.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Bobby Jindal takes office today as the new governor of Louisiana. He has promised to root out corruption in a state legendary for its graft. And that will be part of an even bigger challenge, leading the state's efforts to rebuild from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. It's been more than two years and much of Southern Louisiana is still struggling to recover, as NPR's Jason Beaubien reports from New Orleans.
JASON BEAUBIEN: Along St. Claude Avenue, the plywood tacked over windows has faded to dull gray. Weeds poke through the debris of houses that collapsed in on themselves.
BEAUBIEN: Okay.
BEAUBIEN: For Kelly Westfall, a sophomore at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, this is the first time she's been to post-Katrina New Orleans. She says she's surprised by how bad things still are.
MONTAGNE: I couldn't imagine if something like this happened, like near our school in Boston, I feel as if it would be fixed, you know, it would be months. And I can't believe that, like, two and a half years later, some of this hasn't even been touched. It's kind of mind-blowing for us.
BEAUBIEN: More than two years later, hundreds of thousands of people still haven't returned, and the financial toll of the storms is incalculable.
(SOUNDBITE OF ENGINE)
BEAUBIEN: Brian Brox, who teaches political science at Tulane, says Jindal comes into office with a strong mandate to stamp out graft in Baton Rouge. He says there's a perception in Louisiana that the state's reputation for corruption hindered federal disaster relief.
P: A lot of voters think that we need to clean up the politics in Louisiana in order to help fulfill the recovery from Katrina.
BEAUBIEN: And Brox at Tulane points out that constituents in non-coastal areas have a long list of issues - from education reform to taxes, to job growth - that they also expect Jindal to take on.
P: He's really going to have to split his time, rebuild the hurricane-ravaged areas as well as improve the economic fortune of the entire state.
MONTAGNE: 2008 may be the most important year in the history of New Orleans.
BEAUBIEN: Arnie Fielkow, the president of the New Orleans City Council, says Jindal's coming in at a time when significant amounts of recovery funds will finally be flowing into the region.
MONTAGNE: We must show our citizens and the rest of this country that we're rebuilding. And if we do that, I think we are going to not only get our own citizens to stay with us, but we're going to get a lot of outsiders being inspired to invest in this great community.
BEAUBIEN: Jason Beaubien, NPR News, New Orleans.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Rebels in Colombia last week released two women hostages and that has raised hopes that others could also be freed. The left-wing rebels, known as FARC, are holding dozens of political hostages, including three American contractors. The highest-profile captive is the former presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, who's been held since 2002. She's a Colombian with French citizenship, and her two children live in Paris. Betancourt is practically a household name in France, so along with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has stepped in to mediate for her release, as Eleanor Beardsley reports.
MONTAGNE: (Speaking in Foreign Language)
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY: Sitting in a Paris cafe, 19-year-old Lorenzo Betancourt says he's heartened by the release of the two hostages. But he's worried about his mother.
MONTAGNE: When you send messages, you feel extremely close to her. Know when - you know that she listens to it, you feel like you're next to her and you just want to give her hope. My mom won't hold long. If you see her picture, if you see her movies, if you see her letters, she won't hold long, and all the hostages that are there won't hold long either. They're suffering hell.
BEARDSLEY: Writer Dominique Simone(ph) comes to every rally.
MONTAGNE: (Through translator) In France, we just don't leave one of our compatriots out there to die in such a situation. That's a basic principle of democracy. In 2008, how can we allow people to be chained up, some more than 10 years and dragged through the jungle, and only a couple thousand miles from the U.S.?
(SOUNDBITE OF NEWS BROADCAST)
U: (Speaking in French)
BEARDSLEY: The scene of the hostages being reunited with their loved ones was broadcast live on French television, and Betancourt's supporters hope she will be freed next. Fourteen hundred towns across France has made Betancourt an honorary citizen.
(SOUNDBITE OF BROADCAST)
P: (Speaking in French)
BEARDSLEY: John Michelob(ph), a correspondent with France 2 television, says Sarkozy likes to see himself as the rescuer of hostages worldwide.
MONTAGNE: He's spent a lot of political capital in the very controversial liberation of Bulgarian hostages in Libya plus Betancourt, she's become quite a cause celebre in France, and that's the main reason why President Sarkozy wants to be on that story.
BEARDSLEY: Back at the cafe, Betancourt's son Lorenzo says he wants Washington to be as active as Sarkozy.
MONTAGNE: The United States can do a lot. They can actually change everything. We know in the United States, liberty is one of the basic values. You can make that possible for every Colombian.
BEARDSLEY: For NPR News, I'm Eleanor Beardsley in Paris.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
When the infant became ill eight months later, rebels took him away. Colombian officials found him in foster care, and DNA tests proved that that child, in foster care, was indeed Clara Rojas' son.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Rob Gifford has more.
ROB GIFFORD: Foreign Minister Dimitri Rupel says it's a seminal moment in European history.
GIFFORD: This is the first sign of melting away of this division between East and West, and old and new member countries.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHURCH BELL)
GIFFORD: Back on the Slovenian side of the border, 80-year-old Lado Maroshitz(ph) and his wife, Alowisha(ph), are out shopping.
MONTAGNE: (Speaking in foreign language)
GIFFORD: We never dreamed we could even join the European Union, says Maroschitz, let alone become its president - it's a sentiment echoed by many of the older generation in Slovenia who grew up in Tito's Yugoslavia.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRADITIONAL SLOVENIAN MUSIC)
GIFFORD: In the capital of Ljubljana, stores play traditional Slovenian music for the growing number of tourists. Despite its recent economic growth, the pace of the city of 280,000 people is still slow and relaxed. But leading the E.U. has given Slovenians like 24-year-old Yaca Benedichit(ph) a growing self-confidence. Sitting in a bar downtown, he says joining and leading the E.U. is a completely natural step for Slovenia to take.
MONTAGNE: We felt a part of Europe ever since Yugoslavia fell apart. When it fell apart, we were immediately European. We went shopping to Italy and Austria. We always feel that we are just the same in Europe as Austria or Germany or anything else.
GIFFORD: But his friend, Sabena Zonte(ph), says Western Europeans, like the neighboring Austrians, still have plenty of prejudices about former Eastern European countries like Slovenia.
MONTAGNE: I think Austria really look at us like all the Slovenian, Slavic, or ex-Yugoslavia - they know nothing. We have done so much work in, I don't know, 15, 16, 17 years. And we are not stupid, but they think we are. They don't see us as people.
GIFFORD: Rob Gifford, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Mr. BILLY BUSH (Co-Host, "Access Hollywood") This is the scene today. There is not a star to be found. Due to the Writers Guild strike, the Golden Globes ceremony has been canceled.
MONTAGNE: Good morning.
JOHN RIDLEY: Hey, Renee. How are you?
MONTAGNE: So, did you host a Golden Globe press conference watching party at your house last night?
RIDLEY: Only a party if you consider my wife and our dogs party environment. Otherwise, we were taking the austerity path, along with the rest of the Hollywood. We cut back this year.
MONTAGNE: For those who missed the show and you could have probably if you blinked - I think it was only about half an hour long, instead of the usual three-some hours - tell us about the fashion.
RIDLEY: There was a considerable lack of fashion this year. Instead of having the night of a thousand stars you normally get with the Golden Globes, it was more like night of the four infotainment news readers. So you had Nancy O'Dell and Billy Bush from "Access Hollywood," and that's about it. So Nancy O'Dell looked lovely, and Billy Bush looked functional.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
MONTAGNE: Now, there are estimates that the ripple effect of the cancellation of this awards show alone cost the city tens of millions of dollars, for - in all kind of things - fashion designers, hair dressers, makeup artists, jewelers, limo drivers, restaurant staff, probably even dermatologists. This could have been a big night for many of them.
RIDLEY: It sounds kind of jokey, to talk about the limo drivers, hair and makeup. But honestly, that's a lot of what Los Angeles is about. It's entertainment-driven. And these folks are being hit hard. One estimate, almost $80 million - eight, zero million dollars - in one weekend lost to the city. By the way, that's no joke. We're facing a major budget shortfall in the billions in California. To lose $80 million to the city and the state, we really can't afford that.
MONTAGNE: So the Golden Globes have been lost. But what about the ultimate red carpet event? Do you think the writers strike will be resolved in time for the Oscars to take place next month?
RIDLEY: I think a lot of people felt badly about not having this award show this past week. And now that it's gone and we sort of lost it - and I think looking forward to the Oscars, even if that Writers Guild strike is not resolved, it'll be interesting to see if some of these actors think, you know what? It's more important that the show goes on and that we honor our own than to worry about a strike, which is really starting to damage the economy of Los Angeles.
MONTAGNE: John, thanks very much.
RIDLEY: Thank you, Renee. It was a pleasure, as always.
MONTAGNE: That's MORNING EDITION commentator John Ridley, who, as he just said, has publicly broken with the Writers Guild over the strike.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Good morning.
JOHN FEINSTEIN: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Let's start with the teams that won't be playing next week - the Colts and the Cowboys. How surprising were their losses yesterday?
FEINSTEIN: As for the Cowboys, again, a shock because they were playing at home. But the Giants are 9 and 1 on the road this year. They play good football on the road. And there will be shockwaves - excuse me - throughout the state of Texas because Tony Romo, the star quarterback for the Cowboys, went on vacation last week with the actress Jessica Simpson. And there was all this speculation about, would the vacation affect Romo? Well, the Cowboys lost. Jessica Simpson is not welcome in the state of Texas anymore.
MONTAGNE: So you decide, right?
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
MONTAGNE: Well, the upshot is that Eli Manning will be playing for a Super Bowl spot and his big brother, Peyton, won't.
FEINSTEIN: Now he's won two. He hasn't thrown an interception. The Giants will be underdogs going into Green Bay, where the weather is supposed to be in the single digits next Sunday. But they're there. They're playing. And Peyton Manning is, I guess, taping another TV commercial this morning.
MONTAGNE: Okay. Two favorites to advance: the unbeaten Patriots and the Packers, led by Bret Favre.
FEINSTEIN: Yeah. Bret Favre, who no, it's not true. He did not quarterback the Packers under Vince Lombardi in the '60s. But he is 38. He's talked about retirement many times. He came back and decided to play one more year, and it's turned into a Cinderella story. The Packers were a bad team last year. Now, they're a step away the Super Bowl. And if they get there, they will probably play the undefeated Patriots led by maybe the greatest quarterback of all time, Tom Brady, if he goes on and wins his fourth Super Bowl and takes the Patriots to an undefeated season.
MONTAGNE: John, let's take a quick spin to the other side of the planet and a different sport. The first Grand Slam event in tennis is under way today in Australia.
FEINSTEIN: Yeah. Roger Federer is going for his ninth Grand Slam title in the last 11. What an unbelievable run. He's two short of Pete Sampras's all-time record of 14 major titles. And he is a huge favorite. Serena Williams came from nowhere to win the Australian last year. This year, she should be the favorite on the women side along with Justine Henin, who's the top-ranked player in the world.
MONTAGNE: John, thanks very much.
FEINSTEIN: Okay, Renee, thank you.
MONTAGNE: And you're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
This is MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This morning, we're featuring some thrilling tales from a bygone era, from the days when men were men, and women were women. These stories are collected in "The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps: The Best Crime Stories from the Pulps During Their Golden Age."
Here's how one begins "Stag Party," published in 1933.
(Reading) Stirring his coffee, McFee - Blue Shield Detective Agency - thought he'd seen the girl somewhere. She had dull red hair. She had a subtle red mouth and experienced eyes with green lights in them. That was plenty. But over her provocative beauty, lay a hard sophistication as brightly polished as a new nickel.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. OTTO PENZLER (Editor, "The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps: The Best Crime Stories from the Pulps During Their Golden Age"): They just don't write it like that anymore.
MONTAGNE: No, they don't.
Otto Penzler edited the "Big Book of Pulps," and he owns the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City.
Good morning.
Mr. PENZLER: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: You've divided this massive collection into three categories: crime fighters, villains, and dames. Those would be the three key ingredients of all pulp fiction.
Mr. PENZLER: That's largely true. A pulp story without a detective and, obviously, somebody for him to do battle with is unthinkable and I can't remember reading a pulp story that didn't have a dame - either a good girl or a bad girl.
MONTAGNE: Here's a perfect line - I didn't like his face and I told him so.
Mr. PENZLER: Carroll John Daly.
MONTAGNE: From the story "The Third Murderer." Now, Carroll John Daly is not a name that jumps out and as the way, say, Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler would today. But it turns out he has quite a place in the history of pulp.
Mr. PENZLER: In a way, he has the most important place. He created the hard-boiled private eye character. And then he followed that with writing more than one story about the same character, so he created the first series - private detective in literature.
MONTAGNE: This era, the 1920s, '30s and '40s - it gave rise to this form. Why?
Mr. PENZLER: I think it was really the beginning of a different kind of writing. The kind of writing in the world of literature, world of books that everyone had been familiar with was Henry James and long sentences, long paragraphs. And then Ernest Hemingway came along, and Dashiell Hammett came along, and they started to write short clipped, quick sentences that didn't require lots and lots of description, and the pulps provided the perfect springboard for that kind of literary tone.
MONTAGNE: You've got the book with you, right?
Mr. PENZLER: I do.
MONTAGNE: Read for us the favorite Dashiell Hammett moment in there.
Mr. PENZLER: There a lot of paragraphs in Hammett that stand out. But, generally, you need the whole concept of a longer piece because so much has told in dialogue. Let me give you just a little bit in the story "The Creeping Siamese."
(Reading) He opened the door briskly and then hesitated, standing in the doorway, holding the door open, turning the knob back and forth with one boney hand. There was no indecision in his face. It was ugly and grim. And its expression was the expression of a man who is remembering something disagreeable.
Don't you like that?
MONTAGNE: Mm-hmm.
Mr. PENZLER: You get the look of that face without needing four paragraphs to describe what did I actually look like.
MONTAGNE: All of this pulp fiction rested on one other character and that for the most part was a city, with a place that they were in. Raymond Chandler, of course, that was Los Angeles. And in one of his stories in his book, "Red Wind," he begins the story with weather, some very quintessential aspects of southern California. Would you read that first paragraph for us?
Mr. PENZLER: I'm glad you asked that because it's my favorite story in this entire book.
(Reading) There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husband's neck. Anything can happen.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. PENZLER: I have many friends in California who, every time there are fires or the Santa Anas blow, they refer to "Red Wind" as if it's a red-wind-night here, you know, I'm not going to turn my back on my wife.
MONTAGNE: Put the knives away.
Mr. PENZLER: Yeah.
MONTAGNE: Well, you know, but - you know, it could be another city - fog in San Francisco, rainy streets of New York. It seems that the city has to evoke a sense of menace.
Mr. PENZLER: Well, big cities do evoke a sense of menace. Remember, it's the time of the Great Depression for much of this, a time where a lot of people didn't have a lot of money and gangsters flourished during the Prohibition era. And all of that contributed to a sense of menace in the city, but it's only in a few cities. It's a very rare story indeed in the pulps where you would find something happening in Cincinnati or Indianapolis. It's New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles. Apart from that, the rest of the country doesn't really exist.
MONTAGNE: Now, there's a word for women that get used in the pulps along with, you know, girls, and dolls, and dames. And the word is very unfamiliar to us now - is frails.
Mr. PENZLER: I love the word frail. It's not a word that I would use, although I have used doll, much to the disgust of my wife.
MONTAGNE: Well, put frail in a conversation because I can't - I'm not sure if it's…
Mr. PENZLER: It's just referring to a woman. The frail walked into the room or the blond frail sat at the desk. Skirt is used frequently to mean a woman.
MONTAGNE: What was the target audience? Who were they writing for?
Mr. PENZLER: The pulps that I'm using in this book, the crime-mystery pulps, were written for men - generally younger men, generally blue-collar. You know, the covers were very alluring, almost inevitably. There was a beautiful young woman, partially exposed, and frequently in a torn sweater or dress and looking menaced, and here is the hero coming to save her. Well, this was a very attractive image for a young guy at the news stand figuring out what he was going to read.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for joining us.
Mr. PENZLER: This was fun. Thank you a lot.
MONTAGNE: Otto Penzler is editor of "The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps."
(Soundbite of music)
MONTAGNE: To read "Stag Party" beginning to end, the story that launched an influential detective series at npr.org.
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Securing the border is one of the Department of Homeland Security's most important jobs. As with everything the agency has tried to do, balancing security with freedom and the economy hasn't been easy. Critics say the border is still like a sieve in many areas, and efforts to close the gaps have run into strong resistance.
NPR's Pam Fessler traveled to the U.S. border with Canada for this next in our series on the fifth anniversary of the Department of Homeland Security.
PAM FESSLER: Roy Davis stands on a windswept hill near his farm on one of the northernmost points of Vermont. Dry, powdery snow whips past his legs as he points to a stone block in the ground.
Mr. ROY DAVIS: That granite marker right there is on the border between Canada and the U.S.
FESSLER: There are a few houses nearby, but mostly it's open fields and woods as far as the eye can see. For Davis and others in the tiny town of Derby Line, Canada is literally across the street, where friends and relatives live, where you go to shop or pray.
Mr. DAVIS: Not much to tell, but that's the way it is, and it's the way it is every day. And we don't think anything about it being two countries. It's all one country as far as we're concerned.
(Soundbite of wind chimes)
FESSLER: Back inside their ranch house, Davis and his wife, Shirley, bemoan the changes taking place here. The border checkpoint used to be little more than a formality. But last year, residents suddenly began to face much more intense scrutiny. Cars were routinely searched, familiar faces gone.
Mr. DAVIS: They've treated us just as if we were convicts every time we crossed.
Ms. SHIRLEY DAVIS: It's eased up a little bit now, though, but you'd have to get your ID out, and you'd have to open your trunk. It's so different than it used to be. Before, you know, they would wave and smile, and that was it.
Mr. KEITH BEADLE (Derby Line Trustee): Good morning, Buzzy, how are you this morning?
FESSLER: Derby Line trustee Keith Beadle greets pharmacist Buz Roy at Brown's Drug Store just yards from the border. Everyone here is worried about January 31st - that's when Americans are supposed to start showing not only a photo ID but proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate.
Homeland Security says it needs to know who's entering the country to keep it safe. But Roy asks Beadle, what happens if he forgets his papers?
Mr. BUZ ROY (Owner, Brown's Drug Store): They can't exclude me from my country. They can give me a hard time, but they can't exclude me.
Mr. BEADLE: I don't know what - what would happen, whether there would be fine or - no idea.
FESSLER: There's a lot of confusion here about what lies ahead.
(Soundbite of moving vehicle)
FESSLER: Outside, Keith Beadle acknowledges that smugglers can and do use local side roads and nearby fields to sneak illegal drugs and immigrants into the country and that terrorism is a concern. But he thinks the government's focus is all wrong, that it should be improving intelligence, not clamping down on local residents.
Mr. BEADLE: I realize that we have to be mindful of security, but I think you have to do it in a thoughtful and logical manner, and not just, you know, circle the wagons and, you know, give everybody a gun to protect themselves.
Unidentified Person: Good morning. Welcome to the United States.
Unidentified Woman #1: Thank you.
Unidentified Person: Where do you all live?
FESSLER: Traffic at the nearby Highgate Springs port of entry is light and moving quickly. Homeland Security has been trying to work with locals to address some of their concerns and recently eased the search-every-trunk policy. It also gave supervisors discretion to conduct fewer name checks if traffic is backed up.
Jim McMillan is the Customs and Border Protection port director.
Mr. JIM McMILLAN (Port Director): We're a young agency. We've only been in existence for five years now. We're trying to develop what works best. We're talking totally different times.
FESSLER: He thinks people will find that some changes, such as the passport requirement, will make things easier by allowing officers to electronically scan information that they now type into the computer.
His supervisor, Kimberly Nott, says she realizes the agency has a big selling job to do. She knows it's hard for local people to deal with the new procedures, but says they're here to stay.
Ms. KIMBERLY NOTT (Port Supervisor): Because it's a border and security has now hit Vermont, you know, and they took care of all the big ports and got all the security things there, and now it's starting to come here.
FESSLER: Homeland Security officials say they sometimes feel damned if they do, damned if they don't, that everyone complains about security gaps, then objects when anything's done about it.
But even some Customs and Border Protection officers are unhappy with what's going on here. They say they're understaffed and overworked, and turnover is high.
John Wilda recently retired after 33 years on the Vermont border. He was also the local union rep.
Mr. JOHN WILDA: People are leaving because morale is so low. They don't enjoy the job anymore. It isn't the same. There's no respect for what the people do.
FESSLER: Wilda says customs officers used to have more discretion and that it's been replaced by reliance on documents and technology.
Mr. WILDA: This repeated scan something, let them go, scan, let it go, scan, let it go. You don't have the opportunity to really talk with the people anymore. The sixth sense is the thing that really broke a lot of cases for us. When you would sit there and talk with someone, because it's the nervousness, it's the shifting eyes, it's the carotid artery. It's different things that we're taught to recognize.
FESSLER: But customs official Nott says technology gives officers more time to do their jobs. And sometimes it's good to shake things up, that after the agency started rotating officers in from out of town, there were new arrests.
Ms. NOTT: And they were all frequent crossers. People say that's such a nice guy. He crosses all the time. Well, now you know why. He had, you know, narcotics.
FESSLER: But the department also faces strong opposition from businesses and lawmakers all across the border. They worry that the new security measures could destroy exactly what the country is trying to protect.
Bill Stenger is president of Vermont's Jay Peak ski resort.
Mr. BILL STENGER: They were thinking security, security, security, security. They weren't thinking economy, economy, jobs, people's livelihoods, healthy communities.
FESSLER: He thinks changes at the border are much more likely to stop the Canadians that his business and many others in the area rely upon than it will stop a determined terrorist.
Mr. STENGER: We'll catch this tram.
FESSLER: We take a trip up to the 4,000-foot summit of Jay Peak. There, Stenger points north to a huge, snow-covered field.
Mr. STENGER: And the mountain just beyond that white field is Mount Sutton, and that's one of the more popular ski areas in Quebec, and there are four of them right around our border area that all of our Canadian guests have a choice to use if they choose not to come to Jay Peak.
FESSLER: And that exactly what he thinks will happen if it becomes too hard to enter the U.S.
Recently, Homeland Security worked out a deal with Vermont and other border states to allow secure drivers licenses to be used instead of passports for some crossings, and Congress has delayed a more stringent passport requirement.
It's a start, says Stenger, and so too, it appears, is the growing pushback Homeland Security faces five years after its creation from those who think there are other ways to protect the country.
Pam Fessler, NPR News.
MONTAGNE: Tomorrow we hear proposals for improving the Homeland Security Department, and you can hear the first part of our series at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
The economy is increasingly on voters' minds and nowhere is that more evident than Michigan. As it holds its presidential primary today, the Republican frontrunners are Mitt Romney and John McCain. On the Democratic side, a dispute between state and national Party officials over Michigan's unsanctioned move to this early date led most of the major Democrats to take their names off the ballot. Michigan is the first state with a large and diverse population to hold a primary this year.
NPR's Don Gonyea reports.
DON GONYEA: Two things are happening simultaneously in Michigan today: in Detroit, the annual celebration of the car business is underway in the form of one of the world's premier car-related events: the annual North American International Auto Show; And there is the Michigan presidential primary.
At the auto show, there are glitzy and gleaming new cars on rotating pedestals. In the presidential campaign, the focus has been on the troubles of the Big Three domestic carmakers whose problems are at the heart of Michigan's ailing economy.
Talk to voters and you'll hear hope for better times mixed in with worries about the state of things today. Forty-year-old Michael Sharp is a restaurant manager. He says business is way down.
Mr. MICHAEL SHARP: We need jobs to stop people from running away to other states. We need people to come back here and have a place to work.
GONYEA: Sharp was joined by 33-year-old Erin Alexander, shopping at an outlet mall in the town of Howell.
Mr. ERIN ALEXANDER (Resident, Michigan): A disproportionate number of my friends are unemployed or working in industries that aren't their own - like for instance, I work in an industry that's not my own. I have a degree in automotive marketing, but I work in the restaurant industry.
GONYEA: Independent Michigan-based pollster Ed Sarpolus says in survey after survey, the economy is the number one issue in the state.
Mr. ED SARPOLUS (Pollster): Here in Michigan we have a very stagnant economy, perceptually. Unemployment is running around seven-and-a-half percent consistently.
GONYEA: That's half again the national rate of five percent, and the worst in the country, which brings us back to the car business. The Big Three have shed both blue and white-collar jobs and auto suppliers have cut back as well and the negative effects have spread through other sectors of the Michigan economy. The state has lost some 200,000 manufacturing jobs since the year 2000, and the lay-offs continue. A GM plant near Ypsilanti, just last week, announced another 200 job cuts.
University of Michigan economist Joan Crary says the state has worked to diversify its economy, but it's still got a very long way to go.
Ms. JOAN CRARY (Assistant Research Scientist, Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics, Department of Economics-University of Michigan): I think what we're dealing with here is the fact that the state economy is so much more concentrated in the automobile industry than in the rest of the country. And in particular, in the auto industry that is represented by the domestic nameplates: Ford, GM and Chrysler. Most recent estimates, 17 times greater concentration of jobs from the Big Three in Michigan and in the country as a whole - that's phenomenal.
GONYEA: And Crary cautions that there's no quick fix. Sitting in his office not far from the state capitol building in Lansing, Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis describes the situation as a single-state recession.
Mr. SAUL ANUZIS (Chairman, Michigan Republican Party): We're a unique state in the entire country. We're the only state that lost jobs six years in a row. We're one of only two states that has a net outflow of U-Haul trucks going out of Michigan as people move out. You can feel it. So, I think we are pessimistic.
GONYEA: And that is the backdrop for today's presidential primary.
For Michigan residents, many feel that state's auto industry and its middle-class are in the balance. Many blame the Bush White House for taking such a hands-off approach to the industry. Detroit auto executives even had a hard time scheduling meetings with the president over the past seven years. That's something that candidates from both parties say won't happen if they are elected, although it's not clear that any of them have a plan for actually turning things around for the American automakers.
Don Gonyea, NPR News, Detroit.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
One issue that was not supposed to divide the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination is race. But the rhetoric between the Clinton and Obama campaigns has resulted in bad feelings on both sides, related to race.
Over the weekend, Hillary Clinton tried to clarify her assessment of the role Martin Luther King Jr. played in getting the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed. Her campaign had another fire to put out after a prominent black supporter, BET founder Bob Johnson, seemed to raise Barack Obama's self-acknowledged drug use as a teenager. Voters in South Carolina, particularly black voters, are trying to make sense of it all.
NPR's Audie Cornish reports from Columbia, South Carolina.
AUDIE CORNISH: Until yesterday's steps toward a truce, Barack Obama and his allies have been making the case that the Clinton campaign has been injecting race into this election. And a random sampling of African-American voters in South Carolina seems to agree.
Anthony Stovall(ph) of Columbia gave me the censored version of what he says people are feeling.
Mr. ANTHONY STOVALL: That it's unprofessional, that they're upset; of course they didn't say upset. And that it is a darn shame that that sort of stuff has to still go on today. So that's the clean version.
(Soundbite of laughter)
CORNISH: Stovall is digging into the lunch buffet at Mac's On Main, a popular soul food restaurant run by chef-slash-City Councilman Barry Walker. Walker's place is decorated with signed framed photos of blues greats like B.B. King and laminated maps of his council district. Walker is undecided but says he is unhappy with the direction he feels the Clinton campaign has taken.
Mr. BARRY WALKER (Owner, Mac's on Main): I think they're going for broke now, going for whatever they can do. Crying ain't going to help here. You know, she can cry all she wants. You know, black people have been crying for years. So what's going to help is addressing the issues that are affecting us.
CORNISH: Joseph Free of Columbia, who is dining at the restaurant, agrees.
Mr. JOSEPH FREE: They're doing - are getting into the part that I was hoping wouldn't happen, that they would just stick to issues and what they think they could do instead of start turning this thing into a race problem.
CORNISH: Those comments reflect a kind of collective disappointment within the black community, according to Todd Shaw, political science professor at the University of South Carolina.
Dr. TODD SHAW (University of South Carolina): I think African-American voters are wise in this sense, that they know there is more to come. And I think that is actually the fear.
CORNISH: Shaw says there is a particular frustration at the Clinton camp's tactic of having other blacks, such as BET founder Bob Johnson, go after Obama. And they're especially disappointed in the role President Bill Clinton is playing in this effort.
Dr. SHAW: Clinton is - that sense of him being the first black president. Well, now you have not the surrogate, but you have this prospect of the first black president. And so in effect they don't have that same mantle to speak to, and actually in some ways you might say for, the African-American community.
CORNISH: Those sentiments were echoed across town at the historically black Benedict College, where Kathryn Jones of Columbia and Brenda Walker of Irmo work. The women were split about what to make of Bill Clinton's critical comments of Obama.
Ms. KATHERINE JONES: Bill Clinton and - and he is the kind of straight shooter, I think, if anything he was probably trying to refer to what they call Obama's lack of experience. So you know, I won't hold it against him.
Ms. BRENDA WALKER: Well, see, I wasn't going to vote for Hillary anyway, but him as a former president, I had high regards for him, and I lost some points - he lost some points with me himself.
CORNISH: There is almost two weeks to go before South Carolina's Democratic primary, where more than half of the electorate is expected to be African-American. And so Hillary Clinton has a chance to repair relations with the black community. Her first opportunity comes tonight,when she'll join Obama as well as John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich in a debate in Las Vegas.
Audie Cornish, NPR News, Columbia.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Joining us now to talk about all this is NPR news analyst Juan Williams. Good morning.
JUAN WILLIAMS: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Okay. So it all started with Hillary Clinton's comment to a Fox News reporter about the roles of Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson - and these roles in passing civil rights legislation that happened more than 40 years ago. Did the two sides of this divide just hear the same comments differently?
WILLIAMS: Well, I think that's right, Renee. I mean, it's an innocuous comment for lots of folks. On the other hand, it's a comment that could be easily perceived by African-Americans, minorities, those who have been at the lower end of economic scale as slighting the idea of black power, black agency to create social change.
But you know, for those who see it as innocuous, it is historically accurate. In July of '64 it was President Johnson and - I might add a Republican - Everett Dirksen, the senator from Illinois, white men, who put into place the civil rights legislation. But that came after the '63 march, James Meredith, Freedom Summer. But the comment diminished the role of King and activists, and I think that there was - it touched a deep nerve in black America about the ability of black people to create change. And Mrs. Clinton was trying to suggest that she is a doer while Obama might be just a talker, and that you need people who are doers, but it really did cross the line in terms of the feeling of black people that they're able to make a difference in their own lives.
MONTAGNE: Well, you say that, but could one argue that the Obama side is taking needless offense, as in making this something bigger than it is?
WILLIAMS: Oh, yeah. And I think that they have been trying to fuel the fire, if you will, Renee. Representative Charles Rangel, who's the dean of the Congressional Black Caucus, said this has been overanalyzed, you know, and he's looking for the white person who insulted him or any black person. John Lewis, the civil rights icon, now Georgia congressman, added that Obama is no Martin Luther King or Bobby Kennedy, people that Obama has been analogizing himself to.
And you know, it's funny, racially coded language, though, in the tradition of you-people or states rights, has created a pattern here. And if you look at what, you know, President Clinton, talking about Obama's stand on the war in Iraq as a fairy tale, a lot of people took it to be talking about Obama's vision of hope and constant mentions about the need for change, and then of course some of the surrogates talking about Obama's past drug use, this seemed to be a pattern of attacking or trying to take down Obama on race. And I think that from the Clinton perspective, they see Obama in some ways as an affirmative action candidate and frustrated with the media for not holding him to the normal scrutiny and checking out his small record in the U.S. Senate and of course his limited record, political record, in Illinois.
MONTAGNE: The controversy, though, has lasted for more than a week. Is that just because the media is interested or because people out there are interested or because one side here stands to benefit from prolonging it?
WILLIAMS: Well, I think both sides saw some benefit in it, Renee. From the Obama camp side, I think they saw the benefit and the short run of stirring up voters in South Carolina. The New York Times, for example, has a poll out showing that Obama is now leading Senator Clinton 49 to 34 among blacks. And just a month or so ago, Senator Clinton had a lead among black voters nationwide. And Obama needs the black vote in Nevada, South Carolina and Florida if he is to avoid losing to Senator Clinton going forward. So, you know, Clinton has defined Obama in a way in terms of race. And so there's the benefit to the Clinton campaign if she can limit him and make him more of a Jesse Jackson-type black candidate and not the transformative-type candidate who is able to cross over and be seen as someone who doesn't have any racial baggage. He - Obama usually does not talk about race on the campaign trail because he's seeking to make himself that transformative candidate.
MONTAGNE: But it seems as if it won't ultimately help either camp if they divide the party in this year where Democrats feel they really have a go at a presidential victory. I mean, is there a way for the two sides to climb down?
WILLIAMS: Well, Renee, this is where we started this morning because, you know, there have been statements now issued by the Clinton campaign. Obama said yesterday, you know, both sides are on the right side of civil rights, but Obama has said that Clinton's also trying to knock him off message, and you know, the surrogates are still going at it. But they both see that this could be something that divides the Democratic base, the coalition, going towards November '08.
MONTAGNE: Juan, thanks very much.
WILLIAMS: You're welcome, Renee.
MONTAGNE: NPR news analyst Juan Williams.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Baseball's top officials are in Washington, D.C. today. Lawmakers want to know what Major League Baseball is doing to address the widespread use of banned and illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Former Senator George Mitchell released a report last month revealing that use of these drugs was common. He is one of the witnesses who will be testifying today, along with baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and Don Fehr, head of the players' union.
Eric Fisher covers the business of baseball for the Sports Business Journal.
Good morning.
Mr. ERIC FISHER (Reporter, Sports Business Journal): Good morning. How are you?
MONTAGNE: Fine. Thank you.
Now, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig requested the Mitchell Report. In fact, he's testified in front of Congress about this very subject before. But this is a whole another order today.
Mr. FISHER: That's right. We just know a whole lot more about use of steroids and performance-enhancing substances. The last time that Selig was on Capitol Hill on this subject in March of 2005, the congressmen were not happy with the progress that baseball had made up into that point. And since that hearing, Major League Baseball and the players' union had twice reopened its labor deal with the players to implement some tougher standards and tougher testing procedures.
And so when Selig gets down there, you know, the hope and expectation is that he'll have a better story to tell, and certainly, Major League Baseball is hoping that the reception that they get this time around goes much better than it did in 2005.
MONTAGNE: Now, the union's leader, Don Fehr, will testify today as well. He's there to protect the interests of the players, one - but what are the interests of the players?
Mr. FISHER: Historically speaking, the union has had an issue with random-base drug testing, i.e. drug testing without cause. They have felt that to be an unlawful certain procedure that violates their bill of rights. And they have now agreed to widespread testing without cause. But the union wants to see their players operating under a structure that is somehow consistent with the bill of rights and U.S. labor law.
MONTAGNE: Why is baseball under the microscope? I mean, looking around other news, we have Marion Jones going to jail, you know, runners have been scrutinized, doping scandals in the world of cycling. Baseball, at this moment in time, what gives?
Mr. FISHER: Well, it's been going on for a bunch of years. Baseball, even though it is not quite as large economically as National Football League, it is still the national pastime and it is still the favorite sport of a lot of congressmen on Capitol Hill. And you'll see at the start of this hearing that when a number of these individual congressmen get their turn to speak, they'll sort of wax on about their relationship with baseball personally, how they follow their team on radio or in TV or what have you.
Baseball still occupies a very important place in our culture. And Major League Baseball often sort of calls it its greatest blessing and its greatest curse. It's a blessing because it means it insulates them from any sort of loss of relevance among its fan base and keeps it a very strong entity on that realm. It's also a curse because it keeps them under the microscope and under pressure on issues such as this.
MONTAGNE: In the end, what can Congress really do about all of these? What power does Congress have as regards baseball?
Mr. FISHER: Well, what we're seeing is a way to implement some public pressure, so Major League Baseball and the players' union can implement reforms privately. This is certainly what happened the last time where we had this hearing in 2005. It's just keeping the feet to the fire more than anything else.
MONTAGNE: Eric Fisher is a reporter for the Sports Business Journal.
Thanks very much for joining us.
Mr. FISHER: Sure.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
President Bush is in Saudi Arabia today on his tour of the Middle East. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in Baghdad. She left Saudi Arabia earlier this morning on an unannounced trip to Iraq to meet with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and others there.
NPR's Michele Kelemen joins us from the Saudi capital Riyadh.
Good morning.
MICHELE KELEMEN: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: And Michele, I understand that Secretary Rice there over in Iraq is hoping to give some momentum to the process of political reconciliation, which until now has been pretty slow going?
KELEMEN: That's right. But on Saturday, the Iraqi Parliament passed this bill they call the deBaathification law. It would mean that thousands of people who were affiliated with Saddam Hussein's Baath Party can return to work in government jobs and get pensions. And when they passed it, President Bush called it an important step toward political reconciliation.
MONTAGNE: Although just briefly, there is some question about whether it will actually do the job of bringing more Baathist back into the government.
KELEMEN: Well, I mean, this is the question but this is, you know, early stages of this and, of course, this was one of the key benchmarks that the U.S. was looking for, this - the others being the oil law and other things.
MONTAGNE: Now, the president stayed in Saudi Arabia today. He met with the Saudi King Abdullah, and one of the things he talked about, President Bush, was high oil prices.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: I talked to the ambassador, and will again talk to his majesty tonight about the fact that oil prices are very high, which is tough on our economy. And that I would hope, as OPEC considers different production levels, that they understand that if their - one of their biggest consumers' economy suffers, it will mean less purchases, less oil and gas sold. And so, now we've got a lot of things to talk about, but I want to assure you it's from the spirit of friendship.
MONTAGNE: President Bush in Saudi Arabia, which, of course, is home to the world's largest oil reserves.
KELEMEN: It's right. And this is a big ally. But, you know, most of these talks have been focusing on the strategic issues on Iraq and Iran and other things. But the reporters have been pressing the White House, saying, you know, is he talking about oil. Today, he said he was bringing this up in private with King Abdullah.
The other interesting thing is that the president has been getting lots of questions in the Gulf region about the U.S. economy. And he's had to try to reassure people here that the - he thinks the fundamentals are good. You know, there's a lot of concern here about the dropping dollar, for instance. So economic issues are surely big on the plate.
MONTAGNE: And Saudi Arabia got something big out of President Bush's trip. He delivered a major weapons deal to that country. There has been some criticisms in Congress that Saudi hasn't done - that Saudi Arabia hasn't done enough to fight terrorism and doesn't deserve this deal. What about that?
KELEMEN: The Bush administration has notified Congress it was giving Congress 30 days to object to this. And really what they announced is just part of a multibillion-dollar package. This part of it is $120-million aid package.
MONTAGNE: Is this sale of arms to Saudi Arabia part of President Bush's strategy to sideline or even to ostracize Iran?
KELEMEN: It is part of it. You know, when the Bush administration toppled Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq that it did knock out one of the big counterbalances - the security counterbalances in the region to Iran. So this arms deal that was announced last year was part of that effort to remind this region that the U.S. is committed to its security. And the region does see Iran as a threat, though, a little nervous about the provocative rhetoric that Mr. Bush has been bringing on this trip.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Michele Kelemen in Saudi Arabia with President Bush.
Thanks for joining us.
KELEMEN: My pleasure.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Roughly half the states have laws that make it illegal for police to arrest misdemeanor traffic offenders. Instead, officers are supposed to issue a summons and send the motorist on his or her way. But what happens when police violate state law and arrest an errant motorist anyway and then search the motorist and find drugs? The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing whether the drugs may be used to prosecute that motorist now for a drug crime.
NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports.
NINA TOTENBERG: In 2005, police near Portsmouth, Virginia, stopped David Lee Moore for driving on a suspended license. They arrested him, took him to his hotel room, searched him, and found crack cocaine in his pocket, whereupon they charged him with a drug offense. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that since the arrest was illegal, so was the search, that it violated the Constitution's ban on unreasonable searches, and that the drugs could not be used at trial against Moore.
Yesterday, on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, Moore's lawyer, Thomas Goldstein, reiterated that argument.
Mr. THOMAS GOLDSTEIN (Attorney): We don't want to encourage cops out there to be violating the law, to arrest people when they're not allowed, just to get the chance to search them in the hope of finding something.
TOTENBERG: Inside the Supreme Court, Goldstein had a hard time selling that argument, particularly since a few years ago the court said a state could constitutionally arrest a driver and hold her in jail for a seatbelt law violation. Justice Souter: If the Constitution allows that, isn't it irrational to say it's not okay for police to conduct a search to ensure the person is not carrying a weapon that might be used to hurt the police officer? Justice Kennedy: Isn't it easier to have one uniform federal rule under the Constitution dealing with searches? Chief Justice Roberts: You're not saying this wasn't an arrest. You're saying it wasn't a lawful arrest. Our precedents say you can search incident to arrest. Answer: This court has consistently held that arrest has to be lawful under state law. If you're allowed to arrest him, arrest him. If you're not, you're not, and you can't search him constitutionally.
The state of Virginia's Stephen McCullough countered those arguments, contending that all Virginia had done here was to add a procedure limiting arrests under state law, and that those procedures cannot change what's a permissible search under the federal Constitution. Justice Ginsburg: If the officers had issued a summons, as they were supposed to, you agree they could not have conducted a search. Answer: Yes. Justice Ginsburg: So would you explain the logic to saying that when the police violate state law, then the evidence can be used at trial, but when they follow state law, it cannot be used? Answer: Under the Constitution, an arrest is permissible if the officers have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed. Justice Ginsburg: Any crime at all? Jaywalking, for example? Answer: That's correct. Justice Stevens: You say the officers made a custodial arrest. Did they search the defendant at the time of the arrest? Answer: No. The search took place later at the hotel. Justice Stevens, caustically: So it was incident to an ongoing arrest? That's a new concept.
Justice Scalia drew a comparison to others who might conduct searches. Suppose I think my neighbor is growing marijuana and I go and search his house, and sure enough, I find marijuana and I bring it to the police. I'm a state actor, you know. A Supreme Court justice should not be living next door to someone growing marijuana. Is it rendered an unreasonable search by the fact that I'm not a law enforcement officer? Answer: No. Justice Scalia: That's fantastic. You really think that? What about a janitor - a federally employed janitor? His neighbor is growing marijuana. Can he conduct a search? Answer: Yes. Justice Scalia: Wow.
At this point, U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben came riding to the rescue, telling the justices that if the state enacts more protections from arrest than are in the Constitution, that doesn't affect what's a legal search under the federal Constitution.
Instead, it's up to the states to enact legal remedies, like firing police who make illegal arrests. So were the police who made this illegal arrest and conducted this search fired? After the argument, the state's Mr. McCullough conceded they were not.
Mr. STEPHEN McCULLOUGH (Virginia's Deputy Solicitor General): They made a judgment call at the scene. The court, state courts concluded it was wrong. That doesn't mean they're horrible cops. In fact, one of them was awarded Cop of the Year in Portsmouth in 2005.
TOTENBERG: That was the year of the Moore arrest.
Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
NPR's Business News starts with China rejecting a stake in Citigroup.
China's government is rejecting one of its bank's plans to invest billions of dollars in the U.S. financial giant Citigroup. That's according to today's Wall Street Journal. China and other Asian and Middle Eastern governments have been investing heavily in U.S. companies.
It's sparked concern in the U.S., and apparently China's government is also having second thoughts about where its money is going. Its move comes as Citigroup is expected to announce that it's cutting more than 20,000 jobs.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
On to intellectual property and a scrap over the board game Scrabble. An online version called Scrabulous has gained a following on the social networking site Facebook. But it's not run by Scrabble's owner, Hasbro. Now Hasbro is M-A-D.
NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports.
WENDY KAUFMAN: Scrabulous was created by two 20-something brothers in India. They launched their own game site in 2006. Last year, they put Scrabulous on Facebook as a free download. Today, it's played by more than 2 million people, like Los Angeles resident Kate Henningson(ph).
Ms. KATE HENNINGSON (Scrabulous Player): I can play with a friend in Boston. I play with a friend in Montreal. I think it's unfortunate that Hasbro would try to shut it down because it is - I personally think it's building a much bigger fan base for the game.
KAUFMAN: She means the game of Scrabble. Perhaps it's true, but Hasbro says Scrabulous infringes on its intellectual property.
Law professor Peter Menell of the University of California, Berkeley says Hasbro might convince a court that its trademark had been infringed upon and that Scrabulous had to amend its site.
Professor PETER MENELL (University of California, Berkeley): They might have to avoid some of the advertising that seems to suggest that they are related to Scrabble.
KAUFMAN: But shutting the game down completely won't be easy. Menell suggests that the law isn't entirely on Hasbro's side. Hasbro has already contacted Facebook, and the lawyers are said to be looking into it. The maker of Scrabble says it would like to resolve the matter amicably. But Hasbro says if it can't do so quickly, it will try to close down the online game.
Wendy Kaufman, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And we go now to Detroit, to the big international auto show. With all the carmakers vying for attention, the most beleaguered U.S. carmaker pulled off perhaps the most eye-catching spectacle. Chrysler paraded a herd of longhorn steer into downtown Detroit to get publicity for its new Dodge Ram pickup truck.
We called Chrysler's president and vice chairman Jim Press at the auto show to talk about that and more.
Mr. JIM PRESS (Chrysler): We wanted to show our new truck really is going to separate itself from the herd, but still it's just like a cowboy needs a really dependable horse, and they got a lot of publicity out of it as well.
MONTAGNE: Let me ask you, how much can you push this pickup truck knowing, as you know better than anybody, oil's hitting $100 a barrel, the U.S. pickup truck sales generally are down, trends pointing away from gas-guzzling vehicles to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars?
Mr. PRESS: You have to have a full portfolio of products, from small, very fuel-efficient vehicles, all the way up to large trucks that people use in their work. The full-size truck market, the SUV market, is still the largest single market of automotives sold in North America. And it's gotten more competitive.
MONTAGNE: Are these big pickups all about people who need them for business - contractors, farmers? I mean, how much of the pickup truck market is actually city people, teenagers, women with kids?
Mr. PRESS: You know, there are people who bought trucks that didn't need them. They bought them for - it's a cool thing to have. Those are the customers that are electing not to. And that's where the market is contracted. They're selecting other types of vehicles, crossover SUVs, or something else that might better fit their needs in a more efficient package.
MONTAGNE: Mr. Press, we spoke to you last year and you were in a different incarnation, president of Toyota Motors, U.S.A. Not only did you jump to an American company, but the most struggling of all the U.S. carmakers, also the first major American car company to be privately owned in about half a century.
Mr. PRESS: Well, first of all, it's not the most struggling. You know, I came and took a look at the company, and I found the reality is the bones of the company are stronger than the perception. We've made a lot of great changes, a lot of new products coming.
You know, we got the Journey this year, our all-new SUV. We've got the new Ram you've seen, our Challenger. We're coming out with it, it's already sold out. There's a lot of good things going on. In some way, the establishment doesn't want us to win.
MONTAGNE: One thing, of course, is that even last year at one point, Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli called Chrysler operationally bankrupt.
Mr. PRESS: That's true. He did say that. But what he was trying to do is to tell the associates in the company a sense of urgency. And that is that operationally, we weren't making money. And so we need to make sure that the company's expenditures and overhead are in line with the business that we're doing today, not the business that someday we would want to do in the future.
MONTAGNE: Back to Chrysler being a major American car company that's privately owned - could you give us an example of what it means on a day-to-day basis to be freed from the pressures of Wall Street?
Mr. PRESS: Yeah.
MONTAGNE: You're not necessarily freed from the pressures of public opinion, though.
Mr. PRESS: No.
MONTAGNE: Or the need to make money.
Mr. PRESS: No, we need public opinion. You need money. But what we can do now is we can move very quickly and be responsive to the needs of the market. We took a hundred thousand units out of our dealer inventory this last year. It's a big hit to cash flow. It resulted from about a seven-minute discussion between Bob Nardelli and Tom LaSorda and I.
MONTAGNE: Tom LaSorda, former CEO.
Mr. PRESS: Former CEO. He was with Chrysler, a longtime Chrysler guy. In any other company, that would be a three- or four-month project. Lot of resources, lot of trips across the ocean. Best result is fast and right.
MONTAGNE: What will Chrysler look like five years from now?
Mr. PRESS: It'll be efficient, international, global in scope. My goal is to stabilize the company, get a firm financial footing, and begin to grow the company.
MONTAGNE: You're looking to grow the company. This is not - your job is not to oversee...
Mr. PRESS: No.
MONTAGNE: ...the shrinking of Chrysler.
Mr. PRESS: No. This is the growing of it.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for joining us.
Mr. PRESS: Okay. Thank you.
MONTAGNE: Jim Press is president and vice chairman of Chrysler, speaking to us from the International Auto Show in Detroit.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is not the first time Hasbro has gone after an unofficial online version of Scrabble. A few years ago, the company squashed a site called e-Scrabble. So our last word in business comes from Scrabulous fans who are worried their favorite site will suffer the same fate. The word is B-U-Y. Some fans say Hasbro shouldn't shut down Scrabulous. They want the toy company to purchase the site. And one fan suggests hiring the Scrabulous creators to keep it running.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And the biggest U.S. financial services company, Citigroup, will pull back the curtain on its troubled finances today. The company is expected to say later this morning how much it made during the last three months of the year, and the picture is not likely to be pretty. Citigroup has already acknowledged billions of dollars in losses in the subprime mortgage meltdown, and the company is appealing to foreign investors for new capital.
NPR's Jim Zarroli joins us now to talk more about that. Good morning.
JIM ZARROLI: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: What are people expecting Citigroup to say today?
ZARROLI: Well, this is a day of reckoning for Citigroup. It's going to say how much money it made last quarter. It's also going to give us the latest estimate of how much it lost in the subprime mortgage crisis. And, you know, the estimates are anywhere from $11 billion to $20 billion, maybe even more. It's also going to try to answer the big question that a lot of shareholders have right now, which is how is the company going to get out of this mess. It could announce some job cuts, maybe a lot. There could be a dividend cut. And we, finally, may hear something about Citigroup's capital plans. It's been looking for outside investors. You may remember it got $7.5 billion from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority last year. So we may see another announcement like that.
MONTAGNE: Jim, remind us how a huge company like Citigroup got into a position where it needs to raise so much money from overseas investors.
ZARROLI: Well, one of the important things is that you have to remember Citigroup is basically a big commercial bank, even though it does a lot of other things. It's still a commercial bank. The federal government says that big commercial banks can do a lot of things like issue loans, but they have to keep a certain amount of capital on reserve to back them up.
Now, for a long time, Citigroup has been using the money it has for mergers, for stock buybacks, for lots of different things and it basically kept the minimum amount of reserves on hand. So when these mortgages losses started coming in, it didn't have a lot of wiggle room. So it had to raise money to keep the regulators happy.
Now, how does it do that? Well, it could sell something. It has a lot to sell like its Smith Barney unit. But at this time, it might get nothing but fire-sale prices. So the other option it has is to look for investors and, you know, a lot of the investors with money to play with right now are in the Middle East. They're in Asia, especially in China. So that's where Citigroup is going.
MONTAGNE: Well, how much money does Citigroup need to get its house in order?
ZARROLI: Yeah, I'm sure Citigroup would love to know the answer to that question. It's just kind of in the nature of this subprime crisis that it is hard to get a handle on what the losses really are for several reasons. You may remember that Citigroup's Chairman Charles Prince encountered some job security problems last year. He was sort of forced out of office. And that happened partly because he had understated the size of the company's losses. First, he said it was $6.5 billion, then he said, no, it was 8 billion. So people lost confidence in him. Now, of course, it looks like the losses could be a lot bigger than that. Like, there's been much as $20 billion.
MONTAGNE: All of which sounds terribly serious. On the other hand, this is a huge company, huge bank. But how serious is it?
ZARROLI: Well, yes, I mean, Citigroup has enormous assets. It's - you know, this isn't - it's not like one of those big mortgage companies where there were questions about its saliency. That's not the case. But it does have problems. And, you know, it has these subprime problems. And then, you know, we're going into a slowing economy, and Citigroup makes a lot of money in consumer banking. So if consumers stop taking out all their loans, if they stop taking out, you know, student loans, this is a company that's going to have a lot of trouble. So that's going to compound its problems.
MONTAGNE: And are we likely to see beyond Citigroup similar problems at other big financial companies?
ZARROLI: Yeah. Merrill Lynch reports earnings on Thursday. That's - have some similar problems. That's a brokerage company so it doesn't have the same capital requirements, but it still has potential problems. There's also a lot of speculation about some of the big mortgage lenders like Washington Mutual. So, yeah, we could see more problems.
MONTAGNE: Jim, thanks very much.
ZARROLI: You're welcome.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Jim Zarroli.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
After hearing so much about the political violence in Kenya, its parliament is meeting today for the first time since the disputed election last month that set off the fighting. Lawmakers aren't getting much done, however, government and opposition party members argued and shouted at each other over the vote for a new speaker as the session got underway. Opposition party members say their candidate lost the presidential election because of fraud. Now, the opposition party is vying for control of parliament. But this political fight for power mirrors a much more brutal fight for power in other parts of the country.
NPR's Gwen Thompkins reports from Kenya's Rift Valley.
GWEN THOMPKINS: For all we know, Eric Yongesa(ph) could be dead now. Yongesa is a 52-year-old farmer, a laborer really, who lives on a lush little coffee plantation in the north Rift Valley. He's lived in this area his whole life. His father was born here. He has eight children here. But Yongesa and his neighbors got a message through the grapevine that they have already lived their last day in their village on the plantation.
Mr. ERIC YONGESA (Farmer, Rift Valley, Kenya): We defend our village ourselves.
THOMPKINS: Yongesa and the men of his village now sleep in the bushes at night, and wait to be attacked. They are, for the most part, unarmed.
Mr. YONGESA: We use these sticks. We have no even spears and arrow, but in most cases, we (unintelligible) good.
THOMPKINS: The worst of Kenya's post-election violence has happened here in the majestic Rift Valley where creation is at its best. Gentle hills slope into rippling streams. Wild, yellow daisies are in bloom. Plump cattle have seemingly endless fields to graze. And even the donkeys look satisfied. But a murderous spirit has taken hold of the valley. Much of Kenya has settled down by now, but here, death threats are still being whispered over cell phones and the morgues are full.
Rosemary Nasimiyu(ph) had five children at home with her the other night when she awoke to the sound of a gunshot.
Ms. ROSEMARY NASIMIYU (Resident, Rift Valley, Kenya): (Through translator) I told my children now are dead.
THOMPKINS: Arsonists had set fire to her thatched roofed hut and then stood in the doorway so she couldn't escape. When they moved to light another house afire, Nasimiyu, who is 53 years old, ran through the flames with the children and hid in the daisies. In all, more than 30 houses burned that night.
Ms. NASIMIYU: (Through translator) They came up to check whether we are dead. And we are dead in the house. They knocked at the door and said we have killed them.
THOMPKINS: Much of what's been happening here has been driven by the disputed election drama in Nairobi between Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga. After all, Yongesa, Nasimiyu and many others on the coffee plantation voted for President Kibaki, and Odinga supporters in the area are said to want revenge. But it is also true that something else is stirring the pine trees in the coffee plants and setting houses ablaze; an ugly form of tribalism is in the Bedrock of this place.
Mr. JEFFREY INDIAMA(ph) (Farmer, Kenya): So it is them who controls everything here. The oil economy is under them. We are suffering because of them.
THOMPKINS: That is Jeffrey Indiama, a 23-year-old farmer from the Kalenjin tribe. When Indiama says them, he's referring to the Kikuyu, the same tribe as President Kibaki. Kikuyus bought the coffee plantation down the hill and now, Indiama says the Kalenjin here no longer have access to land that they had once farmed. So in other words, this is a land war, and it's been going hot and cold between the Kalenjin and the Kikuyu for more than 40 years.
Mr. MAINA KIAI (Chairman, Kenya National Commission on Human Rights): The thing that strikes me throughout these last few weeks is the rush to claim victimhood on every site and that's a very dangerous, very, very dangerous trend.
THOMPKINS: Maina Kiai heads the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. He says Kenyans are too quick to do that us-versus-them thing, and that always leads to trouble. Kiai, who is a Kikuyu, says President Kibaki should step aside while the election is sorted out. But those are fighting words to many people in the Rift Valley. When Kiai spoke to thousands of displaced Kikuyus here over the weekend, he got death threats. To them, Kiai is not a human rights leader, but a Kikuyu traitor who speaks against their president.
Mr. KIAI: This is a political crisis with ethnic overtones. With ethnic overtones because our politics is ethnic-based. But it's about power, it's about politics.
THOMPKINS: The Kalenjin, who live up the hill, do not admit to burning the houses on the coffee plantation, but they don't seem to care that it happened. Nor do they seem particularly bothered that many of the people whose houses were burned are not Kikuyu. They are from the Luhya and the Kisii and the Bukusu tribes. But to farmer Jeffrey Indiama, if those folks voted for Kibaki, they might as well be Kikuyu.
Mr. INDIAMA: So through that violence, the Kikuyus are message and be part to the Kibaki (unintelligible) that your people have been attacked somewhere. So quit from the office for the safety of the people. So that's the message.
THOMPKINS: That message is all over the face of Reverend Stephen Mburu. He's bruised and swollen and missing eight teeth. Mburu is the Kikuyu pastor of the church that the Kalenjin burned down two weeks ago, where an estimated 30 women and children were burned alive.
Reverend STEPHEN MBURU (Kenya): (Through translator) This was not the past conflicts between us and the Kalenjin, but it was the worst, of course. There is a foundation that has been laid in the feelings of the Kalenjin that should divide the province is that all the land that is in (unintelligible) is supposed to be occupied by them and them alone.
THOMPKINS: Reverend Mburu says he and a colleague pulled four children from the church window, but flames overtook the fifth child and he had to let go.
Rev. MBURU: (Through translator) When I turned, I saw a group of people with bows and arrows aimed at me. And I remember that the day - just the previous Sunday I have preached on Psalm 91.
THOMPKINS: Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror by night, nor the arrow that flieth by day.
Mburu and his friend walked over to their attackers and stood in front of them. And the crowd beat them unconscious. When he goes back to the pulpit, Mburu says he will remind his mostly Kikuyu flock to be ready for the possibility that tomorrow may never come.
Rev. MBURU: (Through translator) I will begin by preaching salvation and letting the congregation and the people know that on this world we are (unintelligible). So I'll just preach salvation so that people can prepare.
THOMPKINS: On the way out of town, about 50 young men where moving along the side of the road. Some carried machetes, others clubs and still others, bows and arrows. One man waved to the car passing by.
Gwen Thompkins, NPR News, northern Rift Valley, Kenya.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
A disturbing trend in hospital emergency rooms has emerged from a new study - longer wait times even for the very sick. That finding follows a recent report from the Institute of Medicine that describes ERs as being, quote, "at the breaking point."
Here's NPR's Joanne Silberner.
JOANNE SILBERNER: It's hard to find anyone connected with emergency room care who thinks things are working well. Certainly not. Dr. Art Kellermann, professor of emergency medicine at Emory University and a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee that wrote the earlier report. He's seen the increasing wait times firsthand.
Dr. ART KELLERMANN (Department of Emergency Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine): People like to criticize the United Kingdom and Canada for long waits for elective surgery like knee operations. But these are the waits that matter - the wait for heart attack care, the wait when you're having an emergent condition and arrive at an ER. That can make the difference between life and death.
SILBERNER: The new study used data from a federal survey of 92,000 emergency room visits from 1997 to 2004. Andrew Wilper, an internist with the Cambridge Health Alliance, is one of the authors of the study being released online today by the journal, Health Affairs.
Dr. ANDREW WILPER (Internal Medicine, Cambridge Health Alliance): What we found was that the amount of time that patients are waiting to see the doctor is increasing. And not only as the wait increasing, but waits are increasing for patients presenting with what may be severe illness.
SILBERNER: A severe illness like a heart attack. In 1997, heart attack patients got in to see a doctor within just eight minutes. In 2004, they have to wait more than double that time.
When the researchers averaged of the waiting times for everything from strokes to sprained ankles, they discovered that typical ER patient was waiting 36 percent longer to see a doctor in 2004 than in 1997. Wilper also looked at the way times for all sorts of emergency conditions from minorities and women.
Dr. WILPER: We found that blacks and Hispanics wait longer to see the doctor in the emergency room. Blacks waited about 13 percent longer whereas Hispanics waited about 14 percent longer than whites, and that women had a longer wait as well, about five percent difference as compared to men.
SILBERNER: Wilper and the other experts say the longer wait time for blacks and Hispanics was probably because minorities were more likely to wind up in under funded inner city hospitals and those at the ERs that are most likely to be overcrowded. Whether patient could pay the bills, was not a factor.
Dr. WILPER: Insured, uninsured, it doesn't matter. At one point or another, we all rely on the emergency department for care and it looks like regardless of who you are, you're going to wait longer to see the doctor when you go there.
SILBERNER: Wilper thinks patients are waiting longer because those who can't find or afford a family doctor are crowding the emergency room instead. Art Kellermann says, no, the problem is the backup the patients.
Dr. KELLERMANN: Hospitals are not moving the most ill and injured, the ones that we stabilized hours ago, maybe even days ago, out of the ER and upstairs to an intensive care unit or in-patient bed because the hospital is full or because they're holding their beds for elective patients.
SILBERNER: Hospitals make more money on people who come in for elective surgeries. Kellermann says something needs to be done for patients who were waiting, sometimes in pain - now, and for patients in the future.
Dr. KELLERMANN: If you can't get a single heart attack patient to care in time, how are you going to handle hundreds or even thousands of victims of the terrorist strike?
SILBERNER: What got him especially worried is that the federal government has plans to cut payments to the very hospitals that have the busiest ERs, instead of increasing their funding, as expert panels have suggested.
Joanne Silberner, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
You can do just about anything you can think of on the Las Vegas strip. This Saturday, Democrats may even be able to choose or help choose a president there. The Nevada Democratic Party has established what are known as at-large caucus sites at hotel casinos, which would allow workers to participate during their shift. The campaigns were all for it until last week when the culinary workers endorsed Barack Obama. Now the casino caucuses are the subject of a lawsuit.
NPR's Ina Jaffe has more.
INA JAFFE: The Culinary Workers Union is the largest in Nevada. Its 60,000 members and its strong get-out-the-vote machine make its endorsement a coveted prize.
(Soundbite of crowd)
JAFFE: So when the union endorsed Barack Obama last week, he came to Las Vegas to say thank you in person.
Senator BARACK OBNAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): Every time I come here, I feel good because I know, not only am I among friends, but I'm also among the best of the labor movement in this country. Thank you.
(Soundbite of crowd)
JAFFE: But there is more to the labor movement in Nevada than the Culinary Workers. Some other unions have endorsed former Senator John Edwards or New York Senator Hillary Clinton. As she noted on Meet the Press this Sunday, those unions also have members who will be working this Saturday.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): Some people are saying, well, wait a minute, what about us? Those are not our workplaces. We have to be at work. How are we going to participate?
JAFFE: And some of those workers belong to the Nevada State Education Association, which has not endorsed any candidate, but joined with some Democratic Party activists who do support Hillary Clinton to file the lawsuit to stop the caucuses on the strip.
Mr. TERRY HICKMAN (Executive Director, Nevada State Education Association): The overriding issue about any caucus is the fairness.
JAFFE: Terry Hickman, the association's executive director, says many of his members will be working on Saturday that the many caucuses held in schools.
Mr. HICKMAN: They are not going to be given special treatment. They are going to be asked to work, and they're not going to be excused to go attend their caucus in their home precinct. So while they are there working and helping others vote in their caucus, they are not going to be able to.
JAFFE: This is the first time that the Nevada caucuses will be held in January. The National Democratic Party agreed to the date in order to have a state with a large Latino population and a strong union presence in the early going right after Iowa and New Hampshire.
D. Taylor, the head of the Culinary Workers, says that means that his members, at least 40 percent of them Latino, are exactly what the national party had in mind. He rejects the whole notion that the lawsuit against the casino caucuses is about fairness. He says it's about politics.
Mr. D. TAYLOR (Culinary Workers Union): I never thought in my wildest dream, on the weekend they were honoring Dr. King, that people on the Democratic Party would try to disenfranchise a largely people of color and union membership, but I guess that shows the Clinton campaign will put politics over principle, and they reinforces why we endorsed Senator Barack Obama.
JAFFE: The Clinton campaign is not a party to the lawsuit, and the Culinary Workers Union is a helpless bystander in a courtroom drama. The defendant is the state Democratic Party. Spokeswoman Kirsten Searer says the party will vigorously defend the caucuses on the strip because they're opened to more than just the culinary workers.
Ms. KIRSTEN SEARER (Spokeswoman, Nevada State Democratic Party): As long as you work within 2.5 miles of the at-large caucuses, you can participate. So, that means if you work in one of the many retail shops on the strip, if you work at a gas station on the strip, if you work at a sandwich shop on the strip, you can still participate in these at-large caucuses.
JAFFE: And having the biggest possible turnout on Saturday will make the Nevada Democratic Party a winner and show the state deserves to keep its place near the front of the line four years from now.
Ina Jaffe, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign took a sharp new track over the past week. She and her surrogates are portraying her top Democratic rival and fellow Senator Barack Obama as inconsistent in his position on the war in Iraq. They've made some highly critical claims about Obama's record.
NPR's David Welna takes a closer look at the Iraq war record of both candidates.
DAVID WELNA: It was former President Bill Clinton who drew first blood in the new assault on Obama's Iraq war positions. The scene was a campaign stop in New Hampshire the same day Hillary Clinton won that state's primary. The former president had been complaining the news media paid too little attention to Obama's record on the war. He then pointed an accusing finger at Obama.
President BILL CLINTON: You said in 2004, there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war, and you took that speech are now running on off your Web site in 2004 and there's no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever since. Give me a break.
(Soundbite of applause)
Pres. CLINTON: This whole thing is the biggest fairytale I've ever seen.
WELNA: And that's had Obama's allies rushing to his defense for the past week. Here's Illinois' other Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, yesterday on MSNBC.
Senator DICK DURBIN (Democrat, Illinois): There has never been a single moment since Barack Obama expresses his opposition to this war when he has wavered. He has been strong, and to call this a fairy tale is just unfair.
WELNA: One thing everyone agrees on is that Barack Obama made a speech in 2002 as an Illinois state senator, strongly opposing a war with Iraq. It was a week before Hillary Clinton voted in the Senate to authorize the use of force against Iraq. But in an appearance Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, Clinton accused Obama of having failed to follow through.
(Soundbite of show, Meet the Press)
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Democrat Presidential Candidate): If he was against the war in 2002, he should have strongly spoke out in 2004. He should have followed what he said in his speech, which was that he would not vote for funding in '05, '06 and '07.
WELNA: In fact, Obama said nothing in that 2002 speech about not voting for war funding, that was two years before he was even elected to the Senate. Obama did say in a campaign speech in 2003 though that he would have voted against $87 billion in war funding approved by the Senate, but it's also true that Obama repeatedly voted for such war funding once he got to the Senate. He defended to that stance in a December 2006 interview.
Sen. OBAMA: I don't see any inclination on the part of those of us in Congress to cut off funding. I think that if we're going to have America's young men and women there fighting, we have an obligation to make sure that they got the best equipment, the body armor, the resources they need to come home safely.
WELNA: Clinton also accused Obama on "Meet the Press" of having kept quiet too long on Iraq.
(Soundbite of show, "Meet the Press")
Sen. CLINTON: When he became a senator, he didn't go to the floor of the Senate to condemn the war in Iraq for 18 months. He didn't introduce legislation against the war in Iraq.
WELNA: It's true that Obama did not give a floor speech against the war until June 2006. He did, however, introduced legislation a year ago and about the time he opened an exploratory committee for a presidential bid that called for U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by next April.
Sen. OBAMA: If we truly believe that the only solution in Iraq is a political one - and I fervently believe that - if we believe that a phased redeployment of U.S. forces in Iraq is the best, perhaps only leverage we have to force a settlement between the country's warring factions, then we should act on it.
WELNA: As for Clinton's vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq, she defended it on Meet the Press by invoking the name of a Republican Senate colleague, long critical of the war.
(Soundbite of show, Meet the Press)
Sen. CLINTON: It is absolutely unfair to say that the vote as Chuck Hagel, who was one of the architects of the resolution, had said, was a vote for war.
WELNA: Senator Hagel, in fact, helped draft a competing resolution that would have limited the scope of the war. The truth is that Obama and Clinton now hold remarkably similar views on the war, both want a speedy withdrawal of U.S. forces. As Clinton battles for votes though, she's highlighting Obama's record in the Senate while he insists he's shown better judgment by opposing the war from the start.
David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
A Texas man expected a leisurely day fishing with his family at Lake Texoma. And then he snagged what can only be described as a really big catch - so big he turned his boat anchor into a hook to try to pull it in. Eventually he called police, and together they pulled the fish out of the water, which turned out to be a Hummer, a stretch limousine Hummer. Police say the vehicle was stolen. Still, it was a really big catch.
This is MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
Marketers know this. If you want to get people to think your product is higher quality, raise the price. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology asked people to taste wines with different price tags. And the testers' brains showed more pleasure at the pricey bottle than the cheap one, even for the same wine. A waiter might say the lesson here is to always select the most expensive wine - you'll enjoy it more.
This is MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Five years after its creation, the Department of Homeland Security has made big changes to the way the country protects itself. Some security experts think the agency is going about it all wrong though, and it's a debate likely to grow when a new administration takes charge next year.
In this final In Our Series, NPR's Pam Fessler talked to the secretary of Homeland Security, and outside experts who have ideas on how to make it better.
PAM FESSLER: Okay, so here's the challenge. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is getting tired of everyone beating up on his agency. He says if you don't like what the department's doing, come up with a better idea.
Secretary MICHAEL CHERTOFF (Department of Homeland Security): If you have a criticism, what's your better way? What's your alternative? If you don't like what TSA does, should we eliminate the checkpoints? Should we eliminate the watch lists? Would you then get on an airplane or put your children on an airplane in that kind of environment? Would you open the border? What would you do then when a terrorist or a drug dealer came in?
FESSLER: Chertoff says he's willing to debate the issue anytime, anywhere, and a lot of people might be willing to take him up on the offer.
(Soundbite of children playing)
FESSLER: At Baltimore's inner harbor, schoolchildren play outside after visiting an aquarium. Most people feel pretty safe at this busy site. Millions of dollars have been spent to secure the city's ports and other facilities. But Homeland Security consultant Randy Larsen sees a major weakness. He points to the water.
Mr. RANDY LARSEN (Consultant): Any small vessel capable of carrying a Hiroshima-size bomb could just come right up into the harbor, the inner harbor here.
FESSLER: And he says there's little chance it would be stopped. The Coast Guard is smaller than the New York City police department but has to patrol 95,000 miles of shoreline.
The main way Homeland Security protects a city like Baltimore from nuclear weapons is by checking cargo containers at the port. Larsen thinks that focus is all wrong.
Mr. LARSEN: The issue must be on preventing terrorists from getting their hands on nuclear materials. That's not about X-raying and doing radiological scans of containers.
FESSLER: Larsen's recent book, "Our Own Worst Enemy," bemoans what he sees as a lack of common sense when it comes to homeland security. He thinks the government spends too much on guns, guards and gates and not enough on things such as intelligence and nonproliferation, which might be more effective.
Stephen Flynn with the Council on Foreign Relations also thinks the department's focus is wrong and that it's squandered the most useful weapon it has: the expertise and relationships its frontline employees get when they do their more traditional, non-security jobs.
Dr. STEPHEN FLYNN (Council on Foreign Relations): The department was set up, basically said you've got to do counterterrorism and your focus should be just on counterterrorism, and we can't afford the rest of these things. And it's the rest of those things that really were the things that made them national security assets.
FESSLER: Flynn says he learned a lesson in the Coast Guard, now part of Homeland Security.
Dr. FLYNN: The way I used to - back in my patrol boat days - find a drug smuggler was often looking in a fishing ground where he may be fishing where there's no fish. I knew that because I had a fishery mission. And as I developed expertise in that mission, I could spot somebody who was trying to pretend that he was a fisherman when he really wasn't.
FESSLER: Flynn says instead the department's emphasis on law enforcement and security rules alienates the very people it might need to help detect another attack, including those in the immigrant community. Such questions are being raised more and more as Homeland Security enters its second five years. What's the best way to spend limited time and money? What's the right balance?
Dr. JAMES JAY CARAFANO (Heritage Foundation): We have to ask the question - is where do you get the biggest bang for the buck? We don't do that.
FESSLER: James Jay Carafano is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
Dr. CARAFANO: Everybody in Congress and every lobbyist is an insurance salesman. They come to you with the - wouldn't you just - you know, wouldn't you just spent pennies a day to insure your child for the rest of your life? Well, there's an infinitesimally small chance somebody might try to smuggle a nuclear weapon in the United States in a container, but isn't it worth it just to try to stop that? Well, and you go, okay, yeah, well, it's going to cost $20 billion. Oh, well, okay, but $20 billion to stop a nuclear attack. But nobody ever says, what else could I do with that $20 billion?
FESSLER: And what are the other costs in terms of lost business or personal freedom? Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff says that's exactly what he is trying to do - weigh the alternatives - but that he's often pulled in many directions, especially by Congress. More than 80 committees and subcommittees have some jurisdiction over his agency. He says lawmakers have little incentive to look at the big picture.
Sec. CHERTOFF: We're serving so many masters with so many inconsistent positions that it's very hard to do our job.
FESSLER: In fact, almost everyone interviewed for this series cited the failure of Congress to consolidate its oversight of Homeland Security as a major problem. It's the one recommendation of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission that lawmakers chose to ignore.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman agrees that it's a hindrance for the department, but thinks there are more serious concerns.
Senator JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (Independent, Connecticut): The Department of Homeland Security has to continue to improve its management capabilities - that is, its management of its own operations - and to work very hard at recruiting very good people to fill the jobs in the department.
FESSLER: But it's a vicious cycle. The more high-profile mistakes the department makes, the harder it is to attract new talent to make sure they don't happen again. For example, it didn't help when the FEMA press office decided to stage a phony news conference after it notified reporters too late for any real reporters to show up.
Elaine Kamarck, who used to work in the Clinton administration, is a government reform expert at Harvard's Kennedy School.
Dr. ELAINE KAMARCK (Harvard University): You have enormous turnover in the political staff. You have enormous turnover among the career people. There's no leadership there.
FESSLER: She thinks the department is too big, that some parts, such as FEMA, need to be removed. But others say that would be the worst thing, that what the department needs now is stability. After all, the whole reason it was created was to close gaps between government agencies.
And on that front there's one glaring symbol of failure. The department's offices are still spread all over the Washington, D.C. area.
(Soundbite of car door opening)
FESSLER: A drive around to just a few of them shows how difficult it can be to work as a single agency.
Here I am right in front of the main offices of one Homeland Security department, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But if I want to talk to somebody at FEMA, I have to drive here, across town about 1.7 miles away, where FEMA has its headquarters. And what about the Coast Guard? Another two miles. But what if I want to go to the Transportation Security Administration? That means going across state lines into Virginia.
Now let's try Customs and Border Protection. That's almost another three miles. Then what about the big headquarters, where Michael Chertoff is? To get there, I have to drive to a whole different part of the city.
Everyone thinks Homeland Security has to be more cohesive. But last month Congress eliminated the funding needed to start building a huge new headquarters complex, another setback for an agency still struggling to get on its feet.
Pam Fessler, NPR News.
MONTAGNE: Curious about the history of the Department of Homeland Security? Hear the first two parts of our series at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Now, from the depths of space to the top of the world and the man who got there first. In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest. He died last week in his native New Zealand.
Commentator Frank Deford has this remembrance.
FRANK DEFORD: At the end of the century, I wanted to do a story on Sir Edmund Hillary. I thought that what Hillary had accomplished with Tenzing Norgay, his Sherpa guide, was perhaps the single greatest sporting achievement of the 20th century.
In my quest to find Sir Edmund in New Zealand, I called a journalist there. Might he tell me where I could find someone who had Hillary's telephone number? Just a minute, he said. Oh, have you got it? I asked. No, he replied, it's just right here in the phone book. That's right. Anybody could ring up the greatest citizen of the country, the guy on the $5 bill, the hero who stood first on the top of the world.
That probably says as much about what Sir Edmund was like as anything does. Well, really, not Sir Edmund. When he found he had to change our appointment, he politely called my house. I was away, so he told my wife it was Ed Hillary calling. Who, she asked, struggling with his Kiwi accent. Finally, reluctantly, he acknowledged that he was indeed Sir Edmund Hillary. He apologized that he had to change our date, but it seemed that President Clinton was going to be in New Zealand and, being a wise politician, wanted Sir Edmund with him. My wife said that she was sure that I'd understand.
In a suburb of Auckland, Hillary lived on a high hill with a vista of the harbor, but significantly, a large Himalayan tree he'd been given rises higher still over the house on the hill. It's good maybe that you're reminded that no matter how high you go, except maybe on Everest, there is really something always higher.
These latter years, he lived with his second wife, June, and a large tabby cat, Big Red. Both the Hillarys had been widowed. Ed's first wife, Louise, died in a plane crash, along with their daughter, Belinda, when the plane went down leaving Katmandu.
The reason the Hillarys were in Katmandu is because after Sir Edmund became famous for conquering the sacred peak that the people there call Chomolungma, he kept coming back to Nepal all his life to help the people in the land.
At first, when he came down from the summit in May of 1953, many Nepalese didn't embrace Hillary, the outsider who had breached their peak. Hillary made sure to say that Norgay had reached the top a few steps before him. Just before he died in 1986, Norgay finally wrote the truth, that Hillary had, in fact, been first, and Hillary substantiated that. But he was quick to tell me, believe me, to us, to mountaineers, who's first is not important. We're a team.
In fact, he admitted that he'd felt a little guilty days before when he wasn't sure whether he really wanted his friends, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans, to make it to the top first. They had to turn back barely 300 feet short. I wasn't very proud of my feelings, Hillary admitted to me, ruefully patting the old cat in his lap.
Hillary and his teammate made it, and all things considered, I'd have to say that I think God picked the right guy to first stand so close to heaven on earth.
(Soundbite of music)
Frank Deford joins us each week from member station WSHU in Fairfield, Connecticut.
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Steve will be back with us tomorrow.
I'm Renee Montagne.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
We turn now to another country that's a top security concern for much of the world. The U.S. is sending an additional 3,000 Marines to Afghanistan. That decision was arrived at reluctantly after the U.S. failed to get NATO nations to increase their own troop numbers there. And it's raising deeper questions about NATO's role in Afghanistan.
NPR's Tom Bowman reports.
TOM BOWMAN: More than six years after they were toppled, Taliban forces are resurgent. There was an average of 500 attacks each month last year.
Lieutenant General DAVID BARNO (Retired U.S. Army Commander): It appears to be from a distance a much more capable Taliban and a strengthened Taliban from what we faced during the period of time I was there.
BOWMAN: Retired Lieutenant General David Barno was the top commander in Afghanistan from 2003 through 2005.
Lt. Gen. BARNO: Just the size of the engagements, the number of evident casualties that have been inflicted on the Taliban indicate that they are a significantly stronger force.
BOWMAN: And Barno says the U.S. may have unwittingly contributed to that resurgence beginning in 2005 - first, by announcing it was turning over to NATO responsibility for the military operation in Afghanistan; second, by cutting 2500 American combat troops. That sent a message to friend and foe alike, Barno says, that the U.S. was moving for the exits.
NATO commands most of the 54,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, nearly half of whom are American. Defense Secretary Robert Gates wanted NATO to send about 7,000 more troops. Appearing before Congress just last month, Gates wasn't ready to mince words. With American troops stretched in Iraq, NATO troops were needed in Afghanistan.
Secretary ROBERT GATES (U.S. Department of Defense): I am not ready to let NATO off the hook in Afghanistan at this point.
BOWMAN: But by last week Gates was ready to do just that. He moved swiftly to approve the added U.S. troops, even though he worried about the message that sent to NATO.
Sec. GATES: I am concerned about relieving the pressure on our allies to fulfill their commitments.
BOWMAN: With violence flaring in Afghanistan, Gates had little choice but to turn to the Marines. At the same time, defense officials complained NATO is not focused enough on the most important part of fighting an insurgency: making life better by creating jobs, clinics and roads. That left Gates in a recent appearance before Congress to question the role of NATO, an alliance created to fight the Soviets.
Sec. GATES: The Afghanistan mission has exposed real limitations in the way the alliance is organized, operated and equipped. We're in a post-Cold War environment. We have to be ready to operate in distant locations against insurgencies and terrorist networks.
BOWMAN: Those problems are spurring several Pentagon reviews about the way ahead in Afghanistan. One option being discussed would give the U.S. an even greater combat role in the country's restive south, now patrolled by Canadian, British and Dutch forces.
Meanwhile, there is also talk of appointing a high-level envoy to better coordinate international aid for Afghanistan. That makes sense to American officers like Colonel Martin Schweitzer. He commands the 4th Brigade Combat Team in Khost province in eastern Afghanistan, where he says more experts are needed to give Afghans a better life.
Colonel MARTIN SCHWEITZER (U.S. Army Commander, 4th Brigade Combat Team): Specifically, we need assistance with the growing development, natural resource development, like natural gas, et cetera, because there's natural gas in the ground here. We need those smart folks to come over here and help us get it out so we can turn it into a product that can help sustain the government and the country.
BOWMAN: A more robust Afghan economy may help cut into Taliban recruitment. But Barno and others cautioned that the Taliban are a regional problem. There's a steady flow of radicalized recruits pouring over the border from Pakistan.
Tom Bowman, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
In his Middle East trip this week, President Bush tried to get Arab countries to stand up against Iran, saying Iranian actions, quote, "threaten the security of nations everywhere." That warning was undercut last month by the National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, with its headline that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program back in 2003.
We'll talk about the continuing fallout from the NIE today and tomorrow. Here, NPR's Tom Gjelten has this report on the repercussions it's had for U.S. foreign policy.
TOM GJELTEN: For years, the Iranian government insisted its nuclear program was purely for peaceful purposes: to produce energy. The United State said it was to build a nuclear bomb, and it appeared the Bush administration was even considering a military strike to halt the program. The intelligence community's judgment that the weapons program had been suspended, at least temporarily, made that military option impossible.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly mocked and defied the United States, called the NIE a declaration of victory for the Iranian nation against the world powers.
Michael Rubin, an Iran scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says hardliners in Iran have tried to sue the NIE to consolidate their political position.
Mr. MICHAEL RUBIN (Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research): What you often have both on the nuclear issue and also when it comes to the greater diplomatic issues, people who are favorable to the current President Ahmadinejad - a hardliner - saying, Khatami, the former reformist president, failed to bring the United States to the table. Our defiance has been what has brought the United States to its knees.
Mr. GJELTEN: But the NIE cut two ways: Ahmadinejad had been arguing that Iranians should rally behind him to face the U.S. war threat.
Vali Nasr of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy says Ahmadinejad can no longer make that case.
Professor VALI NASR (International Politics, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University): The NIE report, in effect, took the wind out of the war campaign in the United States. And that may have the effect of refocusing its domestic political attention in Iran back on Ahmadinejad's domestic record, on his economic record, right ahead of the March parliamentary elections. So in some ways, it may not necessarily benefit him.
Mr. GJELTEN: In this sense, the release of the NIE may have had the indirect effect of strengthening moderates in Iran.
President Bush hasn't apparently noticed much change, his rhetoric on Iran this week was his toughest ever. Once again, however, he had to deal with the repercussions of the NIE.
In Saudi Arabia, Al-Riyadh, a newspaper that reflects the viewpoint of the Saudi government, immediately challenged President Bush over his characterization of the Iranian threat. It said he should not preoccupy himself with the danger U.S. intelligence has qualified as nonexistent in the short term.
Vali Nasr says the NIE changed the way Arab countries view the United States and its policy options.
Prof. NASR: The Arab governments around the Persian Gulf have been very worried about the rise of Iranian power. But what worries them more is that they don't believe that the United States can execute an effective policy. Anytime an administration is undermined by its own intelligence agency and its policy looks like collapsing, Arab governments become nervous.
Mr. GJELTEN: A senior intelligence official directly involved in the preparation of the NIE judgments says they were not written for public consumption - the decision to release them came later - so there was no reason to consider all the possible consequences.
Paul Pillar, a former CIA analyst who worked on many estimates as the national intelligence officer for the Near East, says it may not have been possible for the authors of the latest NIE to consider whether their report would mean a moderating or a hardening of Iranian political behavior.
Mr. PAUL PILLAR (Former CIA Analyst): Even today, looking at what's happening before our very eyes and reading what we read every day in the newspapers, it's hard to say which is the dominant effect, so it would be even harder for the authors of something like this estimate to anticipate accurately in advance just what the impact would be.
Mr. GJELTEN: Should intelligence officers even worry about the repercussions of what they report or should they just let the policymakers deal with the consequences? That story tomorrow.
Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.
MONTAGNE: You can read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran and a timeline of Iran's nuclear program at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama publicly declared a truce during last night's debate in Las Vegas. The two Democratic presidential candidates had been going at each other for nearly a week over charges of racial insensitivity. But during the debate on MSNBC, Clinton and Obama, along with former Senator John Edwards, seemed to recognize that this is a fight that wasn't doing any of them or their party any good.
NPR's Ina Jaffe reports.
INA JAFFE: If there was any doubt that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had decided to close the book on their recent differences over race, Clinton settled the matter with her first statement.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): Senator Obama and I agree completely that, you know, neither race nor gender should be a part of this campaign.
JAFFE: Clinton had offended some African-Americans when she said that despite Dr. Martin Luther King's eloquence, it took a practical politician like President Lyndon Johnson to make the Civil Rights Act a reality. The Obama campaign called that an affront to Dr. King's legacy, and the argument escalated.
But last night, Clinton made the whole flap seem as though it had almost nothing to do with the candidates themselves.
Sen. CLINTON: We both have exuberant and sometimes uncontrollable supporters, that we need to get this campaign where it should be.
JAFFE: Race was briefly joined by another sensitive issue. Moderator Brian Williams asked Obama about persistent rumors flying around the Internet.
Mr. BRIAN WILLIAMS (Moderator): That you are trying to hide that fact that you're a Muslim, that you took the oath of office on the Koran and not the Bible, that you will not pledge allegiance to the flag...
JAFFE: Obama chuckled as he listened to this, then answered...
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): I am a Christian. I have been sworn in with a Bible.
Mr. WILLIAMS: I figured.
Sen. OBAMA: I pledge allegiance and lead the pledge of allegiance sometimes in the United States Senate when I'm presiding. I have been victimized by these lies. Fortunately, the American people are, I think, smarter than folks give them credit for.
JAFFE: John Edwards was also asked about race and gender by moderator Natalie Morales, leaving Hillary Clinton to exclaim off mic, poor John.
Ms. NATALIE MORALES (Moderator): What is a white male to do running against these historic candidacies?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Sen. CLINTON: Poor John.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): You know, I have to say, I'm proud of the fact that we have a woman and an African-American who are very, very serious candidates for the presidency. It just says really good things about America.
JAFFE: The debate took place just four days before the Nevada caucuses. So two of the topics last night were local. Nevada has the highest home foreclosure rate in the nation, and the candidates touted their plans to alleviate the crisis. The other Nevada issue was the perennial controversy over Yucca Mountain, the proposed federal nuclear waste dump. Just about everyone in this state hates Yucca Mountain. All three candidates say they're against it. But one way or another, the conversation kept returning to race. There was this Tim Russert question about the practical realities of Barack Obama's candidacy.
Mr. TIM RUSSERT (Moderator): Do you believe there's a history of a division where Latino voters will not vote for a black candidate?
Sen. OBAMA: Not in Illinois. They all voted for me. And so...
(Soundbite of laughter)
JAFFE: Obama is hoping that appeal to Latino voters will repeat itself in Nevada, where about a quarter of the population is Hispanic. And next week, racial divisions may again be an issue when South Carolina Democrats - about half of them African-American - vote in the primary there. It's become obvious that as the primaries spread to increasingly diverse states, all of these candidates will have to reach across racial and ethnic lines to have a chance to win.
Ina Jaffe, NPR News, Las Vegas.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
Mitt Romney was the big winner of yesterday's Michigan Republican presidential primary. The victory boosts his struggling campaign. Romney's campaign had suffered two disappointing defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire. Now he's back. The Republican field is wide open. Michigan is a state suffering from massive job losses and the nation's highest unemployment rate. Romney won in part by pledging to help the domestic automobile industry regain its past glory. Senator John McCain, the New Hampshire winner, finished second. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who took Iowa, ran third.
NPR's Don Gonyea reports from Detroit.
DON GONYEA: It is no understatement to say that Mitt Romney absolutely needed a win in Michigan. This is, after all, a state where he has deep ties. He was born here. His dad was a top auto industry executive who served six years as governor. And Romney had prominent political backing and a solid organization in the state. A loss here would have raised serious questions. So when he bounded onto the stage in a victory party in the Detroit suburb of Southfield last night, his usually perfect hair just a bit mussed, the candidates seemed as relieved as he was happy.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Michigan; Presidential Candidate): Tonight marks the beginning of a comeback, a comeback for America.
(Soundbite of cheering)
GONYEA: In Michigan, Romney was relentlessly upbeat, not only about his candidacy, but about the prospects for a domestic auto industry that has been losing market share and slashing both blue and white collar jobs. He said lost jobs are not gone forever.
Mr. ROMNEY: You said we would fight for every job. You said that we would fight to get health care for all Americans. You said we'd fight to secure our border. You said you'd fight for us to be able to get lower taxes for middle income Americans, and Michigan heard and Michigan voted tonight. Congratulations.
(Soundbite of cheering)
GONYEA: At a polling place in an elementary school in the Detroit suburb of Canton, 61-year-old Dolores Wells(ph) said she voted for Romney because of his business background. But she also said she likes his personal connection to the state.
Ms. DOLORES WELLS: And I did meet his father once so - and I thought he was very nice way back then even. But I like that he is from Michigan. And it'd be nice of he really does something for Michigan.
GONYEA: But Wells also expressed doubts that Romney or any other candidate really has the answers Michigan's economy needs.
Ms. WELLS: I think right now it's all - they're saying what people want to hear. You know, I - whatever you want to hear is what they're going to say.
GONYEA: Romney pulled in 39 percent of the vote with John McCain in second place with 30 percent. Mike Huckabee rounded out the top three with 16 percent. This was John McCain's second time running in Michigan. In 2000, he defeated George W. Bush in the primary here, thanks to a large number of Democrats and independents who voted in the Republican primary. This time, according to exit polls, there were far fewer of the crossover votes McCain needed if he hoped to win.
Over the past week, McCain had blunt talk about Michigan's economy. He said lost manufacturing jobs - 200,000 gone in the last eight years - likely won't be coming back. Instead he called for retraining and education for laid-off workers. Romney attacked him as being a pessimist. But last night McCain sounded optimistic.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): My friends, we fell a little short tonight. But we have no cause to be discouraged or to second guess what we might have done differently. We did what we always do. We went to Michigan and we told people the truth. We always tell them the truth.
(Soundbite of cheering)
GONYEA: McCain spoke in Charleston, South Carolina, where the first big southern primary takes place on Saturday. Mike Huckabee also delivered his Michigan concession speech in the Palmetto State while supporters in Columbia cheered. Huckabee tallied the GOP scorecard so far.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): So it looks like that I won Iowa, John McCain won New Hampshire, Mitt Romney won Michigan. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to win South Carolina.
(Soundbite of cheering)
GONYEA: In Michigan, all of the reelection was on the Republican side. As for the Democrats, a dispute between the national and state parties over the decision to hold the primary so early on the calendar resulted in only a partial slate of Democratic candidates. The national party stripped Michigan of its delegates and told the candidates not to campaign here. Both Barack Obama and John Edwards withdrew their names from the ballot; not so with Hillary Clinton. That enabled her to win 55 percent of the vote, with 40 percent, presumably Obama and Edwards supporters, voting uncommitted.
Don Gonyea, NPR News, Detroit.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
With all the presidential candidates talking about the troubled economy, we turned to David Wessel to find out what they proposed to do about it. He is economics editor of the Wall Street Journal.
David, welcome.
Mr. DAVID WESSEL (Wall Street Journal): Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Let us look first at the latest reports, or you look for. Do these reports indicate that we're any closer to a recession?
Mr. WESSEL: It sure looks like we are closer to a recession. The government's retail sales numbers, which came out yesterday, were bad. People are buying fewer cars, building materials stores are reporting declining sales. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan told the Wall Street Journal this week that he now thinks we're probably in a recession. And of course his successor, Ben Bernanke, is rushing to the rescue, promising to cut interest rates - a sign that he too was worried about the economy.
MONTAGNE: Let's turn then to the Democrats and what they're proposing - to head off a recession, keep recession from hurting people as much as it might. Generally, what are their proposals?
Mr. WESSEL: Generally, the Democrats want to use the government spending and tax-cutting power very quickly to get some money into the economy and stimulate it. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards would spend about $70, $75 billion of government money to get to do that, and Senator Obama, in contrast, is offering a proposal for an immediate $250 worker tax cut with another $250 if the economy weakens.
MONTAGNE: And the Republican candidates.
Mr. WESSEL: Most of the Republican candidates are avoiding that kind of stimulus, although interestingly, President Bush seems to be thinking about it. They focus mainly on keeping tax rates low in the future as a way to bolster confidence in the economy. Although former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is talking about a quick corporate tax cut as a way to stimulate the economy.
MONTAGNE: And of all the different proposals, what strikes you as the most original?
Mr. WESSEL: Well, you know, it's funny, there really aren't any new ideas here. President Bush, in his first term, gave us all, or most of us, a rebate in 2001, and then later had an aggressive program to give businesses an incentive to spend money and investment now rather than in the future. And those ideas are similar to those that are coming up again.
The one who seems to be the sharpest, though, I think is Senator Obama, who has decided that you really need to put money in people's pockets now in order to get the economy going. Of course, he has no power to make that happen. This is sort of an illustrative example of what he would do if he were the president.
MONTAGNE: Okay. Of all those then suggestions, why do you think Senator Obama's is the sharpest? Is that because in fact putting money in people's pockets is the likeliest way to head off a recession?
Mr. WESSEL: I don't know that the government that can do anything to prevent a recession. The question here is, if the government sought to prevent one or soften one, what could it do that would have the biggest immediate bang for the buck?
It seems to me that when the government tries to spend money itself, the pipeline is so long that by the time the money get spent, the recession is over. So that's why President Bush in 2001 and Senator Obama now are talking about something that gives money directly to people so they can spend it now.
Now, the evidence is - the economic evidence is that a lot of people got those rebates in 2001 and saved them rather than spending them. So it's not a surefire trick.
MONTAGNE: David, though, what is the value of candidates campaigning to become president, even talking about economic fixes? Obviously by the time a new president gets in the office a year from now, economic conditions could be quite different?
Mr. WESSEL: That's right. I think there are two reasons. One is, it does create a consensus. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, and Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Fed, met this week to talk about stimulus. So if all the candidates do something, there's a possibility that that would create a consensus that Congress would act. And the second thing is, it tells us what the candidates would do if they were president, and after all, that's what campaigns are supposed to be about.
MONTAGNE: David Wessel is economics editor at the Wall Street Journal.
Thanks very much.
Mr. WESSEL: Thank you.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The business community has received a major victory from the Supreme Court - a ruling that will likely put an end to many fraud cases brought by investors. By a five-to-three vote yesterday, the justices blocked almost all efforts by investors to recover losses from those who played a secondary role in schemes to defraud stockholders.
NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg explains.
NINA TOTENBERG: The ramifications of yesterday's ruling are in the billions and involve suits like the one brought by Enron investors against banks that are accused of helping Enron conceal its perilous financial condition. The actual case decided by the court involves a cable company named Charter Communications.
The SEC said Charter engaged in sham transactions with two of its cable box suppliers. Using backdated documents, the suppliers helped Charter conceal a $20-million cash shortfall on its balance sheet. When Charter's day of reckoning finally came, the losing investors sued not just Charter but the cable box suppliers to recover damages. The investors claimed that the suppliers, as knowing enablers, were liable too.
To the business community, this theory of so-called scheme liability was terrifying. John Engler is president of the National Association of Manufacturers.
Mr. JOHN ENGLER (President, National Association of Manufacturers): If you start to bootstrap liability that way, I mean, the fear was where does this end?
TOTENBERG: The Bush administration backed the business community in a do-or-die test case before the Supreme Court, while the Securities and Exchange Commission, 32 states and investors including pension funds backed those claiming secondary participants in a fraud scheme are liable.
The Supreme Court sided with the business community. Writing for the five justice majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that Congress did not authorize such investor lawsuits against secondary players in a securities fraud case unless it could be shown that the secondary players themselves filed misleading financial reports or made erroneous public statements on which investors relied. In this case, said Justice Kennedy, since no member of the public knew about the cable box suppliers' deceptive acts, the investors didn't rely on them for information and the suppliers aren't liable. The SEC, he said, can punish the suppliers but investors can't sue to recover damages.
Christopher Patti represents the University of California, one of the institutional investors suing secondary players in the Enron case.
Mr. CHRISTOPHER PATTI (University of California's Lawyer): This does shut the door pretty firmly on most of these claims, but perhaps not all of them.
TOTENBERG: Patti contends that the Enron suits may survive because they are mainly against investment banks, which he says were directly counseling investors that Enron was a good stock while, at the same time, designing schemes to cover up the company's insolvency.
Most observers, even one sympathetic to the investors, think that yesterday's Supreme Court ruling will doom even the Enron suit. Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, a Democrat, joined with the Republican Texas attorney general in the Supreme Court on behalf of investors. He compares yesterday's decision to a nonsensical rule on bank robbery.
Attorney General MARC DANN (Democrat, Ohio): You could plan the bank robbery and drive the getaway car, but if you don't go in and hold the gun to the teller, then you're not liable in a civil fraud suit. That doesn't make any sense.
TOTENBERG: Dann says the only way to hold secondary actors in security fraud accountable to investors now is to amend the federal securities law to expressly allow such suits.
The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, says he won't waste time on such an effort as long as George Bush is president because Mr. Bush would almost certainly veto the bill.
Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
President Bush is in Egypt today, the last stop of his more than weeklong tour of the Middle East. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been a major theme throughout the region, and it'll come up again today.
NPR's Michele Kelemen is traveling with the president and joins us now to talk about it.
Hello.
MICHELE KELEMEN: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: So President Bush is in Egypt, and doing what exactly?
KELEMEN: He'll be meeting the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who's been a key player for a very long time in the Middle East peace process. And he'll be talking to Mr. Mubarak about his recent visit to Israel and the West Bank, and about his other stops on this trip. The other issue that always comes up with the Egyptians is Egypt borders Gaza - the Palestinian territory that's under the control of Hamas, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group. And there's a lot of concern about gun smuggling into Gaza from Egypt.
MONTAGNE: Generally speaking, how would you say President Bush's Middle East peace plan has been received by his Arab hosts throughout this tour? Just to remind listeners, he has previously met with leaders of the Gulf - allies like Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates - and then Saudi leaders before going on to Egypt.
KELEMEN: Well, he told reporters yesterday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that the first question that comes to the mind of these leaders is why is Mr. Bush so optimistic? And is Mr. Bush going to spend the kind of time and effort in order for this to work? So I think, mainly, he's facing a lot of skepticism about it. He said to reporters that those of us involved in the peace process have a lot of work to do to instill confidence in the people. And he's trying to rally Arab support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but also asking them to reach out to Israel.
MONTAGNE: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who's traveling with the president, yesterday was asked whether it's overdue for Arab states to reach out to Israel. And here's a clip of what she said.
Secretary CONDOLEEZZA RICE (U.S. State Department): We have believed that it will be important for the regional states, the Arab states, to do everything possible to encourage the process, and that, yes, there should be efforts to reach out to the Israelis as this process goes forward. But this will move at different speeds for different countries. We understand that.
MONTAGNE: Secretary of State Rice.
Is it realistic for the Bush administration to expect that it might get actual assurances from this trip?
KELEMEN: I don't think they did there in Saudi Arabia for sure. She sort of looked very disappointed when she was sitting next to Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, at that news conference last night. And he said, I don't know what kind of outreach we can offer the Israelis but to offer a peace plan for the region. The Saudis do have their peace initiative, and it talks about normalization of relations with Israel, but after a just peace.
MONTAGNE: And there in Egypt, will President Bush be broaching the question of human rights, which is an issue in Egypt in which his administration had pushed for earlier in his time in office?
KELEMEN: Well, Secretary Rice says that he is committed to these issues, that he does raise them in all of his private talks. But even she, you know, when she asked about it in Saudi Arabia, was very vague. So they talk about it in broad terms, but you don't hear them getting into very much detail, particularly in public.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Michele Kelemen, traveling with the president and speaking to us from Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.
Thanks very much.
KELEMEN: My pleasure.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And while President Bush has spent time visiting Arab allies, the president of France has been conducting his own tour of the region. Nicolas Sarkozy has been trying to strengthen France's position in the Arab world. Yesterday he signed a deal with the United Arab Emirates granting French troops a permanent home in the Persian Gulf, just across the water from Iran.
From Dubai, NPR's Ivan Watson reports.
IVAN WATSON: Nicolas Sarkozy arrived here on the heels of President Bush. He quickly sat down with the rulers of this wealthy Arab oil sheikhdom to sign an agreement to establish France's first military base in the Persian Gulf. The plan is to deploy up to 500 French soldiers, sailors and airmen at an installation in Abu Dhabi by 2009. Currently the U.S. is the dominant military force in the Persian Gulf. There are some 40,000 American troops stationed across this strategic oil-rich region.
While visiting the UAE, the French president also signed an agreement aimed at eventually building a $6 billion nuclear power plant here. In Saudi Arabia, Sarkozy made a similar offer to provide nuclear technology. The Arab country's move towards developing nuclear technology has been prompted in part by their growing concern about their large neighbor, Iran. For years Tehran has been pursuing its own nuclear program.
Ivan Watson, NPR News, Dubai.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
NPR's Business News starts with more turbulence for the Dreamliner.
Boeing is expected to announce more delays for its new 787 aircraft. The Dreamliner is Boeing's biggest investment in commercial aircraft in more than a decade. The company has some 800 orders for the new plane. But production problems have already put Boeing six months behind schedule. Another delay could force the company to pay millions of dollars in penalties to customers, and could frustrate the plans of some big international airlines.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And in other business news, Oprah Winfrey plans to launch her own TV network. The talk show host will be chairman of a 50/50 joint venture between her own company Harpo Productions and Discovery Communications.
NPR's Wendy Kaufman has more.
WENDY KAUFMAN: The venture will be known as OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network. It's expected to go on the air in mid 2009 on what is now the Discovery Health Channel, an underperforming cable outlet available in more than 70 million homes.
In a conference call yesterday, Ms. Winfrey, the first black woman to attain billionaire status, said creating a TV network was the fulfillment of a dream she's had for 16 years.
Ms. OPRAH WINFREY (Talk Show Host): This is an evolution of what I've been able to do every day. I will now have the opportunity to do that 24 hours a day on a platform that goes on forever.
KAUFMAN: Winfrey will have full editorial control over the new venture, which will focus on the same themes as her daytime talk show, magazine and Web site - money, health, relationships, spirituality, and doing good in the world. Winfrey's talk show with her at the helm will continue, but not on the new network. Her show has already been syndicated through the 2010/2011 season.
Wendy Kaufman, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
On Wednesdays we talk about the workplace. And today we go to Germany, where there's debate over executive salaries. German business leaders generally take home much less than their U.S. counterparts. But recent news reports about multimillion dollar pay packages have sparked a national fury in Germany.
From Berlin, Kyle James reports.
KYLE JAMES: A group of marketing executives is having lunch at the Capital Club in Berlin, a private business club on the city's most elegant square. This is where many of Germany's top executives come when they're in the capital and perhaps among its leather chairs and marble tabletops they can find a little shelter from the current storm of negative public opinion about their take-home pay.
It broke out after reports surfaced that luxury carmaker Porsche paid its management board $161 million in its last fiscal year, more than twice it did the year before. But Michael Schroder, former Germany head of the global PR firm Hill and Knowlton, says those kinds of salaries are justified.
Mr. MICHAEL SCHRODER (Hill and Knowlton): If someone is responsible for company let's say with 20,000 or 30,000 employees and listed on stock exchange, your responsibility is so, so high, and the power you need and the pressure you are under has its worth.
JAMES: That worth is about $6.6 million a year, the average compensation for the CEOs of Germany's top 30 publicly traded companies. That might seem reasonable to Americans, since according to the Corporate Library, leading CEOs in the U.S. earn around 15 million a year. But in Germany that's a development many don't like.
Michael Sommer heads Germany's Trade Union Association.
Mr. MICHAEL SOMMER (Trade Union Association): (Speaking German)
JAMES: Traditionally, a German director earned about eight times what a skilled worker earned, he says. Now in large firms we have executives being paid according to the American models, earning 200 or 300 times more than workers. He goes on - we've never had that in Germany, and many think it's unfair.
In a survey conducted in November, 83 percent of those asked said current salaries of leading CEOs are excessive. The debate comes at a time of unease in Germany about the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots, especially in a social welfare state where taxes and benefits used to nudge people toward the center. But cuts in the top tax rates and welfare reforms have helped the rich get richer and the poor lose ground.
(Soundbite of bar)
JAMES: At a bar in a working class neighborhood of Berlin, 66-year-old retired car factory worker Helmut Tatchmarchek(ph) is having a beer with friends. He says he's not as worried about paying top dollar for a CEO who performs. But he's outraged over executives like Daimler Chrysler's former head Jurgen Schrempp who are given severance in stock packages worth millions, even if they leave their companies in tatters.
Mr. HELMUT TATCHMARCHEK (Retired Factory Worker): (Speaking German)
JAMES: In Germany, executives can screw things up and still they get money thrown after them when they leave, he says. I think that's wrong. When they make a mess of things, he adds, they should face the consequences and not be rewarded with severance pay.
Politicians have been critical of at least some pay practices. Conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel has said rewarding failed CEOs with huge bonuses upsets the country's social balance. No one is talking about capping salaries, a move which wouldn't pass constitutional muster.
But many are talking about demanding more transparency and giving shareholders more say about compensation, or changing tax rules around bonuses.
Social Democratic parliamentarian Joachim Poss is heading a new task force on CEO pay.
Mr. JOACHIM POSS (Parliamentarian): (Speaking German)
JAMES: We're checking on how already existing laws on disclosure and shareholder responsibilities, as well as tax law, might be modified, he says. As we can see from the reactions of business leaders, Poss adds, the pressure is growing, and that's what I want.
(Soundbite of crowd)
JAMES: Back at the Capital Club, former CEO Michael Schroder says top German executives do feel under attack about money. He says he feels for them, since he's been there.
Mr. SCHRODER: They're pretty alone, and I know how cold it is on top of the mountain. And you lose more than you get at the end.
JAMES: The debate has bled over into the world of sports. Germany's parliamentary president has now criticized the sky-high salaries of soccer players. He added that politicians, on the other hand, don't earn enough.
For NPR News, I'm Kyle James in Berlin.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
For our last word in business we bring you the latest in American workplace benefits - pet insurance. It's still rare, but the nation's largest pet insurer says more and more corporations are offering it. Comcast and Home Depot are among the companies which now make available insurance for their employees' dogs, cats and birds. The perk allows companies to appear thoughtful, at no cost to them. That's because pet insurance is still a voluntary benefit. Employees pay for the whole policy. They do get a discount by buying it through the company.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The House Intelligence Committee gathers later today for a hearing on the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes. You'll remember those are the video tapes made in 2002 which showed harsh interrogation techniques being used on two suspected terrorists. The news that the tapes even existed surfaced last December along with the news that they had been destroyed in 2005.
We're going to take a few minutes now to talk about the role of Congress in overseeing intelligence. To do that, we called Representative Jane Harman. She was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee when the CIA first told committee members it was planning to destroy one of those interrogation tapes.
Congresswoman Harman, good morning.
Representative JANE HARMAN (Democrat, California): Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Now, I have in front of me, a letter that you sent shortly after you were briefed, and you urged the CIA not to destroy this tape. What exactly did you say to them?
Rep. HARMAN: Well, I said that it would be ill-advised. That even if there were no legal requirement to keep the tape, it would reflect badly on the agency. I had been briefed in my first weeks as ranking member - that means senior Democrat at that time - on the committee, and I thought the proposed plan was bad, and put in writing my objections.
MONTAGNE: Now, even though you protested this plan to destroy these videotapes, put it on paper, why in the end couldn't Congress stop the CIA from destroying the tapes?
Rep. HARMAN: Well, I wish we had been able to stop them. We didn't know they were being destroyed. I assumed that because I weighed in against it as did, according to his statement - then Chairman, Porter Goss - who later became the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time they were destroyed, I assumed they would not be destroyed. There was no hint of they're being destroyed. In fact, I believe looking back on the things that I heard when I was still ranking member on the committee, I think the committee was misled by the CIA about those tapes. And we'll have to - someone will have to go through the transcripts and figure that out. But I think what was done was wrong. It may well have violated the law. And if people deliberately frustrated the will of the committee, I think they should be accountable.
MONTAGNE: Give us a general sense, if you will, of what it's like to be in those briefings, of the kind we're speaking about. I mean, can you take notes? Can you ask questions?
Rep. HARMAN: Well, one size doesn't fit all. There are briefings regularly of the committee. Some are much more controversial than others. But nonetheless, as far as notes go, you - I suppose one could take some notes but they would have to be carried around in a classified bag, which I don't personally own. You can't talk to anybody about what you've learned, so there's no ability to use committee staff, for example, to do research on some of the issues that are raised in these briefings. And the whole environment is not conducive to the kind of collaborative give and take that would make for much more successful oversight.
MONTAGNE: How easy or how difficult is it to act - for a congressperson in one of these briefings to act on what's being said there, what you're told?
Rep. HARMAN: It's not easy. The administration holds more cards than Congress does. But it is certainly doable. I hope I did it reasonably well in my years on the Intelligence Committee for a member to do a lot of research and push back, and say I don't know enough about that. I insist on somebody more high-level coming in and explaining that again. Show me the legal underpinnings for these. Tell me who approved that. And I have seen some very good hearings, both classified and unclassified in the intelligence area, and I would cite as a high-watermark the so-called joint inquiry, which was a combined hearing by the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, much of which was in public session into what went wrong in 9/11. We published a very, very thoughtful, thorough report.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for joining us.
Rep. HARMAN: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Representative Jane Harman was a member of the House Intelligence Committee during both the Clinton and the Bush administrations. She joined us from Capitol Hill.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The increase in American troops in Iraq is widely credited with reducing violence in Baghdad and other parts of the country. Another result of last year's surge, there are now nearly twice as many suspected Iraqi insurgents in U.S. custody - nearly 24,000 in all. The U.S. military is trying to figure out how to hold those detainees without allowing detention camps to become recruiting centers for the most radical militant groups.
NPR's Corey Flintoff visited the biggest U.S. detention center.
COREY FLINTOFF: The crowd gathers just after dusk, outside the freshly tiled and painted building with a ceremonial red ribbon stretched across its entrance. Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Williams(ph) steps up to the microphone.
Lieutenant Colonel PATRICK WILLIAMS (U.S. Army): Today we open the Dar al-Hikma Book of Freedom School, I guess, I can call it Part two. The buildings you see will support higher education for our detainee population.
FLINTOFF: Dar al-Hikma is the Arabic name for the new school. It means house of wisdom. And the U.S. military hopes it will be a transformational place for the nearly 20,000 Iraqis housed at this sprawling detention camp in the desert of far southern Iraq.
Brigadier General Michael Nevin believes that basic education is one of the keys to returning former militants to Iraqi society. The U.S. detention system offers first through fifth grade schooling for some nearly illiterate detainees as well as health care, family visitations and a military system for reviewing their cases. Nevin admits that it hasn't been easy to convince his fellow commanders that this is an important part of fighting the war.
Brigadier General MICHAEL NEVIN (U.S. Army): This is seen as a byproduct of war fighting, but you've got to look at it in a counterinsurgency terms. All the population engagements you do are part of the counterinsurgency effort, and this is a significant population engagement. The spheres of influence in the Iraqi society, each detainee represents 100 family members - tribal members, relatives, friends that care about them. With the population that we have, we're affecting the perceptions of two and a half million Iraqis.
FLINTOFF: Until the surge began last spring, Camp Bucca had a much smaller population, but it was a chaotic and dangerous place. Radical inmates fought their guards with stones, burned down their barracks and imposed their own rules on the other detainees.
Major General Doug Stone, the commander of U.S. detention operations in Iraq, says that worst of all, hardened militants were able to use the camps to recruit young men. He says that some young detainees were not extremists but were bribed or intimidated into taking part. Some may have been innocent.
Major General DOUG STONE (Commander, U.S. Detention, Iraq): In fact, there are mistakes made. Very significant guys get away and are unknown and guys that are oftentimes very minimally involved or wrapped up.
FLINTOFF: Stone says that much of the anger in the camps stemmed from the fact that the detainees have not been convicted of anything and they have no fixed sentences, so there's a sense of isolation and hopelessness. One way of combating that is to bring each detainee before a military review board that can examine his case and recommend that he be released.
Unidentified Man #1: Please (unintelligible) in the detainee.
Unidentified Man #2: (Speaking in foreign language)
FLINTOFF: A young man stands before a tribunal composed of two officers and a senior enlisted man. He fidgets in his yellow prison jumpsuit and windbreaker hang loosely from skinny shoulders. This is the review board.
Frank Hutchison is a Navy lieutenant commander and a lawyer.
Lieutenant FRANK HUTCHISON (U.S. Navy; Lawyer): The detainee walks in the room and he is read his rights, and approves of rights that is given to the detainee. At that point, the detainee is swore in. He swears on the Koran, if he's Muslim - and not all of them are. And then at that point, the detainee is read what he's been alleged to have done to get him here. And then the board is sort of a give-and-take.
FLINTOFF: Hutchison says the sessions last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. And the three person-boards have to process a lot of them to meet their goal of reviewing every inmate every six months.
Lt. HUTCHISON: In a typical day, we do anywhere between 160 to 200 people, in fact, as many as 240 there for a while.
FLINTOFF: At the end of the hearing, the detainee is told that he'll receive a letter in 45 days, telling him whether he'll be released or extended for another six months. If the board feels that he's made progress in detention, he may be recommended to take part in educational, vocational and religious programs. It's not due process as Americans know it, but Colonel James Brown, the commander of Camp Bucca, says it breaks the cycle of hopelessness that helps turn people who are minor fighters into full-blown radicals.
Colonel JAMES BROWN (Commander, Camp Bucca): It has an enduring effect that - because majority of the guys that we recommend they stay. The reason we're commending they stay is because the clear preponderance of evidence is that they were engaged in any coalition combat, that since they were doing that, the likelihood is very high that they will continue to that. And they understand it. But they respect being a part of the process.
FLINTOFF: For those who don't get to go home, there is the school and the religious program run by an imam who leads discussions of the Koran and tries to refute the teachings of religious radicals known as Takfiris. Because they are zealous and well-organized, they can recruit or intimidate more moderate inmates in their compounds, ruling them like gang leaders in American prisons.
The American strategy at Camp Bucca is to identify the radicals and move them into separate compounds at one end of the camp.
Colonel Brown.
Col. BROWN: These are the Takfirian and al-Qaida compounds. These guys, they came from hardened groups, extremists. They were fighting us. Their belief is that you kill anybody who doesn't agree with your extremely rigid view of Islam, especially other Islamic people.
FLINTOFF: Brown says that even the most extreme inmates still have their status reviewed every six months, and that they have access to family visits and educational programs, although most refused to take part.
Since they have been segregated and since the review process began last August, the American commanders say that even the radical compounds have been quiet. The biggest problem with them is that the inmates are constantly working to escape digging tunnels and tearing up their mattresses to make clothes that will cover their canary yellow prison uniforms once they're outside.
Major General Doug Stone, the detention operations commander, says that's something that keeps him awake at nights.
Maj. Gen. STONE: The thing that I do - I think about all the time is the guys that are really, really smart. And have they figured out how to jujitsu me and our fighters. I mean, have they already infiltrated something? Or have they already engaged in understanding our behavior and what we want to do so well that they've adapted to it, and I don't see it.
FLINTOFF: One weakness of Stone's strategy is simply that the educational and religious programs are still too new and too small to reach more than a few of the nearly 20,000 detainees at Camp Bucca. His commanders are working to create more space for programs, but they say they need more guards to supervise the detainees and move them from place to place inside the camp to be effective in what Stone calls the battlefield of the mind.
Corey Flintoff, NPR News, Baghdad.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
When pitchers and catchers report for spring training next month, baseball's commissioner wants new procedures in place to keep banned performance-enhancing drugs out of the game. Commissioner Bud Selig was on Capitol Hill yesterday, as was former Senator George Mitchell who has detailed widespread use of drugs in baseball. Mitchell blames players, league officials and the players' union.
Joining us now is the executive director of that union, the Major League Baseball Players Association, Donald Fehr.
Good morning.
Mr. DONALD FEHR (Major League Baseball Players Association): Good morning.
MONTAGNE: I want to play a bit of tape to begin from yesterday's hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. It's an exchange between Senator Mitchell and Democratic Congressman Edolphus Towns of New York.
Representative EDOLPHUS TOWNS (Democrat, New York): How would you characterize the level of cooperation you receive from the players association while conducting new investigation?
Mr. George Mitchell (Former Senator, Maine): As I said in my report, the players association was largely uncooperative.
MONTAGNE: Mr. Fehr, why such a characterization?
Mr. FEHR: I was a little surprised by that because at Senator Mitchell's press conference when he announced the report, he didn't say the same thing, quite. What he said was that we were largely uncooperative, but that was largely understandable. And the reason he said it was largely understandable is he understands the role in the position we were in.
Whenever management of a company wants to do an investigation of the employees, the union has the legal obligation to represent those employees to give them legal advice, to recommend they get their own lawyers. We're appropriate to advise them of the consequences of what they might say. And in this context, that had its own course, I think.
MONTAGNE: Of course, the matter of drugs in baseball is as much about public perception as it is about legal issues. I realize that's your responsibility as a union, but it - could you have helped bring these things along?
Mr. FEHR: Well, I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Where we could be cooperative we were. What we did was simply exercise our legal responsibilities to represent the members, and I think everybody understands it.
MONTAGNE: Looking ahead, what do you see is the potential sticking points in negotiating changes to baseball's drug testing policy with the league?
Mr. FEHR: I don't really know. I think that when you look at Senator Mitchell's report a little more carefully and with a little less generalized statement, what you see is that he basically said the procedures we put in effect three years ago for steroids have basically worked. There is no detectible steroid-use.
The problem that he pointed to was human growth hormone, which everybody understands is a difficult issue. The problem is you can't test for it. He made a series of suggestions about how administratively we might be able to modify the program in the hopes that it would work better, and we'll sit down and talk to the commissioner about it. Hopefully, there will be players involved in the meetings and we'll see where we go. I can't predict now whether there will be sticking points or if so will there be?
MONTAGNE: Although in the past the union has objected to tests, blood tests, sort of okayed urine tests, would you hold to that?
Mr. FEHR: That depends on what the nature of the test is. Having said that, there is no accepted and scientifically valid blood test for human growth hormone at the moment. And what we've indicated is if one becomes available, if it can be scientifically validated, then we'll take a hard look at it - the circumstances and all the rest of it.
MONTAGNE: We just have a couple of seconds to go here, but again, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig wants changes made by spring training, do you think that's realistic?
Mr. FEHR: I don't really know. And I don't think he quite said spring training. What we hope to do is to be able to talk about it, be in the position to discuss it with the players during spring training.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for joining us.
Mr. FEHR: Thank you.
MONTAGNE: Donald Fehr is executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
The Republican race for president took another turn last night. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney won the Michigan primary, becoming the third candidate to win in the first three big tests of the GOP calendar.
Joining us now to talk about the results and the wide-open Republican seal is NPR News analyst Juan Williams.
Good morning.
JUAN WILLIAMS: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Not just a big win, but a big reprieve for Mitt Romney.
WILLIAMS: Absolutely. Mitt Romney has now won the gold for as he organized the Olympics, you know? And so now he talks in those terms, and he's won the gold now in Michigan and Wyoming. And it looks like he's ahead going in to this weekend in Nevada.
What we saw yesterday was that he won, largely, around the Detroit metropolitan area, high-income Republican voters, those who weren't less than 50,000, a real split between Romney and John McCain. But if you had more than 50,000, you were strongly in the Romney camp and certainly among people who were self-identified Republicans. Romney did very well. So he comes out with the 39 to 30 victory. Huckabee ended up with about 16 percent of the vote, but a very strong victory for Mitt Romney.
MONTAGNE: And with his ability to finance his campaign, he is right back in the thick if it, isn't he?
WILLIAMS: He is. So we have now three winners, Renee. We've had Huckabee - Mike Huckabee in Iowa winning based on social conservatives and with immigration as the big issue. We've seen John McCain do very well with independents. Independent voters in 2000 gave McCain a victory in Michigan when you have about 52 percent of the voters in the Republican primary be independents or Democrats.
Yesterday, what we saw was only about 32 percent of the independents and Democrats turned out and they went for McCain, but it just wasn't as big as the purely Republican vote. And that purely Republican vote heavily based on the economy and on last minutes ads. Mitt Romney put a lot of money into last minute ads and appearances in Michigan, and that helped him sway last-minute voters, people who made the decision last day or so, and that was the basis of his victory.
MONTAGNE: And let's talk about John McCain. On Monday, he came out on top of all the big national polls that didn't seem to help him in Michigan.
WILLIAMS: Well, you know, it's interesting. The push from the national polls, as you pointed out, and the push that came from his victory in New Hampshire seemed to give him momentum going in. But McCain had a very different stand on the Michigan economy than did Mitt Romney. McCain's position - was I'm going to tell you the truth - a lot of these auto industry jobs are not coming back. McCain, on the other hand, promised that he would help to revitalize the Michigan economy and the auto industry. And apparently, that kind of optimism played well for the guy who claims he was the home state kid, you know, the son of George Romney, the former Michigan governor. He grew up there. Although, of course, he left and gone to Massachusetts long ago.
MONTAGNE: And Romney, of course, promising this could have - innocence bring him back.
WILLIAMS: That's right.
MONTAGNE: Mike Huckabee came in third last night. He said he's in it for the long haul.
WILLIAMS: I think he is. And again, going down to South Carolina this weekend, what you have is an opportunity for him to reclaim those social conservatives, specifically evangelicals. They did not turn out in large numbers for him in Michigan, especially in the Upper Peninsula. That had been his hope.
Now, we go down to South Carolina - much more of those social conservatives to play with and he's in the lead, looking, you know - I would say that's really between Huckabee and McCain in South Carolina.
MONTAGNE: Really interesting race. Three Republican candidates now, they've (unintelligible) up the really states. Next, Nevada, South Carolina, then Florida and a whole bunch of states on Super Tuesday, including obviously big ones California and New York. How is the campaign changing?
WILLIAMS: Well, you know, I think one of the key changes is the economy has become such a central issue, Renee. They're previously - there was a lot of focus on the immigration issue, on the war in Iraq. Now, I think what's coming clear is, as we've seen in Michigan and we'll see now, I think, in subsequent races, the economy is becoming more dominant. It's now the number one issues among voters - Republican and Democrat - in this campaign. And that's something that we haven't seen before, and so we're going to see how the popular (unintelligible), for example, how Mike Huckabee plays, how the optimism of Mitt Romney, especially his ties to a lot of his Wall Street supporters plays versus the kind of, you know, straight talk that John McCain claims to have about economic issues and what can be done out of - help ease some of the middle-class anxiety.
MONTAGNE: Juan, thanks very much.
WILLIAMS: You're welcome, Renee.
MONTAGNE: NPR news analyst Juan Williams.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
With telescopes these days capturing astonishing images of faraway galaxies and other cosmic mysteries, a new book is helping everyone appreciate those pictures, even people who can't see. It was unveiled yesterday in Baltimore by NASA and the National Federation of the Blind.
NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce has more.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE: Back in 1984, Noreen Grice was 21 years old. She was studying astronomy at Boston University and had a job at the local planetarium. One Saturday, a group of blind people came to the show. After it was over, she went up to them.
Ms. NOREEN GRICE (Co-Author, "Touch the Invisible Sky: A Multi-Wavelength Braille Book Featuring Tactile NASA Images"): I said, so how did you like the show? And there was an uncomfortable pause, and then they said, this stunk, and walked away. And that left me speechless because I thought the planetarium was, like, the best place in the world.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The next day, she took a bus to a school for the blind. She found its library and looked for astronomy books. They were thick books, printed in braille.
Ms. GRICE: But something was missing. And I said, where are the pictures? Are there any pictures in these books?
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The librarian said, well, no. Not often. It's expensive to translate an image into raised lines and textures that a person can feel with their fingers. Noreen Grice says it just killed her that blind people weren't getting the kind of cool astronomy books she'd loved as a kid.
Ms. GRICE: I had grown up in the housing projects outside Boston. People would say, you're a project kid, you're not welcome here. I understood what it meant to be labeled and I didn't really know how to make astronomy accessible, but I thought I'll try.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Her first book, "Touch the Stars," came out in 1990. She used the braille printer to trace out the constellations. Her next book, "Touch the Universe," traced out photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Grice created that one using thin plastic sheets.
Ms. GRICE: Basically, I was etching them by hand in my kitchen somewhere like, really, difficult. When you have defused gas that you can hardly see, it is very difficult to apply a texture to it.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Her latest book, with two co-authors, is "Touch the Invisible Sky." It's beautiful, designs to be read by both blind people and sighted people. It has images taken by telescopes that detect things like radio waves, X-rays, and gamma rays - wavelengths of light that no one can see with the naked eye.
Ms. GRICE: Well, I think we all have the same thing in common with this book that no human can see these other wavelengths. So we're all approaching it together.
Dr. MARC MAURER (President, National Federation of the Blind): Most people think that astronomy is the study of light and they think, therefore, that blind people can't do it and would not be interested. Blind people can do it and we find it fascinating.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Marc Maurer is president of the National Federation of the Blind. He says, as a kid, he loved the science textbooks his mom read to him. But a popular science book he could read himself? There was nothing like that.
Dr. MAURER: There still are not enough books. Science with pictures and graphics, and they're almost non-existent.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: That's why Chelsea Cook(ph) got her family to drive four hours to Baltimore for the new book's unveiling. She loves Noreen Grice's books.
Ms. CHELSEA COOK (High School Student, Newport News, Virginia): So really interesting. You know, the visuals are - you can read and they're just cool to look at.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Cook is a high school student in Newport News, Virginia. She says she has enough vision to see a full moon but not stars. Still, she wants to study Astrochemistry, and her ultimate career?
Ms. COOK: The concept of a blind astronaut. It'd be a lot to work towards, but I think it's possible.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: So, would you want to do that?
Ms. COOK: Mm-hmm.
(Soundbite of laughter)
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Totally?
Ms. COOK: Yes.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
Scientists say they've identified the remains of the largest rodent ever recorded - a more than 2,000-pound beast the size of a bull. Its fossilized skull was found in Uruguay by an amateur paleontologist. It has huge incisors, possibly to fight off saber tooth cats. This new find takes the crown from what was the biggest rodent ever discovered. In Venezuela that fossil was dubbed Guinea-zilla.
This is MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
Wisconsin has abolished a law in an effort to prevent cold feet, literally. After enduring a very snowy month of December and a really cold start to 2008, Wisconsin lawmakers lifted its state-wide ban on heated sidewalks, stairs and entrances. The ban was put in place in the 1970s in response to the energy crisis. Those who pushed to get rid of the ban argue that warm sidewalks would also save lots on snow removal and salt.
It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
NPR's business report starts with Asia's stock market spooked by the U.S.
Investors in Asia ran for the exit on the latest news of the U.S. mortgage crisis hitting banking giant Citigroup and the slowdown in retail sales. In Tokyo, the Nikkei Average fell 3.5 percent, its biggest hit in two years. Hong Kong's market index plunged more than five percent, the worst since the 9/11 attacks. Markets from Australia to the Philippines also sank. The U.S. is still a big market for Asian companies. Many of the worst hit stocks were big exporters like Sony and Toyota.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne
The Republican race for president took another turn last night. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney won the Michigan primary. John McCain came in second. And third was the man we're going to talk to next - Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas. He joins us on the line from Columbia, South Carolina.
Good morning.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): Good morning. It's a pleasure to be with you.
MONTAGNE: Pleasure to have you.
Governor, you placed third in Michigan with 16 percent of the vote. The thing that fueled your win in Iowa were the social conservatives there. Why did you lose many of those social conservatives to Governor Romney in Michigan?
Mr. HUCKABEE: Well, people know Governor Romney. I mean, his dad was the governor. He grew up there. He outspent me fifty to one there. I think, frankly, to receive the vote that I did - ahead of Rudy of Giuliani, Fred Thompson and others - is pretty significant.
MONTAGNE: Well, clearly, your base is the evangelical vote. But so far, you haven't been winning the others who made up the Reagan Republican coalition. That would be fiscal conservatives and national security conservatives.
Mr. HUCKABEE: Well, I think that there is sort of a misunderstanding. And people think that the only voters I have are Evangelicals. Evangelicals are also fiscal conservatives and they're interested in national security. And I am winning a lot of the rank and file people. In fact, I'm getting the very people that made up the Reagan coalition - union members and people who are middle class and small business owners. That's exactly many of the people who are supporting me. I think when we get through South Carolina and win here Saturday, people are going to see that there's a much broader support than maybe they had been thinking.
MONTAGNE: We're going to go on to South Carolina. Let's take the issues that will crop up there. The economy is what a lot of people are talking about. What's your view on what the government can do to avoid what appears to be a recession heading our way?
Mr. HUCKABEE: Well, the most important thing is to take the Hippocratic Oath and first do no harm. Don't raise taxes. Don't create more regulation and make it even tougher for businesses who are barely getting around their margins; make it tougher for them to survive. If anything, we need a tax stimulus package to lower taxes, cut some of the regulatory red tape, give businesses a chance to get some breathing room so that they can invest, put capital back into the marketplace. That's critical. And don't take money of the consumers' pocket with high tax rates or with tax increase right now.
MONTAGNE: Governor Huckabee, as we just said, the next important primary for Republicans is the Saturday in South Carolina. People there have been reporting getting automated phone calls from an interest group supporting you - a group called Common Sense Issues. It's what's known as push polling. It's where a pollster asks voters leading questions that include negative or misleading information about other candidates. Your campaign may not actually be doing that. Another group is doing it. But will you demand that this group or any group doing push polling on your behalf stop?
Mr. HUCKABEE: We have done that. And we've done it every state where we participated. We don't know who these people are. I personally wish all of this were outlawed. I think that every candidate ought to speak for himself and that everything that involves the candidate's name or another candidate's name should be authorized and approved by that candidate. Otherwise, it shouldn't be spoken.
MONTAGNE: Can't you get an interest group, that is supposedly doing something on your campaign's behalf, Can't you get them to stop?
Mr. HUCKABEE: No. How can you? The law prohibits us having any conversation with them. I can publicly call for it. But if I have a conversation with them -even to ask them to quit - it's called coordinating, and it's against the law. So I don't want to go to jail because somebody else is doing something that I don't like. There's also special interest groups that are coming down here to attack me today. Now, you know, some of that donors to those groups are major donors to Mitt Romney and others. You know, I haven't heard Mitt Romney call out for these people to stop.
The point is that candidates can't force these special interest 527 groups to stop. I wish we could, because frankly, they're not doing me a favor by carrying out things and tactics that I don't personally approve of.
MONTAGNE: Well, they might not be doing you a favor but they can help a campaign.
Mr. HUCKABEE: And they can hurt. They can also hurt. And I think, sometimes, to me, of all the things that are done, push polling is the most offensive to me because it's - I think it just ingenuous people think they're being a part of a poll, and they're actually being sold something. And that's one of the reasons I detest that method, probably, as maybe above all others.
MONTAGNE: Just a last question. You just told us you're going to win in South Carolina. Do you have to win in South Carolina? And if you don't win - come in first - what do you do?
Mr. HUCKABEE: We don't have to win. We just think we will. And we know that if we do, it really puts us in a very, very strong position going into Florida and on Super Tuesday. So it's important for us. If we don't win, then I guess we, you know, keep going. We just work a little harder when we get to Florida. But we think we will win here. And we're working hard to win.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for joining us.
Mr. HUCKABEE: It's a pleasure. Thanks.
MONTAGNE: Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is a Republican candidate for president. He joined us from Columbia, South Carolina.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Many of us know people who say they need very little sleep to function.
MONTAGNE: Yeah, we can...
INSKEEP: Some...
MONTAGNE: ...we know a couple.
INSKEEP: So NPR's Margot Adler examines the difference between what our culture tells us about sleep and what doctors and scientists are telling us.
MARGOT ADLER: Think of the scene in the film "Thank You for Smoking." Nick, the PR guy for the smoking industry, is talking to a Hollywood mogul, who calls him up late at night.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "THANK YOU FOR SMOKING")
AARON ECKHART: (As Nick Naylor) Hello.
ROB LOWE: (As Jeff Megall) Thought I'd give you a little update.
ECKHART: (As Nick Naylor) Hi. Are you still at the office?
LOWE: (As Jeff Megall) Do you know what time it is in Tokyo right now?
ECKHART: (As Nick Naylor) No.
LOWE: (As Jeff Megall) 4:00 p.m. tomorrow. It's the future, Nick. No, that's London calling. Seven a.m. in the old empire.
ECKHART: (As Nick Naylor) Jeff, when do you sleep?
LOWE: (As Jeff Megall) Sunday.
ADLER: Dr. Eve Van Cauter, a sleep researcher and professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, says today people take pride in not getting much sleep, especially in America.
EVE VAN CAUTER: Sleeping as little as possible is viewed as a badge of honor here, and something that everyone should try to achieve.
ADLER: Dr. David Dinges, a sleep researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, says yes, short sleepers exist.
DAVID DINGES: The question is, are they nearly as prevalent, number one, as is claimed in society? And number two, are they special?
ADLER: And third, says Dinges, some people who say they are short sleepers are really getting more sleep than they think.
DINGES: Sleeping in the limo to the airport and that, and they just don't, quote, "count that" because it's not in pajamas and not in bed. Or they are actually under-sleeping and dosing themselves heavily with caffeine and falling asleep in meetings and when they are driving, but they consider that to be so normal they no longer define that as a needing sleep.
ADLER: Dr. Van Cauter says if you want to understand how sleep deprived many people are, just get on a morning flight.
VAN CAUTER: I find it remarkable that if you board an airplane at 11:00 o'clock in the morning, within minutes of boarding, one-third of the plane is fast asleep.
ADLER: The myth is that short sleepers run the world. At Juliana's coffee shop where I get my morning cup of joe, lawyer Carol Schrager(ph) and Professor Evangeline Morphos(ph) show me just how prevalent this desire is to do away with sleep. Sleep, says Morphos...
EVANGELINE MORPHOS: It's a waste of time if you take more than five hours to sleep at night.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
MORPHOS: You can be on eBay, you can be reading.
CAROL SCHRAGER: My daughter, who has a life-threatening disease, when I asked her if there's one thing you could change about yourself physically, I expected her to say she'd get rid of her life-threatening condition. No way. She'd say I would abolish the need for sleep so I could get more done.
ADLER: Dr. Van Cauter says in 1960, the National Cancer Society surveyed more than a million Americans. And as part of the survey, there was a question about sleep duration. The average, people said, was eight and a half hours. Today, says Van Cauter...
VAN CAUTER: Sleep duration varies between six and seven hours, rarely exceeding seven hours in any poll. The data are limited, but they strongly suggest that over the past four or five decades, that sleep duration has indeed decreased by an hour and a half to two hours.
ADLER: Researchers like Dr. David Dinges say if we put you in the sleep lab and restrict your sleep, chances are it will only take a few days until you show some serious impairments. But you may think that you're fine.
DINGES: People will often say, oh, I'm good to go. And it is that disconnect between your ability to introspect your alertness and impairment and how impaired you actually are cognitively is why we think a lot of people believe that they're doing just fine when in fact they're not doing so fine.
ADLER: Cliff Sloan is the publisher of Slate magazine. He says he needs only five hours of sleep, although his wife gets eight hours and would love 10.
CLIFF SLOAN: And she is somebody who loves sleep and thinks it's absolutely insane that I'm not indulging in one of life's greatest pleasures.
ADLER: Sloan regards his early morning hours as a special gift, a time when the world is peaceful and his mind is clear. Although he admits to some embarrassment when he sends those early e-mails and wishes he could change the time stamp.
SLOAN: So it would look more normal and like I was sending e-mails at a more normal time than I really was.
ADLER: Some sleep researchers say the amount of sleep you need also depends on your work. Political leaders, for example, might require less sleep since they're always engaged, constantly shifting attention, and changing focus.
VAN CAUTER: This person comes in and then it's another group and then they move to a different location. If, on the other hand, you have to get on the road and drive on a flat highway for four hours, sleepiness will overwhelm you.
ADLER: But Dr. David Dinges says it may not be so easy to change public perceptions.
DINGES: We are the ones who came up with artificial light and skyscrapers and going to the moon. This notion of getting more done behaviorally in less and less time is extremely attractive to most of us.
ADLER: Margot Adler, NPR News, New York.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke is set to testify today before lawmakers on that issue, as NPR's Brian Naylor reports.
BRIAN NAYLOR: Here's House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
NANCY PELOSI: Again, it's about confidence. And I think nothing would restore more confidence in the American people than if we could come up with a bipartisan initiative right away that says we are working together.
NAYLOR: Democrats say a stimulus package could be on the president's desk in as few as 30 days. Pelosi met with Republican House leaders yesterday to present a united front on the urgency of the problem. House Minority Leader John Boehner spoke to reporters afterwards.
JOHN BOEHNER: There's no question there's a threat to the economy. And so there is an agreement that we will work together to try to bring forward a package that truly is stimulative that will happen quickly, and those conversations are going to continue in the coming days.
NAYLOR: Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York.
CHARLES SCHUMER: Direct injections of cash into the economy, through both immediate consumer and government spending, are the shots in the arm needed to ward off a recession. In fact, many economists believe that spending stimuli have a greater immediate effect on the economy than tax cuts.
NAYLOR: The Joint Economic Committee Schumer chairs heard testimony yesterday from a panel of economists. Former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers says any stimulus should add up to $75-100 billion and maybe twice that.
LAWRENCE SUMMERS: Economic cooling is a much greater risk today than economic overheating. There is sufficient weakness in the economy now to justify stimulus legislation that will take effect as rapidly as possible.
NAYLOR: Texas Republican Jeb Hensarling.
JEB HENSARLING: Perhaps one thing we agree on in Congress is that a stimulus package is needed. But we think it is more important, those of us on this dais today thinks it's more important to stimulate paychecks than stimulate welfare checks.
NAYLOR: Brian Naylor, NPR News, the Capitol.
INSKEEP: You can learn more about some of the options for jumpstarting the economy by going to our Web site, npr.org.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
The man who now runs the Pentagon is quieter than the celebrity he replaced. He also has less time than Donald Rumsfeld did. Secretary Robert Gates has finished a year in the job and has about a year to go. The time is relatively short considering his two biggest problems - wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
INSKEEP: We sat down to talk with Gates about those conflicts. He faces decisions about pulling troops out. Five brigades are leaving Iraq soon.
MONTAGNE: Or when to send troops in. Just over 3,000 more are now headed to Afghanistan. It's a balancing act.
INSKEEP: Is Iran the greatest threat that the United States is likely to face in the final year of this administration?
ROBERT GATES: Well, I think Iran is certainly one of the most significant challenges. We continue to be concerned about their ongoing enrichment programs, their unwillingness to suspend in the face of broad international pressure to do so. So I think it will continue to be a challenge.
INSKEEP: Is there a reason you describe them as a challenge rather than a threat?
GATES: Well, when I think of a threat, I think of a direct military threat. And while the jury is out in terms of whether they have eased up on their support to those opposing us in Iraq, I don't see the Iranians, in the near term, as a direct military threat to United States.
INSKEEP: You have commented on Iran's role in Afghanistan, which is the next country that I want to ask about. Do you expect that NATO, which is currently involved in combat operations in the southern part of the country, will have a significantly different role in Afghanistan one year from now?
GATES: No, I think the role will be very similar. And I think it's one that combines military action with economic development and civic action. Our NATO allies are playing a significant role, particularly Canada and the United Kingdom and the Dutch. This kind of role, even with the addition of our Marines, will remain essentially the same.
INSKEEP: Although you mention Canada - this is a country where the government is under a lot of domestic political pressure because of the casualties they have suffered. Are you concerned that if they remain in that exposed position that you could end up losing an ally as opposed to perhaps putting them in a less exposed area of the country?
GATES: My hope is that the addition of the Marines will provide the kind of help that will reduce the levels of casualties. Part of the problem that NATO confronts is that a number of governments are present in Afghanistan. But many of them are in minority or coalition governments where support for the activity in Afghanistan is fragile, if not difficult to come by. And one of the reasons why I decided to tone down the public criticism is that, frankly, I think they're doing as much as they can.
INSKEEP: Should I understand you to mean that under ideal circumstances you wouldn't have to be sending extra U.S. troops to Afghanistan right now, that NATO might be putting an extra 3,000 troops in there?
GATES: Well, I think certainly in the near term that's the case. We clearly had an unmet requirement from the NATO commander in Afghanistan. We are providing 2200 Marines and we will partially satisfy the training requirement with another 1,000 Marines.
INSKEEP: Is there a danger that as you try to reduce the strain on the U.S. armed forces by pulling some troops out of Iraq, if possible, over the coming months, that that's going to be canceled out, at least partly by sending more troops to Afghanistan?
GATES: Well, we certainly don't have any plans to send further troops to Afghanistan beyond what we've just announced.
INSKEEP: As you look at your multiple roles of focusing on Afghanistan, focusing on Iraq, focusing on the overall health of the armed forces, are you in a situation where you may need for the health of the armed forces to bring out troops from Iraq more rapidly than General Petraeus might like?
GATES: And my hope is there will be agreement. If not, the president will be in a position to hear independently from each of those groups and make his own evaluation and decisions.
INSKEEP: But aren't you going to hear from the military personnel about the need to reduce the operational tempo for the armed forces overall, which is a demand to bring troops out of Iraq, in effect regardless of the situation?
GATES: Well, first of all, taking five brigade combat teams out of Iraq does relieve the pressure to some extent. And I think we are on a path where there is some reasonable chance that by next fall, units that are deploying will no longer have to have a 15-month deployment.
INSKEEP: Do you think that by the time this administration leaves office in about a year that the military will be in a sustainable position?
GATES: Well, I think that withdrawal of the five brigade combat teams will be in a sustainable position. I think that as the drawdowns continue in Iraq, stress on the force will continue to be relieved.
INSKEEP: I'm trying to get the numbers in my head. You'd go down to maybe 135, 140,000 troops in Iraq? That's a sustainable number?
GATES: You can debate, and people do debate in this building, what that number is, and I'm not going to get into those numbers. The goal here is to be in a position to have some modest-size force, considerably smaller than the one we have now for some years to come.
INSKEEP: Well, given that, do you assume, just for planning purposes, that the administration that follows you will pursue roughly the same policy in Iraq?
GATES: And my goal is to try and put the situation in Iraq in the best possible place for the next president so that we can have a sustained policy in Iraq. My whole experience is shaped by the Cold War, where we followed a basic strategy that had bipartisan support through multiple presidencies. Iraq is a long-term problem.
INSKEEP: Does your experience in the Cold War also inform some of your recent remarks about so-called soft power? You - I'll summarize - encouraged the United States to spend more money and effort on non-military means of influence abroad: diplomacy, improving the U.S. image, and so forth.
GATES: Absolutely. I mean, when the Cold War was at its height, the U.S. Agency for International Development had something like 16,000 employees. It has 3,000 now. One of the points that I make, if you took all foreign service officers in the world - about 6,600 - it would not be sufficient to man one carrier strike group. And right now, frankly, I think that the diplomacy, international economic assistance and so on have been significantly weakened.
INSKEEP: Isn't there, though, a basic budget choice that someone is going to have to make, though? Either you get six more fighter planes, for example, or you get a few thousand extra foreign service officers?
GATES: Well, the reality is that the cost of increasing your capabilities on the diplomatic, economic side is really pretty modest. The entire State Department budget is $36 billion. We spend that in the Pentagon on health care.
INSKEEP: Would you say it would be worth it to slow down the growth of the Defense Department budget to allow for greater diplomacy in other efforts?
GATES: Well, I don't think you'll ever find a secretary of defense who'll say it's a good idea to cut the Defense Department budget.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: Secretary Gates, thanks very much.
GATES: My pleasure.
INSKEEP: He spoke with us at the Pentagon yesterday. And after Secretary Robert Gates stood up, he said he was going to Capitol Hill. The next Pentagon budget goes to Congress early next month.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Scott Horsley reports from Las Vegas.
SCOTT HORSLEY: Nevada's Democratic caucuses are sure to attract a record turnout. But that's not saying much. Four years ago, fewer than 10,000 Democrats showed up, about two percent of those who are eligible. So candidates, like Barack Obama, know they're trying to appeal to a lot of first time caucus-goers.
INSKEEP: Now, let me just see a show of hands, how many people are definitely planning to caucus on Saturday?
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERS)
INSKEEP: Oh, that's good. That's good.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
INSKEEP: How many people - be honest - how many people are still undecided about who they're going to caucus for? Raise your hands. Okay. We've got some live ones here. There's one, yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: You are in our sights now. We're coming after you.
HORSLEY: Coming after these voters isn't all that easy in Nevada. Political scientist David Damore of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas says the state doesn't have a tradition of intense political involvement.
INSKEEP: It's a hard place to reach voters, I mean, it's a transient place, and the iconic places in Las Vegas is full of bunch of tourists. I mean, you're not going to spend your time there.
HORSLEY: So Damore says Democratic politicians have developed a formula: visit a union hall, walk through a neighborhood and hold a rally in a high school gym.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HORSLEY: Desert Pines High School was the setting for Hillary Clinton's rally Tuesday in a working class neighborhood of Las Vegas.
INSKEEP: There are still a lot of people in the state who aren't quite sure what a caucus is. So you've got to get out and talk to as many people as possible: your friends, your family, your neighbors, and come to those caucuses on Saturday morning.
HORSLEY: Carla Jackson, who works as a maid at the MGM Grand Casino, is a precinct captain for Clinton.
MONTAGNE: She won my support every day. Ever since Bill was in there, I had them on my side. And all I need Ms. Hillary to do is get in there, show that she - be strong because we got her back all the way.
HORSLEY: Obama, meanwhile, is attracting some of the same kind of crossover support that helped him win in Iowa. Greg Wood(ph) showed up at an Obama town hall meeting in Henderson.
MONTAGNE: I thought it was very good. I'm a Republican, and I came in thinking I needed to vote for John McCain, but I think I've changed my mind.
HORSLEY: John Edwards also hopes to make a strong showing in Nevada, where one newspaper poll shows a tight three-way race. Edwards stuck to another part of Professor Damore's formula last night speaking at the headquarters of the Carpenters Union in Las Vegas.
MONTAGNE: I'm so proud to be in this union hall and to stand with the men and women of organized labor who help build the middle class in this country and who are going to help reestablish the middle class in America when I'm president of the United States.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD)
HORSLEY: Nevada's caucuses will also be an early test of Latino voting power in a state that's one-quarter Hispanic. Latino leader Ruben Kihuen, who's a member of the state legislature, was heavily courted by all the Democrats. He ultimately endorsed Clinton, but says the close contest with Obama and Edwards has been healthy.
MONTAGNE: Regardless of who ends up getting the nomination, I think this is all good for the party. You know, there's people being energized that have never been energized before.
HORSLEY: Scott Horsley, NPR News, Las Vegas.
MONTAGNE: For a guide to what's at stake for the candidates in the Nevada caucuses and the issues on voters' minds, go to npr.org/elections.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's David Welna was there.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD)
DAVID WELNA: RNC Treasurer Tim Morgan's job is raising money for this year's GOP presidential campaign. As he registers for the annual winter meeting at a swank downtown hotel, Morgan rues the uncertainty that hangs over the presidential race.
TIM MORGAN: It would be easier to raise money in another month or so if we know who the likely nominee is. But we deal with the situation on the ground as we find it.
WELNA: Others are also trying to deal with it. On her way in to hear Karl Rove, national committeewoman Diane Adams of Indiana says she'd expected the GOP would have settled on a presidential nominee by now.
DIANE ADAMS: I think - I know the party will come around and everybody will align. It's just early and it just seems like the voters so far just aren't really sure.
WELNA: Though Adams supports Mitt Romney, she says she could back any Republican contender except John McCain.
ADAMS: I have to be really honest about McCain. I'm just really unhappy with the things that he's done with his McCain-Feingold and some of those other things. And so...
WELNA: Campaign finance reform.
ADAMS: Campaign finance reform. I - not that maybe it wasn't needed, but to put the strain on everybody that it has, you know, I'm sorry, I've - that's a - I'd have a real hard time with that.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD)
WELNA: In a large dining room, several dozen state and national GOP officials sit down to hear presidential guru-turned-newspaper-columnist Karl Rove. He brings a message of hang in there.
KARL ROVE: You know, the primaries are far from over. We got a lot more fun yet to come.
WELNA: Rove admits the GOP candidates do, as he puts it, occasionally disagree with each other. But he insists they're all basically reading from the same script.
ROVE: Our candidates are offering solutions with smaller government, lower taxes, and a strong national defense. And on the other side, as they continue to run to the left to appease moveon.org, the Democrats are proposing just the opposite.
WELNA: Still, it's clear Rove's not entirely satisfied with what he's been hearing from the Republican presidential hopefuls.
ROVE: We have great proposals, far better than what the other side has to offer, but our candidates have got to get out there and articulate them.
WELNA: Later, South Dakota National Committeewoman Mary Jean Jensen says she wants the candidates to talk up the war in Iraq.
MARY JEAN JENSEN: We haven't been public with that enough. I would say that even President Bush - and he probably realizes that the American people aren't listening, you know? Are we war weary or what? But we're winning and we need to get that message out as Republicans.
WELNA: I didn't hear Karl Rove mention his former boss's name once in the speech.
JEAN JENSEN: Ah, you know, it's sad, and true. But why aren't we? He's a great president. As Republicans we've got to be mentioning his name and what he's accomplished.
WELNA: So I ask Wisconsin GOP executive director Mark Jefferson whether he thinks President Bush is being unduly ignored.
MARK JEFFERSON: I don't think so at all. Elections are for - are looking to the future. They're not looking to the past. And I think President Bush will have a very good legacy, but the 2008 campaign is about what we're going to do looking forward.
WELNA: David Welna, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Rob Gifford reports.
ROB GIFFORD: In his interview, Michael Chertoff talked of the importance of the close links between Europe and the United States, but he said his concerns about that interaction were twofold.
MICHAEL CHERTOFF: Second reason is we've watched the rise of homegrown terrorism. We're obviously mindful of the Madrid bombings, the attempted bombings in Germany. And that suggests to us that the terrorists are increasingly looking to Europe both as a target and as a platform for terrorist attacks.
GIFFORD: The visa waiver program, which applies to 27 countries in all worldwide, presents the U.S. and European governments with a problem. Any kind of measures to target those of certain ethnic or religious background would be hugely controversial. Chertoff reassured that was not the plan.
CHERTOFF: We have no interest or intention to shut down the visa waiver program. To the contrary, the president argued, we fought very hard to expand the program. But we do want to elevate some of the security measures in the program by having an advanced travel authorization, which will be an online registration process for people who want to travel to the U.S. That will allow us to clear them in advance, but do it in a way that's minimally inconvenient.
GIFFORD: Dr. Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King's College London, doubts that such postings mean that al-Qaida cells have been set up in Britain.
PETER NEUMANN: They are calls to arms, and the people who publish them hope that people - people who are radicalized hope to feel inspired and are actually taking up arms and are heeding that call. It doesn't mean, I think, that there is an actual structure in place, that there are cells operating in this country. That would surprise me very much.
GIFFORD: But the security minister for the opposition Conservative Party, Pauline Neville-Jones, herself a former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee in the British government, said it was still not something that could be ignored.
PAULINE NEVILLE: Even if it in the end actually doesn't represent any kind of burgeoning organization, let alone anything that's really fledged, it does represent a move in the propaganda game, and the propaganda game is something which we shouldn't ignore. I mean, this is in the end an ideological struggle. And this is just the sort of thing which is designed to motivate those who might be tempted to join.
GIFFORD: Rob Gifford, NPR News, London.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
It's not surprising that people went to sleep earlier in the days before electric light. There's evidence that they also slept much differently than we do today. People may have slept in shifts, as most animals do.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
In the '90s he observed sleep patterns of adults. They were isolated in a room with 14-hour-long periods of darkness. That resembles a nighttime without electric lights.
MONTAGNE: Dr. Wehr discovered that participants began to sleep in two phases. First, they'd sleep for about four hours; then they'd be awake for one to three hours; then four more hours of sleep. Participants described the waking interval as a very tranquil time of quiet attentiveness.
INSKEEP: That's when they produced a morning program. Historians have found people referring to first sleep and second sleep as far back as Homer. Wehr suggests that the use of modern lighting has made us chronically sleep deprived.
MONTAGNE: Some of us need to be taught how to get a good night's sleep. If you're one of those people, we've got some lessons for you at npr.org/yourhealth.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Florida's top insurance regulator has told Allstate it cannot sell new auto insurance policies in the state. That's to punish Allstate because it refused to comply with an investigation into its property insurance business. Home insurers have been raising rates and dropping customers in Florida. Allstate now has less than 250,000 policies there. But selling car insurance is still lucrative. Allstate has more than a million auto policies in the state, which is why Florida's insurance commissioner wants to, quote, "hit them where it hurts." Allstate says it's surprised at the move.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Eleanor Beardsley reports from Paris.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY: Robert Wall, Paris bureau chief for the magazine Aviation Week, says the Airbus desperately wants the tanker contract, and it hopes the offer to build cargo planes in Alabama will strengthen its position.
ROBERT WALL: And on top of that, it sets in with the strategy of Airbus and the parent company, EADS, to put more work in the dollar zone away from the higher cost structure here in Europe.
BEARDSLEY: This week, Airbus CEO Tom Enders went to Alabama to make his proposal and took a swipe at Boeing while he was there.
THOMAS ENDERS: For many years, the production of large commercial aircraft has been a monopoly business in the U.S. An expanded Mobile final assembly facility would re-introduce competition back into the U.S. commercial aircraft sector.
BEARDSLEY: For NPR News, I'm Eleanor Beardsley in Paris.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Good morning.
SCOTT MCCARTNEY: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: How big can the price difference be depending on where you fly out of?
MCCARTNEY: It can be huge. You could end up paying twice as much per mile out of some cities as other cities. Cincinnati was the most expensive city we found. On a per mile basis, you can pay twice as much - you do pay twice as much on average than if you fly out of the Oakland Airport. Pittsburgh was 70 percent cheaper than Cincinnati. Memphis, Tennessee - 38 percent more expensive than Nashville, Tennessee. And even in the New York area, there was disparity. Newark - the Newark Airport was 18 percent more expensive than LaGuardia.
MONTAGNE: So what actually, though, in the end does account for this disparity?
MCCARTNEY: You would think that an airplane - everything would depend on distance. But the biggest determinant of prices in an airline market is whether there's a discount airline there that forces other airlines to match prices and offer low prices.
MONTAGNE: Once one finds about this and figures it'd be cheaper if I go out of another airport - you know, how realistic is it to do that? You're in Cincinnati - is it worth it to try and avoid going out of Cincinnati?
MCCARTNEY: Many people do. The Dayton, Ohio Airport has low cost competition. A lot of people drive to Dayton. There are about four airports surrounding Cincinnati that are trying to capitalize on this and say come here because we have cheaper prices.
MONTAGNE: Is there any way to pressure an airport to bring in discount airlines?
MCCARTNEY: Charleston, South Carolina has done the same thing. They're paying marketing cost to get AirTran in there. So AirTran puts in a couple of flights to Atlanta. That connects to many other cities. And so you end up with lots of low-fare competition in the computer reservations systems that everybody else who flies to Charleston has to match.
MONTAGNE: But the community - Charleston, for instance, wanted more tourists. Did it in fact pressure its airport to try and bring in these discounted airlines?
MCCARTNEY: That's right. It was a community-wide effort with the Convention Visitors Bureau, the local governments, the airport. And a major economic issue for a tourist destination like Charleston, if airfare are high, that's going to affect the hotels and the restaurants and everybody else. So having low airfares was a critical economic issue for the community.
MONTAGNE: Thanks very much for joining us.
MCCARTNEY: Good to be with you.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Earlier this week, we reported that the new owners of music label EMI planned to slash one-third of the workforce. They're also going to shake up the way the company sells music. It turns out that EMI's artists, which include the Beastie Boys, Norah Jones and the Rolling Stones, are not happy. Coldplay and Robbie Williams are checking out the exits. And today the Financial Times reports the Rolling Stones have decided to release their next album through EMI's rival, Universal Music.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
NPR's Tom Gjelten has the second of two reports.
TOM GJELTEN: Former CIA analyst Paul Pillar helped write many estimates as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East. He says the drafters of this Iran NIE would have known that a lot would ride on the way they presented their conclusions.
PAUL PILLAR: A great deal of time and attention and negotiation typically goes into, not just what the judgments are in one of these estimates, but how they're arranged. What's going to be in the first paragraph? Even more so, what's going to be in the first sentence?
GJELTEN: Paul Pillar says the NIE drafters may not have wanted to be accused again of enabling a march to war, this time with Iran.
PILLAR: If the intelligence community is going to be criticized in many of the ways that it was in the Iraq case, then one should not be surprised if in a case like this, amid all the talk of going perhaps to war again, that the estimators might have shaped an estimate in a way that would take this military option off the table.
GJELTEN: In an interview broadcast last night on Fox News, the president was asked if he believed the NIE. He shrugged and said he believed in the professionals who prepared the NIE, quote, "were very sincere." But then he gave his own view of the Iranians intentions not quite consistent with the NIE.
GEORGE W: I believe they want a weapon, and I believe that they're trying to gain the know-how as to how to make a weapon under the guise of a civilian nuclear program.
GJELTEN: Here's how McConnell described the intelligence community's mission in a speech to students yesterday as St. Mary's College in Maryland.
MIKE MCCONNELL: We're attempting to earn the trust of the American public as professionals in the intelligence community. We're not political; we're professional. And we're going to go collect that information. We're going to provide to a set of decision makers that have different points of view.
GJELTEN: Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.
INSKEEP: If you missed Tom's first report, you have a second chance to hear it. Just go to our Web site, npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Tovia Smith reports.
TOVIA SMITH: Christopher McCowen said he had consensual sex with Worthington, but denied the murder. His attorney Robert George says he always expected race would make McCowen's story tough for jurors to buy.
ROBERT GEORGE: I must have told them five times to be careful of their predispositions because he was a poor, black garbage man in an almost entirely white community, just sticking out like a sore thumb.
SMITH: George is now arguing race did influence the jury. He says three jurors called him after trial to complain about blatantly biased comments, like one from a white juror who allegedly said the victim's bruises were, quote, "What happens when a big, black guy beats up on a small woman?"
GEORGE: That's over the line. That's something that has no place in the jury room because race has nothing to do with that.
SMITH: George says the comments sparked a confrontation with a black juror who took offense and that's when another juror, a Cape Verdean, allegedly pointed to the angry outburst and said he, quote, "didn't like blacks because that's what they were capable of."
GEORGE: That is an idiotic, racist statement that offended people and there was no doubt in my mind that racial bias was in this jury room.
SMITH: Judges are usually loath to pry into jury deliberations, which are suppose to be free and candid exchanges. But in this case, the judge interviewed every juror to determine if the comments were actually made. If so, experts say, he'll then have to decide whether they tainted the verdict enough to call a mistrial.
GEORGE: There is no bright-line rule that if there is an impermissible mention of race, it's over.
SMITH: Ron Sullivan is a professor at Harvard Law School.
RON SULLIVAN: In this sort of case, we give the judge a lot of discretion to determine whether the defendant got a fair shot.
SMITH: An expert witness, Tufts Psychology Professor Sam Sommers is expected tomorrow to describe how even one biased juror might influence others.
SAM SOMMERS: He could, at some level, liberate me to feel that if it's okay to speak to my own prejudices and stereotypes. It could also make me feel marginalized seeing the health situation is a deck stacked against me and say why would I argue with these people and they were going to change that kind of attitude so I might as well just switch my vote.
SMITH: In the Worthington case, defense attorney say it was the latter. Two jurors, who were holding out for not guilty, caved when they perceived racial bias they couldn't overcome. While it's unusual for that kind of thing to be investigated, Sommers says it's not unusual for it to happen.
SOMMERS: There's no magic portal through which you step when you become a juror and you're suddenly free from all the biases and preconceived notions that regular humans have in their daily lives. We know from data that race does have pervasive effects on people's decision making when they're jurors.
SMITH: But Old Dominion University criminologist Donald Smith calls that a useless exercise.
DONALD SMITH: Those three questions are so obvious that no one's going to fess up to having a problem with any of those things.
SMITH: Smith says jurors in racially charged cases like this one should be asked a long list of more proving questions like what they read and how they feel about various public figures. But ultimately, Smith says, biased juries are often chosen not in spite of lawyers' best efforts but because of them.
SMITH: It is in fact a poker game, and that jury is literally the hand you've been dealt. And everybody is trying to stack the deck. Sometimes, they can't help but smile when they see the jury they've drawn.
SMITH: Tovia Smith, NPR News, Boston.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Time now for your comments.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MONTAGNE: Even before Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama declared a truce over charges of racial insensitivity in the campaign, some of you were asking us to drop the subject. Leave it alone, writes Julie Eligood(ph) of Phoenix. You're using this as news and it is not.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Other listeners wanted to weigh in on Clinton's remarks about Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Johnson. From Miami, Steven Cox(ph) writes what Mrs. Clinton does not understand is that while we may have needed a white president to execute King's dream, the country has come a long way since then.
MONTAGNE: Kelly Brown(ph) of Fort Worth, Texas adds, quote, "I am black and I am a woman, part of the first-generation born after the Civil Rights Act. Dr. King understood the power of marching with hundreds beside him, but he also knew he could not enact legislation or enforce it. For that he needed the men that Senator Clinton referenced in her speech."
INSKEEP: We have a correction this morning. In a report on a Supreme Court case about an illegal arrest in Virginia, we noted that the policeman involved was awarded a prize for Cop of the Year, which is true. But he did not get it in the same year as that illegal arrest. He received the award two years later.
MONTAGNE: We received many e-mails - and many of them from writers - after our commentator and screenwriter John Ridley spoke about the Golden Globe Awards. They weren't much of a show this year because of the writers' strike.
INSKEEP: Doug Ivok(ph) of Studio City points out, quote, "Ridley has long been vocally critical of union leadership. He cannot possibly be expected to report stories about the strike objectively."
MONTAGNE: Doug Moliture(ph) of Los Angeles adds: Since when is it appropriate to send a bitter enemy of his own union to report on its strike? Would you hire Jefferson Davis to provide insight into Lincoln's Second Inaugural?
INSKEEP: People offered other variations on that theme. Would we ask Rush Limbaugh to report on Hillary Clinton or Michael Vick to talk about animal rights?
MONTAGNE: Finally, in my interview about crime stories from the golden age of pulp fiction, our guest said that in the 1920s, a write named Carroll John Daly created the very first series about a hard-boiled private eye.
INSKEEP: He also said Daly created the first private detective to appear in a series of stories, which prompted many of you to write in defense of earlier detectives like Sherlock Holmes. In that same interview, Renee, you also talked about the word frail used as a noun?
MONTAGNE: That's another word for dame or doll.
INSKEEP: And a few of you wrote to say there is at least one other way to meet a frail in song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BIRTH OF THE BLUES")
HANK SNOW: (Singing) And from a jail came a wail of a downhearted frail...
MONTAGNE: This is NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Joanne Silberner reports.
JOANNE SILBERNER: The study had its start several years ago when psychiatrist Erick Turner worked for the Food and Drug Administration. He was evaluating a drug company application to market a new antidepressant. He had access to all the research that had ever been done on the drug.
ERICK TURNER: In going through some of that, I was noticing quite a few negative studies, studies where the drug did not beat placebo to an extent that was statistically significant.
SILBERNER: At first, that surprised him. He figured he was up on things and would have known about any negative research - studies showing the drug didn't work. Then he realized the problem.
TURNER: The reason, of course, that I hadn't almost because I was relying like any physician does on a published literature and was realizing these studies were not getting published.
SILBERNER: What he found confirmed what he suspected - 94 percent of the studies that showed the drugs worked made it to publication. However...
TURNER: For the studies that were not positive, only a minority of those studies were published. It turned out to be only three out of 36, which is eight percent.
SILBERNER: Jeff Drazen is the editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, which published Turner's study. Drazen wasn't surprised by the finding.
JEFFREY DRAZEN: This is about what we had suspected, but we didn't have these kinds of good quantitative data to show the magnitude of the problem.
SILBERNER: He now have a policy. Drug companies have to announce that they're starting a drug trial at the very beginning before they know what the results will be. Otherwise, the major journals will refuse to publish the results.
DRAZEN: Having at least an understanding of the trials that have not been reported allows you to compensate when you are examining the effect of a drug for those unreported trials. If you don't know about them, you can't compensate.
SILBERNER: The major drug company trade group says that many of its members have been voluntarily posting results of unpublished studies. Drazen says that's the least researchers can do for their patients who volunteer for experimental drug trials.
DRAZEN: Because they put themselves at risk, we, as a profession, owe them the dignity of making sure that their period at risk is not hidden away, so the company can make money.
SILBERNER: Joanne Silberner, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
The next presidential primary comes just as the economy emerges as a major issue. And the next state up is going through big economic changes. Republicans vote Saturday, Democrats, a week later in South Carolina. It's the birthplace of one presidential candidate, John Edwards.
JOHN EDWARDS: In my hometown, the mill that my father worked at and the people that I grew up with, that mill is closed now. The jobs are gone.
INSKEEP: NPR's Adam Davidson found another place where people are prospering, which is where, Adam?
ADAM DAVIDSON: They say this is an area that has made the move into the 21st century and is doing well. Just for an example, I talked to Bunny Richardson(ph). She's a native South Carolinian and a spokesperson for BMW's plant in Spartanburg.
BUNNY RICHARDSON: If I'm forceful and you think I'm getting angry, it's - because it's stereotypical and it's not accurate for the entire state.
DAVIDSON: Much of South Carolina is doing well. Tourism is booming on the coast and up in the Northwest, what they call Upstate or the I-85 corridor, things were not at all what I expected. There are hundreds of high-tech good-paying factories here. BMW has a plant. But as Richardson says...
RICHARDSON: BMW was the 76th German company to come into South Carolina.
DAVIDSON: I went to AFL Telecommunications, a Japanese-owned company that makes fiber optic cables. Rebecca Jennings(ph) is running the machine that coats the cables in plastic.
REBECCA JENNINGS: We have compounds and you have the color chips that drop down, they're heated up, comes to the comes to the extruder, here...
DAVIDSON: It's a ridiculously complicated machine that Jennings runs by herself.
MONTAGNE: I don't understand all of it, but understand it enough to run to it.
DAVIDSON: Jennings has been here for 12 years and she's still can't quite believe it. She's 57 and spent most of her life in one of those textile mills. Her whole family worked there. But she didn't make much money.
JENNINGS: There was no savings plan, no 401(k). That was it, you know, not really good at all.
DAVIDSON: Tom Quantrill(ph) says there are tens of thousands of people just like Jennings, former textile workers now making more in high-tech factories. He runs advanced composite materials, which makes a kind of artificial diamond used to cut and shape jet engine parts. He remembers a few years ago when a bunch of textile factories closed all at once.
TOM QUANTRILL: We literally went to these firms and said, look, we want to hire some of the best people you got and we were alone. In fact, there was a fair amount of competition for getting some of the best people these places.
DAVIDSON: South Carolina as a state is among the poorest, unemployment is higher than national average is, income is lower. But the Upstate region where I was, it is the opposite. Incomes are higher than the U.S. on average, unemployment is lower. The statistics seemed to confirm the story people kept wanting to tell me. This area where a quarter of South Carolinians lived has made the transition to a post-textile economy really well.
INSKEEP: We're listening to NPR's Adam Davidson. And, Adam, as we're about to hear not all parts of South Carolina are doing so well, which is going to raise the question what's the difference between a town that recovers and a town that doesn't?
DAVIDSON: So it was able to industrialize more quickly and thoroughly. It's a society, which is able to transform more quickly than other parts of the state. And then it has its huge advantage that it's located between these mega growth cities of Atlanta and Charlotte.
INSKEEP: Okay. Thanks very much, Adam. Interesting to hear you say that auto plants are among the firms changing the upper part of South Carolina because we've also been visiting people just a couple hours away who wish they had a plant in their town.
LINDA BURKES: I pray every day like, I said, for a car company come to this area, and we pray for it. So, you guys say prayers for us, okay?
INSKEEP: You pray every day for a car company, Linda?
BURKES: For a car company to come the - it's got every job you might want.
INSKEEP: The main company here was Springs Industries, which might have produced the Springmaid sheets on your bed. Its employees included Fred Sulters(ph) and his wife, and before that his mom.
FRED SULTERS: Everybody here - my mom told me when I considered going somewhere else to work she thought I was crazy. And she says there is no other place to work. You have to go to work at Springs.
INSKEEP: We met Fred Sulters in his kitchen where he showed us a bird in his cage and served us coffee. His elderly mother lay asleep in the living room so Sulters spoke softly explaining his family's long history with the areas textile mills.
SULTERS: I operated an old 7S70 computer. It would fill up that computer with - fill up two of these rooms and it wouldn't do as much as a PC will do today.
INSKEEP: Now, isn't strange at all to work for this company during all these years and knowing that its part of an industry that was clearly going through a lot of change?
SULTERS: Well they spent a lot of time and money trying to convince us that, you know, change was good. And I think change was good for the company, but it wasn't necessarily good for the employees who are going to be pushed out of jobs.
DAVIDSON: Do the company back free trade agreements?
SULTERS: Yes. Yes. They encouraged us to back it.
DAVIDSON: How they encourage you?
SULTERS: Well they even bought t-shirts for us to wear on certain days that says, We Support NAFTA.
INSKEEP: And that helps explain why Fred Sulters is skeptical of what politicians tell them even today. He says he will vote in this month's presidential primary, but he's not happy about his choices. Like many people in this town, he's been out of work since Springs sent the jobs to Brazil.
DAVIDSON: So what is your income right now?
SULTERS: I was afraid you would ask that, I don't know. I have no income. I have no income, whatsoever.
INSKEEP: Since he was laid off, more than a year ago, Fred Sulters has trained for a completely different life as a nurse's assistant.
SULTERS: I can't send nursing across the border, I can't send this out.
INSKEEP: He's come to use his new skills at home. His mother has Alzheimer's.
SULTERS: You know, it doesn't seem like you could find anything good in any of the layoffs, but I'm laid off now and I can help my mom - she needs total care. The only thing she can do is pick a spoon and feed herself.
DAVIDSON: What are some things you'd learned to do that you do for mom?
SULTERS: Oh, gosh. Just simple things like moving her from a chair to a bed or from wheelchair to a chair.
DAVIDSON: How to do that comfortably without...
SULTERS: How to do that without hurting her. I have to bathe her, she can't do that herself. I have to remind her - she has forgotten how to sneeze.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SULTERS: That sounds so strange.
(SOUNDBITE OF SQUEAKING)
INSKEEP: And tomorrow we'll hear how more people in that area are adapting to a changed economy.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Ausma Khan is executive editor. I reached her at her Toronto office and we flipped through a section universal to women's magazine - the fashion sections. Right here, I'm looking at some of these outfits - and these girls, they sure have all these jewelry on and beautiful make-up, and they've got little mini- skirts and kind of shiny things in fashion but the girls have, underneath these outfits, long-sleeved t-shirts, and in the case of a little mini dress, Levi's.
AUSMA KHAN: That's right. And that's actually one of the areas, I think, that is the biggest challenge for us, but it's also the area that girls are most interested in because we frequently hear it from them that they have a hard time finding clothes that are sufficiently modest and reflect their dignity and self respect. So what we try to do with the fashion section is show things that are very au courant, very trendy - the metalics, the tunics - but put a twist on them so they are more modest and more covering for their things that Muslim girls we feel comfortable buying and wearing and would reflect their dress code.
MONTAGNE: Well, the range of subjects covered; life in cyberspace, what would life in cyberspace be different from Muslim girl than for a girl who's not Muslims.
KHAN: It actually wouldn't be that different. And the only thing that we might do a little differently is add some additional content on some Web sites on Islam that would be interesting for girls or for their parents to engage with.
MONTAGNE: One issue, out during Ramadan, offered tips like remember to change the ringtone on your cell from a pop tune to a more solemn recitation from the Koran or risk being embarrassed when it goes off during prayers.
KHAN: Again having fun with it. Acknowledging that Muslim girls are just like their American counterparts, they enjoy popular music, they watch, roughly, the same TV shows but we're saying to girls, think about things that take you back to the Koran or take you back to the principles of Islamic faith. The message that we're trying to promote in Muslim girl is to focus on to her goal, her character, her ideas, her accomplishments.
MONTAGNE: Have you heard from any Muslims who are unhappy with the magazine?
KHAN: We treat it really as a non-issue; that it's the personal choice between a girl and God; and it's up to her to make that choice but the reality is that Muslims come from all different backgrounds and different perspectives and approaches to faith. And the point of our magazine is to be as representative, as authentic, and as an inclusive and pluralistic as possible.
MONTAGNE: Ausma Khan is the editor of Muslim Girl.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
NPR's Asma Khalid visited one such organization called Companionships, founded by an Imam and his wife in Northern Virginia.
ASMA KHALID: Everyone here tonight shares a common thread. They're Muslims, and their tradition teaches that getting married is a large part of the faith. So, they've come tonight to fulfill that religious duty but also to see whether they'll find a match.
HAF SIBULAN: I'm looking forward to, you know, a soul mate, but it's just so hard to meet people nowadays.
KHALID: That's Haf Sibulan, the engineer. She's in her late 20s. She never thought Muslim singles events would work but she's beginning to change her mind. It's a Wednesday, and tonight she's battled rush-hour traffic to get here. Her parents have been relentless about her finding a man.
SIBULAN: Out of all of my siblings I'm - there's four of us - they're all together married, or engaged and I'm the only one. So the pressure is really on now, like, you have to find a man and, you know - my mom is always like, why don't you just go to India, go find a guy in India. And I'm like no - try to stick to somebody here. It's so much easier.
KHALID: The night begins with a round of bingo - Islamic style with questions like what do you enjoy about Ramadan? Within a few minutes it's time for the evening prayer.
(SOUNDBITE OF ISLAMIC PRAYER)
MAJUD: Imam Majud and his wife Amara(ph) founded the Companionships organization in 2003. They say it fills a void for American Muslims. According to Amara...
AMARA: Bathsheba Filpot(ph) agrees that mosques, where the sexes are segregated, aren't ideal for meeting guys. She's in her mid-30s and converted to Islam 10 years ago.
BATHSHEBA FILPOT: Mingling of the sexes is not really, you know, something that, you know, easy or it's not something that is embraced. It's generally the opposite. So I think you're just attending prayers on Friday just coming out for a few events like that. It can be difficult because you tend to grab things towards the same sex.
KHALID: For Imam Majud, the social and religious factors of marriage go hand and hand.
MAJUD: We teach in the program some aspects of what this organization look like? We used the holy Koran teaching out the Prophet Mohammed, be (unintelligible) on him and we'll explain the responsibility of husband and wife from this other perspective.
KHALID: As she closes the night, Amara offers a few words of encouragement for her guests.
AMARA: Contact me, say Amara, I'd like you to follow up within brothers that I met here last night. Let me know and let me work for you. This is not a business that is willing to keep you all as clients for a longtime. Our business is about getting you off of our clientele list.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
KHALID: Asma Khalid, NPR News.
MONTAGNE: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
FAA: It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Merrill Lynch says it lost $8.6 billion in 2007. It's the largest loss in the company's history. The loss is due to the brokerage giant's decision to lower the value of its mortgage investments by more than $14 billion. And that's just for the fourth quarter. In the previous quarter, Merrill wrote down nearly $8 billion in bad mortgage investments. Merrill's chief executive called his company's performance, quote, "clearly unacceptable." The new numbers came after Citigroup and JP Morgan also announced billions of dollars in losses stemming from the mortgage crisis.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
The Americans submitted their voices to our StoryCorps project now include this woman.
Ms. ANNA WISE (StoryCorps Contributor): My name is Anna Wise, and I'm 96.
INSKEEP: Anna Wise spoke with her daughter, Mary, at StoryCorps. They talked about Anna's husband, Joseph, and the story of their love. It spanned nearly 80 years.
Ms. WISE: I knew Pop when we were children. I was eight and he was 11. I was madly in love with him, and I thought surely that I would marry him when I was old enough.
MARY (Anna Wise's Daughter): So how did you go about bagging him?
Ms. WISE: Well, I was sassy. I turned on all the tricks that I knew, and winked an eye or two now and then.
MARY: Do you remember your first date?
Ms. WISE: Yes. I remember that date. He took me to a baseball game. I was perfectly willing to go there or anywhere else. We danced the night away. We went to speakeasies. We did all the things you're not supposed to do. And to make a long story short, which people are not fond of doing, we just sort of agreed that it was time to get married.
MARY: What year was that?
Ms. WISE: This was 1933.
MARY: And what was the day?
Ms. WISE: What was the date? Well, that's been so long ago, I guess, I don't remember.
MARY: November 11th.
Ms. WISE: November the 11th. Correct.
MARY: Tell me about taking care of Pop when he got sick.
Ms. WISE: Well, your father was diagnosed with diabetes. He lost a leg. Then the diabetes took him anyway. And we never know what diseases are going to catch up with us. It's amazing, the things that people can live through when they have to. So you get through it, and you get through almost anything, and you live to be 96. And sometimes you wonder why. But then when you look up the blue sky, you think it's going to be all right.
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: That's Anna Wise with her daughter Mary in Maryland.
Their interview will be archived along with all the others in American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. And you can hear the StoryCorps Podcast at npr.org.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Now, if you are among those dissatisfied with your presidential choices, there might still be one more candidate running. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg told us last year there's no way he is running. But because he has the money to pay for an independent race, people keep speculating.
So NPR's Robert Smith decided to investigate signs that Bloomberg might really try.
ROBERT SMITH: Every year Bloomberg gives his state of the city address, a 60-minute laundry list of his achievements and plans for New York. But this year, people in the audience could amuse themselves with a question: Does this man sound like he's running for president?
Mayor MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (Independent, New York): To those politicians who all of a sudden have embraced xenophobia, I say, open your eyes, take a look behind me. This is what makes America great.
(Soundbite of applause)
SMITH: I'm actually standing here in the back of the hall. And you know, this speech can get a little dull so I've made up something I call the Candidate Bingo Card. I've put all the signs, the ways you can tell that someone is running for president on this card. Things like mention the word change over and over again, quote John F. Kennedy excessively.
Now, as he speaks we'll play along on this bingo card.
(Soundbite of applause)
Mayor BLOOMBERG: We remain committed to extending the $400 property tax rebate to all homeowners.
SMITH: Did you catch that? He just promised a tax cut. Mark it off on the bingo card.
Mayor BLOOMBERG: Keeping housing affordable is an essential to remaining a city that welcomes the middle class.
SMITH: When a billionaire talks about helping the middle class, he may just be running for president.
(Soundbite of applause)
SMITH: After an hour of the speech, though, I wasn't anywhere close to yelling out bingo. And that's even counting the squares that Bloomberg gets for free. As a billionaire, he already has all the money he needs to run. As a former CEO, he certainly has the ambition and ego to be president. But still, I followed Bloomberg all week long, and he passed up one opportunity after another to act like a candidate. At a morning event, faced with a buffet full of sweets, did he grab a donut just to look like an average Joe?
What's for breakfast today? What are you going to pick?
Mayor BLOOMBERG: I'm going to have an eighth of a pumpernickel bagel.
SMITH: An eighth of a bagel. How would this man even survive at a state fair? All right, another one of the squares on the Candidate Bingo Card is to take credit for the work of others. It's a time-honored, political tradition. But when asked about his successes, Bloomberg thanks his staff.
Mayor BLOOMBERG: In the end, the head of any government candidate's job is not to do the work themselves, it is to attract good people.
SMITH: Okay. Mayor Bloomberg is just leaving an event here at the South Street Seaport Mall. We're going to see how many hands he shakes.
There's one. There's two. Oh, he goes in for a side kiss. And that's it.
He needs to shake at least 20 hands to be considered a viable candidate and for me to get a square on this bingo card. And don't get me started on the babies. At event after event, Bloomberg snubbed every adorable, chubby-cheeked infant in his path. He made not a single funny face, offered not a single smooch, until yesterday right at the end of the state of the city speech.
Mayor BLOOMBERG: God bless you and God bless New York City.
(Soundbite of applause)
SMITH: Now, wait a minute. A mother with a small little baby is approaching the mayor and handing him the baby. He's not kissing the baby, but he's holding her up for the camera. That will do. We can mark that one off.
Still, there's not enough on this card to call bingo. Of course, to be fair to Bloomberg, 10 years ago no one would have picked him as the next mayor. New York City had a tradition of larger-than-life controversial leaders.
But Bloomberg showed that New Yorkers actually like a calm, efficient manager, without all that baby-kissing. And perhaps that's the big opportunity for Bloomberg. He's waiting for voters to get so tired of filling up their bingo cards with all those typical politicians that they beg for a candidate who plays a different game.
Robert Smith, NPR News, New York.
INSKEEP: We want to help you find out if somebody that you know is running a shadow campaign for president. You can find out for sure by printing off our Candidate Bingo Card, which is available at npr.org.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
A man named Donnie Ingram will lose his job at the end of this month. He's being laid off by the South Carolina company that he served for more than 30 years. In these final days, Ingram walks the floors of a massive textile mill. He passes the sewing room and an area called the bleachery.
Mr. DONNIE INGRAM (Resident, South Carolina): Bleaching, yeah. We bleached, dyed, and finished cloth, yeah.
INSKEEP: And so there's a bunch of machinery in there to deal with the cloth.
Mr. INGRAM: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
INSKEEP: And what's happening with it now?
Mr. INGRAM: It's being taken out and being moved to Brazil.
INSKEEP: The same company will run the same equipment using South Americans who work for less.
That company, known as Springs Global, will leave behind thousands of employees who will vote in their state's presidential primary. Republicans face the voters tomorrow, and Democrats next week.
So we're learning how those workers are adapting to the loss of their community's main employer.
Ms. ANGIE HUNTER(ph) (Resident, South Carolina): At one time, this was the largest fabricating and finishing facility under one roof in the world.
INSKEEP: Angie Hunter met us in front of the red-brick complex in Lancaster, South Carolina.
Ms. HUNTER: Fitted sheets, flat sheets or pillow cases - they would pack it, ship it out and it would leave all over the world.
INSKEEP: We are looking at a complex. It looks like it stretches over - the equivalent of several city blocks.
Ms. HUNTER: It's humongous. I mean it goes way back to the river.
INSKEEP: Hunter is among thousands who lost their jobs. Now this is just a distribution center for products made elsewhere.
But Hunter has returned. She works in the state unemployment office that took over some of the vacant space.
Ms. HUNTER: It took me 11 months to get a job. Yeah, because whenever I left here, I knew I wanted a state job. The state never lays off.
INSKEEP: Angie Hunter says former Springs workers may have to live with a longer commute or lower wages, or both.
One person has accepted a much longer commute as the man we'll meet next. It's after midnight as we're recording this. We're bouncing along a rural road, we've just crossed the border into North Carolina, which is where we expect to find a former Springs textile worker who has a new job at Tyson Foods. We're going to join three Tyson workers as they get off the evening shift.
Hi. How are you?
Unidentified Woman #1: Hi.
Unidentified Woman #2: Hi.
INSKEEP: All right.
They turn on the radio and carpool back to Lancaster. All three work in the Springs textile mill. Today, one is earning more than at the job she lost. The driver, Sam Blamour(ph), is paid less.
What did you make at Springs, if I can ask that?
Mr. SAM BLAMOUR (Resident, South Carolina): Our wage was $12.67. That's low operator(ph).
INSKEEP: And then you got the job at Tyson's. And how much is that pay?
Mr. BLAMOUR: $9.65.
INSKEEP: Which is, what, maybe about three quarters of what you were making before?
Mr. BLAMOUR: Yeah.
INSKEEP: To help make up the difference, this native of Liberia works overtime. He also accepted Tyson's offer to help pay for college classes. He hopes that he will not always have to return to his family's rental house at 2:30 in the morning.
At a diner, a few hours later, we met a former Springs textile mill supervisor. Mike Montgomery dug into his omelet and shrugged off the loss of his high-paying job.
Mr. MIKE MONTGOMERY (Resident, South Carolina): We've been blessed. Our lives have been blessed. We've seen the Lord carry us through a lot. And he put me in an industry that I could contribute to with a bunch of good people. I have a strong faith, and I want to share that. I like to finish well.
INSKEEP: Montgomery put up his house up for sale. He's attending a seminary. He's studying to become a missionary or a minister. He never expects to match his former income. That is also true of Donnie Ingram, the man who's finishing his textile job this month at age 52.
Mr. INGRAM: It's hard to find a good job at that age because you're at the age where you're too old for me to hire you, but yet still you're not young enough to do what they want you to do. You're right in that zone that's not called - not that good zone. I mean it's just the best part to be in.
INSKEEP: Last November, Ingram agreed to host a visiting presidential candidate.
John Edwards met a dozen Springs workers in Ingram's dining room, and mentioned to him in a debate this week.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS, (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): When I see a man like Donnie Ingram, who I met a few months ago in South Carolina, who worked for 33 years in the mill, reminded me very much of the kind of people that I grew up with.
INSKEEP: Yet, like many former workers, Ingram has not decided how to vote in South Carolina's upcoming presidential primaries.
He's more occupied with paying for his daughter's wedding, and securing his own future if he can.
Ingram wants to throw his severance pay into a business he's been sharing with his wife.
Mr. INGRAM: I'm trying to get my video business off the ground, full time. See, we got a part time video business.
INSKEEP: Video business.
Mr. INGRAM: Yeah.
INSKEEP: What sort of videos?
Mr. INGRAM: We do video recordings. We do church events, weddings, birthday parties, things of that nature.
INSKEEP: So, if I want someone to video tape my wedding…
Mr. INGRAM: That's us.
INSKEEP: Donnie Ingram is hoping other people's new beginnings also become his, but he knows that other Springs workers have trouble starting over.
Ms. SANDRA GEIGER: Everybody says, you know, they say, oh, a year from now, it will be great. You won't even think about it. But it's been a year, and it's still not any better than it was.
INSKEEP: That's Sandra Geiger who met us at Lancaster's unemployment office. She's among hundreds who report every Monday to put in for a weekly check. She let us follow her home where she sat on a couch with her mother. Carolyn Summers worked 42 years at Springs and brought her daughter into the company.
How did each of you get the word that you were being laid off?
Ms. GEIGER: I just went to work one day, and actually it's a really sad story too because it was on my birthday. And they called and said you need to go - they had a little conference room that they called you to. And you knew when they called you there that was what was going to happen.
INSKEEP: And they will say you're gone as of today or…
Ms. GEIGER: They say, get your stuff and go home.
Ms. CAROLYN SUMMERS: Now with mine, they - I lost my job on a Wednesday and they told me that my last day would actually be Friday. That's probably the hardest thing I have ever gone through. I went through a marriage and a divorce. I lost my father at an early age. I lost my mother in '99. But nothing compares with losing a job that's your livelihood, and not knowing - especially at my age - not knowing what you're going to do.
INSKEEP: Carolyn Summers showed us where she found the answer on the wooden porch of her daughter's mobile home.
Ms. SUMMERS: That's one thing that got me started - is because we had a guy to build a deck, and I thought, I could do that, but I needed to learn how.
INSKEEP: Which she's doing now. A job training program provided money for community college. And at 63, Carolyn Summers is studying to be a carpenter. She's renovating her daughter's bathroom. Listen to both of them and you sense how former textile workers are changing.
Ms. SUMMERS: I've always loved tinkering and building and putting stuff together. But I wanted to learn the right way to do it, and that's why I'm in school is now I know how to do floor joists or put up sheet rock. This gives me an opportunity to do what I want to do, for the first time in my life.
Ms. GEIGER: I'm presently trying to find a job, you know? But, like I said, mom was talking about being lost. Well, I think I'm still lost. Cause it's really, you know, I'm not as strong as her and I just - I don't know if I want to go to school. I don't know, you know, what I want to do, but I'll figure it out. But you know, like I said, you know, like Mama said, you know, we'll trust in God. And he's got something out there for me, and I think I'll get there.
INSKEEP: Sandra Geiger's mother brings her a tissue. And then both stand up. They step out on the deck, passing Bible verses chalked on the kitchen wall.
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: To hear more about the politics of Lancaster's former textile workers you can go to npr.org.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
President Bush is expected to propose some help for the economy today. A so-called stimulus package comes a day after investors cast more votes of little confidence. When stock markets closed, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 300 points. But Asian markets, which usually follow U.S. markets, were a different story today.
And joining us to tell us about that is Andrew Wood, the Asia markets correspondent at the Financial Times. Welcome to the program.
Mr. ANDREW WOOD (Financial Times): Hello. Good morning.
INSKEEP: What has happened overnight - or overnight in U.S. time anyway?
Mr. WOOD: Asian stock markets have responded quite positively to the news that President Bush is hopefully going to announce some details of this stimulus package, because there's been an awful lot of nervousness here in Asia since the beginning of the year. Many markets are down 10 or 12 percent in the first two weeks of the year because, you know, after all, America is Asia's biggest export market. And if America catches a cold when it's - you know, potentially it could mean a lot of bad news for suppliers here in Asia.
INSKEEP: Well, I suppose the first question was whether U.S. officials were willing to do something about the economy at this time. The answer seems to be coming back yes. And you're saying that's being received positively. Do investors where you are believe that the United States can affect its economic destiny at this moment?
Mr. WOOD: Well, I think people are a bit cynical. Until we actually see the details of the package, it's difficult to tell. I mean, so far over the past few weeks, I mean certainly this week, some of the signs like retail sales in America, you know, some of the worst for some time, Intel missing its sales targets. And of course all of the stuff about the bank earnings this week with, you know, banks announcing more and more billion dollar write-downs as a result of the subprime mistakes. You know, this is really worrying a lot of people here in Asia. We are worried about that contagion a lot.
INSKEEP: Do officials in China or Japan or South Korea talk about developing their internal markets so they don't depend so much on the U.S. economy?
Mr. WOOD: Well, in the past six months to a year or so, you've heard talk of what's called the decoupling thesis. The idea is that China is now so big. It's growing so fast. I mean, economic growth, for the moment in China, the most recent figures were 11 percent a year. You know, at that rate the economy doubles in size about every six or seven years. And that the idea is that China is now dealing and trading with other countries in the region. And that this now is giving the region an economic life of its own.
So what happens in Europe, what happens in North America is less important compared to what it was, say, 10 years ago after the Asian financial crisis when there was a lot less domestic demand. Now, that's still a theory. And I mean we're certainly seeing over the next year, I think, will be a very big test of that theory.
INSKEEP: It certainly sounds like investors do not buy that theory if Asian stocks keep rising and falling based on the latest economic news from the U.S.
Mr. WOOD: They've certainly become very, very volatile, and it's not just in one country. Different countries are in different parts of the supply chain to the United States.
So if you're in Taiwan, you see - or in South Korea, companies like Samsung go up and down a lot because they make memory chips that might go into mobile phones or iPods.
And then in places, say, like Indonesia or Australia, you know - Indonesia, which provides palm oil, coffee, and things like that, and Australia, where, you know, big mining companies are supplying bauxite to turn into aluminium and copper and so on. You know, these economies are also getting affected because they're worried that a slowdown in the United States and perhaps a global slowdown will mean less demands for raw materials. So you're seeing a sort of knock-on effect right away through Asia as people worry about the worst that might happen.
INSKEEP: Andrew Wood is a reporter with the Financial Times. He monitors Asian markets from Hong Kong. Thanks very much.
Mr. WOOD: Thank you.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Some of the pressure on the world economy comes through the high price of oil, so you would think this would be a good time to live in an oil-rich country - not true of Saudi Arabia right now. The price of food is rising in Saudi Arabia and so is discontent. In this absolute monarchy, people have started circulating text messages on mobile phones urging boycotts of milk. Not only that, the inflation has some economists calling on Saudi Arabia to revalue its currency or even delink it from the slumping U.S. dollar.
And we have more this morning from NPR's Peter Kenyon.
PETER KENYON: From the outside, Saudi Arabia looks like a country awash in petrodollars, without an economic care in the world. But here at the Panda Supermarket, in a middle class neighborhood of Riyadh, ordinary Saudis are finding their budget strained to the breaking point by inflation that soared to a 16-year high last month.
Rice, a nearly ubiquitous ingredient at mealtime that used to cost a little more than $7 per 22-pound sack, now goes for nearly $17. Cans of powdered milk have more than doubled in price, and shoppers like Abu Faisal(ph) say the economic pain is getting severe.
Mr. ABU FAISAL: (Through translator) I've got eight kids. I can't pay these prices. It's really too much. The government should subsidize these common foods and they should be really vigilant to hold the greed of the merchants in check. They should pay attention because hunger can make somebody a time bomb.
KENYON: At 6.5 percent last month, the official Saudi inflation rate is lower than in other Gulf states, but this is a country where zero to one percent inflation was the norm for two decades. And the price rises are only reminding Saudis that the kingdom's vast oil wealth is hugely concentrated among the royal family and a small upper class.
Some visitors are shocked to find the vast majority of Saudis struggling to make ends meet, even as oil hits the $100 a barrel mark. Businessman and analyst Yussein Eliracis(ph) says there are a number of factors involved in the rise in prices, but one that's getting a lot of attention lately is the fact that the Saudi riyal is pegged to the weak U.S. dollar. Eliracis says the Saudi relationship with the U.S. remains as strategically important as ever, but for Saudis that relationship is getting very expensive.
Mr. JUSSEIN ELIRACIS (Businessman): First of all, it's the exchange rate to the U.S. dollar. The dollar has been going down; along with it the riyal goes down, so imports go up. And practically all the food is imported.
KENYON: There are a few steps Riyadh could take to ease the pain of a slumping dollar, the simplest and for some analysts the most likely would be to revalue the currency. But former journalist and writer Khaled Batarfi says there are growing calls from within the kingdom to delink the currencies altogether. He says many Saudis assume it's U.S. pressure that's keeping the currency's linked and it's easy for people to blame America when they can't feed their families while oil prices are soaring.
Mr. KHALED BATARFI (Journalist): It's much more than they dreamed about and at the same time their ability to buy the necessities of life is decreasing. For me and many of my colleagues, we believe the only way out is doing what the Kuwaitis have done, to separate the dollars from the riyal.
KENYON: It's not just basic foods that are going up. In some areas, rents are up 10 to 50 percent and the cost of imported medicines is anticipated to rise 20 to 30 percent this year, largely because of the flagging buying power of the riyal.
Saudi Arabia is not known for its tolerance of dissent, certainly not in public. But Wahid bin Hashim(ph), an associate professor of political science at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, says as the gross disparity between most Saudis and the extreme wealth of the upper class becomes more and more exposed, unrest could grow.
Professor WAHID HASHIM (King Abdul Aziz University): Before, there were no SMS(ph), no Internet. Now they are beginning to form public opinion, you know, resisting what's happening and criticizing the status quo and the situation, you know, using these methods. So even the students receive 800 riyals a month just to keep them in line, sometimes, somehow, they will start becoming more and more grumbling and discontent.
KENYON: Officials say the chances that the Saudis will sever the link between the riyal and the dollar are slim at the moment, with Riyadh not eager to antagonize its key ally, but calls for revaluing the Saudi currency are not likely to go away. The Financial Times this week quoted the chief economist at a major Saudi bank as saying inflation is likely to continue to rise through the first half of this year.
Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Jeddah.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Some safety experts are rethinking some advice that you find in almost any elevator. The sign on many elevators shows flames and a stick figure running down a stairway. The sign says in case of fire, use stairs. It turns out that may not be the best idea in every case.
NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports there's growing interest in elevators that are fireproof.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE: The Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas is over 900 feet high. It's the tallest building west of the Mississippi. And at the top, it has the highest thrill rides in the world. Here's one other unexpected ride: if there's a fire, people will flee in the elevators.
Unidentified Man: These elevators travel at the speed of 1,800 feet per minute. Each level of the cab can accommodate 13 people.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: This video, put out by the local fire department, says the elevators are way faster than walking down over 1,600 steps. Officials note that relying on elevators for evacuation is unusual. But Richard Bukowski says that's starting to change.
Mr. RICHARD BUKOWSKI (National Institute of Standards and Technology): I can't find a building that's currently under construction or planned anywhere in the world over a thousand feet that isn't using protected elevators.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Bukowski works on building-safety issues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. That's a federal research agency. He says people thought 9/11 would mean the end of mega high rises.
Mr. BUKOWSKI: And in fact, it's been the other way. There are very tall buildings being built.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Bukowski says the main effect of 9/11 is that developers realized they needed better ways to evacuate these buildings. Elevators have started to look very appealing, and that's a huge change. For decades, experts have warned people that elevators could be death traps.
Edward Donoghue works for a trade group called the National Elevator Industry. He says that advice came after some tragedies back in the 1960s and '70s. Elevators accidentally took people to floors that were burning.
Mr. ED DONOGHUE (National Elevator Industry): The elevators came down and responded to what they thought was somebody pressing a call at that floor. The doors opened up and that's what led to the fatalities inside the elevator cars.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Elevators were redesigned. Little signs went up telling people to use the stairs. And now if smoke or fire gets anywhere near lobbies or the guts of the elevator system, the cars go to the ground floor and wait.
Mr. DONOGHUE: People can stand there all day long and push the button and the elevator will never respond because it's been taken away from them.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: But in the last few years experts have started to realize that stairs have their own problems.
Mr. JAKE PAULS (Building Safety Analyst): If we talk about stairs, we're opening Pandora's box, so to speak.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Jake Pauls is a consultant in Maryland who spent decades studying how to evacuate buildings. He says disabled people can't take the stairs, and in tall buildings stairs can get jam-packed with people.
Mr. PAULS: They won't be able to move at the top and they'll just dribble out the bottom.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: At a rate of about one person a second.
Mr. PAULS: One person a second is a pretty slow rate when you have 10,000 people trying to get down a stair of a very large building.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Plus, he says, Americans are getting fatter, less fit, and just slower at getting downstairs.
Mr. PAULS: So elevators are starting to look better. For example, you could evacuate a very high rise office building in something like 30 minutes using elevators alone. That same building might take an hour or two, maybe even longer, to evacuate by stairs.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: For evacuation elevators to work, they have to be protected from heat, smoke and water, and that's technically doable. For example, you can keep smoke out by pressurizing the elevator shaft. If the sprinklers go off, sloping floors and drains can keep water away. And elevator lobbies can be redesigned to create refuges where people can wait.
Starting this year, San Francisco will require certain kinds of tall buildings to have at least one protected elevator. Barbara Schultheis is the city's fire marshal. She says this measure was intended to help firefighters, not necessarily residents who are trying to escape.
Ms. BARBARA SCHULTHEIS (Fire Marshal): We haven't gone the route of self evacuation yet. And it's my belief that further study is needed before we would go that route.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Further study into questions like this one.
Ms. SCHULTHEIS: How do you reeducate people to use elevators when they've always been taught not to use the elevators?
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Especially if the elevators in some buildings are protected and others aren't. Richard Bukowski says confusion could become a real issue if protected elevators become more common.
Mr. BUKOWSKI: The signs that say don't use the elevator in case of fire will go away. But we also need something positive there, some kind of international symbol, if you will, for a fire-safe elevator.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: And he says if people aren't convinced, they'll always be able to take the stairs.
Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
A documentary filmmaker has been sending out warning signs of his own. He examines troubling social stories. Alex Gibney was nominated for an Academy Award for his film "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room."
Los Angeles Times and MORNING EDITION film critic Kenneth Turan says his new film deserves another nomination.
KENNETH TURAN: "Taxi to the Dark Side" is as shocking and disturbing as its title. "Taxi"'s subject matter is torture as a weapon of choice in the war against terror, so it can be difficult to take. We see pictures and videos from Abu Ghraib not suitable for family viewing. But what's finally the most distressing thing about "Taxi" is how readily our government turned to torture.
"Taxi to the Dark Side"'s title sounds like simply an adroit metaphor, but it has very concrete origins. The dark side comes from a post-9/11 interview with Vice President Dick Cheney.
(Soundbite of movie, "Taxi to the Dark Side")
Vice President DICK CHENEY: We have to work sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows, in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies.
TURAN: As to the taxi part of the title, writer-director Alex Gibney has loosely structured his film around the death of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar, who died after five days of American military interrogation. His U.S. death certificate listed the cause of death as homicide, traceable to beatings he received while in captivity.
Filmmaker Gibney interviewed the clearly haunted soldiers who are put on trial in military court for the man's death. We hear exactly what they did, as well as the circumstances that put ordinary decent men in interrogation situations without the kind of written guidelines they desperately requested.
"Taxi to the Dark Side" also looks at where our change in interrogation policy came from and talks to people all across the political spectrum who are upset about it.
Here's what former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora has to say.
(Soundbite of movie, "Taxi to the Dark Side")
Mr. ALBERTO MORA (Retired General Counsel, U.S. Navy): The argument that we have to apply abuse to detainees in order to protect American lives I find to be violative of our deepest values and to the very safety of our country. We fight not only to protect lives, we fight to protect our principles.
TURAN: "Taxi"'s most poignant interview is with the director's seriously ill father, Frank Gibney. He interrogated Japanese prisoners during World War II and he asked to be unhooked from his oxygen machine so he could speak out against the new policies. It's got to stop, he insists. And his son's significant film shows both why he cares so passionately, and why we should, too.
INSKEEP: Kenneth Turan reviews movies for MORNING EDITION and the Los Angeles Times.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Looks like the pope got the last word in a battle with professors and students at Rome University. Pope Benedict XVI was supposed to appear at the university yesterday but he cancelled when he heard students were planning to protest. Some students and professors said the pope's views are reactionary and anti-science.
But the pope was the star of the show anyway, as NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: Pope Benedict was not physically present, but his persona was the main theme of the entire ceremony - the official opening of the academic year at Rome University, the largest public university in Europe. And after the pope's speech was read by a faculty member, the audience gave Benedict a standing ovation.
(Soundbite of applause)
POGGIOLI: And a group of Catholic students shouted viva il Papa. The pope decided late Tuesday not to attend the event. An official statement said he didn't want to create a pretext for further unpleasant protests by those opposed to a religious leader speaking at a secular campus.
Last November, nearly 70 physics professors had written a letter to the university chancellor, saying they were opposed to Benedict's invitation because of the pope's views on science. They cited a speech then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made in 1990 suggesting the 1633 heresy trial of the astronomer Galileo for teaching that the Earth revolved around the sun was reasonable and fair. The letter was leaked to the media earlier this week and led to a firestorm of criticism. The contents were said to smack of censorship and an assault on free speech.
At the ceremony, Fabio Mussi, the Italian minister in charge of universities and research, and a former communist, spoke out in favor of the pope.
Mr. FABIO MUSSI (Minister of Universities and Research, Italy): (Through translator) I'm not a believer. I'm not a member of the Catholic Church. And I do not understand - I do not understand - why Pope Benedict cannot be here in person to deliver a speech he wrote for this ceremony at Rome University.
POGGIOLI: Speech after speech lamented the incident, which everyone attributed to the intolerance of a small minority. But physics Professor Andrea Frova, one of the signers of the letter, said Pope Benedict's invitation to attend an academic event at a secular institution was inopportune.
Professor ANDREA FROVA (University La Sapienza): (Through translator) He is the leader of the Catholic Church, while here we are in a secular university where there are students who are Indian, Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, of all religions, and non-believers.
POGGIOLI: The controversy comes at a time of fierce debate about what many see as Benedict's increasing interference in the Italian political and social sphere. Since his election nearly three years ago, Benedict has been waging a vocal campaign against abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research in Italy. And his speeches and public appearances are extensively covered by Italian state-run TV.
(Soundbite of protesters)
POGGIOLI: The tensions between Italy's Catholic and secular factions was highlighted by the huge deployment of police inside and outside the university campus, as a few hundred students on both sides of the ideological spectrum staged demonstrations.
But the biggest turnout is expected on Sunday. Cardinal Camillo Ruini, head of the Rome diocese, has invited all Romans to gather in St. Peter's Square to show their support for Benedict XVI.
Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Rome.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
This weekend, two significant voter groups get a chance to influence the presidential race. Latinos are a big part of the electorate in Nevada, and we'll have more on that state's caucuses in a moment.
We begin with evangelical voters. They are expected to be a big portion of the electorate in tomorrow's Republican primary in South Carolina. And on the eve of the primary, many remain undecided.
NPR's Audie Cornish reports from Columbia, South Carolina.
AUDIE CORNISH: With just days to go before the primary, the Palmetto Family Council, an evangelical policy group, mailed out over 100,000 DVDs showcasing the stump speeches of the Republican presidential candidates. The disc was titled "Still Undecided."
(Soundbite of DVD)
Unidentified Man: Throughout the pages of history, you'll find the ongoing story of America, defending our beliefs and our values around the globe.
CORNISH: Orin Smith is director of the group. He says even his own board of directors are split among four different candidates.
Mr. ORIN SMITH (Palmetto Family Council): I think South Carolinians traditionally have not only supported candidates that were consistent with their values, but they wanted to support someone who had a good chance of winning.
CORNISH: Smith's DVDs will join the hundreds of thousands of mailers and flyers that have already jammed mailboxes here, not to mention the constant barrage of campaign phone calls. For undecided voters like Larry Johnson of Cayce, South Carolina, faith is the paramount issue.
Mr. LARRY JOHNSON: Being a Christian, I really believe that we as a nation need to get more grounded in real Christian values. There's a lot of talk with all candidates on the local, state and national level, but the depth doesn't seem to be there...
CORNISH: But since there appears to be so many voters who have yet to make up their minds, it's not only the word of God that is being spread, it's the word of negative campaign tactics.
Mr. BILL FULTZ(ph): There was that sleazy computerized telephone survey that his campaign has, that they did a number on me today.
CORNISH: Bill Fultz says he was turned off by so-called push polling that appeared to him to support Mike Huckabee. Huckabee's campaign has disavowed any connection to the calls.
Mr. FULTZ: Oh, they were trashing all the other candidates, talking about how rich Romney is, and they used the epithet millionaire to describe John McCain.
CORNISH: Besides, Fultz says, Huckabee shouldn't need the help. Here at the Northside Baptist Church in Columbia, where he's attending a midweek service, Fultz says lots of people are considering the former Arkansas governor.
Ms. ANGIE WETHERSBY(ph): His firm foundation in his beliefs and - that he's a Christian and that he is very pro-family and just puts family first, and I just really feel like that's a very important issue.
Mr. DONALD CLARK(ph): What impresses me most is that he doesn't waffle. He hasn't waffled. There's a straight stance from Huckabee. He has a very firm set of beliefs, and that's what he sticks to.
CORNISH: Huckabee's victory in Iowa has made voters like Angie Wethersby and Donald Clark sit up and take notice. Their vote, they say, is guided by their faith. But some voters, such as Wayne Morris(ph) and Annette Folkenberry(ph), say their faith keeps them from voting for Mitt Romney, who is a Mormon.
Mr. WAYNE MORRIS: There are so many differences between Mormonism and mainstream Christianity that for me that is a huge issue.
Ms. ANNETTE FOLKENBERRY: I really look at Mormons as more of a cult, and I know they're trying to explain that in the best way they can, but really when it comes down to it, you know, I only have one God, and Jesus Christ, and the way to my guide is through Jesus Christ the Lord savior.
CORNISH: Other evangelicals I've spoken to say they intend to vote their head and not their heart. And many of them are drawn to Senator John McCain. But whether it's their head or their heart that leads them to a candidate, Reverend Rocky Purvis, pastor of Northside Baptist Church, offers this advice to his flock.
Reverend ROCKY PURVIS (Northside Baptist Church): The Bible says that righteousness exalts the nation. And we as believers should be seeking to elect people that we are convinced are going to lead our country to righteousness to honor God.
CORNISH: Audie Cornish, NPR News, Columbia, South Carolina.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Democrats are focusing this weekend on Nevada. Diversity was one of the reasons the Democrats decided to put the Nevada caucuses in January for the first time, soon after Iowa and New Hampshire. And Nevada's population includes many Latinos; that's a big part of the diversity.
On the state level, the party has gone all out to register and educate the one-fifth of the voting-age population that's Latino, and the presidential candidates have courted them.
NPR's Ina Jaffe reports from Las Vegas.
Mr. MARCO RAUDA (Field Organizer): (Speaking Spanish)
INA JAFFE: There are just a couple of days to go before the caucuses, and Marco Rauda is returning dozens and dozens of voicemails left on the Democratic Party's Spanish-language hotline.
Mr. RAUDA: Okay. (Speaking Spanish)
JAFFE: Marco Rauda is a field organizer for the Nevada Democratic Party. And right now he's the guy with the answers to all the varied questions that Spanish-speaking voters have about the caucuses. There is some real excitement out there, he says.
Mr. RAUDA: It's the first time the Hispanic community could have a say on picking the next presidential nominee. It gets them excited to hear it on the news every day, so they definitely want to participate and want to be part of it.
JAFFE: Rauda sits in a cavernous hall surrounded by a couple dozen volunteers who have become one with their telephones. A number of them are Hispanic and will be first time caucus-goers themselves. Gladys Racino(ph) says Hispanics are savoring the attention.
Ms. GLADYS RACINO: We haven't had a candidate yet reach out to us, the Latino community, and this is the first time that they've really seen a level of access and a level of participation that they can connect to.
JAFFE: Connect to them right in their living rooms.
(Soundbite of ad)
Unidentified Man #1: (Speaking Spanish) Amiga Hillary Clinton.
JAFFE: Latinos knew best Amiga Hillary has been advertising in Spanish here, and Senator Clinton has been sharing the airwaves with her chief opponent, Senator Barack Obama.
(Soundbite of ad)
Unidentified Man #2: (Speaking Spanish)
JAFFE: Hispanics have also gotten a lot of personal attention from the candidates and state assembly member Ruben Kihuen believes that's what it takes to be successful with Latino voters. He won his seat largely by going door to door and then writing personal thank you notes. He's backing Hillary Clinton, and he did some house-to-house canvassing with her in his district last week.
Mr. RUBEN KIHUEN (Nevada State Assembly): She went to a neighborhood that had never been reached out to by a candidate at a state level. And then here you have a presidential candidate, when they could be at a rally with 20,000 people, coming out to meet the constituents directly.
JAFFE: Clinton was also perhaps sticking it to the powerful Culinary Workers Union, the state's largest labor organization, which had the day before endorsed Obama. The union is about 40 percent Hispanic, and many of those members live in Ruben Kihuen's district.
But the increasingly bitter rivalry doesn't bother Kihuen as long as it gets Hispanics to caucus.
Mr. KIHUEN: So at the end of the day, we're both working towards the same cause, just for a different candidate.
JAFFE: The Culinary Workers Union has a legendary get-out-the-vote machine. It will double as a Latino outreach effort for the Obama campaign. A spokesman for the union refused NPR's request to see them in action. But they have 60,000 members, so it's not hard to find one.
Verona Colora(ph), a cashier at the Luxor Hotel, was waiting in line yesterday to hear Obama speak at Rancho High School in the heart of the Latino community. Yes, she said, she has been contacted by her union.
Ms. VERONA COLORA: They've been at the work and signing us up for the caucus on Saturday. So they've been really helpful.
JAFFE: And are you going to caucus?
Ms. COLORA: Yes, I'm going to caucus on Saturday.
JAFFE: Have you ever before?
Ms. COLORA: No, it's my first time. I'm excited.
JAFFE: There is no telling what the impact of Hispanics will be on Saturday because no one has any idea how many people will turn out in these first-time-ever January caucuses. But Democratic Party organizer Marco Rauda thinks all this work will pay off after Saturday.
Mr. RAUDA: Yeah, we're hoping that Nevada not only picks the next presidential nominee, but even the next Democratic president, and this is a great way to start.
JAFFE: Nevada has, in fact, voted for the winner in every presidential election but one. But this November it's likely that Hispanic voters will play a larger role in the outcome.
Ina Jaffe, NPR News, Las Vegas.
INSKEEP: Read more about the issues in Nevada at npr.org/elections.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
NPR's business news starts with the latest loss of personal data.
A computer tape has gone missing and it has the personal information of about 650,000 customers of J.C. Penney and other retailers. GE Money, a unit of General Electric that handles credit card operations for Penney and other retailers, says this loss includes Social Security card numbers for about 150,000 people.
Since the tape went missing last October, GE Money has been notifying customers and telling them to phone a special call center. It is paying for one year of credit monitoring services for people whose Social Security numbers were on the tape.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Now, a team that was once accused of stealing signals tries to get closer to perfection this weekend. On Sunday, the New England Patriots play for a spot in the Super Bowl and for an unprecedented 18-0-record, and this affects businesses well beyond the sports world. For the corporate bigwigs who have suites at Gillette Stadium outside Boston, deciding who gets to go is a delicate art.
From member station WBUR, Curt Nickisch reports.
CURT NICKISCH: Gillette Stadium won't say which companies have suites and Barb Hefner understands why.
Ms. BARBARA HEFNER (Marketing Consultant): You run the risk of getting a call from a customer or a client asking, you know, I've heard you have a box, gee, how come you've never invited me?
NICKISCH: Hefner is the founder of a marketing consulting firm here. Her company doesn't have a suite, but her clients do and they've invited her before. Not this weekend, though.
She says most are being extremely selective, trying to get the most yardage out of their investment without offending anyone.
Ms. HEFNER: Do you try to court a prospect who's a possibility down the road? Or do you try to cement a relationship with an existing customer?
NICKISCH: It's a tough call, and to avoid any fumbles one corporate box owner at Gillette has a different game plan. Covidien asked its managers to nominate their best workers. Senior VP Eric Kraus says that's a much bigger score than the old employee of the month parking spot.
Mr. ERIC KRAUS (Senior Vice President, Covidien): Absolutely. It's a nice benefit. You're not only going and experiencing the game firsthand, but there's a pride factor when you see the Covidien name and logo.
NICKISCH: Finally, one CEO here has used his company tickets all season long to network, but for Sunday's big game, he's taking his closest business partner - his wife.
For NPR News, I'm Curt Nickisch in Boston.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
On Fridays, we talk about your money, and today we'll talk about why so much of your money may be going away from you in fees - the ones in your phone bill, and your credit card bill, and your cable bill, and your bank statement. Fees seem to hit us from every direction. Many of them are hidden, as a matter of fact.
And reporter Bob Sullivan has been tracking this. He wrote a book called "Gotcha Capitalism."
Welcome to the program.
Mr. BOB SULLIVAN (Columnist; Reporter): Hi.
INSKEEP: I want to mention, I was on the street the other day and this woman asked me where's a bank machine for my bank, and she names the bank, and I said, well, there's an ATM over there, there's an ATM across the street. She says I don't want to go to those. They're going to charge me three bucks.
Mr. SULLIVAN: It's not just $3 from the machine that you get your money from; it might be another $2 from your bank. So $20 can literally cost you $5. That's just one of the myriad of fees that banks charge in this huge industry now that has kind of grown around confusing people about what things really cost, putting one price tag on products and then later adding in all these fees.
INSKEEP: But let's talk about what is driving companies to move in this direction.
Mr. SULLIVAN: Now, this is a big shift and it really is tied to the Internet. Ten years ago or so, Internet shopping was becoming the new thing. Businesses and economists were really worried about with consumers being able to shop at maybe 20 different stores instantaneously, that they would always get the lowest price. So companies had to come up with some kind of alternate strategy, and that was literally what I call the death of the price tag. So they give us one price and then later on add in all these charges.
INSKEEP: Can you go through corporate reports and find companies who've essentially said, well, our business is flat, but fees are taking off?
Mr. SULLIVAN: Sure. There are banks now that will say that they make more money from fee income then from interest income. And if you think about that, that means that their business model has been turned upside down in the last decade. You know, $1 at a time, you know, that's obviously annoying. But I think this is really changing the way the economy works.
And in a free market you're supposed to be rewarding the most talented people with the best ideas and most innovative products, but if you're in a system where cheating is what wins, you're rewarding the best cheaters.
INSKEEP: Are you saying that companies are no longer competing to provide the best service?
Mr. SULLIVAN: That's exactly what I'm saying. They go quarter to quarter, just bumping up their revenue as much as they can through misleading people. The other part of this is companies that would like to compete honestly can't do it. I have an anecdote in the book of Intercontinental Hotels a couple of years ago setting upfront pricing, they called it, and they were offering consumers precisely what they would pay when they checked out of the hotel, and they lost all their customers to competitors who were doing bait and switch. And so they literally could not afford to be honest. That's a shame.
INSKEEP: What's the bait and switch when it comes to a hotel?
Mr. SULLIVAN: Well, I'll give you the most dramatic example. If you use Priceline and you get a $99 price for a hotel in San Francisco, almost all those hotels now that are three-stars or higher, they have resort fees, they're called. And they can be $15 per person per night.
INSKEEP: What's a resort fee?
Mr. SULLIVAN: Well, it charges you for mini-golf or for towels at the pool, even if you don't use them. It's mandatory. You've already paid the money, so you can't get out of it, and your good deal is suddenly a bad deal.
INSKEEP: I suppose you pick up the telephone and make a phone a call, that might be another three bucks where it used to be fifty cents.
Mr. SULLIVAN: Yeah. You know, there's even some hotels now that are charging for room-to-room calls.
INSKEEP: Room-to-room calls?
Mr. SULLIVAN: Yeah. You have to watch for that. And I'll give you - I'll go one better. I was in Las Vegas for the CES Convention.
INSKEEP: This is the Consumer Electronics Convention that's gotten a lot of news.
Mr. SULLIVAN: That's right. Yeah, yeah. And at the Wynn Resort there they have a sign on their mini bars there that if you pick up an item, even if you put it back, if you don't put it back within 60 seconds, they'll charge you.
INSKEEP: Oh, because they got the motion detectors there for the individual...
Mr. SULLIVAN: They have sensors in the mini bars, yes, yes.
INSKEEP: Did you pick up something and put it back after 45 seconds just to feel you'd gotten something free?
Mr. SULLIVAN: You know, if they had a little stopwatch near the mini bar, that might be fair.
INSKEEP: Bob Sullivan. Thanks very much.
Mr. SULLIVAN: Sure. Thank you.
INSKEEP: Bob Sullivan's book is titled "Gotcha Capitalism."
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And our last word in business today is gotcha, which is appropriate on this morning when the news seems to be about getting ripped off and about identity theft. Because the Chicago police have nabbed a 37-year-old woman for identity theft.
In this case a mortgage company and a car dealership notified the police of suspicious activity, but not before these two companies had already sold the woman a house and an SUV using the stolen information. So the woman got the car but she won't be driving it anywhere soon because she just got eight years in prison.
And that's the business news on MORNING EDITION from NPR News. That's our real identity. I'm Steve Inskeep.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.
We're not even through January, and if you own stocks, you may be worth noticeably less than you were on New Year's Day. The slipping market is just one reason that President Bush will endorse measures to improve the economy today, and the people who want to replace him are taking the chance to offer their own ideas.
Here to talk about that and more, NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Mara, good morning.
MARA LIASSON: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: Also our political editor, Ken Rudin. Good morning to you as well.
KEN RUDIN: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: So how are the candidates addressing the economy?
RUDIN: Well, you know, the Democrats have a different view than the Republican. Democrats have seen this more as a Henny Penny approach that the sky is falling and the recession is here, and they have been calling for more drastic measures. The Republican…
INSKEEP: Which would cost more than a Henny Penny, I presume.
RUDIN: A little bit more than Henny Penny. But the Republicans have really mostly been ignoring it. Mitt Romney has always been focusing on abortion and immigration and bringing back Ronald Reagan - that might be difficult. But we saw something different that happened in Michigan, the highest unemployment in the nation. Mitt Romney suddenly became the businessman, the guy who turned around the Olympics, the guy who turned around Massachusetts. He could turn around the economy, too, even though he has not been specific.
INSKEEP: Are Republicans, when you say they have been ignoring this until now, is that because this is in some way a weakness for Republicans, Mara Liasson?
LIASSON: Well, I actually think Republicans are now paying a lot of attention to it. But there's a differences of opinion about how bad things are, and also, the cost of a short-term fix. I think that Democrats generally seize on the economy. This is something that's usually a good issue for them, and especially when you've got an incumbent president of the other party.
INSKEEP: Okay, so we have a voting in Nevada - or rather, caucuses in Nevada on Saturday. Also a big primary for Republicans, on the Republican side in South Carolina on Saturday. What's at stake?
LIASSON: Well, I think there's a lot at stake for three of the Republican candidates. For John McCain who was beat here in South Carolina by George W. Bush in 2000, he really has to show that he can build a coalition starting with the strong base of military families that he has there. He has got the establishment in South Carolina behind him this time.
For Mike Huckabee, he's got to show that his appeal can reach beyond evangelical voters. There are plenty of them down there, and he is doing very well among them. But he's pushing his populist message talking about economic problems for middle and working-class families, the kind of Sam's Club Republicans that you hear a lot about now.
And for Fred Thompson, it's very important because he has to win somewhere. Both McCain and Huckabee have won other places: Iowa and New Hampshire. Fred Thompson hasn't won anywhere. He hasn't really done well anywhere. He's got to win here; he is the southerner in this race.
INSKEEP: When you look at the polling data from South Carolina, do you see a real front-runner right now?
RUDIN: Well, I'd rather you don't say the word polling data because right before New Hampshire, we were writing off Hillary Clinton. Before Michigan, we were writing off Mitt Romney. So who knows, but obviously, these candidates have to win. John McCain, running out of money, needs to win somewhere. Mitt Romney has so much money. Even if he doesn't win South Carolina, he's bankrolled through the February 5th primaries.
And you know, I think with Fred Thompson, the Hollywood writers strike has certainly hurt him. He has not had much to say.
(Soundbite of laughter)
RUDIN: And he has to win somewhere - and maybe some.
INSKEEP: Come on. Well, he comes up with his own lines.
RUDIN: Maybe. I know.
INSKEEP: Unless he doesn't. And you come up with your own lines. We know that for sure. Has it been a clean campaign in South Carolina?
RUDIN: No, it has not. And we go - I mean, go back to 1980, there has been dirty tricks always in South Carolina. Probably, the reason they do it there is because it works, and two, because it's very important. The winner of South Carolina primary has always gone on to win the Republican nomination.
John McCain, eight years ago, was pilloried - they said that Cindy McCain was a drug user. They said that he had fathered a black baby out of wedlock. He and Cindy McCain adopted a child in a Bangladesh orphanage, for goodness sakes. But those flyers - those scandalous flyers are out there again. They are saying that John McCain abandoned his fellow POWs to save his own skin when he was in Hanoi. So it's gotten very, very ugly. And except this time, McCain has the apparatus, the organization, and perhaps, the money to fight back, unlike 2000.
INSKEEP: How ugly, if at all, have things been in Nevada, where the biggest focus is on the Democratic side?
LIASSON: Well, a lot less ugly than South Carolina by those standards. I think Nevada is a very close race. This is the first time that Hispanic voters are going to weigh in in large numbers. We're going to see a real test of union clout. The big unions there have endorsed Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton has what you might call the Nevada Democratic establishment on her side.
Yesterday, a judge ruled against the Clinton supporters who were trying to stop the caucuses being held inside the casinos where a lot of those union workers work. The suit was brought, of course, after the union decided to support Barack Obama.
The issues there are, of course, the economy. Nevada has the highest rate of home foreclosures in the country. And also, there is a local issue: the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site. All three Democratic candidates are opposed to it, and the big argument is who is more opposed to it.
You haven't had a lot of polls in Nevada - that's probably a good thing. But there is one coming out today - that shows Hillary Clinton ahead.
INSKEEP: Mara Liasson, thanks very much.
LIASSON: Thank you.
INSKEEP: And our political editor Ken Rudin, thanks to you.
RUDIN: Thanks, Steve.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Iraq's minister of defense was in Washington this week, and he did not have much positive to say about his own country's army. He says Iraq's security forces will not be ready to control internal security for four years, and he predicted they would not be able to protect against an external threat until 2018. That assessment matters because U.S. forces would be expected to fill the gaps in the intervening years. So that's what Iraq's defense boss says.
NPR's Anne Garrels spoke with Iraqi forces on the ground.
ANNE GARRELS: General Abdullah Mohamed Komes(ph), the head of logistics for the Iraqi army, was in despair last year. He's a lot more optimistic now.
General ABDULLAH MOHAMED KOMES (Head, Logistics, Iraqi Army): (Through translator) The army is better than last year. It's better than just three months ago. And in the next three months, we'll be better than now.
GARRELS: He's seen dramatic improvements in training, staffing and performance. He says the Shiite-led government is not interfering as it once did, allowing the military greater latitude to put the right people in the right place regardless of ethnic background. But he acknowledges the army still needs a lot more.
Gen. KOMES: (Through translator) We need better weapons, firepower, armored tanks and helicopters.
GARRELS: General Abdullah's shopping list also includes secure radio communications and reconnaissance vehicles. For now, Iraqi forces depend entirely on U.S. drones to survey the battlefield. He also needs fighter jets. The Iraqi air force hasn't flown a fighter since the U.S. invasion, and it's not expected to get any jets for another three years.
U.S. commanders point to the second division in the northern city of Mosul as an example of progress. But Brigadier General Taja(ph), a brigade commander there, is clear about continued problems. His units are under-strength. He needs more good mid-level officers. With the new deBaathification law, he hopes the government will make it easier to rehire former officers with needed skills.
Brigadier General TAJA (Brigade Commander, Iraq): (Through translator) In theory, a lot of employees can take their jobs back, but only if that law is actually applied.
GARRELS: One of his battalion commanders, Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad(ph), says it's hard to train and fight at the same time.
Lieutenant Colonel MOHAMMAD (Battalion Commander, Iraqi Army): The new Iraqi army is a different system. American system, they have now like Internet, computer, all the stuff, radios, you know. We need cause for those officers to do his job good.
GARRELS: A year ago, Iraqi troops patrolling the streets of Mosul were in open, vulnerable trucks. Now, they have armored Humvees. The division was recruited locally and knows the area well. That helps with intelligence. But it makes it easier to pressure or intimidate the troops because their families are here. Colonel Mohammad's house was blown up. He had to move his family out of the city for safety.
Major AMJAD(ph) (Battalion Commander, Iraqi Army): (Speaking in foreign language)
GARRELS: Major Amjad says he's had six relatives killed by extremists trying to scare him off; it didn't work. But because of threats, desertion rates remain high. Amjad's battalion has also taken a lot of casualties - 126 from his battalion of 600 were killed or severely wounded last year.
Maj. AMJAD: (Speaking in foreign language)
GARRELS: When he was injured, Amjad said he had to pay for his own medical care. The military didn't pick up the tab. And he had to find the care too. The new military hospital is incapable of doing the simplest operations. And if the soldier dies, Major Amjad says, there are no death benefits. That was supposed to have changed, but so far Amjad has seen no improvements - hardly the way to get good recruits.
(Soundbite of vehicle)
GARRELS: As he patrols with the Americans, Amjad says he has confidence in his troops, but he doesn't trust other units. Among the many reasons: infiltration.
Maj. AMJAD: (Through translator) There is definitely infiltration. The enemy can get into the army. We know about this.
GARRELS: That impacts how Iraqi units work with each other.
Back at the joint U.S.-Iraqi base, battalion commander, Colonel Mohammad, refuses to put a date on when the Iraqi army will be self-sufficient, but he's certain of one thing.
Col. MOHAMMAD: We need our brother, we need our friends to stay with us until the - make this area safety. Hold the Iraq, hold the countries.
GARRELS: He says the U.S. must stay for the foreseeable future.
Anne Garrels, NPR News, Baghdad.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Any election in Taiwan can affect that country's future status with Mainland China. Some political parties want independence, some don't. And last weekend, Taiwan's voters chose a party that is not pushing for independence. The opposition Nationalist Party won big in legislative elections and is favored to retake the presidency this spring. That reduces the chance of conflict with China, the kind of conflict that could involve the United States.
NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Beijing.
ANTHONY KUHN: Speaking after the election, President Chen Shui-bian called it the worst defeat in his Democratic Progressive Party's 22-year history, and he resigned as party leader to take responsibility. Taiwanese voters were clearly more concerned with their faltering economy and corruption within the ruling DPP than with Chen's efforts to achieve formal independence for the island.
Chang Yan Sher(ph) is a Taiwan expert at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
Mr. CHANG YAN SHER (Taiwan Expert, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences): (Speaking in foreign language)
KUHN: The result of this election showed that voters don't want to follow the directions set by Chen Shui-bian, he says. In this sense, the danger in cross-strait relations has decreased. And it should be good for peace and stability in the Asia Pacific region.
The Nationalists have pledged to ease restrictions on travel and investment with the Mainland. They now hold a two-thirds majority in the legislature and their popular presidential candidate, Ma Ying-jeou leads the DPP's Frank Hsieh in the polls.
But included in the March presidential elections is a controversial referendum on whether Taiwan should apply to join the United Nations as a separate entity from China. Beijing considers this as a step towards formal independence. So far, it has refrained from any saber rattling, realizing that it would probably backfire.
Mr. SHER: (Speaking in foreign language)
KUHN: If we had gotten excited or overreacted, it would have helped Chen, says Chang Yan Sher. It's a good thing we didn't.
Lin Jung Bin(ph) is a China expert at Tamkang University in Taiwan. He says that Washington's warnings to Taipei have undercut popular support for the referendum.
Mr. LIN JUNG BIN (China Expert, Tamkang University): (Speaking in foreign language)
KUHN: Last year, U.S. officials publicly warned Taipei nine times - a historic high. The result was that support for maintaining status quo increased sharply in opinion polls while support for Taiwan's independence dramatically decreased.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Taipei last month about the referendum.
Secretary CONDOLEEZZA RICE (U.S. Department of State): We think that Taiwan's referendum to apply to the United Nations under the name Taiwan is a provocative policy. It unnecessarily raises tensions in the Taiwan Strait and it promises no real benefits for the people of Taiwan on the international stage.
KUHN: But the U.S. is also worried about China changing the status quo.
Admiral Timothy Keating, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, said here on Tuesday that the U.S. is concerned about new weapons that China is developing.
Admiral TIMOTHY KEATING (Commander, U.S. Pacific Command): We are concerned about development of long-range cruise and ballistic missiles. We're concerned about anti-satellite technology. We're concerned about area denial weapons. And we want to be very straightforward with our Chinese colleagues that increased transparency can yield(ph) greater trust.
KUHN: These weapons, analysts say, could be used to deny U.S. forces access to the area around Taiwan in any conflict with China.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Beijing.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Hollywood directors reached a tentative agreement with studios yesterday and that could put pressure on striking writers to reach their own deal. While the writers' strike continues, your entertainment options include pro-football, and reality TV, and some films for which the original story credit goes to Jane Austen.
"Masterpiece Theater" on PBS is offering the complete Jane Austen. These are adaptations of all six of Austen's novels. Four of the six productions were written for the screen by Andrew Davies. He approaches the famous novelist with a mischievous streak.
As NPR's Lynn Neary reports.
LYNN NEARY: So here's how Andrew Davies' adaptation of "Sense and Sensibility" begins.
(Soundbite of TV Mini-Series, "Sense and Sensibility")
Unidentified Woman #1 (Actress): (As Character) Do you truly love me?
Unidentified Man #1 (Actor): (As Character) Trust me.
NEARY: Those are words no woman should ever believe in a situation like that, as anyone who's ever read a Jane Austen novel knows. But Austen fans may also note that no such scene occurs anywhere in the novel, a fact which doesn't bother Davies in the least.
Mr. ANDREW DAVIES (Screenwriter): Chronologically, that event does happen right at the start of the story, so I put it there. But also, I suppose, the kind of rather cheeky reason for putting it there is to put a seduction scene right at the start of a Jane Austen novel, so that, you know, the Jane Austen faithful can be a little shocked.
NEARY: And purists have criticized Davies for his tendency to add some overt passion to the stories of repressed love that Austen made so famous. Jane Austen couldn't write such scenes at the time, Davies says, but the consequences of such passion were very much a part of her stories, take "Sense and Sensibility," for example.
Mr. DAVIES: One of the main characters in the story seduces a 15-year-old girl and abandons her, leaves her pregnant. She has a baby afterwards. And the results are important to the plot. But people forget about that girl because she isn't in any of the actual scenes in the book. We just hear about her.
And so, I invented her as a character, and once you can see a character, then you notice or then you get involved with her, then you think how shocking, then, you think poor girl, what's going to happen to her?
NEARY: In "Northanger Abbey," the young heroine, Catherine, loves to read Gothic fiction, which was very much like romance novels of today. Her overactive imagination gets her into trouble and almost ruins her chances with the man she loves. But Catherine's reading habits proved to be a golden opportunity for Davies.
Mr. DAVIES: It was great, fun to just make up little scenes that Catherine makes up for herself, which she is being sort of kidnapped by highway men or tied up in some dungeon by villain.
NEARY: Yeah. It was sort of a natural opportunity for bodice-ripping.
Mr. DAVIES: Oh, yes. Well, I've never been against a bit of bodice-ripping.
(Soundbite of movie, "Northanger Abbey")
Unidentified Woman #2 (Actress): (As Character) He was interrupted by a noise in the passage leading to the room. It approached. The door was unlocked. A man entered, forcibly dragging behind him a beautiful girl. Her features bathed in tears and suffering utmost distress.
Unidentified Man #2 (Actor): (As Character) Take her where she'll never see anymore(ph).
NEARY: Davies attributes Jane Austen's enduring popularity to her ability to create appealing heroines who overcome huge obstacles in order to find, not just true love, but a happy marriage or, at the very least, a very nice wedding. And, of course, the true love always happens to be, not just good-looking, but extremely rich. All this might just be the stuff of your average romance novel were it not, says Davies, for Jane Austen's formidable talent as a writer.
Mr. DAVIES: Jane Austen manages to combine all this wisdom: there are real three-dimensional characters and lots of wit, beautifully organized plots in which there's always an element of suspense. You can never guess exactly what's going to happen. Although, of course, you hope for the happy ending and she usually supplies it.
NEARY: Perhaps the most famous of Austen's novels is "Pride and Prejudice." It's been adapted many times, most recently in the film version starring Keira Knightley as the beautiful proud and witty Elizabeth Bennet.
Although Davies did not write that screenplay, he did collaborate in writing a modern version of the story, "Bridget Jones' Diary." And his 1996 adaption of the novel for the BBC helped spark the renewed interest in Austen's work. Starring Colin Firth as the haughty Mr. Darcy, and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth, the BBC production brings Austen's quick-witted dialogue to life.
As in this scene with the fiery Ms. Bennet turns down Mr. Darcy's proposal of marriage in no uncertain terms.
(Soundbite of TV Mini-Series, "Pride and Prejudice")
Ms. JENNIFER EHLE (Actress): (As Elizabeth Bennet) The mode of your declaration has spared me any concern I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner. You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it.
From the very beginning, your manners impressed me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others. I had not known you a month before I felt you were the last man in the world whom I could ever marry.
Mr. COLIN FIRTH (Actor): (As Fitzwilliam Darcy) You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your feelings.
NEARY: Davies, once a professor of English literature, says his work as a screenwriter is not so different from what he did when he was teaching and giving seminars on the work of Jane Austen.
Mr. DAVIES: The whole time I'd be trying to say, look, it's like this, it's not some dull old text. It's about real people, like you and me and all that kind of thing. And, now - it's like I'm giving these lectures but I've got millions of pounds worth of visual effects and wonderful actors and actresses to support it all.
NEARY: Davies says he hopes the TV productions of the Austen novels will convince more people to read her books. Reading classic literature remains his favorite pastime. But when Davies does watch TV, he admits he's a fan of reality shows - the "Dog Whisperer" being one of his current favorites.
Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.
INSKEEP: Andrew Davies' adaptation of Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey" premiers this Sunday on PBS, and the Austen series continues until April.
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Here's what a chess grandmaster said about Bobby Fischer.
Mr. GARRY KASPAROV (Chess Player): He's probably single-handedly revitalized the game of chess in the late '60s and early '70s, the game which was under strict control of Soviet officials because Soviet chess players have dominating the game for quite a long time.
INSKEEP: That's chess champion Garry Kasparov in a 2004 interview. He was talking about his fellow champion, Bobby Fischer, the American, who died yesterday in Iceland.
Among those remembering him today is David Edmonds. He is a BBC journalist and co-author of a book about Bobby Fischer. And we should mention that Kasparov there was talking about the period in which Bobby Fischer became the world chess champion in 1972.
What was the significance of that win?
Mr. DAVID EDMONDS (Journalist, BBC): Well, Bobby Fischer presented it as a microcosm of the Cold War. This was a lone American without much government backing, taking on the might of the Soviet chess machine. There were millions, literally millions of registered players in the Soviet Union, and one man defeated that Soviet chess machine.
INSKEEP: Because Soviets have been chess champions going back decades?
Mr. EDMONDS: Going back decades, ever since World War II, they dominated world chess. Of course, they excelled at a couple of other cultural things. They excelled in the circus. They excelled at ballet. But chess was what proved to them that communism was superior to the capitalist system.
INSKEEP: Is there a way to explain to a layman what was so brilliant about the way this man moved his pieces across that chess board?
Mr. EDMONDS: It's rather difficult for non-chess players. It's a bit like trying to explain I don't know what makes Mozart such a wonderful musician. He had a very harmonious, clean chess style. There were no pyrotechnics(ph). I mean, he could play tactical games, but what he really did was ruthlessly dispatch his opponents. And he did what nobody had done until then. He destroyed the opposition. On the way of challenging Boris Spassky, he beat the challengers, 6-nil, 6-nil. This had never been seen in the history of chess.
INSKEEP: Was there a way in which this man who, obviously, had a brilliant mind found out that his mind was his enemy?
Mr. EDMONDS: I don't know if he ever realized that. Other people realized that for him. He had an IQ that was estimated to be over 180. He was a high genius. But chess really saved him. Had it not been for chess, God knows what would have happened to Bobby Fischer. Chess was his life. And for his entire life, he did virtually nothing but play chess.
INSKEEP: And whenever he was away from the chess board, he was often saying bizarre things, anti-Semitic remarks and other things.
Mr. EDMONDS: He became increasingly anti-Semitic. He became increasingly anti-American. He'd played a match - a rematch against Boris Spassky in 1992 and broken U.S. sanctions. And ever since then there was an arrest warrant out for him. And it was after that that he became very anti-American. On 9/11 he said words to the effect that America had got what it deserved.
One of the ironies, of course, is that as we discovered in our book, not only was his mother Jewish, but his father was Jewish as well as it turned out. And it puts his rabid anti-Semitic statements in a sort of ironic light.
INSKEEP: Do you remember him well?
Mr. EDMONDS: I remember the famous game in 1972 well because I was an 8-year-old chess player. And the world of chess was suddenly abuzz. Chess was suddenly, from the back pages, put on the front pages, not just in America, not just in Britain but all around the world. A reporter went around the bars of New York during the match against Boris Spassky and went to 21 bars, and saw that 18 of them had their televisions tuned not to the Mets baseball game but to the chess game against Boris Spassky.
INSKEEP: Mm-hmm. David Edmonds is co-author of the book, "Bobby Fischer Goes to War." Bobby Fischer died yesterday in Iceland at the age of 64.
Mr. Edmonds, thanks very much.
Mr. EDMONDS: Thanks very much indeed.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
Twenty-five years later, a boomerang came back. Those flying blades are used by Australia's aborigines to hunt animals. They're supposed to return to a skilled thrower. And back in 1983 one disappeared from a museum in Australia's northern state of Queensland. Now an American has returned it. The man identified only as Peter included a check. He also sent a note saying he stole the artifact when he was, quote, "younger and dumber."
It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
Researchers have finally hit on the essential truth, previously known to horror film makers: clowns are not necessarily funny. Britain's University of Sheffield wanted to find a way to improve the children's wards of hospitals. They conducted a survey of 250 kids and every single young patient disapproved of using clowns to cheer them up. The big painted smile didn't persuade them, and even some of the older kids found them scary.
It's MORNING EDITION.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Poetry is made for the ear, and hearing it read out loud can made listeners smile. Think (unintelligible) your laugh uproariously. Calef Brown's latest book of poems for children is "Flamingos on the Roof."
And Daniel Pinkwater, our ambassador to the world of children's literature, has brought this charming book to our attention.
Daniel, I can hear them now, smiling at us from his home in the Hudson River Valley.
DANIEL PINKWATER: I am smiling broadly because I have this book in front of me, Scott. I donated 1,900 picture books that were sent to me for review in the year 2007. Half of them did wasted trees. Some of the worse ones were poetry. But Calef Brown is reliably - well, he's weird but he's good.
SIMON: His drawings just invite the eye. I mean, you could linger over them for half an hour.
PINKWATER: He's a great artist. He does wonderful drawings. He never fails me.
SIMON: Yeah. Should we - let's read a little from this book.
PINKWATER: I see no reason not to just get in it, so I just grab one and…
SIMON: Sure.
PINKWATER: …read it at random.
SIMON: Yeah. Please.
PINKWATER: Here's one called "Combo Tango."
(Reading) Dance lesson number one: the combination tango. Listen to the lingo. This is how the steps go. Boogie to the banjo. Bop to the bango. Freeze like an igloo. Stomp like a buffalo. Drop like a yoyo. Swing like a golf pro. Flip like a hairdo. Tumble like a domino. Swivel on your kneecap. Wobble like a mud flap. Take a little catnap. Do it all again.
SIMON: It's just terrific and…
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: …an illustration of a dancing (unintelligible)…
PINKWATER: Number an pictures. There are 12 illustrations showing you how to do the combo tango.
SIMON: Let me read "Angus."
PINKWATER: Read "Angus."
SIMON: (Reading) A dog, wearing an orange-plaid suit. Angus dressed as best he could, but all his clothes were gray. Either that or all olive drab the colors of the day. So Angus sewed the snazzy suit with a better biter claw, not half bad complete people at. He never takes it off.
PINKWATER: Here we have a sort of idealic(ph) California scene.
(Reading) A freak(ph) sitting on a bench, a dog looking at the tennis ball for no particular reason, truck in the distance, palm tree. "Ten-Cent Haiku."
SIMON: Ah. I love this one. Yes. Go head, please.
PINKWATER: (Reading) I sit down to write a Haiku. It seemed like the right thing to do. I wouldn't need very much time. No need to bother with making it rhyme. I wished in my pocket and pulled out a dime. This is my 10-cent Haiku. Shinny silver friend, I will never let you go. Look, an ice cream truck.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: And that's what poetry can do - cannot do.
PINKWATER: It can do it when it's done right.
SIMON: Hold on. Let me turn back the next one that I should read. Hold on for just a moment. Oh. Let me try "Biscuits in the Wind." Okay?
PINKWATER: Yes.
SIMON: Firstly, there's somebody looking like the illustration all in a series of blues, as if someone looking a little Elvis-like, right? Maybe a young Elvis descendent or maybe somebody who could be with the "Tumbling Tumbleweeds."
PINKWATER: Or Elvis' young brother whom we never heard of.
SIMON: Exactly. So this is "Biscuits in the Wind."
(Reading) The latest song from a long ago is "Biscuits in the Wind." First made famous yesterday by Andy Mandolin. My oh my, the years go by. I wonder where they've been. Gone astray, or so they say, like biscuits in the wind.
I can't explain why that's so touching.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: But it is.
PINKWATER: It is. It's - how do I say this? It's so at free. He manages to do what some people say poetry should do. It has a logic. It isn't translatable. If you could explain it, it wouldn't be a poem.
SIMON: Yeah.
PINKWATER: Here's one: "A New Utensil."
(Reading) I eat my beans with lots of lard. The kind without the pork. But here's the rub, this tasty grub, just slides right off my fork. So I found a little ladle and a handle for my hatchet, several feet of wire will require to attach it for eating slippery lima beans nothing else can imagine.
(Soundbite of laughter)
PINKWATER: The other thing of poetry is, I am told, is just the sheer pleasure in words.
SIMON: Yeah.
PINKWATER: And what he does is she sheer pleasure in words facing page, sheer pleasure in color and image and just as, you know, it's - gosh, I'm having fun with this book.
SIMON: Let me try "Bossy Casey," okay?
PINKWATER: Do so.
SIMON: Do we need to talk about the sheer pleasure, the way the words kind of (unintelligible) around.
(Reading) Bossy Casey gives advice, completely free and worth the price. She reads a list to be precise at things you shouldn't do. These are some a few. Never climb a rubber ladder, never punch a kettle. Never juice a caterpillar. Never kiss a metal. Never eat the turkey free but always order fries. Casey maybe bossy but her words are very wise.
Absolutely read about climbing that rubber ladder but…
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: Or kissing a needle…
PINKWATER: We've all tried that. "Rey's House(ph)."
(Reading) Rey built a house on his nose just for a lark, I supposed. The lark is content there and even pays rents there and shovels the stoop when it snows.
SIMON: Can I try "Worms?"
PINKWATER: Please do.
SIMON: Hold on.
PINKWATER: I was hoping one of us would.
SIMON: (Reading) The worm in the apple likes mangoes. The worm in the mango likes jams. The worm in the beet likes anything sweet, especially jellies and jams. The worm in the onion likes cabbage. The worm in the cabbage like cheese. The worm in the pear likes a day at the fair. The worm in the turnip agrees.
Do you learn about the rhythm and the sheer delight in words, with his poems.
PINKWATER: (Unintelligible) its poetry, Scott. I'm going to read you "Tiny Baby Sphinx."
SIMON: Oh, I love that one. Yeah.
PINKWATER: Which has got - actually, a sort of a beautiful illustration of this little cute Sphinx speaking around the backyard fence.
(Reading) Tiny Baby Sphinx, she looks at me and blinks. I offer bits of cat food, the kind that really stinks. I wonder what she thinks about at nighttime when she sleeps about, inviting other sphinxes out together in the moonlight.
SIMON: So you know this Calef Brown?
PINKWATER: Oh, we have never met.
SIMON: Yeah.
PINKWATER: But sooner or later we have to. He requested me - not you, but me - to do the reading of the audio of his poems.
SIMON: Okay. But - so you've never actually met him?
PINKWATER: We have never met. I understand he is a blue elephant.
(Soundbite of laughter)
PINKWATER: (Unintelligible).
SIMON: Would say, Daniel, that he is the most successful blue elephant in children's literature?
PINKWATER: After me.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: Daniel, thanks so much.
PINKWATER: Scott, such fun.
SIMON: The book Daniel brings us this week is "Flamingos on the Roof" by Calef Brown, the blue elephant.
Daniel is the author of many fine books for children and for adults and there's a new Pinkwater podcast for the weekly program of stories and music and a whole books available for your downloading all for free and worth every penny, I'm sure. You can find a link to it at npr.org/books. By the way, come to our Web site, you can download our podcast too.
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Coming up, "Flamingos on the Roof."
But first, here's a bright idea. Take a busy main street, strip it of road signs, curbs, sidewalks and stoplights, then mix up the cars and trucks with pedestrians and bicyclists. Now, sit back and wait for the accident rate to drop. Sound crazy? That's the plan they're working on in Bohmte, a small town in Germany.
Kyle James went slowly and carefully into Bohmte to take a look.
(Soundbite of vehicles moving)
KYLE JAMES: Uwe Muther knows all about dealing with heavy traffic. He stocks vending machines and spends a lot of time in his delivery van.
(Soundbite of a car engine revving up)
JAMES: On the road, he's used to fighting for space among the 12,000 cars and big trucks that once rumbled along the narrow main street in the little town of Bohmte on an average day.
Mr. UWE MUTHER: (Through translator) I was really bad before, especially because all the trucks would come right through the center of town. Sometimes, if you wandered across the street, you had to stand there and wait for five or 10 minutes. Something had to be done.
JAMES: And something was done. Along one stretch of the town's main thoroughfare, the curbs have been removed and the asphalt and sidewalks replaced by one continuous red pavement. There's hardly a street sign in sight. As Muther's van approaches this section, he slows down.
Mr. MUTHER: (Through translator) The kind of pavement here and the lack of street signs means everybody has to be considerate of everybody else. It's about cooperation on the streets. But I think it make sense.
JAMES: It seems counterintuitive, though, giving drivers less information by taking away street signs, stoplights and lane markings to make them drive more safely. It's supposed to help reclaim the streets for pedestrians and bicyclists. And advocates of his traffic management philosophy called Shared Space say it works.
Ben Hamilton-Baillie is a leading shared space proponent based in Bristol, England.
Mr. BEN HAMILTON-BAILLIE (Designer, Shared Space): If you're faced with a traffic signal, you don't have to think anymore. Whether you go or not depends on whether the light is red or green. Of course, if in the absence of such things, we are perfectly capable of reading and understanding the situation, so that when grandma is in the road in front of you, you don't run her over.
JAMES: He compares the shared space concept to an ice-skating rink - it might look chaotic, but actually people usually navigate the shared area pretty well. In a traffic context, it means cars, bicyclists and pedestrians are in much closer proximity than they usually are. But common sense and courtesy, as well as drivers feeling more a part of the space they're moving through, are supposed to cut down on accidents.
Back in Bohmte, a team of construction workers is busy turning a road that runs along the side of Brigitte Asshorn's hotel and restaurant into more shared space. The street in front of her business has already been redone.
Ms. BRIGITTE ASSHORN (Hotel Owner, Bohmte, Germany): (Through translator) Since this part was finished, I've had drivers actually stop, smile at me and signal for me to cross the street without a marked pedestrian crossing or a light. I think it's caused a change in people's awareness.
JAMES: These shared streets are not meant to replace every road, but reworking downtown thoroughfares has already succeeded in the Dutch town of Drachten. That shared space municipality got rid of almost all its stoplights a few years year ago, most street signs are gone, and big intersections have traffic circles. Since the program started, city officials say accidents have fallen by 50 percent.
But in Bohmte, some worry the roads will become more dangerous. Others, like Nadia Keer, worry about the cost.
Ms. NADIA KEER (Resident, Bohmte, Germany): (Through translator) I think it's a waste of money. This town needs a lot of things like programs for young people and they're spending all these money just to repave some streets. I think this little backwater just wants to put itself on the map.
JAMES: Policeman Peter Hilbricht says the investment is worth it. Still, he says, in car-loving, rule-loving Germany, sharing the lane with those on two legs or two wheels will take drivers some getting used to.
Mr. PETER HILBRICHT (Policeman, Bohmte, Germany): (Speaking in foreign language)
JAMES: In Germany, everything is regulated - from the food we eat to how I have to tear my toilet paper, he says. Suddenly, we have a little town losing all of its traffic signs. To really get that into people's heads, he adds, it's going to take awhile.
(Soundbite of vehicle)
JAMES: Bohmte officials hope it never catches on with some. The town's mayor says as traffic slows and drivers have to be more careful, he hopes big trucks bypass his main street altogether.
For NPR News, I'm Kyle James.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Yesterday, at the end of another week of discouraging economic news, President Bush announced he is working on a plan to stimulate the economy and he hopes to avoid a recession.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: By passing an effective growth package quickly, we can provide a shot in the arm to keep a fundamentally strong economy healthy. And it will help keep economic sectors that are going through adjustments, such as the housing market, from adversely affecting other parts of our economy.
SIMON: President Bush said a stimulus package would need to be large, around $150 billion, and provide broad-based tax relief. Most observers expect that relief to take the form of tax rebate checks that would put money in the hands of consumers willing to spend. It's not clear yet just how much the checks will be for even who will be getting them, but we wanted to understand how all this would actually work.
So, we asked NPR's Adam Davidson to look into what would happen if everyone got a check for, say, $500. Adam joins us from New York.
Adam, what did you find out?
ADAM DAVIDSON: Well, I asked an economist to meet me on a street corner in New York, and I have some tape from that.
I'm sitting at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in Lower Manhattan. I'm in front of J&R Computer World, and I would imagine this is where many New Yorkers would come if they suddenly found themselves with $500 extra to spend. I see a bunch of digital cameras. There's laptops here; iPods. And I'm here with John Leahy(ph).
Professor JOHN LEAHY (Economics, New York University): Leahy.
DAVIDSON: Leahy.
(Soundbite of laughter)
DAVIDSON: An economist with New York University.
Prof. LEAHY: Yes.
DAVIDSON: And you're going to explain to me what happens when someone suddenly spends $500 here?
Prof. LEAHY: If we gave somebody $500, and this person was $500 short of making a major purchase, say, at J&R, so they go to J&R and they buy a camera. J&R earns money. J&R pays its employees. Then, the employee may take the added income, come to mini-central Italian shoe company across the street here on Nassau Street and buy a new pair of shoes. The shoe salesman now is feeling a little richer. They may go to this travel shop here…
DAVIDSON: And he…
Prof. LEAHY: …may go to the travel shop, take a trip, maybe to Las Vegas or Miami. People in Miami are now feeling better because there are people at their restaurants and in their hotels. Five hundred dollars probably itself will not do all of this because it's only $500, but 50 billion would be a pretty significant kick to the economy.
DAVIDSON: You're making it sound like a really great idea, this fiscal stimulus.
Prof. LEAHY: There are costs. I mean, the cost is - first of all, we do have to pay things back. We shouldn't think of this as a free lunch. The second cost -and most economists are kind of leery - that once the federal government or any government opens up the floodgates of spending that they will find it very difficult to rein in their desires.
It's really fun to spend money, especially as a politician, especially as politicians coming into an election year who want to get reelected, who want to be seen as doing things for their constituents. And there's always the worry that the government will take the license to spend and take it to the limit.
DAVIDSON: What happens if I get that 500 bucks and I don't go to J&R? I don't spend it. I put it in my account over there at Citibank.
Prof. LEAHY: Suppose the government borrowed the money to give you the $500. Suppose they borrowed it from Citibank. And suppose you put the money into Citibank. Then, basically you've given the government $500 so that the government can give you $500. So in that case, nothing would happen.
SIMON: That was NYU economist John Leahy, talking to NPR's Adam Davidson in a street corner in Lower Manhattan.
Adam, Mr. Leahy laid out the cost and benefits. I'm still not clear if he thinks it's a good idea or not. Clearly, he thinks just giving you the 500 to put into Citibank isn't a good idea.
DAVIDSON: And that's part of the problem. When you give everyone in America or some subset of Americans money, we don't know what they're going to do with it. For this to work as a stimulus, we need them to spend it. We don't care what they spend it on. They can buy an iPod. They could buy anything as long as they are taking that money, giving it to someone else who's then going to take that money and give it to someone else. If they put it in a savings account, there is no stimulus.
Also, we need it to be the right amount to not cause too much spending or so little that it doesn't affect it. There are all these incredibly technical requirements. And Leahy, he's of the belief that it's theoretical possible to do it right. Other economists say it's not even theoretically possible to really have an effective stimulus.
SIMON: How do you really get that $500?
DAVIDSON: This is where the details are still yet to be worked out, but you may, one day, go to your mailbox and there's a check for 500 or 800 bucks. And Democrats and Republicans both want to get that money out to people, but one of the big questions is which mailbox does that check go to. You know, Democrats want it to go to a poor group of people, even people who don't pay taxes at all. Republicans are not crazy about that idea, and want to get it in more mailboxes among the wealthier folks as well as the middle class.
SIMON: NPR's Adam Davidson in New York. Thanks very much.
DAVIDSON: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
And we're joined now by Representative Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts, who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
Good morning, Mr. Frank.
Representative BARNEY FRANK (Democrat, Massachusetts; Chairman, House Financial Services Committee): Good morning.
SIMON: And you're going to give the Democratic address today that responds to President Bush's talk. Where do you agree with the president in a stimulus package and where do you depart from him?
Rep. FRANK: Well, I'll be glad to tell you and also, well, I disagree with the piece you just have, which I think, frankly, trivializes a very serious issue in ways that don't correspond to reality. We agree that a good chunk of this should be - and first of all, I (unintelligible) up to say this is a case, frankly, the president agreeing with us. On December 9th, and Nancy Pelosi convened a group of economists and businesspeople - Larry Summers, Felix Rohatyn, some business leaders - and they told us back then you better get ready to have a stimulus package because the economy is getting weak.
And so the president's initial response to all these was to say everything is going well. He's now seen some bad figures that we all have. And we have - when he made the announcement, we've been talking with people in the administration, the secretary of treasury and others, and we're ready to work this out. We agree that about $130 billion ought to be made and be available. Interestingly, that's up when Larry Summers and others were recommending this stuff, they were talking about over less than a hundred. Things have deteriorated over this and there's an increase in the amount that people are now talking about.
Secondly, we agree that a lot of it ought to be tax relief, one-time tax relief, but it ain't mostly of people who're going to spend it. You know, this notion that people are going to be, down in the Lower Manhattan, buying iPods and Italian shoes, even though that's not who's going to be doing most of it. I said, wait, that's so - they're just trivializing it with no basis.
We're talking about a lot of people are hurting in this economy and these are people who need things - clothes of their kids and other very important things that we hope to get them the money. But we do disagree with the president to some extent about who gets it. And frankly, the more economically stressed the people who get the money are, the more likely they are to spend it. So it has the double effect of being both socially relevant and also better stimulus.
But in addition, we want to do some spending as well. And here it's Professor Leahy, who's frankly off the wall, there's no danger that this is going to get out of control. This is a very disciplined agreement. There's going to be a cap of about $130 billion. Much of it will be tax relief, but some of it will be, for example, increased unemployment compensation. Unemployment is going up. There are people who are hurting, who are out of jobs. Food inflation - it's been the problem, and so there'll be some money, we hope, in food stamps.
And finally, we're looking for some way to go to some of the state and local governments who are hurting because they're losing tax revenues. Some of them are into the position, and more of them will be of laying people off and cutting back - and we'd like to avert that.
SIMON: Mr. Frank, I'd like to leave something for your - for the speech you're going to leave later this morning, so can I follow up with a question?
Rep. FRANK: Sure.
SIMON: Reading through the reports of the stimulus package this morning, I'm reading a lot of economists - I'll quote one, Bruce Bartlett, who is assistant treasury secretary in the administration of George H.W. Bush, who says in The Wall Street Journal, "look, the history of this kind of stimulus packages, if you go back to the 1970s, is that you don't need a one-time-only rebate, you need a permanent change in the tax code. And that's what gives consumers the confidence to spend it on something substantial." How do you feel about that?
Rep. FRANK: That he's a very conservative guy writing in The Wall Street Journal editorial pages, a very conservative place, who - with whom we disagree. There was a great, by the way, consensus of economists if that's the measure that says stimulus makes sense. You know, Ben Bernanke was head of the finance, the economics department at Princeton. He's now the chairman of the Council - he was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for Bush. He's the head of the Federal Reserve. Independently, he's longing(ph) for this stimulus package.
So the answer is no, we don't think that the kind of tax cuts that George Bush gave us a few years ago is what's needed. These are people who really don't think government has much of a role to play. A stimulus done well and quickly helps out. And, again, it's a question of who you are talking about. The Bush tax cuts went largely to wealthier people, and maybe they are the ones who are going to buy those iPods and go to Las Vegas. But we have a lot of people in this economy who have not done very well even in periods of growth, and these are people who will spend it in a fairly short order…
SIMON: And…
Rep. FRANK: And as I said - you also talk about unemployment compensation, you're talking about food stamps. You're talking about getting to people who are going to have the option of either putting it in a savings bank or buying Italian shoes.
SIMON: In a minute we have left, Mr. Frank, what about some kind of - are the rebates or stimulus or tax relief for small businesses - they might apply to upgrade equipment and hire an extra…
Rep. FRANK: Well, there's an argument. The point about the business is everybody - we are going to do this. It has to be money that's spent very quickly. We need to pass this in about a month and have it be money that's going to be available and not much after that. The president is asking for some kind of accelerated depreciation for businesses. And - well, that wouldn't be on the top of our list. If that could be worked out as something - and the president insists on this part of the deal - it could happen. In other words, you know, we both agree on individual tax relief. We want to add some additional unemployment compensation, money for food stamps and other money for (unintelligible) that we'll spend in a hurry. The president is going to probably want to add to that, or we know he wants to add to that business tax relief. And that's the elements of that package, of a 130 billion.
SIMON: Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, thanks very much for being with us this morning, Mr. Frank.
Rep. FRANK: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Coming up, we'll preview the weekend's elections in Cuba. But first, elections a little closer to home. There's voting even today, with Republicans only casting primary votes in South Carolina; both parties holding caucuses in Nevada.
NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving joins us.
Ron, thanks for being with us.
RON ELVING: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: And how did these two, with respect, relatively small states get such a prominent spot in the primary calendar?
ELVING: Quite different paths. Nevada was appointed to the task by the Democratic National Committee, which wanted a Western state to move up to the top of the calendar and also one of the states with a substantial Hispanic population - about a quarter of the Nevada population is Latino. On the South Carolina side, totally a different story. The state volunteered itself…
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
ELVING: …30 years ago to become an important trigger primary for the Southern primaries that came to be known as Super Tuesday and, of course, are now spread all over the country. What we call Super Tuesday today is going to include about half of the states in the country on February 5th. But South Carolina got started as the trigger primary on the Saturday before the Tuesday that was Super Tuesday, and it laid down a marker, and the rest of the Southern states tended to follow it quite reliably.
To the degree that South Carolina has become the kingmaker in the Republican Party and the winner of the South Carolina primary in every contested quadrennium since 1980 has become the Republican nominee for president without exception - hasn't always been elected president, but has always won the nomination.
SIMON: Let's follow up with Nevada first. These are caucuses - how are they going to work? A lot like Iowa?
ELVING: Very much like Iowa. On the Republican side, you show up, you meet your neighbors, you hear a pitch for each of the candidates, you can nominate your neighbors if you want, nominate your own favorites. Then you have a secret ballot preference vote. No biggie.
On the Democratic side, like in Iowa, it's a much more social event where there's a lot more horse swapping and people meeting in groups and people having an open declaration of their preference for a candidate and standing up in front of their friends and co-workers and neighbors to declare themselves for the candidate they prefer.
SIMON: And this has been controversial, of course, because a very prominent union has made a public endorsement in that race. And if anybody wants to depart from their union, they're going to have to stand up and do it in public.
ELVING: Yes, with all of their co-workers and their union leaders, right there's doubtless, looking unhappy. I think there'll be a great deal of that, though. I think there are quite a few people who are going to cross the line from the culinary workers. They're not going to want to just follow what they were told by the union. A very large proportion of that union, about 40 percent, is Latino, and those people do not necessarily agree with the choice that the union made.
SIMON: Is it possible that participation will be held down because of the public declaration aspect?
ELVING: Caucuses always attracts more audience. Caucuses are about intensity of feeling and real dedication to a particular candidate or to a process. Primaries are much easier to vote in, so you'll get many more people participating. But I'll tell you, there will be a lot more than the 10,000 people who showed up for the Democratic caucuses in Nevada in 2004, got a much hotter contest, got national attention and the entire country really looking to see what Nevada was going to do.
SIMON: You referred to South Carolina as a kingmaker in Republican circles -quite a statement. Why is that?
ELVING: In this particular instance, we still have five or six viable candidates on the Republican side, even after Iowa and New Hampshire. And that field is probably going to get smaller today. At least one, maybe two candidates, is going to see his prospects foreclosed. And he may not drop out right away, but he's going to fade from view. And we're also going to see at the other end of the spectrum one or two people at the top who are going to go on to be the most serious candidates. I would say that we will see someone emerge from South Carolina tonight, who will be one of the two that go to the end of the Republican nominating contest.
SIMON: Ron Elving, thanks very much.
ELVING: My pleasure, Scott.
Tammy Soong joins us now from Reno.
Ms. Soong, I understand you're what they call a temporary chair of a Democratic caucus. You're running the caucus in your precinct?
Ms. TAMMY SOONG (Temporary Chair, Democratic Caucus, Reno): That's correct, at least if I get elected to be in the position of the caucus chair. It's sort of a formality that has to be done at the beginning of the meeting.
SIMON: Where are you going to caucus?
Ms. SOONG: We're caucusing at Brown Elementary School, which is just about a mile from my house.
SIMON: So how do these things work? I understand people are supposed to report by 11 a.m.
Ms. SOONG: Hmm. Checking is from 11 to 11:30 and after that, at 11:30, the actual meeting begins. There are some formalities that we go through. Then after, that we kind of read some letters from our congresswoman and our senator.
SIMON: Wishing you Godspeed and…
Ms. SOONG: Exactly.
SIMON: Yeah. It's okay.
Ms. SOONG: And then at 12 o'clock, the doors are figuratively slammed shut and no one else can come in to the meeting. We take a head count of who has come to the caucus. After that, based on the attendees, we determine what's called the viability. It's based on the number of delegates that you're precinct is assigned.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Ms. SOONG: So it's anywhere from 15 percent to 25 percent. So, for instance, if 100 people showed up to my caucus location…
SIMON: Yeah.
Ms. SOONG: …25 people would have to be in each preference group in order to be a viable group.
SIMON: A preference group is a group of people who identify with a certain candidate.
Ms. SOONG: Exactly. What we do is for about 15 minutes, everybody talks, gets to talk about their candidates.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Ms. SOONG: And then we call for a vote and everyone goes into their corner. We count everyone up. And if you don't meet viability, in my example, 25 people, then you're considered a non-viable group. And then in that situation…
SIMON: Oh, disdain of it all, yeah.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. SOONG: It's painful. In that situation, what those people will need to do is find a viable group, so again another 15 minutes and everyone gets to come over and try to convince those people to come over to their group - this is why our healthcare plan is better, we're a better candidate, that sort of thing. So after that 15 minutes, once the groups realign, then they recount. We actually have these preference cards where you mark your candidate, so we just kind of have a paper record. And then after that we elect delegates from the preference groups and that's it.
SIMON: Going to serve food at the caucus?
Ms. SOONG: There is. We have a couple of different jobs that you do at the caucus. There's a temporary caucus chair, one to be an assistant caucus chair. Then, there's a secretary and then a hospitality person, who is kind of in charge of the food. And they're doing coffee and water and probably muffins or something like that just so everybody stays happy.
SIMON: Excited?
Ms. SOONG: I am very excited. I think this is such an incredible opportunity for Nevada. I don't know if it's ever going to happen again. Clearly, we are in an incredibly unique situation right now where the spotlight is on us. And I'm really hoping that my fellow Nevadans all step up to the plate and actually participate in this, and show the rest of the country that we care, and that we have an opinion, and that we are, you know, interested in doing this. It's been incredible to be part of this process because we had so many candidates come through our city. This never would have happened before. Yeah, it's been incredible.
SIMON: Tammy Soong, who'll soon be running a Democratic caucus in her precinct in Reno, Nevada - biggest little city in the world.
Good luck to you.
Ms. SOONG: Thank you very much.
SIMON: And we have a correction. Last Saturday, we reported that John Edwards was concentrating his campaign resources on South Carolina, essentially leaving Nevada a two-candidate race. That was wrong. Mr. Edwards, in fact, added more events in the state and stepped up his competition there.
Our story also said that Senators Obama and Clinton had spent the previous week in Nevada. That was wrong too. It should have said they were planning to spend the coming week in Nevada.
If you want to follow the results as they come in, NPR's interactive election map should have the latest. You can find it at npr.org.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Mao Zedong urged his followers to do many things. Mostly just to be quiet and listen to him. Certainly, he never said have a sense of humor.
And this week, a French automaker learned the hard way. Citroen pulled ads from several Spanish newspapers that showed Chairman Mao scowling over a new of their car. The text read: It's true, we are leaders, but at Citroen the revolution never stops. We are once more going to put in motion all the machinery of our technological ability in order to repeat in 2008 the successes obtained in previous years.
Despite that greatly forward ad rhetoric, Chinese officials were reportedly displeased. Chinese Daily Global Times called the ad wantonly distorted. Citroen lags well behind Volkswagen, GM, Ford and a whole host of Japanese car makers in selling cars in China.
The company apologized and issued a statement, saying: we repeat our good feelings toward the Chinese people and confirm that we respect the representatives and symbols of the country.
Cuba holds parliamentary elections this weekend. There's no need for exit polls or predictions - only the communist party is allowed to compete. The elections, however, are part of a process that should reveal whether Fidel Castro will continue as Cuba's president, and U.S. government officials acknowledge they have almost no idea about his plans.
NPR's Tom Gjelten reports.
TOM GJELTEN: Cuban parliamentary elections aren't remotely comparable to those in Western democracies. There is a single slate - voters either approve a candidate or not. The nominees have been selected by municipal assemblies and by women's groups, worker groups and other communist-led organizations.
Cuba's top diplomat in the United States, Jorge Bolanos, says the Cuban model has advantages over the U.S. political system.
Mr. JORGE ALBERTO BOLANOS SUAREZ (Diplomat to the United States): (Speaking in foreign language).
GJELTEN: It's a more direct democracy, Bolanos says. It's a democracy in which all segments of society are represented and not just those with the money to campaign.
Fidel Castro, last week, urged Cubans to mark a single box for the entire slate of candidates rather than approving them one by one. But this essentially turns the elections into a referendum, where all the voters do is endorse the Cuban system. Jorge Bolanos says the unified vote demonstrates consensus.
Mr. BOLANOS: (Speaking in foreign language)
GJELTEN: The elections, Bolano says, serve as a common denominator for Cubans so they can show they're united against external campaigns meant to divide them.
Dissidents in Cuba, on the other hand, say such elections show only a false unanimity.
Within 45 days, the national assembly has to choose its council of state, including a president from among its members. Some Cuba specialists therefore look at elections like these, not for an indication of what the Cuban people think, but for clues into what might be happening inside the Cuban regime.
When Fidel Castro said recently that he does not feel well enough to campaign for his own parliamentary seat, for example, some Cuba watchers speculated it could mean he's going to give up his presidency. He's not been seen in public since he fell ill in July of last year.
With the U.S. government figuring out Fidel Castro involves a lot of guessing. Brian Latell, for many years a Cuba specialist at the CIA, says it's a hard nut to crack for U.S. analysts.
Mr. BRIAN LATELL (Former CIA Analyst): It's a close monolithic system that protects itself from outside observers. I mean, to be a Cuba expert is almost to be like a Kremlinologist was back in the days of the Soviet Union. You know, you have to read between the lines. You have to try to find evidence in some often very remote places.
GJELTEN: The lack of official U.S. intelligence about political developments inside Cuba has been underscored since Castro took ill. Over a year ago, the then-director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, said his intelligence officers were telling him that Castro would be dead within months.
In part, the failure of the U.S. government to have better intelligence about Cuba indicates how good the Castro regime has been at shielding itself. Several U.S. intelligence officials have said that almost every time the United States has recruited a Cuban spy, he or she turns out to have been a double agent.
The Cubans, on the other hand, have been able to penetrate the U.S. government. The best example being Ana Belen Montes, the top Cuba analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, who pled guilty in 2002 to being a Cuban agent.
Brian Latell, author of the book "After Fidel," says the Cuban Intelligence Service, in his judgment, is among the five or six best in the world.
Mr. LATELL: This is not an intelligence service with a global capability. But given there are much more restricted missions and objectives, they are one of the best in the world, especially in terms of their intelligence tradecraft.
GJELTEN: A country's strengths usually reflect its priorities. For nearly 50 years, the government of Fidel Castro has worked above all to stay in power. That means organizing elections it can't lose, and that means having an intelligence service that keeps its secrets secret.
Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.
(Soundbite of song, "Oops! ...I Did It Again")
Ms. BRITNEY SPEARS (Singer): (Singing) Oh, baby, baby. Oops, I did it again. I played with your heart, got lost in the game.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Britney Spears is many things to many people - mostly over-publicized even among those who can't seem to get enough news about her. But she might also be an economic engine in an ailing economy.
We're joined now by Portfolio magazine's Duff McDonald, who has written a recent article about what he calls the Britney industrial complex. He joins us from New York.
Thanks for being with us, Mr. McDonald.
Mr. DUFF McDONALD (Writer, Portfolio): Thanks for having me.
SIMON: What gave you the idea that this was an economic resource worth exploring?
Mr. McDONALD: It's hard to ignore Britney Spears. And a conversation happened in our office one day. Someone used the terminology that is becoming increasingly popular, which is train wreck. And someone else said, but, yeah, but think of the money that still must be being made off of her.
SIMON: Well, let's follow on that. How much and who's making it?
Mr. McDONALD: Our estimate, which we call a back-of-the-napkin calculation because it's so rooted in science, was 110 to 120 million a year. The Britney economy is - it'll be equivalent of, you know, 50- to 75,000-people strong company.
She is a gold mine for paparazzi. One of the agencies in Los Angeles estimated to - she alone accounts for 30 percent of their revenues.
SIMON: Kevin Federline, Britney Spear's ex-husband - now, do you count him as part of the Britney industrial complex, or is he subsidiary because (unintelligible)?
Mr. McDONALD: He isn't one of the three main spokes of the Britney industrial complex, which are the packagers, the paparazzi and the media. We thought of him more of in the sycophant portion of the industrial complex. He is pouring in about a million a year as a result of a bit sort of coming into the Britney orbit.
The media, we put at 75 million a year.
SIMON: There must be concern about a Britney recession.
Mr. McDONALD: The Britneyconomy is big enough to tolerate changes in its complexion. We talked to the people at Yahoo Search, and they said that for six of the past seven years, she has been the number one searched term on Yahoo, falling into second place, only once in 2004 when Paris Hilton briefly took the crown. But if you look at that, that's seven years. That's an economic cycle. So Britney - the Britney economy may be impervious to the overall economy.
SIMON: Duff McDonald at Portfolio magazine. You can find a link to his piece, "The Economy of Britney," on our Web site, npr.org.
Thanks so much.
Mr. McDONALD: Thanks for having me.
(Soundbite of song, "Piece of Me")
Ms. SPEARS: (Singing) I'm Mrs. "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous."
Unidentified Man: (Singing) You want a piece of me.
Ms. SPEARS: (Singing) I'm Mrs. "Oh my God that Britney's Shameless."
Unidentified Woman: (Singing) You want a piece of me.
Ms. SPEARS: (Singing) I'm Mrs. "Extra. Extra. This just in."
SIMON: This is NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon, and it's time for sports.
Stock up on taco chips, dog food and baby wipes today. Baby wipes, dog food for everybody, because tomorrow will be devoted to football - both the AFC and NFC championship games.
San Diego Chargers, with most of their major stars out or limping, take on Tom Brady and the undefeated New England Patriots. Then, the New York Giants led by the other Manning will face the Green Bay Packers at home in Green Bay, where the cold can be as legendary as their quarterback Brett Favre.
Forecast for tomorrow: high of four degrees at game time.
Joined now by Howard Bryant. Good morning, Howard.
Mr. HOWARD BRYANT (Senior Writer, ESPN): Scott, good morning.
SIMON: Look. The San Diego Chargers have done wonderful things in the play-offs. But are they playing with half a deck when they go up against what might be the best team of all-time, the New England Patriots?
Mr. BRYANT: Well, I don't think it would make much of a difference if they're playing with a full deck, two decks, three decks, half a deck. I think this game is - I think the Patriots is too close to it. They're - they've had a mission all season long. They don't like the Chargers anyway. These two teams, as we like to say in cliche world, they don't like each other. So I really don't see it happening for the Chargers.
SIMON: Hmm. It must be sad, though, that they've surprised a lot of people so far.
Mr. BRYANT: Well, they surprised people and then…
SIMON: Including last week, yeah.
Mr. BRYANT: Well, I am not one of those people. Sure, they weren't supposed to win that game against the Colts last week. And yes, they did destroy my dream matchup because I did want to see the Patriots and the Colts because I'm a rivalry guy. I like to see those two teams go at it.
On the other hand, let's not go overboard. The San Diego Chargers were 14-and-2 last year. And the coach, Norv Turner, who doesn't have a great reputation, he inherited what I'd like to call a Lamborghini. That is a great football team. They have a good, young quarterback in Philip Rivers. They have a great, great running back, LaDainian Tomlinson, and a great tight end and a great defense.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Mr. BRYANT: And so, it's not as if this is a little engine that could. I mean, it wasn't a 1-in-15 team. He's got a great team. They're supposed to be here. They're just not good enough to beat the Patriots.
SIMON: And, of course, let's ask about Giants against Green Bay. The emotional weight of, I must say, millions of people including me pulling for Brett Favre…
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: …to make it back to the Super Bowl.
Mr. BRYANT: Though we do have our storylines, don't we? I think that the great story there is that it's the weather because there is just something about those games. There are certain places in sports where it's like Denver and Mile High Stadium back in the old days with the Boston Garden with the Celtics and the form with the Lakers in where the actual buildings, the locale, gets into the head of the opponent.
SIMON: Yeah.
Mr. BRYANT: And when the weather starts to snowball and when the momentum starts to go on the other teams, in the home team's direction, a lot of teams go in there, thinking that they have a plan and then they just get blown out. And I have feeling that tomorrow is you start to see those big heavy flakes. The New York Giants might say, well, let's get them next year.
SIMON: Well, now, of course, that would be gracious to the New York Giants and Eli Manning. It's not like they're, you know, the Dallas Cowboys or from Tampa, St. Pete coming up there to play. They know how to play in cold weather.
Mr. BRYANT: Oh, they know how to play in cold weather. But there's a mystique about Lambeau Field. And I believe in it because I've watched a lot of teams go up there, and they pretty much all come out with the same result. I mean, Brett Favre in temperatures under 20 degrees, there's 43-and-5 in his career, there's something about it that speaks to him.
On the other hand, though, the New York Giants can - they can win that game. That game, I have no feel for. It wouldn't surprise me if it was a blowout. It wouldn't surprise me if the Giants came back and won a close one.
SIMON: Hmm. So are you willing to say, Mr. Bryant, that it looks now like it's going to be a Green Bay-New England match up in the Super Bowl?
Mr. BRYANT: Patch-packed revenge for 1997, I say, rematch of the '97 Super Bowl.
SIMON: Well, I'm going to watch that. Okay, thanks very much, Howard.
Mr. BRYANT: Okay. Well, see you later.
SIMON: Howard Bryant, senior writer for ESPN.com, ESPN the magazine and ESPN the power bar. Thank you so much.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
The Sundance Film Festival is well underway. Not all about films, is it? A lot of the festival is festive - parties, finger food and gossip, gossip, gossip. A lot of it right now about the Writers Guild strike and whether the writers will reach the same agreement as the Directors Guild, or that the strike will be long, what shape the film industry will be when it's all over.
Daniel Holloway is film critic for the free urban newspaper Metro. He joins us from Park City.
Mr. Holloway, thanks for being with us.
Mr. HOLLOWAY: Thank you.
SIMON: It's early there, waking up after a lot of parties, so we are very grateful for your time.
Mr. HOLLOWAY: It's early and it's cold.
SIMON: Well, I think you've shed that heat in your hotel. It's, you know, it's - Park City is classy place. What was the big party talk last night?
Mr. HOLLOWAY: I'm assuming you're talking biz and not where Perez Hilton was.
SIMON: Yes, but answer it any way you like.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. HOLLOWAY: As far as business, I don't think there's any of it getting done really until about Tuesday. There's only been two deals so far. You hear more people muttering toward the Yangtze under their breath. And you try to figure out what that is. It's actually the first movie that got picked up here at Sundance. It's got picked up by Zeitgeist Films. It's a drama called "Up the Yangtze." The only other one to get picked up so far is a movie that HBO purchased called "The Black List." And that's coming - it's a film in which Elvis Mitchell, the former Times movie critic…
SIMON: Yeah.
Mr. HOLLOWAY: …interviews influential black Americans. So there's really - yesterday was the first full day of screenings. There's nothing - there's not going to be a run yet. If there is, that's not going to happen probably until early in the week.
SIMON: What about the talks about the Writers Guild strike? Do you have any handle now on whether the writers see the directors' agreement as a model or as a caution?
Mr. HOLLOWAY: Well, the Los Angeles Times is actually reporting that they're going to use it as a prompt to go back to the table with the producers. And, you know, you've got writers out there talking about this being - about this Directors Guild contract being the most impressive one for creative talent to come out to be negotiated by any of the guilds in decades.
So I think that's a very positive thing for people who don't want the multiplexes to dry up, you know, with films coming down the pipe. It's - and you know, a lot of the speculation about there being a run on movies this year was coming from the idea that, you know, studios were going to panic because of the writers' strike not being - not affording them the ability to put new movies into production, and that they're going to just start buying up movies to hold on to them for one movie to start running now. If this deal is really is the foundation for a new one with the Writers Guild, that's not going to happen.
SIMON: Have you seen any films so far actually this year?
Mr. HOLLOWAY: A couple. Today is going to be my big day as far as getting started in earnest. I saw the opening night film, "In Burges," with Colin Farrell, which, you know, have a lot of buzz around it and I think it's well-deserved. It's a hit-man movie. It's better as a movie about hit men being kind of quirky and funny than it is when they're actually chasing and shooting at each other than it's - you know, it's not of the Bond quality.
But - and the other one was a film by Amy Redford, who is the daughter of a guy who's very important around here, who's name is Bob. And her directorial debut, "The Guitar," starring Saffron Burrows, screened yesterday and to a very, very large, very packed house.
SIMON: And did you like that one?
Mr. HOLLOWAY: I think it's a first directorial feature effort. And I think I'm going to leave that one at that.
SIMON: Okay. Well, you're a gracious man and gracious to your host. Mr. Holloway, very nice talking to you.
Mr. HOLLOWAY: Nice to talking to you.
SIMON: Daniel Holloway, film critic for the urban free newspaper Metro, speaking with us from the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Edward Albee, of course, is one of America's best-known playwrights, and this March, he celebrates his 80th birthday. He's still creating new plays. His latest called "Me, Myself and I" premiered last night at the McArthur Theater in Princeton, New Jersey.
Edward Albee established his reputation with his very first play, "The Zoo Story," still considered one of the most performed plays in America. But this year, almost a half-century after its premiere, Edward Albee returned to the one act, and he's expanded it to two. That's upset some people in the theater.
Ms. Caitlin Shetterly reports.
CAITLIN SHETTERLY: Edward Albee was just 30 years old when "The Zoo Story" first hit the boards off Broadway. The play is set on and around a bench in Central Park where the character, Peter, is accosted by Jerry, who requires that he listen to his story about his landlady and her malevolent dog.
In a recent New York production, Dallas Roberts played Jerry.
(Soundbite of Broadway play, "The Zoo Story")
Mr. DALLAS ROBERTS (Actor): (As Jerry) The day I tried to killed the dog, I bought only one hamburger. And well, I thought it was a murderous portion of rat poison. When I bought that hamburger, I asked the man not to bother with the rolls; all I wanted was the meat. I expected some reaction from him, like, we don't sell hamburgers without rolls, or what do you want to do, eat it out of your hands.
But no, he smiled benignly, wrapped the hamburger in wax paper, and said a bite for your pussycat. I wanted to say no, not really. It's part of a plan to poison a dog I know, but you can't really say a dog I know without sounding funny. So I said, a little too loud I'm afraid and too formally, yes, a bite for my pussycat.
SHETTERLY: Jerry lives in a small room, in a grim, crowded tenement on the Upper West Side with a gay, black queen, a Puerto Rican family and a few other transients like himself. Albee says he lived in places a lot like that when he first left home for New York City.
Mr. EDWARD ALBEE (Playwright): I was adopted by a wealthy family at a house in Larchmont, New York, about 20 miles from New York. We didn't get along very well. So when I was 18 they threw me out and I left and moved to Greenwich Village, which was the longest journey that anybody could possibly take. It was 18 miles from Republican facetious Westchester County to Greenwich Village. And I lived here ever since, ever since I was 18 years old.
SHETTERLY: After "The Zoo Story" became a success, Albee was able to find nicer digs and he quit his day job delivering telegrams for Western Union. He settled into writing plays fulltime, but something about "The Zoo Story" nagged at him.
Mr. ALBEE: I hope "The Zoo Story" was okay. It works perfectly well as a play. It's a good play. But I always felt that I underwrote the character of Peter. They just see - he sits there and he's sort of backboard for Jerry's ideas. And I wanted to know more about Peter. I wanted the audience to know more about Peter - who he was, where he came from, why he reacted the way he did to Jerry.
SHETTERLY: So Albee set about the task of writing a first act, more than four decades after he pulled the last page of "The Zoo Story" out of his typewriter. He wrote the new opening in two weeks. And it takes audiences away from the park bench and into the apartment that Peter shares with his wife, Ann.
(Soundbite of Broadway play, "The Zoo Story)
Ms. JOHANNA DAY (Actress): (As Ann) When we come together in bed and I know we're going to - what's the term young people use - going to do it, when we come together in bed and I know we're going to make love, I know it's going to be two people who love each other, giving quiet, orderly, predictable, deeply pleasurable joy. And believe me, my darling, it's enough. It's more than enough most of the time, but where is the rage, the animal. We're animals. Why don't we behave like that? Like beasts. Is it that we love each other too safely, maybe, that we're secure? That we're too civilized? Don't we ever hate one another?
SHETTERLY: Actress Johanna Day played Ann in the recent New York production. She's thrilled that Albee wrote a part for a woman in what had been an iconic man's play.
Ms. DAY: I had read it in school, in acting school - American Academy of Dramatic Arts. But I was a girl and that was like 200 years ago, so it didn't mean as much to me as it did to the young men that I knew.
SHETTERLY: And why do you think?
Ms. DAY: Because it's men struggling, men desperate, trying to tell their story, trying to be understood, trying to have a connection. It's got violence in it. It's got humor in it, and then a lot of intelligence.
SHETTERLY: Not everyone in the theater community is pleased, however, in large part because Albee is now insisting that "The Zoo Story" can no longer be performed professionally on its own. It has to be performed with the new opening act, under the title, "Peter and Jerry."
Robert Orchard, the executive director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard, says he's never known of a situation quite like this.
Mr. ROBERT ORCHARD (Executive Director, American Repertory Theater, Harvard): The idea of an iconic play like "The Zoo Story," which everybody knows and which every theater student has performed, or at least been involved with, to have it all of sudden no longer available is kind of a shock to the system.
Edward Albee, of course, has every right to do that, but nevertheless, it's a loss and it's one that will limit choices. And from that perspective, it's regrettable. But on the other hand, the themes of the play are obviously now embraced by, you know, another piece that he's written. So I think you can still explore the same territory. But still, it's quite hard to imagine not having "The Zoo Story" around.
SHETTERLY: Orchard can no longer stage "The Zoo Story" at A.R.T., but he can present it with his students because colleges and amateur companies need no agreements from Albee.
New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood thinks the decision to restrict professional companies is a mistake.
Mr. CHARLES ISHERWOOD (Theater Critic, The New York Times): "The Zoo Story" was first produced in the U.S. on a bill with Samuel Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape." And I think to preclude the possibility of other, you know, (unintelligible) the petitions being made by enterprising producers or directors. And it's kind of sad. And "The Zoo Story" is such a seminal play in the American theater that to limit the way it's produced or in one context it's produced is - I can understand why people would be upset about that.
SHETTERLY: But playwright Edward Albee says it's ultimately his play to do with as he sees fit.
Mr. ALBEE: Some people thought he may have written it, but I own it because that was such moving experience to me when I was a younger person. How dare he do anything to it? Well, tough, since I made it better. That's fine.
For example, when I first sold Beckett's play, "Krapp's Last Tape," it was one of those moving experiences in my life. However, I just didn't come to the conclusion that I owned it. I knew that Beckett had written it, and I was along for the ride and wasn't I lucky at what he had done. And if he had wanted to rewrite it or add something to it, since I knew what a great playwright he was, I would have been perfectly happy to go along with him because he knows better.
SHETTERLY: Albee says that he never really got the chance to fully get it why "The Zoo Story" ends the way it does. He says he wanted to give audiences a better understanding not only of Peter, who was little more than a cipher in the original one-act, but also of themselves.
Mr. ALBEE: He's been so troubled by what Jerry is telling him, and learning so much about the other way that people live, people unlike him who have not made the decisions, the compromises, or had the opportunity to make the decisions and the compromises. That he feels that he must stand up for that, which he really doesn't believe. That's a sad thing. So many people lie so much in their lives. Lying to yourself, of course, is the really dangerous one. And I don't why because lying is so difficult. Telling the truth is really a lot more interesting.
SHETTERLY: With that in mind, Edward Albee says audiences are welcomed to go along with him for the ride, or not. The choice is theirs.
For NPR News, I'm Caitlin Shetterly.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
This week, the White House, the Federal Reserve chairman, many members of Congress all agreed in principle: the economy needs some kind of stimulus to fend off a recession. And senior U.S. military officials say it may be another decade before Iraq is able to defend its own borders.
NPR senior news analyst Dan Schorr joins us.
Hello, Dan.
DAN SCHORR: Hi, Scott.
SIMON: And let's begin with the economy.
SCHORR: Yeah.
SIMON: President Bush had asked Congress to move quickly to approve his economic stimulus plan, which he called a shot in the arm for the economy. It's made up mainly of tax rebates for consumers and temporary tax breaks for businesses. What's you're estimation for it?
SCHORR: Well, my estimation doesn't count. But Wall Street, on a Friday, indicated that it was not really convinced that anything was going to get better in this slide towards recession. And when the president offers a stimulus package, everybody says yes, but you got to do it very fast. And the question is how it comes out when it's negotiated with Congress.
Clearly, in the Congress, there'll be a greater tendency to favor the middle class and poorer people in giving these tax rebates. The administration typically wanted to give them across the board. And for speaking not any logically but purely economically, if you want money to have an effect, you're much better off giving it to poor people who go out and spend it right away than to rich people who will simply suck it away.
SIMON: In a situation like this, are people's perceptions about the economy, which after all usually begin and end with their own personal economy…
SCHORR: Right.
SIMON: …does that matter more than what the overall reality of the economic picture is?
SCHORR: I don't know if it matters more. It certainly matters as much. I mean, the way people perceive the economy and the way the economy is going will affect their behavior in many, many ways. And so, if you cannot convince them that the United States is not speaking of the right track, poll indicates that 70 percent of Americans believe the United States is on the wrong track, and that goes for the economy as well. So they have to be reassured.
SIMON: Which gets us into the election season. And, of course, polls now indicate this election that was supposed to be about Iraq and immigration, the number one concern in the mind of America's voters now…
SCHORR: Yeah. Right.
SCHORR: …is the economy.
SCHORR: That's right. Well, on the one hand, things are little bit better in Iraq in terms of the surge and how things are going there and a little bit worse in the economy. So it's quite natural as to say that we worried about it. And remember after the last election, it was predicted that Iraq would dominate the political campaign. But, yes, things are better then than was here. And, now, we are back where we tend to be in most election years. The pocket book is what counts.
SIMON: And does this get to be unchartered territory for the campaigns, although I imagine they plot up most everything. But here was an election that was supposed to be about certain issues and now they have to make a mid-course correction.
SCHORR: Well, yes, of course. And every candidate is now asked where he or she goes, about what would you do about the economy or come out with basically the same thing and we have the stimulus. I mean, there are not great many things you can say about how you stay out of recession, but they'll say them and life will go on.
SIMON: This week, the House Armed Services Committee heard testimony from Lieutenant General James Dubik. He heads the Multinational Security Transition…
SCHORR: Yes.
SIMON: …Command in Iraq. General Dubik quoted Iraqi officials as saying that Iraq may not be ready to take responsibility for its own internal security until - four years from now. It won't be able to defend its borders until 2018.
SCHORR: Yes.
SIMON: What are the implications of that statement?
SCHORR: Well, the implications are if the Iraqis say that's what's needed, that's one thing. It's another thing for American president to make a commitment that goes past his tenure in office. I'm not quite clear on what happens if President Bush decides all right, yes, we'll be there for the next eight years and 10 years, you can count on it. We'll have American bases there. And then leave it for the next president to have to enforce. Can the president tie the hands of the next one or two or three presidents?
SIMON: I was going to ask you, I mean, for example, there are still U.S. troops even in Bosnia…
SCHORR: Right.
SIMON: …which were committed during a previous administration.
SCHORR: And Korea, of course.
SIMON: Yeah. So there is certainly a precedent for that.
SCHORR: There is precedent for that, but in most previous cases, there've been acceptance by the Senate, and it's not clear that any of these will be submitted to the Senate for ratification.
SIMON: I want to ask you about Bobby Fischer, who died this week in Iceland. He was 64 years old, reportedly had been in poor health for, at least, the last few months of his life. This is a real figure from history, someone who was an important figure during the Cold War, someone who slipped into pathetic and sometimes really very wretched decline also.
SCHORR: Yes. We learned from this that a great chess player can also be a great jerk. And other than…
(Soundbite of laughter)
SCHORR: …other than…
SIMON: Well, he was beyond even a jerk.
SCHORR: …was beyond - he (unintelligible) something wrong. After 9/11, he said he wanted to see the United States wiped out. Although, his mother or maybe his father were Jewish, he talked about the Jews being live, being peeving bastards. I'm not saying that's Bobby Fischer. And, well - I'll tell you as a chess player, he was unrivaled, but in other ways, he was - how shall I say - rivaled.
SIMON: Senior news analyst Dan Schorr.
Dan, thank you very much.
SCHORR: Sure thing.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
NPR's Pam Fessler has been covering the Department of Homeland Security since its inception five years ago. She has a lot to talk - lot of time to think about how the United States responds to disaster.
PAM FESSLER: I've been to countless hearings and news conferences these past five years, where my eyes have glazed over, my mind numbed by a wave of bureaucratese - all the things I don't put on the radio.
Unidentified Man #1: The domestic nuclear detection office, DNDO - D-N-D-O - is developing the next generation of radiation…
Unidentified Man #2: SUPB identified short-term initiatives it can implement to address attrition needs.
Unidentified Man #3: The implementation of WHGI facilitative technology and the requirements to present secure documents…
FESSLER: It's at these times I wonder, is this what are enemies are doing? Dealing with acronyms and organizational charts? Worrying about grand formulas? Giving PowerPoint presentations like this one from Homeland Security on first responder ID cards. Here, from slide one, is strategic objective one and I, quote, "establishment of a multi-jurisdictional identity trust model in accordance with existing standards and technology that," well, you get the idea.
A lot of progress has been made building a Homeland Security Department, but it's the people who've stuck with me most. One of the first I interviewed was Diana Dean, the Customs inspector in Washington State, who stopped Ahmed Ressam, the Millennium Bomber, on his way to blow up L.A. Airport. She thought he seem suspicious.
I asked Dean in 2003, what would help her do a better job.
Ms. DIANA DEAN (U.S. Customs Inspector): If we can have one thing here that we don't have that we'd like, we'd have a dog.
FESSLER: Not some multi-million dollar gizmo, just a dog to sniff drugs or bombs. But I checked, and no, they still don't have one. Dean said that no technology was helpful at the border, but one of the best tools was the instincts of those on the frontlines.
Ms. DEAN: You still need that inspector to ask those questions and to hear the responses that you're going to get.
FESSLER: I remembered these all last month, when I went to Vermont and heard complaints that Customs and Border Protection inspectors had less discretion because of new procedures and technology used to screen travelers.
Mr. JOHN WILDE(ph) (Former U.S. Customs Inspector): Now, you get the false sense of security. You'd only have passports that are okay.
FESSLER: John Wilde is a recently retired inspector. He thinks some changes make no sense.
Mr. WILDE: I worked here for 30 years. I drive through the port. And the inspector I've worked with for many years will say, John, I need to see a piece of ID. Why? You know who I am.
FESSLER: But, he says, those are the rules for CBP officers at DHS.
SIMON: NPR's Pam Fessler.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has been publicly canoodling with Carla Bruni, the model and singer. But, of course, the French don't bother about such things. The French press brims with bulletins about Carla and Sarkozy. My French family calls up to gossip about Carla and Sarkozy. Our French friends say they are appalled by Carla and Sarkozy. But the French don't really bother about such things.
If the French press seems obsessed with Carla and Sarkozy, it's just because it's been Americanized. Although some of us think that the American press has actually become Australianized. Of course, the French don't bother about such things.
Carla Bruni is a celebrated model, singer and songwriter. She's also had between rock stars, billionaires, prime ministers, film stars and famous philosophers, almost as rich a romantic history as the Taj Mahal. She once notably said, I am monogamous from time to time, but I prefer polygamy. As the French comedian Anne Roumanoff said the other night, if Sarkozy needs to fall asleep, he can just start counting her exes. Not that the French bother about such things.
The story of this public courtship - to use an old-fashioned word - bristles with personal and political complications and implications. Several recent presidents of France - in fact, as the French will tell you, most of them - not that they bother - have had multiple mistresses. Some presidents have had whole hidden families which the press didn't report and about which the public didn't seem to care. President Sarkozy gets a divorce, falls in love, wants to get married, and it's called a scandal. Not that the French care about such things.
The man, who has bluntly told his citizens work more to earn more and work hard like the Americans, British and Pols to revive his country's greatness, has taken three vacations with his lover in the past two months - creeps into Egypt, Jordan and Euro Disney. Anne Roumanoff said France has glorious chateau, hotels and cultural institutions, but, no, he takes her to Euro Disney. Three hours of standing in line for two minutes of pleasure. I'm sure he meant the rides - okay, nothing else. Americans can be so bootie(ph). The French don't bother about such things.
President Sarkozy contrasts his openness about his life with the secrecy of past French presidents. Makes it sound as if having a public love affair with a famously alluring woman is a service to democracy and at par with those 1,500 French troops who served in Afghanistan.
Okay, sergeant, what would it be? Fight the Taliban in Kandahar or ramp around with Carla Bruni?
Ha, ha. Mon capitan, you choose. We French don't bother about such things.
(Soundbite of song, "At Last the Secret is Out")
Ms. CARLA BRUNI (Singer/Songwriter; Model): (Singing) At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end.
The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend.
Over the tea-cups, into the square…
SIMON: Carla Bruni, she had to take a deep breath. And this is NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Coming up, pigeons and no grass, alas, unfed.
But first, unemployment is up, manufacturing down, consumer spending is weak, and the markets have headed south. The president wants some kind of economic stimulus, including tax cuts. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says stimulus is a good idea. Many in Congress seem to agree.
But there are a number of economists who believe that the economy may not be heading into recession. It turns out that the economy's weaknesses aren't evenly spread across the country.
Brian Wesbury is chief economist at First Trust Portfolios and joins us from our Chicago bureau.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Mr. BRIAN WESBURY (Chief Economist, First Trust Portfolio): It's great to be with you.
SIMON: And what sectors of the economy are hurting most?
Mr. WESBURY: Well, obviously, the housing sector has been really damaged. We've seen a huge drop in building and in home buying. And that's the area that's really been hurt worse. And then, obviously, that follows on to losses at financial institutions. And then, I think retailers are having a problem but not necessarily because people aren't spending as much as kind of retailers built too many stores.
SIMON: Are there other sectors of the economy that are holding their own or even blooming?
Mr. WESBURY: Yeah, absolutely. The biggest one is the exports. And just as a little reminder, the housing sector is 5 percent of GDP. The export sector is 13 percent of GDP. So while this housing decline is really hurt, in fact, dramatic fashion - the 5 percent sector - the housing sector, the export sector is blooming. In fact, exports are up about 13.5 percent over last year. And that's 13 percent of the economy. That's a roaring sector of the economy right now.
SIMON: Some states are hit harder than others?
Mr. WESBURY: Oh, absolutely. You know, it's very clear that, you know, Michigan, Florida, Las Vegas, Nevada, Arizona, California - these are the states that really have been hurt much worse by the housing. And it's really due to overbuilding.
If you go back and look at the data, housing sales peaked in mid-2005 and then started to fall. But home building didn't peak until mid-2006, which means we built a lot of homes while sales were beginning to fall. A lot of that was done in, for example, Florida and Arizona and Nevada. And those states are the ones that are really getting hit because they still have some of these high-rise condos aren't even finished yet. And that means we're getting a real overhang of inventories.
SIMON: Do you see the trouble spreading?
Mr. WESBURY: I don't. I think the economy - the other 95 percent of the economy other than housing looks pretty good to me. It's very clear that we've taken a hit. But this is a huge economy. And when I do the math, if we lose 20 percent of all subprime loans in total losses, total write-downs, that's only about $200 billion. And the economy is a $14.5-trillion economy. So 200 billion is a big number, but it's small when you compare it to the size of the U.S. economy. We're a real juggernaut.
SIMON: I must say your optimism is something that I'm not used to hearing when I watch the financial channels.
Mr. WESBURY: Right.
SIMON: Are you an exception in your industry?
Mr. WESBURY: If you look at the average forecast for 2008, people are saying - economists are saying 2 percent real growth in economic activity. That's not great, but it's not horrible. In fact, in The Wall Street Journal poll, where there's 55 economists, there's only one that is predicting an outright recession.
Now, there are heightened odds of recession, but the actual predictions of economists are for 2 percent real growth in 2008. My forecast is that we have 3 percent growth.
So I'm a little bit more optimistic than the average economist right now, but not that much. I have had periods of time where I've been pessimistic about the economy. And today, I'm not. I just don't - I don't see the damage that's coming from subprime. I don't think it's as big of a problem as it's been made out to be.
I think the proof really should be on the pessimist not on the optimist. And so far, we haven't seen data that's consistent with anything close to a recession.
SIMON: Brian Wesbury, chief economist at First Trust Portfolios in Chicago. Thanks very much.
Mr. WESBURY: Thank you.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Pro-immigration side of the debate is being prepared for television. Now, this ad is already aired in Northern Virginia.
(Soundbite of TV ad)
Unidentified Man: This is Riverside, New Jersey. It accomplished what some citizens want done today. They drove out undocumented workers by passing a law penalizing anyone who hired them. It worked. But with so many people gone, their economy suffered.
SIMON: That ad was produced by a group called Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together, which is producing and promoting the series of ads that argue that immigration - even illegal immigration - is necessary for the prosperity of America.
Lionel Sosa is the organization's executive director. Mr. Sosa has a long history as a media strategist, supporting, advising and working for many Republican candidates.
He joins us from the studios of KJZZ in Tempe, Arizona. Mr. Sosa, thanks so much for being with us.
Mr. LIONEL SOSA (CEO, Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together): Thank you, Scott, for having me. I appreciate it.
SIMON: And this is the first in the series of ads that are planned, I gather.
Mr. SOSA: Yes. This ad ran a couple of months ago. And it was extremely successful; actually help defeat some of the anti-immigration folks that were out there.
SIMON: Mr. Sosa, who is Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together? That - which is a nice way of saying, where do you get your money.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SOSA: Well, we're a group of people. Some of us are Americans. Some of us are Mexicans. Many of us have dual passports and dual citizenship. And we're people who love both countries.
SIMON: Could you be more specific about who's contributing money to the Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together?
Mr. SOSA: Well, you know, the folks behind it aren't the type of people that want to take a lot of credit, but they are businesspeople from the U.S. and businesspeople people from Mexico. Others are people that are in business and…
SIMON: Well, I mean, at the risk of embarrassing their modesty, I wonder if you could identify, just so we'll know your sources of support.
Mr. SOSA: Sure. All you have to do is look at our Web site, matt.org, and you will see the folks that are on the board of directors, and you will see that all of them are contributors to this.
SIMON: You, of course, Mr. Sosa, I'm sure has had to contend with the argument that there's a problem when you make unauthorized workers legal. And people have even cashed back and suggested that President Reagan was wrong in their view to extend the amnesty that he did in the 1980s. They say this rewards criminal behavior, and more to the point, even encourages more people to come over illegally.
Mr. SOSA: Well, you know, encouraging criminal behavior, how interesting is that? Senator Mitchell held this big hearing on baseball players using steroids. And what was his recommendation? Let's forgive them for the good of the game. That's amnesty, you know? We have presidential pardon; that's amnesty. We talk ourselves out of a traffic ticket. That's amnesty. Amnesty is something that we do everyday. But somehow or other when you say that these unauthorized workers are - what we're really doing is we're taking a group of people and treating them in a different way.
SIMON: As we know that you have a long-time status as a Republican Party supporter and activist, and specifically, in behalf of this President Bush -George W. Bush - who tried to get some kind of amnesty reform package passed, may I ask - not to put you on the spot, Mr. Sosa - do you still consider yourself a Republican?
Mr. SOSA: Oh, absolutely. I've been a Republican since age 13, when we got our first television set, and I saw the Republican National Convention on television. And President Eisenhower was talking about personal responsibility, about opening the door for opportunity and that people could really take care of themselves without a lot of government intrusions. I still believe that but, you know, right now, a lot of the folks in my party are just not doing the right thing. And I certainly don't agree with most of the candidates for president out there. They're being very anti-immigrant.
You know, if we look at our plate of food, we see fruits and vegetables, we see meat. Well, you know, these are the folks that are processing the meat, picking the fruits and vegetables. They are all around us. But, some of us don't really see them and certainly don't see their benefit.
SIMON: Lionel Sosa, head of Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together. Thank you so much for being with us.
Mr. SOSA: Thank you very much, Scott. Pleasure.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
A legal showdown was set this week, when the Hillsborough County School Board in Florida voted to seek legal action against an apiary. Now don't run off to look that up. That's a place where they keep bees, which brothers Steve and Mike Grande(ph) have done since the 1970s.
But their apiary is not far from the Limona Elementary School in Brandon, and the staffs there say that students have been stung and bees have left corrosive droppings on teachers' cars. The same thing is that they had cattle roaming around, school board member Jennifer Faliero told the St. Petersburg Times.
But Steve Grande points out that unlike cattle, bees can't be fenced, or make a beeline, if you please, to feast on flowers. They have defenders in the neighborhood who say that the apiary was there before the school and besides, the bees pollinate flowers and orange trees. The Grandes say we have gentle bees. And it is just not in the nature of bees to sting when they are far from their nest. They believe that wasps that built nests in the east of the school are responsible for any stinging that's going on.
But bees always blame the wasps, don't they?
SCOTT SIMON, host:
There's an old saying that unless you want an argument, don't talk about politics or religion. But maybe in New York, where argument is a kind of local religion, the aphorism should go: don't talk about politics or pigeons. A bill before the city council proposes $1,000 fine for feeding pigeons. A taskforce has suggested a few strategies to control the pigeon population, and these proposals have several defenders of winged New Yorkers up in arms.
From New York, NPR's Mike Pesca reports.
MIKE PESCA: They are brazen, some would say, confrontational urban dwellers, whose families have been in the city for years. They remain street-smart even the face of prejudice, just for the way they strut down the boulevard. All of those words apply to both pigeons and the New Yorkers who hate them.
But when a city councilman, Simcha Felder, recently proposed the anti-pigeon legislation, he wasn't ready for the resulting flap - mostly from the left wing of the bird rights groups who say the proposals will not fly. Even so, Councilman Felder's spokesman Eric Kuo characterized his boss' position this way.
Mr. ERIC KUO (Staff, Councilman Simcha Felder): Not a hawk, not a dove.
PESCA: Felder in a must-read municipal report of the season, curbing the pigeon conundrum explores sterilization, fines for over-feeders and in the latest idea to take flight, specify pigeon feeding zones. Kuo sits in Felder's office underneath a piece of hate mail, which compares in pounds the amount of excrement generated annually by a pigeon to the amount generated by Councilman Felder.
Kuo says his boss just wants to clean up the places that are the most befouled.
Mr. KUO: In the perfect world, we would see less mess where a lot of people congregate. In addition to that, have the people who enjoy the company of pigeons still be able to enjoy the company of pigeons.
PESCA: That sounds like a euphemism - people who enjoy the company of pigeons.
Mr. KUO: People do enjoy the company of pigeons. You know, they - a lot of people like feeding the pigeons.
PESCA: People like Al Streit, president of Pigeon People.
Mr. AL STREIT (President, Pigeon People): They want to push their head into your hand. They'll say when a cat pushes its forehead into your hand. They play with toys. They love musical toys especially. My Bobby has made up so many games that he plays, put all kinds of musical toys. Right now, its favorite is chimes.
PESCA: Bobby is named after Bobby Simone, an "NYPD Blue" character who raised pigeons. And "On the Waterfront," raising pigeons was the very thing which softened Marlon Brando's lug of a longshoreman in the eyes of Eva Marie Saint.
(Soundbite of movie, "On the Waterfront")
Ms. EVA MARIE SAINT (Actress): (As Edie Doyle) Joey used to raise pigeons.
(Soundbite of ship)
Mr. MARLON BRANDO (Actor): (Terry Malloy) You know, he had a few birds.
PESCA: But it was another quintessential New York movie, Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories," which gave rise to the slur which has become blood libel to the pigeon proponents.
(Soundbite of movie, "Stardust Memories")
Mr. WOODY ALLEN (Actor): (As Sandy Bates) No, it's not pretty at all. They're rats with wings.
Ms. CHARLOTTE RAMPLING (Actress): (As Dorrie) No. It's probably good omen.
PESCA: Rats with wings. It drives the Pigeon People crazy. Also, the People for Pigeons, another group totally against pigeon population control. Both groups accuse the ASPCA and the Humane Society of compromising with the enemy because, as Al Streit says, all the proposals add up to fewer pigeons.
Mr. STREIT: Remember the pigeons are homing pigeons. Every one of them is a born homer. That means they love their homes. They love their neighborhoods and they only go about two to four blocks to look for food. If we have feeding in designated areas, how many are they going to be? Getting rid of pigeons is exactly what's going to happen.
PESCA: Which would be either a coup or a calamity depending on where you stand in a squab squabble.
Mike Pesca, NPR News, New York.
(Soundbite of movie, "On the Waterfront")
Ms. SAINT: (As Edie Doyle) I wouldn't have thought you'd be so interested in pigeons.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Jack Broad died earlier this month. For years, he bragged that he was the last living original tenant of the Empire State Building that was still working there. In 1931, when he and his father opened a collection agency in the building, only a little more than a dozen floors were even ready for occupancy. It was the height of the Depression. Folks called the landmark the Empty State Building.
As people started handing the Broads gold and diamonds to make good on their debts, the men changed their focus from collections to jewelry. Jack Broad was an early user of toll-free numbers - dial-a-diamond, he called it. He guaranteed that engagement rings could be returned. Cost you nothing, he said, if she dumps you within 60 days.
Jack Broad's brash talk worked. His business grew. And in an interview with NPR five years ago, he told how he moved up in the Empire State Building at the same time.
Mr. JACK BROAD (Owner, Empire Diamond Company): We moved from the seventh floor up to the 14th and up to the 15th and up to about 25, 30 years ago, we moved up to the 66th floor.
SIMON: For eight decades, Mr. Broad ruled the elevators, higher and higher. His last office was on the 76th floor. Jack Broad loved the Empire State Building. One Valentine's Day, he gave wedding bands to couples who were getting married on the building's observation deck. And in 1996, the building honored him by lighting the tower gold - an appropriate color not only for Mr. Broad's business but because, for Jack Broad, the Empire State Building was business.
Mr. BROAD: You see I call it a cathedral of commerce. And I put in the same class as St. Patrick's Cathedral or St. John's Cathedral. But this is a type of building that I don't think will ever be built again because it's too expensive per square foot.
SIMON: Over the years, Jack Broad witnessed plenty of real drama at 34th Street in Fifth Avenue. He remembered the day in 1945 when a B-25 bomber accidentally crashed into the building. Three decades later, robbers tied him up and dashed off with $600,000 worth of jewelry. And twice a year, Mr. Broad recharge his romantic feeling for the signature skyscraper in which he work by watching a famous old movie in which a giant gorilla hung to the skyscraper with a beautiful girl in the palm of his hand.
(Soundbite of movie, "King Kong")
Mr. ROBERT ARMSTRONG (Actor): (As Carl Denham) Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was beauty who killed the beast.
SIMON: Jack Broad was 98 years old when he died. No cause of death was given.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
When you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you. But what if they can't see you? What if they can just hear you? A new study out of the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. says that a smile is, in fact, something that you can hear, and that a good set of ears can pick up on different kinds of smiles.
Joining us now from her office is the author of that study, Amy Drahota.
Thanks very much for being with us.
Ms. AMY DRAHOTA (Research Fellow, School of Health Sciences and Social Work, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom): I'm happy to be here.
SIMON: I think you're smiling a little, aren't you?
Ms. DRAHOTA: I am. I'm smiling now. Yeah.
SIMON: Okay. All right. Well, explain to us how you set up this study. I mean, did you have control questions, as they call them, and that sort of thing?
Ms. DRAHOTA: The study was carried out in three stages. The first stage involved recording speakers whilst they were smiling, but we didn't want the speakers to know that the study was about smiles at the time because they're interested in everyday expressions.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Ms. DRAHOTA: So in order to do this, we carried out some rather bizarre interviews where we asked the speakers to always respond to our questions with the same answer, which was: I do in the summer. And then we don't have the questions scheduled to gradually become more amusing, strange from bizarre in order to make them smile.
SIMON: First question would be: Do you eat oatmeal - I do in the summer. But the - like the 10th question might be something like: Do you go to Mars?
Ms. DRAHOTA: Yeah. Something like that - would you ever go skinny dipping?
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: I do in the summer.
Ms. DRAHOTA: Yeah. So then after that had been done, we took the interview recordings and analyze the facial expressions that people had while, say, with speaking.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Ms. DRAHOTA: And we picked up on three different types of smiles for the purposes of the study and these were Duchenne smile, which is where the lips are drawn back, the cheeks and raised and you get little crows-feet wrinkles around the eyes…
SIMON: What was that called again?
Ms. DRAHOTA: Duchenne smile.
SIMON: Duchenne.
Ms. DRAHOTA: Yup.
SIMON: Okay.
Ms. DRAHOTA: Named after a physician.
SIMON: A physician.
Ms. DRAHOTA: Yes.
SIMON: I thought it was Eddy Duchin, the piano player, but…
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: …all right.
Ms. DRAHOTA: And then the second type of smile we did get was the non-Duchenne smile, which is just like the Duchenne smile but without the crows-feet wrinkles around the eyes.
SIMON: So that's more of a half smile.
Ms. DRAHOTA: Might be less intense version of the Duchenne or it might be something completely different altogether. And the third type of smile that we looked at was the suppressed smile, which is where you're trying not to smile whilst you're speaking perhaps because you are trying to remain serious and you say, pulling your lips in or down as you speak. And then the fourth type of expression we had with the study was a no smile where people just speaking normally.
So we categorized all those expressions and we then we lift it, just the voices, from the recordings and played them back to this different set of listeners. You have to work out whether or not people are smiling.
SIMON: When you played those voices back…
Ms. DRAHOTA: Yeah.
SIMON: …how did your controlled subjects do? Were they able to discern smiles after a while?
Ms. DRAHOTA: Most people were good at hearing the Duchenne smile. That was the type of smile that people are most successful at.
SIMON: Our producers here have been busy replicating.
Ms. DRAHOTA: Yes.
SIMON: In this case, they've been trying to replicate at least some aspects of your study. So we're going to play some tape of someone who was on staff here, and going to try and guess. I'm going to try and guess with your guidance, perhaps, if she's smiling or not.
Ms. DRAHOTA: Okay.
Unidentified Woman: I do in the summer.
SIMON: That doesn't sound like a smile to me.
Ms. DRAHOTA: Well, I thought I had a slight twinge of a smile in there, but…
SIMON: They're nodding in the control room. You're right. And I know this person. All right. Let's here the next one.
Unidentified Woman: I do in the summer.
SIMON: But I would guess there's a - at least, a non-Duchenne smile there.
Ms. DRAHOTA: Woo.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. DRAHOTA: I don't know, but I heard the smile in there.
SIMON: Right again. Of course, you're the expert. Okay. We're going to hear another one.
Unidentified Woman: I do in the summer.
SIMON: Well, I, of course, am thoroughly intimidated at this point so I'm not sure what I've been through, I guess. I'm going to say there's a Duchenne smile in there.
Ms. DRAHOTA: Yeah. I thought there was even a little sound of laughter in that as well, and hopefully with you.
SIMON: I'm told we were both right. Although, to be honest, it was more a process of elimination, whereas you have absolutely heard something. So with respect for what you have done - why? I mean, do we learn anything about how we communicate?
Ms. DRAHOTA: A lot of the research that's been done in this area in the past just focused on and when they've used actors to simulate the different expressions. They haven't looked at different types of smiles…
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Ms. DRAHOTA: …and everyday expressions which is what these three types was really trying to hime in on, but also this research could have further applications. For example, in our computer-stimulated speech, making computerized voices sound more natural as you speak because I've done a lot of work in making computerized phrases more expressive, but the voices still need more work.
SIMON: Ms. Drahota, I moved to ask you a philosophical question…
Ms. DRAHOTA: Mm-hmm.
SIMON: …given your area of expertise. Do people smile because they are happy? Do they smile to make themselves feel happy?
Ms. DRAHOTA: Ooh.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. DRAHOTA: I imagine it works both ways.
SIMON: Amy Drahota, University of Portsmouth. Thanks so much.
Ms. DRAHOTA: It's been a pleasure.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen.
(Soundbite of people talking)
Mr. CHRIS PAINTER (Deputy Chief, Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section Department of Justice): How are you doing?
Mr. SHAWN HENRY (Deputy Assistant Director, Cyber Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation): Great. (Unintelligible).
Mr. PAINTER: Very good to see you again.
Mr. HENRY: Hey, good to see you.
Mr. PAINTER: Got to see you got your Diet Coke to keep the caffeine going.
Mr. HENRY: Yeah, actually.
HANSEN: Two of the nation's top cyber crime enforcers interrupted their busy morning last week to sit down and talk to us about their jobs. One works for the Department of Justice, the other for the FBI. They investigate and prosecute cyber criminals.
I don't want to be an alarmist here, but what are the odds that the average citizen is going to be the victim of a cyber crime?
Mr. HENRY: I, well, I can tell you this, you put an unprotected computer on the Internet, I would say with virtual certainty within 30 minutes your computer is going to be compromised.
HANSEN: Scary stuff to start this week's segment in our cyber crime series. Today, we're going to examine cyber fraud.
Since the beginnings of the Internet some 25 years ago, hackers and other computer criminals have found ingenious ways to use this technology to their advantage.
Kevin Mitnick was one of America's most wanted, and now works as a cyber security consultant. We called him. He explained how he became a notorious hacker.
Mr. KEVIN MITNICK (Cyber Security Consultant, Mitnick Security Consulting): Well, because I have such a passion for technology and wanting to learn how technology works, I compromised numerous companies - mainly telephone companies and companies that develop cell phones and operating systems. And at one point I became a fugitive. And I used my computer skills to evade the government - the FBI and the U.S. Marshals for about three years. And finally when they caught up with me, I became the example. I was arrested in a point of time where the Justice Department wanted to make computer crime a top priority, and they needed a symbol to show their dedication to fighting computer crime. So my case was used as that symbol.
HANSEN: Kevin Mitnick did nearly five years in prison for hacking into dozens of corporate computers, stealing proprietary software and damaging their networks. Chris Painter helped put Mitnick behind bars, when Painter was an assistant U.S. attorney in the mid-1990s. Today, he heads the computer crime and intellectual property section of the Department of Justice. He and his FBI counterpart met us at the Justice Department's offices here in Washington.
Mr. PAINTER: Good to see you.
Mr. HENRY: Good to see you.
HANSEN: We're seated in the cyber crime lab at the Department of Justice, a very clean, well-lit room. There's a horseshoe counter with various computers on it, displaying the Department of Justice seal and several small computer towers called FRED, which is Forensic Recovery Evidence Device.
Chris Painter is jovial and low key, yet eager to tell us some stories. So we asked how cyber criminals have evolved.
Mr. PAINTER: Cyber criminals are certainly very clever and they certainly, because of the nature of their technical experience, had advanced and found new ways to commit crimes. I mean, we're always seeing new and different ways for these criminal groups to act. And frankly, we've seen a real change in the kind of paradigm of these cyber criminals. We had a lot of these criminals who were doing these hacking and other crimes, doing it somewhat for their own edification - just to show that they could.
Now, what we're seeing more and more is organized criminal groups. Sort of like traditional OSE groups, but they are spread all over the world and they are linked virtually by computers. And they are doing it now very explicitly for the money. This is where the money is. And because this is where the money is, that creates a greater threat, it creates a better motivation for them.
And although the traditional people were using the Net just to commit these crimes, were not all that bright in the way they committed them in the past and the hackers were really smart in the way they did them, we've seen a convergence between those two groups so that they're doing it for money and they're being clever about hiding their identity, going through different countries.
HANSEN: Tell us about that. What are some of the new ways they're committing crimes?
Mr. PAINTER: Well, one of the things that we've seen really grow over these years is something called botnets. And botnets are armies of what are kind of colorfully described as zombie computers or slave computers that are tens of thousands strong that are operated by a control channel to do a whole host of different crimes. I think both of us have called this in the past the Swiss Army knife of computer hacking and computer crimes because they're used for identity theft, they're used for spam, and we've been targeting them. The FBI, specifically, is also been targeting them.
HANSEN: Chris Painter is seated next to Shawn Henry, deputy assistant director of the FBI cyber division. He's been leaning back in his chair, listening to Painter. Then, he straightens up in front of the microphone.
Henry is a little intimidating, a G-Man in black. His head is shaved and his gunmetal gray eyes seemed to have x-ray vision. I get the feeling he knows everything about me. I want to know more about these botnets. So, Henry explained the FBI strategy.
Mr. HENRY: We actually started a botnet initiative. We termed it Bot Roast, a clever play on words. But just to focus our agents and our analysts on what the threat was. So two methods for us, I think, to try and have an impact on the problem. One is the deterrent effect, being able to aggressively investigate and then, through the Department of Justice, successfully prosecutes somebody and let them know that when they commit one of these crimes they're going to pay for it. They're not going to get six months probation, but they may get five or six years in prison sitting next to somebody who's doing hard time for a physical crime. So actually being able to investigate it successfully and have a deterrent effect is one part.
But the second part, I think, that is critical is to raise the public's awareness. When Chris talks about 10,000 bot armies of computers, there's actually millions of computers that are controlled. And the average computer user does not even know their computer's under somebody else's control. So for your listeners to understand this, you might be working on your computer, surfing the Internet, shopping, and there's somebody who is actually on that computer with you and you don't know it. You log off. They're actually using your computer to attack other computers, to steal other people's passwords and user names, to steal people's credit cards so that the resources of your computer, because it's not adequately protected, is susceptible to being utilized by somebody else.
HANSEN: Our lives, how we worked and how we communicate have been changed immeasurably by the Internet for the better. But you should know the risks. Even the savvy FBI investigator Shawn Henry says he's amazed how sophisticated cyber criminals are.
Mr. HENRY: In this environment, in this virtual world that we live in, we've seen these organized groups that live virtually where we have groups that are organized, not like "The Sopranos" organized crime, but organized in that each of the players in this group have a specific expertise. And they may never have met each other ever. They meet online in a chat room - one from Turkey, one from Ukraine, one from the United States, one from Greece, one from Russia, one from you name the country - each of them having a particular area of expertise.
One might actually compromise computers and develop a botnet. One might write spam e-mails specifically to entice you to give up your username and your password. Somebody might actually harvest those credit card numbers when they come in. Somebody else might actually take the money and physically launder it and turn it into real money. And then somebody else might actually send the money using Western Union or some other type of financial transport mechanism to get the money into the pockets of the other members. They never meet. They never see each other. They never touch each other, but they are organized. They are together. And to me, that's an aha moment, where we watched crime actually moved from the physical world to the virtual world.
HANSEN: So how do you protect your computer? Here are some tips our experts gave us. Keep your Firewall turned on. It's like a gatekeeper who checks all your visitors. Use anti-virus software. Make sure your operating system is up to date and when you're not using your computer, turn it off. If after all that you still become prey for the cyber fraudsters, you can report it to the federal authorities. Go to the Web site ic3.gov to file a complaint. There's more on our Web site, npr.org.
No one is immune from cyber crime. Police officers, lawyers and doctors have been defrauded. Susan Grant is the director of consumer protection for the Consumer Federation of America.
Ms. SUSAN GRANT (Director of Consumer Protection, Consumer Federation of America): You have to remember that con artists are really insightful. They know what buttons to push. They know what makes people tick.
HANSEN: Grant tells the story of one woman, an accountant, who was sought into an e-mail scam originating from Africa.
Ms. GRANT: She was convinced that this person had contacted her about getting his money out of his country and into her bank account because of her accounting expertise. He also appealed to her because, through their communications, he picked up on the fact that she was a very religious person. And so he started to say that he was as well. When this person contacted me, she had bought plane tickets to fly to Ghana to meet with this guy, and she was within three days of going.
Susan Grant is with the Consumer Federation of America.
Next week, in the final installment of our series on cyber crime, we examine cyber stalking.
Unidentified Man #1: If somebody wants to stalk you, the Internet is a huge advantage for them now. They don't have to put the work they used to have to put in to find out your address, your phone number, what you look like. So we've got a situation with immense amounts of information that are outside of your control, yet, are probably accessible to people with malicious intent.
(Soundbite of song, "Moses Smote the Water")
THRASHER WONDERS (Group): (Singing) Mothers ain't you glad (unintelligible)? Mothers ain't you glad that the sea give away. Hallelujah. Moses smote the water and the children all passed over.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Music and song and a deep rooted sense of faith have always been hallmarks of the African-American experience, and gospel music is practically a part of the DNA. A CD coming out later this month from Smithsonian Folkways chronicles this great tradition. Classic African-American gospel was compiled and edited by George Washington University ethnomusicologist Kip Lornell. He says the oldest recording on the collection is this song performed by the Thrasher Wonders.
(Soundbite of music)
THRASHER WONDERS (Group): (Singing) Father ain't you glad…
Professor KIP LORNELL (Ethnomusicologist, George Washington University): That is actually from about 1948 or 1949.
HANSEN: No instrumentation, just voices and harmony.
Prof. LORNELL: Yes, indeed.
HANSEN: Where does this fit in the timeline of gospel music itself, not just recorded gospel music?
Prof. LORNELL: Well, it depends on how you define the term gospel. But if you think about gospel music is a really a 20th-century phenomenon, then it really does fit kind of in the middle, in the 1940s in particular - in the 1940s into the early - to mid-1950s was the age during which gospel music, particularly black American gospel music, probably reached its height of popularity and for the first time really crossed over in terms of record sales, in terms of radio airplay into the wider mainstream - in that regard read the word - white audience. So late 1940s means it was at a time when a lot of people were consuming this music one way or another both white and black.
HANSEN: In churches?
Mr. LORNELL: Not only in the churches. A lot of people who were doing performances, when they wet out in the road as either professional or semi-professional groups perform not only in churches but municipal auditoriums, community centers, people's homes. So the music was really moving out of the church in a way that it never had before.
HANSEN: The tone of the music tends to be either cheerful or mournful, and there are some melodies that seemed to have been around since music was first made. I'm referring to cut number eight, which is "Dry Bones: Ezekiel Saw the Wheel," The Missionary Quartet.
(Soundbite of song "Dry Bones: Ezekiel Saw the Wheel")
The MISSIONARY QUARTET: (Singing) (Singing) Ezekiel one saw the wheels are rolling…
Unidentified Man: (Singing) Oh, Lord, it was returning over…
The MISSIONARY QUARTET: (Singing) Ezekiel once the wheels are rolling there in the middle of the earth.
HANSEN: I'm sure a lot of people are singing in their heads the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone is connected to - so this is "Dry Bones," the melody. Is this a song that is passed from parish and pew as well as from playground to backyard?
Mr. LORNELL: I think in a lot of regards, if it's something that works, it's going to be used in a variety of context. And also that particular performance there's a couple other things to note: You - working in the realm of black American quartet tradition, which began in a very serious way in the early 20th century. And by the 1920s, you would find quartets singing in neighborhoods, quartets singing at work places. But that particular selection is very clearly influenced by a group called the Golden Gate Quartet. It's usually what's referred as a jubilee style of singing. And that developed very clearly and very distinctly with the Golden Gate's starting in the mid-1930s.
(Soundbite of music)
The GOLDEN GATE QUARTET: (Singing) Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I'm rejecting these bones from the skull to the jaw. And the skull and the jaw bones are joined together and the jaw…
HANSEN: How would you define jubilee song?
Mr. LORNELL: If you're talking about black American gospel quartet singing in jubilee, then you're talking about a particular kind of pumping bass in the background, you're talking about the kind of song and spoken lead, and usually songs that have a connection with the New Testament of the Bible.
HANSEN: I can see that jubilee style leaning to The Temptations.
Mr. LORNELL: Oh, the connection between gospel quartet jubilee singing and doo-wop and ultimately Motown is very clear. There's an undeniable continuum among all of those.
(Soundbite of music)
HANSEN: We have been listening to some selections from the "Classic African-American Gospel Recording from Smithsonian Folkways." We've been listening mostly to voice, close harmonies, choirs. I'd like to play a little Sister Ernestine Washington with Buck Johnson.
(Soundbite of song, "Where Could I go but to the Lord")
Sister ERNESTINE WASHINGTON (Singer): (Singing) Living below in this old sinful world, hardly a comfort can afford. Striving alone to face temptation calls, anywhere could I go but to the Lord.
HANSEN: If I didn't hear that lyric, where could I go back to the Lord, I would have assumed we were in a jazz club hearing the drums and particularly that clarinet. Was that a little scandalous when those instruments and these kinds of arrangements were added to church music?
Mr. LORNELL: Well, this particular cut came out in the mid-1940s. And what really happened a decade or so before that was the real scandal. There's a man named Reverend Thomas Dorsey who was involved with performing blues in 1920s as Georgia Tom with Tampa Red. They did a very big selling song called "It's Tight Like That" in 1928.
Due to a variety of circumstances and also looking back to his own upbringing, Thomas Dorsey decided that he needed to leave the blues behind and devote his time entirely to religious music. He lived until his early 90s and died approximately 12 years ago. He ended up composing scores of songs that you would remember. For example, he was the person who actually wrote "Precious Lord, Take My Hand."
What he was criticized for was precisely that mixing of what had been considered to be entirely sacred music, lyrics and forms with what was contemporary popular music. You would probably have a similar reaction, Liane, if you listen to some gospel hip-hop. You would say, well, if I didn't listen to the words, then I would think it was just - it could be gangster rap for all I know.
(Soundbite of song "Every Time I feel the Spirit")
LEAD BELLY (Singer): (Singing) (Unintelligible) and they sing every time I feel the spirit.
HANSEN: I love the cut from Lead Belly. If you could listen to this three minutes and 23 seconds and basically hear a history of denominations and music. Let's just hear a little bit of it.
(Soundbite of song, "Every Time I feel the Spirit")
LEAD BELLY: (Singing) Do it again. Every time I feel the spirit movin' in my heart I will pray. Every time I hear the spirit movin' in my heart I will pray.
(Soundbite of song "Swing Low Sweet Chariot")
LEAD BELLY: (Singing) How did Baptist people do come along? They sing. Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.
HANSEN: And he goes on to tell us how the Baptists swing Low and the Holy Ghost people - they hung them on a cross, which is very emotional kind of singing. This is a different sort of tributary of gospel music. It's going down to the delta and then forming the blues that was coming out of their area.
Mr. LORNELL: Yeah, Lead Belly is really the quintessential 20th century black American songster. And by songster, I mean somebody who sings everything. If you were to listen to Lead Belly in the 1930s especially when it went up to New York after the Lomax's kind of discovered him and…
HANSEN: Alan Lomax…
Mr. LORNELL: Alan Lomax and there's Father John. In mid-1930s, Lead Belly hits the scene and he is singing a wide range of material that includes blues but also work songs, dance tunes on accordion. He plays piano. He plays this low down blues as you can get, but he also plays a wide range of religious music. And that's really, really the point is that religious music is just part of the well spring and all this, and they feed upon one another in terms of influences.
HANSEN: One thing gospel music was an intrical part of was the civil rights movement and much of the movement was inspired by both words and music that were heard in the churches. And on this recording, you actually have one of more well-known activist Fannie Lou Hammer. And she's singing "Go Tell It on the Mountain."
(Soundbite of song, "Go Tell It on the Mountain")
Ms. FANNIE LOU HAMMER (Activist): (Singing) Go tell it on the mountain over the hills and everywhere, go tell it on the mountain that (unintelligible) people of the world.
HANSEN: What were the circumstances of this recording? Where did it come from?
Mr. LORNELL: If I recall correctly this was actually recorded at one of the civil rights rallies in the early 1960s. And I think what a lot of people don't understand who's not old enough is these folks are really putting out lives on the line. We take so much for granted now especially while we're talking the day before the country celebrates Martin Luther King's birthday and having to perform at a rally like this one of the cohesive elements were the element of religious songs and also spirituals that virtually everybody knew. So that helped to cement the audience black and white and it was a kind of antiphony, a kind of calm response and it really did rally (unintelligible) together and Fannie Lou Hammer did that about as well as anybody.
(Soundbite of song, "Go Tell It on the Mountain")
Unidentified Group: (Singing) Go tell it on the mountain over the hills and everywhere, go tell it on the mountain that (unintelligible )people of the world.
HANSEN: The last tune is "It's Time to Make a Change," and this is recorded in 1994. So as we follow this particular band out, where are we going musically?
Mr. LORNELL: Well, if I remember right, if this is one of the shout bands, is that correct?
HANSEN: Yeah, "It's Time to Make a Change," Madison's Lively Stones.
Mr. LORNELL: Ah, well, here in Washington, D.C. as well as some other places in the mid-Atlantic States they have at the United House of Prayers for All People. In fact, we're sitting not more than six blocks from God's little White House which is a - the main temple in the area here. They're all brass ensembles primary different levels of trombones. And this is a form of music that goes back to Daddy Grace's inauguration of the church back in the teens. It is a vibrant and important form of African-American expressive culture. And one of the reasons I included this is not only to show the diversity, but to show people that there are other kinds of music out there besides vocal music in which black Americans worship the Lord.
HANSEN: So onto the gold dome of the Daddy Grace's church just blocks north of here, this is the kind of music you'd hear on the Sunday morning.
Mr. LORNELL: Yes, indeed.
(Soundbite of music)
HANSEN: Kip Lornell of George Washington University's music department. He compiled and edited a new collection "Classical African-American Gospel" available on Smithsonian Folkways recordings on January 29th. Thanks a lot for coming in.
Mr. LORNELL: Thank you.
(Soundbite of music)
HANSEN: To hear songs from classic African-American gospel and more interviews in the story about gospel music, check out our music site at npr.org/music.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
There is good news that could improve the health of millions of children in Africa and Latin America. Researchers have located long-forgotten varieties of corn with surprisingly high levels of Vitamin A. In some third world countries where people rely heavily on corn for nutrition, these new varieties could help keep children from going blind. But they'd have to get used to eating corn of the different color.
NPR's Dan Charles has the story.
DAN CHARLES: The very first corn thousands of years ago was white. Then, came a genetic mutation that turned some corn kernels yellow. The color came from chemicals called carotenoid. One of these carotenoids, beta-carotene, gives us vitamin A. So yellow corn is a little bit more nutritious than white corn.
But Torbert Rocheford, a corn geneticist at the University of Illinois, says, until recently, no one thought it mattered.
Mr. TORBERT ROCHEFORD (Corn Geneticist, University of Illinois): There was some measurements taken in the '80s. But it was just some simple measurements, and nobody really cared about vitamin A in corn.
CHARLES: A global epidemic of vitamin A deficiency has changed that. According to the World Health Organization, between 200,000 and 500,000 children each year go blind because they aren't getting enough of this vital nutrient. There's now a global effort under way to boost vitamin A levels in the grains that people rely on most: rice, wheat and corn. Torbert Rocheford took on corn.
The yellow corn that's widely grown today doesn't have enough beta-carotene to make much of a difference. So Rocheford tested hundreds of old and abandoned varieties drawn from every corner of corn's gene pool.
Mr. ROCHEFORD: These all had been used by breeders at some point in time in the last 70, 80 years.
CHARLES: And he struck gold - corn with 10 times more beta-carotene than average. There was more good news. A colleague at Cornell University traced the surplus of beta-carotene to a single gene. That makes it a lot easier for breeders to move the gene into corn varieties that people already grow and eat. t won't involve controversial tools like genetic engineering. The report appears in the current issue of the journal Science. But the last big hurdle isn't scientific. It's cultural.
Africans, for instance, generally prefer white corn, which has no vitamin A. One reason they don't like yellow corn is it usually comes as food aid. Alex Winter-Nelson, an economist at the University of Illinois, says that food aid corn doesn't feel or taste quite right.
Mr. ALEX WINTER-NELSON (Economist, University of Illinois): Yellow is sort of code for this texture, for quality issues, for a sense in the back of the mind that this corn was grown as animal feed and not as human food.
CHARLES: The researchers are hoping that Africans still might accept the vitamin A corn as something new and different. Because the latest lines of this corn which promised even higher levels of beta-carotene aren't yellow. They're orange.
Just over a year ago, Alex Winter-Nelson and one of his graduate students took some of this orange corn to an open-air market in Mozambique for a taste test. The Mozambiqueans still preferred their white corn, but almost half of them agreed to exchange it for bags of orange corn once they heard it was more nutritious.
Mr. WINTER-NELSON: Probably, the most encouraging part of it for me was that people who had reported that they didn't have much dietary diversity, people who reported that they didn't eat very many fruits and vegetables, that they very rarely ate animal products of any kind — eggs, meat, or chicken — were the most likely to take the trade, and so the ones who need it were attracted to it.
CHARLES: Winter-Nelson says that's just a hopeful sign, not proof that orange corn will save lives. But last week, a scientist from the one of the world's main corn-breeding centers in Mexico visited the University of Illinois, making plans to get vitamin A corn to farmers around the world.
Dan Charles, NPR News, Washington.
(Soundbite of This I Believe montage)
Unidentified Man #1: I believe in mystery.
Unidentified Woman: I believe in feelings.
Unidentified Man #2: I believe in being who I am.
Unidentified Man #3: I believe in the power of failure.
Unidentified Man #4: And I believe normal life is extraordinary.
Unidentified Man #5: This I believe.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Our This I Believe essay today was sent in by public radio listener Annaliese Jakimides. She lives in Bangor, Maine, where she's a copy editor for Sawmill & Woodlot magazine and other local publications. Jakimides also does creative writing on her own time.
Here is our series curator, independent producer Jay Allison.
JAY ALLISON: There is one dark event in Annaliese Jakimides' life that she says she'd never written about before. But after she decided to take us up on our public invitation to create an essay for this series, she discovered that she was drawn to write about that event - not because of the darkness but, rather its opposite.
Here is Annaliese Jakimides with her essay for This I Believe.
Ms. ANNALIESE JAKIMIDES (Copyeditor, Sawmill & Woodlot): I'm 57. Divorced after 28 years of marriage, I no longer have a house. I own very little, make a marginal living and I lost my youngest child to suicide when he was 21. At my core I am grateful for it all — even my son's death. It gave the lens through which to see everything. I believed in a silver lining.
I will forever carry my son with me. How can a mother not? This is the only choice I had: I could either carry him as a bag of rocks or I could live a life celebrating him. Now let me be honest here: I wailed for months before I figured out how to trade the rocks for the joy, and found the silver lining thing.
I'm a people person, but Arrick was really a people person. He told me once, I talked to everyone I want to talk to. Everyone? I asked incredulously. Well, yeah, I might miss someone I need to know.
And now, five years later, I've embraced my son's philosophy.
My daughter on the other hand, is more cautious — she shushes me when she sees I am about to say hello to a strange woman by the subway stop. You can't do that, Mom, she says half laughing, knowing that I now see every single encounter as filled with possibilities that can make a difference in my life; that I am more eager than ever to connect with others.
Waiting for the train, I hear strains of an Ornette Coleman tune. I smile, and drop a precious $5 bill into the open case. My Arrick played the saxophone. I wish I had his saxophone's soft leather traveling bag with me, so I could give it to this man in case he someday finds himself on the way to a non-street gig. I tell him that. He smiles.
Arrick couldn't figure out how to make his way, how to live out the rest of his life. I believe he wanted to. When I call up that beautiful face and those elegant cocoa-brown fingers running along the sax's keys, I am always convinced of it. The youngest of three, Arrick was the smartest, the funniest, and we all say so.
He was also the darkest, but no one ever saw him as suicide dark. The why of these choices is often not clear — actually downright murky. I still don't know what brought him to suicide. What is clear, however, is that my son continues: He continues to be part of my story, the family's story and every day now, I'm still making connections on his behalf.
And so I smile at the checker in the grocery store, discuss architecture with the homeless guy who reads every bad-weather day in the library. I tell the woman my daughter thinks I shouldn't speak to that I love her fuchsia hat with the funky feathers, and I thank the saxophone player for the fine Coleman on a subway platform in wintry New York City.
Arrick's death made me sit up and pay attention. I lingered on the edges before, playing it safe, but I'm in the game now. Arrick showed me the silver lining and I'm showing it to everyone I meet.
ALLISON: Annaliese Jakimides with her essay for This I Believe. Jakimides said that she has found that the subject of a child suicide can be taboo and that she hopes her essay might help counter that.
If you'd like to write about the core beliefs in your life, we hope you'll visit our Web site npr.org/thisibelieve to find out more. You can also search through the more than 35,000 essays that have been submitted to date.
For This I Believe, I'm Jay Allison.
HANSEN: Jay Allison is co-editor with Dan Gediman, John Gregory and Viki Merrick of the book "This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women."
Next week on npr.org, an essay from the founding editor of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
And joining us puzzlemaster Will Shortz.
Hi, Will.
WILL SHORTZ: Hi, Liane.
HANSEN: How are you today?
SHORTZ: I'm doing great. You know, have you seen this new movie, "The Savages"?
HANSEN: Not yet. Why?
SHORTZ: There is - near at the start of movie, they have a radio on in the background, and you hear like a local NPR announcer say coming up next is puzzlemaster Will Shortz.
HANSEN: You're kidding me. Did you know about this or did you find out in the theater?
SHORTZ: Two people warned me about it beforehand, so I was waiting for it.
HANSEN: Ah. So you get to be a voice in the movies this time.
SHORTZ: That's right. It's a great movie, too. So you should see it - even beside the NPR reference.
HANSEN: I will. I wanted to ask you. I mean, I know you're a wordsmith, and a lot of your time is taken up - most of your time is taken up with that kind of game. But were you a fan of chess at all? And I'm mentioning this, of course, because of the passing this past week of Bobby Fischer.
SHORTZ: Yeah. Well, I'm not expert at it, no.
HANSEN: Yeah. It was just fascinating because his game back 36 years ago - in like 1972 - became an international story when he and Boris Spassky played their chess game. But the strange part is, you know, the end of the game, it wasn't like a table tennis game, you know, where you see, whoa, you know, you win. It was a - I mean, Boris Spassky sort of called in, said he won. I'm not coming back. So it was an empty chair. Odd. I mean, I think Bobby Fischer's life was so odd. So it was - I just felt we had to remark about it in this section of the program. I'm no good at chess. I'm better at puzzles. But I didn't get the answer to last week's. Would you remind us what it was, please?
SHORTZ: Yes. It came from Larisa Kuhar of Colorado Springs, Colorado. I said name a famous American novelist whose last name contains nine letters. Drop the first and last letters. The remaining seven letters can be rearranged to name another famous American novelist. Who are the authors?
HANSEN: Who are they?
SHORTZ: They are Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edith Wharton.
HANSEN: Oh, that's great. Well, I wish I had solved that puzzle. We had over 1,300 entries from people who did. And our randomly selected winner is William Pahle from Chicago, Illinois.
Hi, William.
Mr. WILLIAM PAHLE (Retired Speech and Language Pathologist): Hi. How are you, Liane?
HANSEN: I am very well, sir. What do you do there in Chicago.
Mr. PAHLE: I'm a retired speech and language pathologist.
HANSEN: Oh, speech and language. You're a word person, too. How long have you been playing this puzzle?
Mr. PAHLE: Oh, at least 10 years - probably longer.
HANSEN: You know what happens then.
Mr. PAHLE: Yes.
HANSEN: Are you ready?
Mr. PAHLE: I'm ready.
HANSEN: I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be. Will, meet William. This could be tough. Let's play.
SHORTZ: All right, William. I'm going to give you some words. For each one, drop two letters so that the remaining letters, in order, will name a color or shade. For example, if I said greed, G-R-E-E-D, you would say red, because you would have dropped the G and one of the Es. Okay?
Number one is train, T-R-A-I-N.
Mr. PAHLE: Tin?
SHORTZ: No. There's a more common shade than that.
Mr. PAHLE: Tan, of course.
SHORTZ: Tan is right. Number two is blouse, B-L-O-U-S-E.
Mr. PAHLE: Okay. Blue.
SHORTZ: Blue is right. Grouse, G-R-O-U-S-E.
Mr. PAHLE: Rose.
SHORTZ: Rose is good. Greasy, G-R-E-A-S-Y.
Mr. PAHLE: Gray.
SHORTZ: Gray, with either spelling.
Mr. PAHLE: That's right.
SHORTZ: Age-old, A-G-E-O-L-D.
Mr. PAHLE: A-G-E-O-L-D. Gold.
SHORTZ: Gold is it. Pucker, P-U-C-K-E-R, as in to pucker up your lips.
Mr. PAHLE: How about puce?
SHORTZ: That's correct. Reborn, R-E-B-O-R-N.
Mr. PAHLE: Reborn.
HANSEN: Well, if you added a Y, you could get ebony, but I know we can't do that.
SHORTZ: Oh, just drop out Y. Drop the Y, Liane.
HANSEN: Drop that Y. All right. I dropped it. We have ebon. Ebon?
SHORTZ: That's it.
HANSEN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: As in E-B-O-N. It's a word for black.
HANSEN: It's a crossword puzzle word for black.
SHORTZ: It's a crossword word. Good.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SHORTZ: Try this one. Grubby, G-R-U-B-B-Y.
Mr. PAHLE: Ruby.
HANSEN: Nice.
SHORTZ: Is right. Cordial, C-O-R-D-I-A-L.
Mr. PAHLE: Okay.
SHORTZ: Give you a hint. It starts with a C.
Mr. PAHLE: Coral.
SHORTZ: Good job. Clemson, C-L-E-M-S-O-N.
Mr. PAHLE: Lemon.
SHORTZ: Uh-huh. Outlive, O-U-T-L-I-V-E.
Mr. PAHLE: Olive.
SHORTZ: Uh-huh. Whither, W-H-I-T-H-E-R.
Mr. PAHLE: White.
SHORTZ: Uh-huh. Besiege, B-E-S-I-E-G-E.
Mr. PAHLE: Besiege. Beige.
SHORTZ: Uh-huh. Greyhen, G-R-E-Y-H-E-N.
Mr. PAHLE: Green.
SHORTZ: Uh-huh. Poacher, P-O-A-C-H-E-R.
HANSEN: Now, you…
SHORTZ: Starts with - yeah?
HANSEN: It starts with an O?
SHORTZ: Uh-huh.
HANSEN: Is it oaker?
Mr. PAHLE: Oh, oaker.
SHORTZ: That's it.
HANSEN: But I thought ended in R-E.
SHORTZ: R-E is one of the British spelling. Our spelling is more of the E-R.
HANSEN: Oh, well, that's what you get for spending four years in London, England.
SHORTZ: There you go.
Macaroon, M-A-C-A-R-O-O-N.
Mr. PAHLE: Maroon.
SHORTZ: Is right.
HANSEN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: And you're last one is outrange, O-U-T-R-A-N-G-E.
Mr. PAHLE: Orange.
SHORTZ: Orange is correct.
HANSEN: All right. Boy, what a rainbow.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. PAHLE: Yeah.
HANSEN: William, nice work.
And for playing our puzzle today, you get some things. You get that WEEKEND EDITION lapel pin, the 11th edition of "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus," the "Scrabble Deluxe Edition" from Parker Brothers, "The Puzzlemaster Presents" from Random House Volume 2, Will Shortz' "Little Black Book of Sudoku," and "Black and White Book of Crosswords" from St. Martin's Press, and one of Will Shortz' "Puzzlemaster Decks of Riddles and Challenges" from Chronicle Books.
William, tell us what member station you listen to.
Mr. PAHLE: WBEZ in Chicago.
HANSEN: Oh, absolutely. William Pahle from Chicago, Illinois.
It was so much fun playing with you today. Thanks so much.
Mr. PAHLE: I appreciate it. Thank you.
HANSEN: Okay.
And, Will, you have a new challenge for everyone to try to solve for next week.
SHORTZ: Yes. Take the phrase, right lane, spoonerize it, and that means switch the initial consonant sounds — and you get light rain. Well, think of a familiar two-word phrase for an activity in a riding stable, spoonerize it and you'll get another familiar two-word phrase for something a stable worker handles. So again, a familiar two-word phrase for an activity in a riding stable, spoonerize it and you'll get another familiar two-word phrase for something a stable worker handles. What are these phrases?
HANSEN: Boy, we haven't heard spoonerism in a long time.
When you have the answer, go to our Web site, npr.org/puzzle. Once again, that's npr.org/puzzle. And click on the Submit Your Answer link. Only one entry per person please. Our deadline this week is Thursday, 3 p.m., Eastern time. Please include a phone number where we can reach you in about that time and we'll call you if you're the winner and you'll get to play puzzle on the air with the puzzle editor of The New York Times and WEEKENED EDITION's puzzlemaster, Will Shortz.
Hey, Will, thanks a lot.
SHORTZ: Thanks, Liane.
(Soundbite of musical, "My Fair Lady")
Ms. JULIE ANDREWS (Actress): (As Eliza Doolittle) The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain?
LIANE HANSEN, host:
After today's matinee at the Kennedy Center here in Washington, Britain's National Theater Company packs its trunks and heads for Chicago. The company's American tour of "My Fair Lady" began last fall in Florida and will end this summer in Arizona. This show has a lot of mileage on it.
(Soundbite of musical, "My Fair Lady")
Mr. REX HARRISON (Actor): (As Professor Henry Higgins) (Singing) By George, she's got it. By George, she's got it. Now, once again where does it rain?
Ms. ANDREWS: (As Eliza Doolittle) (Singing) On the plain. On the plain.
Mr. HARRISON: (As Professor Henry Higgins) (Singing) And where's that soggy plane?
Ms. ANDREWS: (As Eliza Doolittle) (Singing) In Spain. In Spain.
Mr. HARRISON: (As Professor Henry Higgins) (Singing) The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain. Ha, ha. The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain. In Hartford, Hereford, and Hampshire…
HANSEN: In 1956, when "My Fair Lady" opened at the Mark Hellinger's Theater in New York, Julie Andrews played Eliza.
(Soundbite of musical, "My Fair Lady")
Ms. ANDREWS: (As Eliza Doolittle) (Singing) How kind of you to let me come.
Mr. HARRISON: (As Professor Henry Higgins) (Singing) Now once again, where does it rain?
Ms. ANDREWS: (As Eliza Doolittle) (Singing) On the plain. On the plain.
Mr. HARRISON: (As Professor Henry Higgins) (Singing) And where's that blasted plain?
Ms. ANDREWS: (As Eliza Doolittle) (Singing) In Spain. In Spain.
Mr. HARRISON: (As Professor Henry Higgins) (Singing) The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain. Bravo.
HANSEN: Sally Ann Howes took over the lead role of Eliza in 1958, best known as Truly Scrumptious from the movie "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," Howes is a film and stage veteran.
Ms. SALLY ANN HOWES (Actress): In fact it's 50 years since I played Eliza. And I have many, many memories of Moss Hart, who has directed it. And he was a brilliant, brilliant director and a very important name in theater. And of course, it brought back my very close relationship with Alan and Fritz Loewe - Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe.
(Soundbite of musical, "My Fair Lady")
Ms. HOWES (Actress): (Mrs. Higgins) Remember, last night, you not only danced with the prince but you behave like a princess.
Unidentified Man (Actor): (As Professor Henry Higgins) Mother, (unintelligible) you.
Ms. HOWES: (Mrs. Higgins) How do you do?
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: Sally Ann Howes has now logged some 150 performances as Professor Higgins' mother on this tour. Today's matinee at the Kennedy Center is her last.
(Soundbite of musical, "My Fair Lady")
Ms. HOWES: (Mrs. Higgins) Professor Higgins, are you quite well?
Unidentified Man: (As Professor Henry Higgins) I'm all right.
Ms. HOWES: (Mrs. Higgins) Of course you are. You are never ill. Would care for some tea?
Unidentified Man: (As Professor Henry Higgins) Don't you try that game on me, I taught it to you. Now get up and come home and don't be a fool. You already caused enough trouble for one morning.
Ms. HOWES: (Mrs. Higgins) Oh, very nicely put indeed, Henry. No woman could resist such an invitation.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. HOWES: Oh, my father is comedian so I am totally hooked on getting as many laughs as I can. And I've really enjoyed, sort of, wheeling out all her witty bits.
HANSEN: Have you created a back story for this, Mrs. Higgins?
Ms. HOWES: Of course.
HANSEN: Oh, what is her story?
Ms. HOWES: Of course, yes. Well, she's got one truculent son, right? Rather spoiled. Professor Higgins. And she was poor gentry, I think, you know good education as much as you could get in those days, elegant family and all the rest of it. Married a man in the industry and was left a lot of money. He died. We got rid on him really rather quickly.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. HOWES: And then, really, basically, if she had been a generation or two before, she would have been a suffragette at this time, but of course she isn't. And therefore, she recognizes the freedom and the future in Eliza.
(Soundbite of movie, "My Fair Lady")
Ms. MARNI NIXON (Actress; Singing Voice of Audrey Hepburn): (As Eliza Doolittle) I could have danced all night. I could have danced all night. And still have begged for more. I could have spread my wings and done a thousand things I've never done before.
HANSEN: When the 1964 film version of "My Fair Lady" opened, audiences saw Audrey Hepburn and heard her speak Eliza's line but Marni Nixon sang the role — as she did for many Hollywood musicals. Now she's getting ready to play Mrs. Higgins when the show opens Tuesday in Chicago. But something is missing.
Ms. NIXON: She has no songs. She has no songs.
HANSEN: You were watching the performance during the matinee. When you watched the scene that you know you're going to be playing soon, what runs through your mind?
Ms. NIXON: My lines, the physicality. You can imagine yourself on stage but it's about the backstage, the beehive of places and little things that you have to walk around and be careful of and get to the right side of the stage so you can get there on time with this - this set is very complicated.
Ms. HOWES: I've just been taking her around, you know, the back and telling her where not to trip and watched out for this. No, we haven't discussed it at all. This - and there's no, we probably won't, you know.
HANSEN: Because it's going to be two separate characters.
Ms. HOWES: Well, she's got to make it her.
HANSEN: Sure. Sure. But…
Ms. HOWES: And, you know, we're very different. First of all, I'm about 4 feet taller than - Marni is absolutely tiny - tiny little thing.
Ms. NIXON: True enough.
Ms. HOWES: And I'm big.
HANSEN: Where do you go next?
Ms. HOWES: I should go back to retirement.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: While Sally Ann Howes can begin to relax Marni Nixon is a little anxious about putting on Mrs. Higgins' lavender gown and tiara.
Ms. NIXON: I'm at the stage at this moment being terrified of not enough rehearsal and, oh, my gosh, what if I forget a line or I did this and I stumble here or blah, blah, blah. But that always happens.
HANSEN: After all these years, that hasn't change?
Ms. NIXON: Always. It gets worse. I think when you're younger you just don't know what can happen.
HANSEN: You're at the beginning of a long road trip.
Ms. NIXON: Yes. And I've never been on a tour like this.
HANSEN: Never before.
Ms. NIXON: No.
HANSEN: Never?
Ms. NIXON: Never. Even in…
HANSEN: In all your years.
Ms. NIXON: …younger days I've never been out this long, not on a show like this for this length of time ever. It's kind of interesting. I feel like I'm going back to my beginnings or something.
(Soundbite of music)
HANSEN: Marni Nixon takes on the part of Mrs. Higgins when the British National Theater Company's touring production of "My Fair Lady" opens Tuesday in Chicago. She inherits the role from Sally Ann Howes, who gives her final performance at the Kennedy Center today.
You can hear more of our interview, including what Mrs. Higgins really thinks about entertaining a Cockney flower girl at Ascot at npr.org.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
A Southern triumph for Arizona Senator John McCain last night, and out West, wins for Senator Hillary Clinton and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Our political coverage begins today in South Carolina, where John McCain won a hard-fought contest, capturing 33 percent of the GOP vote. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee came in a close second with 30 percent.
NPR's Debbie Elliott has more from Columbia, South Carolina.
(Soundbite of crowd chanting)
Unidentified Group: Mac is back. Mac is back. Mac is back.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT: Mac is back. That was the chant at the Citadel in Charleston last night when McCain supporters finally heard he'd eked out a win over Mike Huckabee. A short time later, the candidate took the stage for a victory speech with a spring in his step and a grin from ear to ear.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): Thank you, South Carolina, for bringing us across the finish line first in the first-in-the-South primary.
(Soundbite of cheers)
Sen. McCAIN: You know, it took us awhile, but what's eight years among friends, huh?
(Soundbite of cheers)
ELLIOTT: No one in the state needs reminding about McCain's stinging defeat here in the 2000 race. He won this year with 100,000 fewer votes than he had back then, a feat possible because of this year's crowded GOP field and a 20 percent drop in the total vote for Republicans. McCain reminded his supporters that ever since 1980, the winner of the South Carolina Republican primary has gone on to the party's nomination.
The former prisoner of war campaigned as the man best prepared to handle national security, appealing to the state's large veteran population and it's sense of patriotism.
Sen. McCAIN: I'm running so that every person in this country, now and in generations to come, will know the same sublime honor that has been the treasure of my life - to be proud, to be an American.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
Unidentified Group: U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.
ELLIOTT: Mike Huckabee corded the religious conservatives, the same group that gave him his early win in Iowa. He carried them but not by enough to overcome McCain's advantage elsewhere. Still, Huckabee's address in Columbia last night sounded more like a post-game pep talk than a concession speech. We left it all on the field, he told his supporters, and got awful close.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor of Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): Unfortunately, in politics, close doesn't count for the first slot. But it does count. And the reason that I want to encourage you tonight is to remind you that politics - and particularly this year, more than perhaps any other - this is not an event. It is a process. And the process is far, far from over.
(Soundbite of cheers)
ELLIOTT: The process could be over soon for the other southerner in the race. Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson came in third with 16 percent, just ahead of Mitt Romney who spent his recent days and dollars in Nevada. Thompson builds himself as the true conservative in the race. And his message resonated with Columbia accountant Wanda Wildman(ph), who decided to vote for Thompson after hearing him talk at a small group event.
Ms. WANDA WILDMAN (Accountant): In my voting life, this has been one of the most interesting presidential races. And to have had as many opportunities provided to us to actually meet and talk to presidential candidates has just really been remarkable. It makes me have tremendous faith in the United States and our system.
ELLIOTT: Her husband, Matt McGuire(ph), was also impressed with Thompson but…
Mr. MATT McGUIRE (Wanda Wildman's Husband): As much as I like him, I voted for McCain because we have a son that's in the Navy and military. And being a commander in chief had a big thing for us. And I do believe that he's a very honorable man.
ELLIOTT: But Thompson did make a difference here. His vote in many rural inland counties caused Huckabee his chance to overcome McCain's advantage along the state's coast and in the cities. In the end, that edge proved decisive.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Columbia, South Carolina.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
There were three winners in the Nevada caucuses: Hillary Clinton for the Democrats, Mitt Romney for the Republicans and the state of Nevada. The first-ever January caucuses there resulted in a record turnout.
More from NPR's Ina Jaffe.
INA JAFFE: On the Democratic side, this was a tough, sometimes-nasty campaign. And while Hillary Clinton was jubilant in victory, the strain could be heard in her voice.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Democratic Presidential Candidate): I guess this is how the West was won.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
JAFFE: Clinton won the support of nearly 51 percent of Democratic caucus-goers. Barack Obama received just over 45 percent. John Edwards was a very distant third with less than 4 percent. As in all speeches of this type, Clinton thanked the supporters who worked so hard for her.
Sen. CLINTON: And I am particularly grateful to all of the members of the Culinary Union who stood with me today.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
JAFFE: The members of the powerful culinary workers merited special mention because their union had endorsed Barack Obama. That seemed to give him an advantage, especially because there were nine special caucus sites on the Las Vegas strip where the union's members work.
(Soundbite of crowd chanting)
Unidentified Group #1: Obama. Obama. Obama. Obama. Obama. Obama.
JAFFE: But at the caucus at the Wynn Hotel yesterday, there were slightly more Clinton backers than Obama supporters.
(Soundbite of crowd chanting)
Unidentified Group #2: Hillary. Hillary. Hillary. Hillary.
JAFFE: The Clinton and Obama supporters tried to shout each other down, mirroring the punch and counterpunch battle between the two campaigns here.
Cynthia Garcia, a Clinton supporter, said she'd witnessed some of her co-workers being deceived and intimidated by union organizers.
Ms. CYNTHIA GARCIA (Hillary Clinton Supporter): Yeah, they were telling them they had to vote for Obama. They are basically hoodwinking them, you know what I mean? They weren't letting them know that they had a choice. They were telling them that this is who you're going to vote for.
JAFFE: The Clinton campaign said they'd heard many such reports. And the Obama campaign returned fire. In a conference call with reporters, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said they'd uncovered a number of election irregularities.
Mr. DAVID PLOUFFE (Campaign Manager, Barack Obama Campaign): There's been a lot of reports of issues today - caucus sites being closed a half hour early, people not being able to register to vote because registration forms had run out. So we want to get to the bottom of that and we'll decide with what to do with that once we've a full review of that.
JAFFE: Obama himself released only a written statement on the outcome, saying, in part, we ran an honest, uplifting campaign in Nevada that focused on the real problems Americans are facing, a campaign that appeal to people's hopes instead of their fears.
And Obama may have done better in Nevada than the numbers suggest. Because of the peculiar math of the caucuses system, he could end up with one more delegate than Clinton.
On the Republican side, Mitt Romney won overwhelmingly. He had the support of 51 percent of Republican caucus-goers.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Republican Presidential Candidate): It's huge for us and we're very, very pleased.
JAFFE: In a distant second place was Ron Paul with just 14 percent. Romney's fortunes got a boost from Nevada's sizable Mormon population; they counted for about half of his support. But he said his Nevada victory was also due to the backing of evangelicals and Hispanics.
Mr. ROMNEY: And I expect that this campaign will cross ethnic and religious and gender lines and will generate the support that I need to win the nomination.
JAFFE: But the count that may be getting the most attention in Nevada is the head count of people who attended the caucuses. This is the first time that Nevada has been one of the early states with a real chance to influence the nominations. And people in both parties responded in force. Forty-three thousand Republicans caucused, more than party officials expected. And about 116,000 Democrats turned out - their old record was 9,000.
Ina Jaffe, NPR News, Las Vegas.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
The Democrats will now leave the West and head to South Carolina. In this race, the candidates aren't just trying to sell voters on their messages. They're also selling the Democratic Party as a whole. That's a tough job. The last Democratic presidential candidate who won in South Carolina was Jimmy Carter.
Matt Bai is the New York Times magazine's political writer. His article "South Poll" appears in today's issue.
Welcome.
Mr. MATT BAI (Political Writer, New York Times): Thanks, Liane.
HANSEN: Why have the Democrats had such a difficult time in the south?
Mr. BAI: Well, that is a question that has preoccupied much Democratic conversation over the last few decades. But probably, the greatest factor and the most commonly accepted was the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s -beginning with that, and Lyndon Johnson, when he signed the Voting Rights Act, was famously known to have said that he was signing away the next generation of Southern voters to the Republican Party. And in large part, the next couple of decades would gradually bear that out. Democrats, in the face of that estrangement, receded from the area and ceded it to Republicans altogether.
HANSEN: But you seemed to point out in your article that the Democrats are pretty optimistic that they might actually win the south this year. Why? What's bringing on the optimism this time around?
Mr. BAI: Well, I don't know that they're optimistic they can win the whole South. But I think they're optimistic they can compete everywhere and expand the electoral map in the last couple of elections. And what's changed is obviously the conditions in the country. There's just widespread discontentment with the war, and now the economy is turning into the major issue of the campaign, which is really bad for Republicans because Democrats always do better on that front.
And you have, you know, increasing numbers of independent voters. And independents are more than willing to shift sides if they think they need to. And so I do think that the rising number of independents is a very favorable condition for Democrats because a lot of people who've been considered Republican voters are very likely to entertain another option this year.
HANSEN: Hmm. What do you think has changed then - the party shifting toward the south or the south itself changing?
Mr. BAI: I think both. I don't think the Democrats have made any more concerted effort to go into the South. I do think the conditions around the politics in the South have changed. Politics in the country have certainly changed and that just the widespread alienation and discontentment with what this Republican government has wrought has opened new doors for the Democrats that they themselves have not frankly done much to open.
But then also, the South has changed. There's no question that the new South, as it's often called, is more open-minded. It's different. It's more progressive. And there are a lot of folks in the South who are very eager to get pass the legacy of segregation and the legacy of racism and the legacy of these divisive social battles.
HANSEN: Matt Bai is the New York Times magazine's political writer. His article "South Poll" appears in today's issue.
Thanks very much.
Mr. BAI: Any time. Thank you, Liane.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
If you listened closely this past week, you could hear the sound of cheering from parents and students at Yale University. The school announced it would slash the cost of attending for low-income students and, most notably, for many middle-income families.
Yale is the latest Ivy League school to make tuition more affordable. But as NPR's Larry Abramson reports, these dramatic cuts by elite schools probably won't have much of a ripple effect.
LARRY ABRAMSON: In December, it was Harvard announcing that families earning less than 60K a year will get a free ride. And other top schools have pledged to give students grants instead of loans. Now, Yale says parents earning as much as $200,000 a year will get some financial aid, and students should no longer have to borrow money to attend. Good news, no doubt, for parents contemplating the cost of an Ivy League education. But let's put this in perspective.
Mr. ROBERT SHIREMAN (Executive Director, Project on Student Debt): Schools that are offering these no-loan pledges represents less than 1 percent of the students who enter higher education as freshmen every year.
ABRAMSON: Robert Shireman of the Project on Student Debt says Yale is one of the few schools that can afford to take this step because it has a humungous endowment - a towering $22 billion. Only Harvard tops that.
David Warren of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities says when he looks down the list of his members, Harvard, Yale and a few other giants stand alone.
Mr. DAVID WARREN (President, National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities): After that, there are approximately 1,575 institutions that do not have endowments of any significant size. They're simply not competing for the same students.
ABRAMSON: Take for example Washington University in St. Louis. It has, by comparison, a measly $5.6 billion endowment. Officials at this well-regarded school say they don't plan any big announcements about boosting financial aid for middle class students. The university's Nanette Tarbuni says Washington evaluates each family's need individually because the bright line limit set by Harvard and Yale may not tell the whole story.
Ms. NANETTE TARBOUNI (Director of Admissions, Washington University): I mean, I think about living here in St. Louis and you might make $60,000 and live somewhat comfortably. But that same $60,000 isn't going to cover things in New York City.
ABRAMSON: Some analysts say private schools like Washington University will continue to compete on the basis of reputation, not on price. So what about public universities? Lots of kids considering Harvard may also be looking at Ohio State or Berkeley. Will the big publics have to ante up to compete?
Peter McPherson was president of Michigan State until 2004. And he says college is a seller's market.
Mr. PETER McPHERSON (President, National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges): Because there's so many exceptional students in this country. The average GPA during the time I was president of Michigan State went from about 3.2 to almost to 3.6. I mean, there's just lots of excellent students.
ABRAMSON: McPherson is now president of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. He says that while the Ivy League is boosting student aid, his members must deal first with cuts in state funding. Some tuition watchers are hoping that public schools do not rush to increase aid to the middle class because that could take money away from funds available for low-income students. They are the ones most likely not to go to school at all if the price climbs.
Sandy Baum teaches economics at Skidmore College in New York State.
Professor SANDY BAUM (Economics, Skidmore College): So if the other institutions could just acknowledge that students who get into Harvard or Yale are going to go and that they should focus on educating the rest of the world, then, I think, we'll be better off socially.
ABRAMSON: Baum and others say more aid from the big schools does show the power of growing concern over the cost of attending college. But they say the vast majority of students is more likely to get a break from other changes, like federal legislation passed last year which cuts the cost of student borrowing and raises aid for students who need it most.
Larry Abramson, NPR News, Washington.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Later today, four football teams will face off in the NFL playoffs. The winners will compete in the Super Bowl next month. One of the quarterbacks playing today has a special spot in the heart of a teenage girl.
Jill Singer, a freelance writer from Laguna Hills, California explains the connection.
Ms. JILL SINGER (Freelance Writer, Laguna Hills, California): My daughter, Jaclyn, is a Southern California girlie girl, which means she carries a Chanel lip gloss in her purse, an iPhone in her pocket and doesn't miss an episode of "America's Next Top Model."
Despite appearing a bit L.A.-ed out, her roots are far from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. She lived a decade in Wisconsin and is a certifiable cheese head - from her yearning for fried cheese curds to her passion for the Green Bay Packers.
Despite now living among the rich, famous and indulged, Jaclyn's hero isn't one of the starlets of her time. It's Packers quarterback Brett Favre. Her bedroom is a shrine to number four. While her friends pleaded for a new car for their sweet sixteen, Jaclyn only wanted a signed Favre jersey. Her game day ritual includes wearing the Jersey a full 24 hours. When I asked her if she is ever taunted for her choice of clothing, she answers sternly, what would it matter? We're talking Brett Favre.
Favre's drive to win against all odds is magical in Jaclyn's eyes. When she failed her driving test for the second time, she sobbed long and hard. I hired a driving instructor again to give her additional lessons but she still lacked confidence. Then, in a last ditch effort to get Jaclyn back in the driver seat, I told her Brett Favre would certainly find the courage to face the dreaded road test again.
Jaclyn agreed to return to the DMV for the third time. She got behind the wheel, the solemn-face examiner in the passenger seat. She looked out the window and mouthed Brett Favre - our secret signal for determination. She took off down the road. I hoped the thought of Favre would inspire her to emerge victorious. It did. When she finished the test, she jumped out of the car, her provisional license in hand, and did her own version of the Lambeau leap into my arms.
Last week, Jaclyn snagged a 50-yard-line seat at Lambeau Field and watched the Packers beat the Seattle Seahawks in a snowstorm. She witnessed her hero do what he does best - keep as cool, stay focused on the goal, inspire others to greatness and lead from his hands, heart and soul. Jaclyn came back to California, wearing a new Packers T-shirt. It said simply: Favre for president in '08.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. SINGER: I'd vote for that.
HANSEN: Jill Singer is a freelance writer who lives in Laguna Hills, California.
(Soundbite of music)
This is NPR News.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Actress Suzanne Pleshette has died. Pleshette enjoyed success on television, on the stage and the big screen. With her striking looks and distinctive robust voice, she landed roles in Hitchcock's "The Birds" and replaced Anne Bancroft in the Broadway production of "The Miracle Worker." But she is best known for her role as Bob Newhart's wife, Emily, on "The Bob Newhart Show."
(Soundbite of show, "The Bob Newhart Show")
Ms. SUZANNE PLESHETTE (Actress): (As Emily) You know, Bob, ever since you took that I.Q. test, you've been sitting acting petulant.
Mr. BOB NEWHART (Actor): (As himself) What do you mean by that?
Ms. PLESHETTE: (As Emily) Petulant means suddenly irritated by the trivial.
Mr. NEWHART: (As himself) Emily, I know what petulant means. You don't have to talk down on me just because I'm not as intelligent as you are.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. PLESHETTE: (As Emily) Bob, you are intelligent.
Mr. NEWHART: (As himself) Well, maybe I am, Emily, but ever since I found out what our I.Q.'s are, well, I figured it's affecting our marriage.
Ms. PLESHETTE: (As Emily) What do you mean by that?
Mr. NEWHART: (As himself) Marriage is a wedding between…
Ms. PLESHETTE: (As Emily) Oh, Bob, I know what marriage means.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. PLESHETTE: (As Emily) What's it got to do with us? We've got a perfect marriage.
Mr. NEWHART: (As himself) Emily, a perfect marriage is where the husband and the wife have the same I.Q.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. PLESHETTE: (As Emily) Bob, it is not important.
Mr. NEWHART: (As himself) Next to perfect is where the husbandz is higher than the wife.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. PLESHETTE: (As Emily) Bob, forget it.
Mr. NEWHART: (As himself) Third is where the wife is one point higher than the husband.
Ms. PLESHETTE: (As Emily) Please, Bob.
Mr. NEWHART: (As himself) And the fourth, which is us which is the worst, is where the wife is 151 and her husband is 129 which is a difference of ah…
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. PLESHETTE: (As Emily) Twenty-two.
HANSEN: In 2000, Suzanne Pleshette, married fellow cast member Tom Poston. He died in April 2007. Pleshette underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006. She died of respiratory failure. She was 70.
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
Big wins yesterday for presidential candidates John McCain in South Carolina and Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton in Nevada. In a moment, what's next for the candidates? First, here's how they reacted last night.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Democratic Presidential Candidate): We're going to be picking a president on February 5th and we have to pick someone that can be ready to lead on day one, as soon as you walk into that Oval Office and see that stack of problems that is waiting.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Republican Presidential Candidate): This is just a wonderful feeling. This has been an extraordinary day for me. We have an event that's already concluded in Nevada, a caucus there. It's a big presidential sweepstakes state, as you know, and we won that one handily today. I'm really pleased.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Republican Presidential Candidate): My friends, as pleased as we are about the results - and we have a reason to celebrate tonight - I know that I must keep foremost in my mind that I am not running for president to be somebody, but to do something.
(Soundbite of cheering)
LIANE HANSEN, host:
We turn now to NPR's David Greene in Charleston, South Carolina, as he looks ahead to where the race for the GOP nomination goes from here. It could be called Six Flags over Florida.
DAVID GREENE: Before John McCain came out to declare victory last night, 18-year-old Alex Ropson(ph) was in the crowd, finishing up a poster for the Arizona senator.
Mr. ALEX ROPSON: We made a sign that says New Hampshire, and he got a check mark there. We got South Carolina. And I think if we could put the check mark there, he'll get to White House, and that's the next check mark that we're going to have.
GREENE: You don't need any more check marks in between there?
Mr. RAPSON: South Carolina has a pretty good track record taking the next nominee for the president is really the next president of the United States.
GREENE: You've heard this before: Every winner of the South Carolina GOP primary since 1980 has gone on to the nomination. But even McCain last night said not so fast.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Republican Presidential Candidate): We have a ways to go, my friends, and there's some tough contests ahead. And starting tomorrow in the state of Florida, where we're going to win with your support…
(Soundbite of cheering)
GREENE: In South Carolina last night, runner-up Mike Huckabee said much the same.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Republican Presidential Candidate): Let me just say that tonight is not a time to start asking what if. It's a time to start talking about what now.
GREENE: What happens now is the GOP race moves onto Florida with as many as a half dozen candidates still standing. California Congressman Duncan Hunter dropped out yesterday and Fred Thompson seems in some trouble having relied on a good showing in South Carolina and having finished with 15 percent. Even if Thompson drops out, McCain, Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are still in the hunt, and even Ron Paul has been picking up enough votes to be a factor. It's all pretty hard to sort out.
Bill Greener is a Republican strategist, who says he was asked who would win the last primary in Michigan, and wrongly predicted it would be McCain.
Mr. BILL GREENER (Republican Strategist): And the guy who interviewed me said, you know, I'm not sure the system is going to run before the Michigan primary, but if Romney wins the Michigan primary, I'll make sure the thing gets edited to where you don't look so stupid.
GREENE: So here's Greener's current take: McCain and Huckabee now both have momentum that's there's to lose. As for lingering questions about McCain's fundraising, Greener says all McCain really need is enough cash to fly to the twenty-some states voting February 5th.
Mr. GREENER: There's not enough hours in the day or money in the universe to redefine yourself as a candidate in those states by February 5th. So as a consequence of that, it is almost entirely, if not exclusively, reliant upon personal persona.
GREENE: McCain's name and reputation are well-known, Greener said, so if he can land in many of the states and get on local news that would keep him more than competitive. But McCain has to start in Florida. The primary there on the 29th will set the table for Super Tuesday, and there are so many Sunshine State scenarios.
Florida could be Romney's first win in a competitive state he wasn't born at, or maybe Huckabee could find enough evangelicals to become the frontrunner, or it could be the restart button for Rudy Giuliani, the one-time frontrunner who has been invisible of late except if on Saturday you happened to be in the Florida Everglades.
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York; Republican Presidential Candidate): We know about these issues but you don't really understand them until you see them firsthand how important the everglades is to our ecology, how important it is to all of us not just in Florida.
GREENE: Giuliani's lonely days in Florida are over. The rest of the field is arriving there immediately. Mitt Romney landed in the Sunshine State last night, saying…
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Republican Presidential Candidate): I care very much about Florida.
GREENE: That's a message we'll be hearing a lot from every Republican candidate in coming days.
David Greene, NPR News, Charleston, South Carolina.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton wound up a long day yesterday in St. Louis, Missouri celebrating a win in caucuses held the same day in Nevada.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Democratic Presidential Candidate): What they did showed exactly how the West was won, and we were able to do that together earlier today. But now, we're back here in the Midwest where I'm from. And I'm so happy to see all of you.
HANSEN: In Nevada's caucuses, Clinton topped Barack Obama by about 6 percentage points. But because of the way Nevada awards delegates by districts, Obama could end up with one more Nevada delegate at the Democratic convention.
NPR's Scott Horsley explains.
SCOTT HORSLEY: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama came in the Nevada with one big win apiece. It was billed as a rubber match, and their supporters knew it.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Unidentified Group #1: Hillary, Hillary, Hillary…
Unidentified Group #2: Obama, Obama, Obama…
HORSLEY: At this special caucus on the Las Vegas Strip yesterday, casino workers run a friendly gauntlet of their co-workers, urging them to take sides. When these caucus-goers were counted, Clinton had emerged the winner.
Unidentified Woman: One eighty-one for Clinton and 156 Obama.
(Soundbite of cheering)
HORSLEY: That same pattern held statewide. Clinton later thanked her staff at the Planet Hollywood and looked ahead to the upcoming contests, next Saturday in South Carolina and in nearly two dozen states on February 5th.
Sen. CLINTON: We will build on what we achieved here today and continue to make it clear here in Nevada and across the West that the Democrats - we're the problem solvers.
HORSLEY: One problem for Clinton is that Obama may actually come out of Nevada with one more national delegate than she got. Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe explains.
Mr. DAVID PLOUFFE (Campaign Manager for Senator Barack Obama): Well, the reason for that is Barack Obama did well throughout the state of Nevada, in the northern part of the state and in the rural parts of the state, which I think speaks to his ability. Down the line in the primary process here, I also once again as a demonstration of how strong a general election candidate he would be.
HORSLEY: Nevada won't formerly assign its nominating delegates until April. Entrance poll suggests Obama drew 80 percent of the black vote in Nevada, which could be a good sign for his chances in South Carolina, while Clinton won support from about two-thirds of Latino voters who could play a big role on February 5th. John Edwards vows he'll fight on. USC political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe says the Democrats have entered a sustained period of competition.
Professor SHERRY BEBITCH JEFFE (Political Analyst, University Southern California School of Policy): Quite frankly, I'm loving every minute of it.
HORSLEY: The close contest has also energized voters, leading to a record turnout in Nevada and elsewhere. Jeffe says, suddenly, the process mean something to people.
Prof. JEFFE: A wide-open race means people are paying more attention because there is the possibility of getting something out of it.
HORSLEY: Both Clinton and Obama got something out of Nevada, and by tomorrow, they'll both be back on the campaign trail.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Las Vegas.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
The Iraq war is one of the most pressing issues the next president will have to deal with.
NPR senior analyst Daniel Schorr wonders whether the new administration will be bound by agreements made by the old one.
DANIEL SCHORR: It has become a staple of the presidential campaign for candidates to promise swift withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. The question arises whether the new president's hands can be tied by commitments made by the outgoing Bush administration.
The president has given no indication of how long he expects troops to stay in Iraq. But Defense Minister Abdul Qadir, on a recent visit here, told the New York Times that his country will not be able to take responsibility for its internal security until 2012, and will not be able to defend its borders until 2018.
American bases with a somewhat permanent look are going up all over Iraq. Negotiations may be starting soon for status of forces agreements, defining the rights and the responsibilities of American troops. Such agreements were signed with Germany and Japan after World War II. But these were occupation forces. These agreements typically make Americans immune from local law. And after recent incidents in which Iraqi civilians have been killed, there may be some resistance to releasing soldiers to be sent home for trial.
But an unresolved question is whether the president can make agreements not submitted through the Senate for ratification that commits future presidents. It seems clear that the Bush administration foresees an alliance with Iraq for many years to come. Whether that relationship is set down in a NATO-like agreement, which provides that an attack on one country will be considered as an attack on both - that raises some issues that have only begin to be faced.
The word from the Pentagon is that formal negotiations will start next month. And President Bush is reportedly eager to conclude binding agreements before he leaves office.
Down the road, one can foresee a debate on the constitutional issue of whether the outgoing president can make serious commitments of American power that future president will have to respect or maybe not?
This is Daniel Schorr.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
At this time of year, the sanctuary of the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Houston fills with the sound of elementary schools students. They gather here to compete in a speech contest inspired by the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Out of the mouths of 10-year-olds come eloquent words full of idealism and passionately delivered.
Houston Public Radio's Laurie Johnson reports on this year's MLK Oratory Project.
(Soundbite of choir singing)
LAURIE JOHNSON: The Antioch Missionary Baptist Church is one of the oldest African-American churches in Houston. It was founded in 1866 by former slaves. And today it's surrounded by office buildings and sky scrapers. As the Salvation Army Harbor Light Choir sings, the audience filed in to the dark worn pews. Ten students compete for first place, nine are girls.
The only boy, fifth-grader Christopher Borders, captured the audience's attention right away with his view of the future.
Mr. CHRISTOPHER BORDERS (Student; Contestant, MLK Oratory Project): I am Christopher D. Borders, the first American president to pass 5,000 yards and 60 touchdowns in an NFL season, to score 102 points in a single NBA game and to successfully perform a multi-organ transplant using a computerized robotic arm while commanding a mission in space.
(Soundbite of laughter)
JOHNSON: Christopher told the audience those achievements might sound far-fetched, but because of Dr. King, all of his dreams could become reality.
By the time Christopher and all of these children were born, Dr. King had been dead for three decades, but they still find comfort and inspiration from his legacy.
Kaylin Smith is next on stage. She competed last year and she's back to try for first place.
Ms. KAYLIN SMITH (Student; Contestant, MLK Oratory Project): I am opportunity, you are opportunity, we are all opportunity. And they say when opportunity knocks, well, I, Kaylin Smith, I am opportunity. And I'm not knocking, I'm coming on through. Welcome to the good life.
(Soundbite of cheers)
JOHNSON: Kaylin reminded the onlookers that because of Dr. King, she has the freedom to go to any school, eat in any restaurant and drink from any water fountain.
It looked like she would win this year's oratory until 10-year-old Perrie Jones stepped on stage.
Ms. PERRIE JONES (Student; Winner, MLK Oratory Project): Little Miss Jones is a bratty little girl, who lives in a world where she doesn't have to sit in the back because her skin is black, or doesn't have to sit down because she is the only girl with four brothers around. She is not afraid to soar or even to explore. She is bright and can fight for her rights. She is very brave, even though her forefathers were slaves. And because of Dr. King, she believes that she can do anything.
JOHNSON: Little Ms. Jones continued to wow the crowd so much so organizers awarded her first place and $1,000 savings bond for college. As she concluded her speech, she said: There's no stopping me now. With my eyes I see it, with my mind I believe and with my hands I will one day achieve it.
For NPR News, I'm Laurie Johnson in Houston.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Time now for your letters.
(Soundbite of Kermit the Frog singing)
KERMIT THE FROG (Jim Henson's Muppet): (Singing) It's not that easy being green.
HANSEN: We didn't hear from Kermit the Frog himself, but we did hear from exactly 62 of you about Anthony Brooks' piece last weekend on the Detroit Auto Show.
In his story, Brooks identified Elmo…
(Soundbite of Elmo laughing)
HANSEN: …as the character from saying, it's not saying easy being green. It was of course Kermit the Frog. And we heard from many listeners such as this one.
Ms. MARY REESE(ph) (Caller): My name is Mary Reese. I'm from Greenville, South Carolina. Anthony Brooks must not be the father of young children or even know any very well. In his report, he referred to the singer of "It's Not Easy Being Green" as Elmo. Mr. Brooks, please review your Muppets. Elmo is red. The wistful green singer is of course Kermit the frog.
HANSEN: So we called reporter Anthony Brooks.
Hey, Anthony, what happened?
ANTHONY BROOKS: Well, what can I say? I made a mistake. I owe Kermit the Frog, obviously, a huge apology and, you know, I'm in hot water with my 10-year-old daughter who heard the piece and even knew that I got it wrong and inexcusably confused Elmo with Kermit. What can I say?
But, Liane, in my defense, let me just say this. I take full responsibility. I certainly wouldn't want to blame my editor, Les Cook, or your producer, Devor Adelon(ph) or anyone on your capable staff or, indeed, any part of NPR's fine editorial structure, all of which missed this terrible, terrible mistake.
HANSEN: Well, Anthony, I'll just let you know they're taking a little time out in the corner of their offices now.
BROOKS: Well, good. I'm glad to hear it. And, of course, I'm, you know, going to be in exile for the next few days, studying my Muppets.
HANSEN: Good for you. Anthony, thanks a lot.
BROOKS: Thank you, Liane.
HANSEN: Our interview with Drew Wharton and Dr. Burney Le Boeuf about the return of the elephant seals to the coast of California brought back happy memories for Hillary Grist(ph) from Roseville, California.
I greatly enjoyed the piece by Liane Hansen and friends about the elephant seals. She persisted with questions as they took shape within the interview and the sounds of the seals came through loud and clear, she writes.
Being a California native, I have heard these wonderful creatures before and hearing them again I could see them in my mind's eye. I chuckled by the charm of the ending somewhere over the sea with their call singing with the music -class act.
Whether the subjects is frogs, seals, or Muppets or anything else you hear on our show write to us. Go to our Web site at npr.org and click on the Contact Us link.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen.
This week, NPR begins a series on Muslim women in Europe. Their status varies from country to country. But everywhere, women's empowerment is being seen as the key to the Muslim community's integration into European societies.
Our senior European correspondent Sylvia Poggioli traveled to Britain, France and Germany - three European countries with the largest number of Muslims. Sylvia is on the line to preview this week's stories.
And Sylvia, first of all, why are Muslim women becoming such important players?
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: In the heated debate on Islam in the West, Muslim women are often the flashpoint - their dress codes, their rights, their roles in society. But their voices are rarely heard. Now, there's a second and third generation of Muslim women in Europe who are better educated than their mothers and grandmothers, and they're beginning to tackle the obstacles women face.
For example, a patriarchal tradition sees women as the weak link. The men fear the family clan structure is jeopardized if women adopt Western lifestyles. In Berlin, women's rights activist Seyran Ates said this is why many Turkish German women are forced to live in isolation.
Ms. SEYRAN ATES (Women's Rights Activist): They are under control of their man or of their family. These are women who are physically living in Germany but psychologically living in the Nazar culture which is looking much more for gender apartheid.
POGGIOLI: Now, in the broader society, Europeans are questioning the notion of multiculturalism, which often leads to separate parallel societies. This does not mean separation automatically equals terrorism. But officials fear a growing divide and a lack of dialogue can only breed conflict. So they're beginning to focus on women in the belief they have the most to gain in becoming full-fledge members of mainstream society.
HANSEN: Sylvia, you visited women in mosques in London, Paris. And this one, in Berlin.
(Soundbite of chanting)
HANSEN: How important is the mosque in these women's personal lives?
POGGIOLI: It's very important, but in different ways in each society. Here in Berlin, women came to break the Ramadan fast. But it's more than a place for prayer. I met women who don't speak German although they've lived there for years. These women are very alienated from the broader society, so attending mosque is also a form of therapy. It's a place where they can be reassured in their identities.
In Paris and London, I saw better-educated and more self-confident Muslim women. Many are studying the Koran and entering the traditionally male bastion of religion. In France, for example, women students are the majority in Islamic studies institutes.
HANSEN: Sylvia, while you were reporting from London, you found women who actually seem to be turning their backs on British society.
POGGIOLI: Yes. As are many young men. And this worries authorities, especially in light of the London bombings. Polls show a very small percentage of British Muslims identify with British society. This is how Amna Durani, talk show host of the Islam Channel, put it to me.
Ms. AAMNA DURRANI (Host, Muslimah Dilemma, Islam Channel): My allegiance to the Muslim - what we'd say Ummah, the Muslim community - definitely has got a lot, a lot stronger as a result of the war on terror. It has made the sense of solidarity throughout the world, I think, a lot stronger, and definitely, for Muslim women here in Britain. Yeah, it's really made us think where do our loyalties lie.
POGGIOLI: I met British Muslims with a strong desire for separation and unwillingness to mingle with Western culture; and women wearing the face covering nikab, who have pressured their mothers and grandmothers to cover their head for the first time in their lives.
HANSEN: Talk a little bit about France. Because your report that France is Europe's most rigidly secular society. And of all the Muslims in Europe, those in France most closely identify with the country's secular values. That seems like a paradox.
POGGIOLI: It is. And keep in mind that during the riots in the immigrant suburbs last year and a couple of years ago, Muslim youth don't shout religious slogans but brandish their identity cards, demanding jobs and full representation. One important signal was President Sarkozy's appointment of three Muslim women to his cabinet. But activist Sihem Habchi told me there's still lots of discrimination and that there are no Muslim mayors and only one Muslim MP.
Ms. SIHEM HABCHI (President, Ni Putes Ni Soumises): We don't understand why they want to build this wall between us and the rest of the society. I can represent all the French, you know? I'm French since a long time, you know? And I can defend the values of progress also.
POGGIOLI: Nevertheless, many Muslim women spoke with pride that French secular society taught them to speak as individuals and not as part of a group. Muslim sociologist Dumnia Boussard(ph) told me they belong to the first Muslim generation that does not seek religious and social guidance from the Islamic homelands of their parents and grandparents.
HANSEN: NPR senior European correspondent Sylvia Poggioli. Her series about Muslim women in Europe begins tomorrow on MORNING EDITION.
Sylvia, thanks very much.
POGGIOLI: Thank you, Liane.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
If you want to know how European Muslims affect America, consider one thing. Some of the 9/11 hijackers made their plans in Germany. You could also consider that moderate European Muslims are no threat at all. So this week on MORNING EDITION, we're going to track some of the ways that Islam is changing in Europe.
We will focus on the lives of European Muslim women. Some want to join mainstream society and others withdraw from it. And we begin in Germany. That's where the overwhelming majority of Muslim women are of Turkish descent. They are guided by strict Turkish traditions, which is why so many Muslim women live in the West yet spend their lives in a different world.
NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports from Berlin.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: "Turkish for Beginners" is a popular TV sitcom. A German psychotherapist who is a single mother of two teenagers falls in love with a policeman of Turkish descent who also has a teenage son and daughter. They all move in together and form a patchwork family.
(Soundbite of show, "Turkish for Beginners")
Unidentified Woman (Actress): (As character) (Speaking German)
POGGIOLI: Here the veiled Turkish daughter tells her new blonde stepbrother she wants her own plates not tainted by his German pork. The sitcom - written by a Turkish German - pokes fun at the cross-cultural family, but also raises more serious issues in a multiethnic society over religion and relations between men and women.
One of the biggest problems is the wall of silence behind which tens of thousands of uneducated Muslim women live. Many of them first met their husbands on their wedding day, only to disappear into a world ruled by rural Turkish traditions - unnoticed by their German neighbors.
Ms. SEYRAN ATES: They live in big families and family structures where they can't go out.
POGGIOLI: Seyran Ates is a lawyer and women's rights activist. She says many Muslim women in Germany lead lives of isolation and often experience physical violence.
Ms. ATES: They are under control of their man or of their families. This is women who are physically living in Germany, but psychologically living in another culture, which is looking much more for gender apartheid.
POGGIOLI: Polls show that only a third of Muslims in Germany want to integrate. And German authorities worry about the rise in the number of uneducated, imported brides and grooms from Turkey through both arranged and forced marriages. The interior ministry says nearly half a million spouses have been imported since the 1980s. Tens of thousands continue to arrive every year.
These families, where children don't hear German spoken and where the values of rural Anatolia prevail, are increasingly seen by authorities as an obstacle to integration. With every new imported bride, the parallel society grows, and it's as if each generation is a first generation.
Alarmed by the growing divide, the Berlin city council has turned to people like Nailya Alieva, an Azerbaijani who speaks numerous languages. In her modest apartment, she counsels Muslim women with problems. Her official title is district mother.
Ms. NAILYA ALIEVA (District Mother): (Speaking German)
POGGIOLI: It's very difficult for women, Alieva says, to go out from their closed world into an alien German society where they have to put on a smiling face and act self-confident.
As we talk, Shisek, one of the women Alieva counsels, drops by.
SHISEK: (Speaking German)
POGGIOLI: Little by little her story emerges. Shisek grew up here and speaks German well, but she was dragged back into the world of rural Turkey, she says, when her parents forced her to marry a much older man from their home village. Once he arrived in Germany, he began having girlfriends and beating her. Shishek is adamant that her daughter will not follow in her footsteps.
SHISEK: (Through translation) I want her to finish whatever studies she wants. I will not allow her to drop out of school as I did, or to be married off the way I was.
POGGIOLI: Many Turkish women have similar experiences. In 2004, the German ministry for family affairs claimed 49 percent of Turkish women had experienced physical or sexual violence in their marriage. And in the last decade, there have been 49 known cases of honor killings, 16 in Berlin alone.
Some women - those daring enough to break the family code of silence - flee domestic violence and seek help in the few existing shelters.
Social worker Gockcen Demiragli, German-born of Turkish descent, says every month 300 to 400 women come for assistance to her center alone. But most, she says, remain hidden in their homes, fearful of an outside world they don't understand. For them, Demiragli says, Islamic preachers are filling the void.
Ms. GOCKCEN DEMIRAGLI (Social Worker): The Muslim institutions, they see this problem, that families are having problems, and they say if you get back to your roots and your religious beliefs, then everything will become better. And that's why we have this movement, that religious institutions are becoming bigger and stronger.
(Soundbite of man singing)
POGGIOLI: On Friday evening, veiled women gather in their section of the Bilal prayer hall. It also serves as therapy, a place where women can find their equals and be reassured in their identities. They barely speak German and like 40-year-old Zinna Abbas, they say they feel comfortable only in the mosque.
Ms. ZINNA ABBAS: (Through translation) In the streets, you know, especially elderly people, they call me a foreigner. They kind of look at me in a certain way, so I do notice that they don't like me because, you know, the way I look.
POGGIOLI: Muslim conservatives are closing ranks, fearful the patriarchal family might be undermined if their women yield to the seduction of Western society. Schools are increasingly granting Muslim parents' demands that their daughters not take part in sports, sex education and field trips.
Iranian-born Mina Ahadi heads the council of ex-Muslims - a group founded here in February that has since spread to other European countries. She has received death threats and is under police protection. She believes Germany has allowed the construction of too many big mosques.
Ms. MINA AHADI (Council of Ex-Muslim): (Through translation) We want to show to the people that people from Islamic countries don't have religion as their main identity. And what we want to achieve is that politics acknowledges that there is no alternative to human rights, to women rights, and this is what we are fighting for.
POGGIOLI: In March, a Frankfurt judge rejected a Muslim woman's request for a fast-track divorce. She said her husband beat her, but the judge ruled that the Koran sanctions such physical abuse. Ahadi says this is an example of German condescension.
Under the guise of religious tolerance, she says, German institutions turn a blind eye to women's rights violations. Her group's main goal is to fight against both political Islam and German policies that strike compromises with Islamic institutions at the expense of women's rights.
Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.
INSKEEP: Sylvia's reports continue tomorrow with the journey of a woman who broke away from her family and became a prominent women's rights lawyer in Berlin. You can read about Sylvia's experiences reporting on Muslims in Europe at npr.org.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
We'll report next on something that polar bears might like to see more often - snowflakes.
Ken Libbrecht is an astrophysicist and chair of the Physics Department at Caltech in Pasadena, California, and he studies snowflakes.
Dr. KEN LIBBRECHT (Chairman, Physics Department, Caltech; Astrophysicist): It's been said that snowflakes are like hieroglyphs from the sky. They sort of encode - in the shape of the crystal is encoded the conditions under which it grew.
INSKEEP: Libbrecht explores the physics of how snow crystals grow and form in the atmosphere.
Dr. LIBBRECHT: Everybody can kind of picture a snowflake in their head and yet very few people have thought about, you know, why they look like that — and very few scientists have really spent much time looking at that, either. And, in fact, we don't really understand the details of why they look like they do.
INSKEEP: Although we had plenty of time to wonder about it if you're in any part of the country that is having extremely cold whether today. Libbrecht photographed snow crystals as a hobby, and then he expanded with a Web site he called SnowCrystals.com. It became popular with, as he says, snowflake enthusiasts — science teachers and mathematicians who want to model snowflakes. Even the U.S. Postal Service, which turned one of his wintry images into a stamp.
Libbrecht travels to places like Vermont, Alaska, and Canada to understand how snowflakes get their shapes — for example, why they are symmetrical. And he breaks the science into fundamentals.
Dr. LIBBRECHT: A snow crystal forms up in the atmosphere, of course. It starts with, a small water droplet, which freezes into a very tiny piece of ice and then that grows and gets this hexagonal shape. Then, as it gets larger, these corners of the hexagon sprout branches and they can become very elaborate as it grows larger.
INSKEEP: If you want to know how he knows this, consider that he built his own microscope with a camera attached to take pictures. The whole thing fits in to a suitcase so he can take it along to any cold places.
The question he hears most often as he travels is whether, in fact, there are any two snowflakes that look alike.
Dr. LIBBRECHT: One thing you can do, as a physicist, is you can try to calculate how many ways there are to make a snowflake - and I've done that. And it's a very large number. The number of ways to make a complex snowflake is far greater than the total number of atoms in the universe. And with such large numbers, you can say fairly confidently that if you looked at all the snowflakes that grew on Earth, you would never see one that looked exactly the same.
INSKEEP: In other words, the answer is no. There are no two snowflakes that look alike. As with politicians no answer is straight, he says with scientists no answer is short.
To learn how to grow your own snow crystals and learn more about Ken Libbrecht's work just visit npr.org.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
All right, the federal government is expected to decide soon about whether to put the polar bear on the endangered species list. It would be the first species to be listed because of climate change.
NPR's Elizabeth Shogren reports that the nature of the threat gives polar bear lovers around the globe an opportunity to help save them.
ELIZABETH SHOGREN: For most people the only place they'll ever get to see a polar bear is in a zoo. At the Pittsburgh Zoo, you can walk through a glass tunnel in the middle of the bear's swimming pool. That's what Amy and Brian Wilding(ph) are doing with their toddler Tria(ph).
Ms. AMY WILDING: Tria, look at that. Look at them diving. That's just amazing.
SHOGREN: Koda, one of the twin polar bear brothers who live at the zoo swims right past them.
Ms. WILDING: He likes watching them swim. That's probably the most amazing thing is when they're right above, you think you're close to them, you put your hand up there and you're really - like how many feet away from a gigantic bear. But they don't look dangerous. They look like such a big, furry bear you can play with. It's wonderful.
SHOGREN: Koda and his brother Nuka are three years old and already weigh more than 600 pounds. As the brothers wrestle in the water above his head, keeper Mark McDonough says they're also powerful carnivores.
(Soundbite of noises)
SHOGREN: McDonough takes me behind the scenes to meet the third - even bigger polar bear, Marty. He's interested when a fluffy mic is pointed in his direction. When he gets close to the door leading to the exhibit, where the twins are, they sniff and bang up against the door.
Zoo's curator, Henry Kacprzyk, says the polar bears are a huge draw for visitors.
Mr. HENRY KACPRZYK (Curator, Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium): And while they're here, we're trying to educate people about the bears and what you can do to help these animals. A lot of people don't realize, you know, the Arctic is really in for some bad times.
SHOGREN: Scientists predict that two-thirds of the world's polar bears will disappear by the middle of the century. That's because the summertime sea ice is rapidly melting.
Dr. ROSA MEEHAN (Supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska) As the ice retreats and retreats extremely far north as it has in a past couple of years, the bears simply have less places to be.
SHOGREN: Rosa Meehan heads the marine mammal program for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska. She says many more bears are ending up on land but land isn't the best place for them. Their ideal habitat is floating slabs of ice, which teemed with fish and the bear's favorite meal - seals. Meehan says more time on land increases the chance for polar bears to encounter people. That can be deadly for both the people and the bears.
Dr. MEEHAN: Polar bears are curious. If there's a new smell, new activity, new noise — it might be something to eat — and so they'll just go over to investigate.
SHOGREN: So there's also a risk to polar bears from expanding oil production. Next month, the federal government plans to sell off-shore leases for 30 million acres of the Chukchi Sea, where about one-tenth of the world's polar bears live.
But Meehan says the biggest threat facing the polar bear is global warming. And unfortunately, she says, for the next few decades, no matter what people do to counteract climate change, the summer sea ice will continue to decline dramatically.
Dr. MEEHAN: Even if we all stop driving our cars today, we're not going to have a lot of change in the near term, but after that it will start to have changes.
SHOGREN: So she says, cutting energy use and recycling today will improve polar bears chances over the long term.
Dr. MEEHAN: We want to do everything we can to essentially help the polar bears through this next very difficult period so that polar bears persist, and that when things turn around as a result of society making changes, the polar bears will still be in the environment and be able to take advantage of, hopefully, a rebuilding of the sea ice and a rebuilding of the ice ecosystem.
SHOGREN: Back at the zoo, some visitors say they've already gotten the message.
Jim Gessler(ph) has been coming here to see the polar bears here since he was a kid. Concern about their fate has pushed him to do what he can about climate change.
Mr. JIM GESSLER: I'm turning off lights when I leave the room. I don't have a car anymore.
SHOGREN: What do you do for transportation?
Mr. GESSLER: Public transportation. Anything we can do.
SHOGREN: His 22-year-old daughter, Anne(ph), says she's given up meat.
Ms. ANNE GESSLER: How much energy it takes to produce a hamburger is really distressing.
SHOGREN: She says many people think you have to buy something expensive, like a hybrid car to help the environment.
Ms. GESSLER: But if you just make small changes in your lifestyle, that's a lot more beneficial.
SHOGREN: But polar bear biologists say it will take more than individual actions: saving the polar bears will require governments around the globe to make major efforts to cut greenhouse gas pollution.
Elizabeth Shogren, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
People were commemorating King's life long before there was a holiday. And for three decades now a photographer has been taking pictures of King's image on urban walls.
Camilo Jose Vergara has turned his cameras to murals depicting King in neighborhoods from Detroit to Los Angeles to Chicago to Newark, New Jersey. He has also spoken with people who painted those murals. They're on the walls of playgrounds and restaurants, even liquor stores.
And the images include one which Vergara photographed in the South Bronx, in one of New York's poorest areas in 1977.
You've got an orange background. You've got Martin Luther King. I'm not sure I'd know that if you didn't tell me that because it looks like it's been spattered with things, posters have been stuck over it, maybe it's been shot at. I don't know what's happened to that mural. It's just chipped all over the place.
Mr. CAMILO JOSE VERGARA (Photographer): I think the more important issue is how few of those there are. You know, it is that if you paint Martin Luther King, it stays. And that, I think, is a sign of respect, and that also, I think, is a sign that the people in the neighborhood feel that Martin Luther King and his effigy and his accomplishments, as they are often listed, represent them. You know, because it's obviously, you know, very seldom somebody gets paid to do those things. So they go there and put their thoughts on the wall. By looking at the pictures you get to see the diverse ways in which people in the neighborhoods that Martin Luther King most - was most concerned about looked at Marin Luther King and thought about him.
INSKEEP: I have come to one here. This - it's labeled seafood restaurant, South Normandie at 47th Street, Los Angeles, 1997. And what's remarkable about this is someone has drawn a portrait of Pancho Villa, the legendary Mexican bandit and rebel leader with his ammunition belts around him, and right next to him is Martin Luther King. I guess it's supposed to be Martin Luther King, although honestly it looks a little like Pancho Villa.
Mr. VERGARA: Well, you know, you gave Mexican sign painters a picture that was taken from a newspaper or from a calendar of Martin Luther King and says, go and put this on the wall. And often, what happens is that they had never before made a portrait of an African-American person. So they ended up making him looking Latino, and that's what it looks like.
But the particular story with that - with that seafood place was that the owner thought that by putting the two of them together, it would make African-Americans feel at home. You see the merging of two cultures, which I think is a very interesting thing. As you can see from the Latino portraits, their main purpose there often was to say, look, we're talking to you. We're not different from you. We want your business. We want to be friends with you.
INSKEEP: And here's one where there seems to be some kind of gate or grate that's been closed in front of Martin Luther King, like a store window grate. And it looks like he is in jail.
Mr. VERGARA: Yes, yes. Well, what usually happens is that the portrait - it's placed there. The image is placed there. And then, something else needs to be put in there. So, in that case, it was grates. In other cases, it's been a TV camera, you know, which in another one of the pictures, you know, he has - you can look at an ear of a giant head of Martin Luther King, and the ear has a close-circuit television camera pointed at the (unintelligible).
(Soundbite of laughter)
INSKEEP: I'm looking at this now - a no loitering sign.
Mr. VERGARA: That's right.
INSKEEP: A symbol of freedom, and not quite as much freedom perhaps as you thought. Or maybe too much freedom. I don't know.
Mr. VERGARA: Well, I mean, there is a certain ambiguity in all of this, you know?
INSKEEP: Did you ever meet a mural artist who painted Martin Luther King again and again, who, in effect, was as obsessed with painting Martin Luther King as you have been with exploring these murals?
Mr. VERGARA: Not really. Not really. I just - the kind of obsession - and what I find very interesting is let's say somebody who is homeless, and just all of a sudden gets a mission, and in an alley - as you can see one of the pictures there - paints Martin Luther King with the pyramids behind. So even though he's down and out, you know, even though he has no place to go, you know, he puts Martin Luther King there as something, you know, that is uplifting.
INSKEEP: Camilo Jose Vergara - it's great to talk with you again.
Mr. VERGARA: Well, it's a pleasure to talk to you, Steve,
INSKEEP: He's a noted urban photographer, and you can see some of his photographs of Martin Luther King murals for yourself simply by going to our Web site, npr.org.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
A researcher has been trying to nail down more specific facts behind a common piece of medical advice. The advice goes to expectant mothers. Doctors often tell them to limit caffeine during pregnancy. The question for researcher DeKoon Lee(ph) and a team of researchers funded by Kaiser Permanente in California was how much is too much? The researchers found that just one or two cups of coffee per day can increase the risk of miscarriage. And we have more this morning from NPR's Allison Aubrey.
ALLISON AUBREY: The study included about a thousand women from the San Francisco Bay region. And what's unique is that researchers had the women write down exactly how much coffee, tea and caffeinated sodas they were drinking, starting in the earliest weeks of their pregnancy.
Ms. TRACY FLANAGAN (Kaiser Permanente): They were recruited early in pregnancy from a pregnancy test.
AUBREY: Tracy Flanagan is director of Women's Health at Kaiser Permanente's Northern California region. She explains most of the women were in their late 20s to mid-30s, and at the end of the study researchers took their caffeine diaries and put them in one of three groups, those who drink no caffeine, those who consumed just a little, and those who drink moderate amounts, 200 milligrams or more per day. It turned out that those in the last group double their risk of miscarriage compared to women who drink no caffeine.
Ms. FLANAGAN: To me what's really interesting about the study is that so many causes of miscarriage are not alterable by lifestyle or by anything a woman can do. So cutting out caffeine can be a pretty easy thing to do for three or four months in the early part of pregnancy when miscarriage rate is the highest.
AUBREY: Flanagan says many studies have found a link between high caffeine intake and miscarriages. But this study evaluated the risk of just 200 milligrams or more of caffeine per day.
Looking at the findings, Flanagan says it can be tricky to translate them into easy advice for women. If you stick to the idea of limiting consumption to just one caffeinated drink a day, it does not take into account all the variation in caffeine concentration and serving sizes too.
Take, for instance, a standard cup of auto-drip coffee. An eight-ounce mug will have roughly 140 milligrams of caffeine. But how many people pay attention to how many ounces they're drinking?
Ms. FLANAGAN: Most people don't actually measure out a measuring cup of coffee. How it's brewed makes a difference.
AUBREY: As do the beans, and where you might buy your coffee. If your morning starts with a stop at Starbucks, one tall coffee has more than 200 milligrams. For women who want to taper down caffeine, green tea is one option. Green tea typically has just about 25 milligrams per cup. That's one-tenth of the tall coffee.
Regular tea has a little more and diet sodas are in the same ballpark. Drinking one of these a day is a way to stay below the 200 milligram threshold. The other option for pregnant women or those trying to become pregnant is just to go cold turkey. That's what 35-year-old Tammy Plotkin-Oren did despite her love of the morning ritual.
Ms. TAMMY PLOTKIN-OREN: I definitely miss it, you know, when we'd sit around with a group of friends and I was the only one who is pregnant and everyone's, you know, drinking a hot cup of coffee.
AUBREY: But she says switching to herbal tea was the obvious choice. She explains her first pregnancy did end in a miscarriage.
Ms. PLOTKIN-OREN: I remember asking a lot of questions about like, is it something that I did? How can I - what can I do differently so that it doesn't happen again?
AUBREY: She had already cut out alcohol and was not a smoker, so eliminating caffeine was the change she could make.
Ms. PLOTKIN-OREN: I think I'd really made the decision that I was going to do anything that I had control over. So it was very black and white to me. It was like, okay, no more caffeine, we're done.
AUBREY: Three healthy children later, she says clearly giving caffeine up wasn't much of a sacrifice.
Allison Aubrey, NPR News, Washington.
INSKEEP: You can find out how much caffeine is in certain drinks and food at npr.org.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
The 1950 classic "All About Eve" contains one of the most famous lines in movies.
(Soundbite of movie, "All About Eve")
Ms. BETTE DAVIS (Actress): (As Margo Channing) Fasten your seatbelts - it's going to be a bumpy night.
INSKEEP: That bumpy night is what Bette Davis is about to give her ever-so-helpful assistant Eve Harrington. Maybe she's too helpful.
Eve is the next subject of In Character, our series exploring famous fictional characters and what they say about our real lives.
NPR's special correspondent Susan Stamberg zooms in for a close-up of sweet, little Eve Harrington.
SUSAN STAMBERG: In an old porkpie hat and wrinkled raincoat, Eve looks outside the stage door, waiting for a glimpse of the famous Margo Channing.
(Soundbite of movie, "All About Eve")
Ms. CELESTE HOLM (Actress): (As Karen Richards) I'm going to take you to Margo.
Ms. ANNE BAXTER (Actress): (As Eve Harrington) Oh, no.
Ms. HOLM: (As Karen Richards) Oh, yes. She's got to meet you.
Ms. BAXTER: (As Eve Harrington) No. No, I'll be imposing on her. I'd be just another tongue-tied, gushing fan.
Ms. HOLM: (As Karen Richards) There isn't another like you, there couldn't be.
Ms. BAXTER: (As Eve Harrington) Maybe if I'd known - maybe some other time - looking like this.
Ms. HOLM: (As Karen Richards) Oh, you look just fine. By the way, what's your name?
Ms. BAXTER: (As Eve Harrington) Eve. Eve Harrington.
STAMBERG: Actress Anne Baxter is Eve, playing opposite her in this scene - Celeste Holm who once described Eve as having the manners of an ambassador and the morals of a pirate.
Critic Bosley Crowther went even further: Eve would make a black widow spider look like a ladybug. She is duplicitous, deceitful, two-faced. She wants everything Margo Channing has: her career, her lover, her place on the marquee. Eve Harrington will do anything to get what she wants.
Mr. SAM STAGGS (Author, "All About, All About Eve") And she damn well near succeeds.
STAMBERG: In his book "All About, All About Eve," Sam Staggs reports that the film was based on a story called "The Wisdom of Eve" published in Cosmopolitan in 1946.
Writer Mary Orr got $800 for her story and sold it to the movies for $5,000. In the magazine version, Eve Harrington is never punished. She spies on the star, steals a husband and gets away with it. But in the movie Eve gets stardom, awards, but it's clear her heart is hollow, her life empty, and she has her own Eve waiting in the wings.
Why the difference? Sam Staggs says Hollywood was censorship central in those days.
Mr. STAGGS: Not only were sex scenes censored and scenes of violence and this sort of thing, there was a censorship for morality. That is, people who did bad things had to be punished at the end of the picture.
STAMBERG: Sam Staggs sees "All About Eve" as an indictment. Writer-director Joseph Leo Mankiewicz implication that show business survives on bloodsuckers like Eve.
Actress Stockard Channing disagrees. A few years ago, she played Margo Channing in a benefit reading of the screenplay; Calista Flockhart was Eve. Stockard Channing says in any world, on or off the stage, a sinner like Eve would be punished for her treachery.
Ms. STOCKARD CHANNING (Actress): The hidden aspect, the fact that she would simper and hide things and leave some snakes on the grass, you know, I think it is the covering, the hiding.
(Soundbite of movie, "All About Eve")
Ms. DAVIS: (As Margo Channing) Why won't you sit down, Ms. Worthington?
Ms. BAXTER: (As Eve Harrington) Harrington.
Ms. DAVIS: (As Margo Channing) I'm sorry, Harrington. Won't you sit down?
Ms. BAXTER: (As Eve Harrington) Thank you. Would you (unintelligible)…
Ms. HOLM: (As Karen Richards) I was just telling Margo and Lloyd how often you've seen the play.
Ms. BAXTER: (As Eve Harrington) Yes, I've seen every performance.
Mr. HUGH MARLOWE (Actor): (As Lloyd Richards) Every performance. Well, then am I safe in assuming you like it?
Ms. BAXTER: (As Eve Harrington) I'd like anything Ms. Channing played in.
STAMBERG: Were you ever an Eve? Did you ever glom onto anybody, watched her like a hawk?
Ms. CHANNING: No, I never was and I always yearn for a mentor.
STAMBERG: Mentor is one thing; predator is another - that's Eve.
And in his 1998 play "Collected Stories," Donald Margulies creates an Eve-like character. Margulies is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and teaches drama at Yale.
Have you, as a man of theater, seen your share of real-life Eves?
Professor DONALD MARGULIES (Pulitzer Prize-winning Playwright; Drama, Yale University): Have I seen my share of real - I've seen glimmers of incredible ambition. Yes, I have seen that, a kind of veraciousness and a hunger for recognition.
STAMBERG: In Donald Margulies' play "Collected Stories," a venerated author mentors a young graduate student. Over the years, Lisa Morrison, the student, and Ruth Steiner, the writer, become close friends. Ruth pours her heart out to Lisa — who uses Ruth's most private experiences to create a highly-successful first novel.
On television, Ruth was played by Linda Lavin; Samantha Mathis was Lisa.
(Soundbite of TV drama, "Collected Stories")
Ms. SAMANTHA MATHIS (Actress): (As Lisa Morrison) You're not being fair. You're…
Ms. LINDA LAVIN (Actress): (As Ruth Steiner) Oh, look who's talking about fair.
Ms. MATHIS: (As Lisa Morrison) …contradicting everything you ever taught me about writing.
Ms. LAVIN: (As Ruth Steiner) The things you got me doing, saying, thinking.
Ms. MATHIS: (As Lisa Morrison) Not you. Miriam.
Ms. LAVIN: (As Ruth Steiner) Oh, please. You here being disingenuous or very naïve, of course, it's me. There is no fact. There is no fiction. As far as everybody is concerned, it's me, so it might as well be me. Everybody knew you were my protégé, for God's sake.
Ms. MATHIS: (As Lisa Morrison) So?
Ms. LAVIN: (As Ruth Steiner) So you're pandering to the public like some dirty camel rag.
Ms. MATHIS: (As Lisa Morrison) No.
Ms. LAVIN: (As Ruth Steiner) You know how that is, you read the book, your guessing, you're smacking your lips and you're guessing.
Ms. MATHIS: (As Lisa Morrison) So what's do worse…
Ms. LAVIN: (As Ruth Steiner) Get out of my life, damn it. You appropriated my life.
STAMBERG: The story of Ruth and Lisa, Margo and Eve, is the story of star and disciple, mentor and apprentice, even parent and child.
Age superseded, and yes, threatened, by youth. Wanting to be kind, to teach, to give, but not everything, not all of it. Such a complicated relationship -riddled with love, desire, fear and ego. And when the younger person - the Eve Harrington is an unbridled rhymes-with-witch but cloaks it in sugar, you end up with a classic bad girl.
Why do bad girls fascinate us so?
Prof. MARGULIES: Because bad girls and bad boys act out basest instincts that we try to suppress, that our superegos work overtime to suppress.
STAMBERG: In 16th-century Germany, Lucas Cranach did a painting of Adam and Eve it's at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. Adam faces forward, large apple leaf strategically placed, kind of scratching his head. Eve, on the other hand, thrusts out one hip, writhes her arms above her head toward the apples and looks right at us through slightly lowered lids — the picture of seduction. Eve, as in evil, Eve, the corrupting femme fatale.
No accident, then, that Miss Harrington, the ambitious heroine of that 1950 Best Picture, shares the Biblical first woman's first name.
I'm Susan Stamberg, NPR News.
INSKEEP: We'd like to know what great American characters inspire you or inspired the person who wants to replace you. You can nominate your favorites at our In Character blog. We may put your suggestion on the radio, just go to npr.org/incharacter.
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
At least four people can claim some advantage in the Republican presidential contest. John McCain won South Carolina's primary on Saturday. Mike Huckabee came in second. Mitt Romney won caucuses in Nevada over the weekend. All three of them have won somewhere. And the next state up for the Republicans is Florida, where Rudolph Giuliani has campaigned almost nonstop.
NPR's Don Gonyea joins us now on Orlando.
Don, good morning.
DON GONYEA: Good morning.
INSKEEP: So, okay - so you were covering the Giuliani campaign yesterday in a planned community known as Celebration, which is ironic, since Giuliani hasn't been able to celebrate anything yet.
GONYEA: Exactly. It's a Disney community. It's just outside of Orlando. And this is a state where Rudy Giuliani has banked everything. And - well, he had a bus tour, kind of across central Florida, an area that is rich in Republican votes for this Republican primary. So let's - let's let him talk about it himself for a moment. He appeared on ABC's "This Week" yesterday morning as he embarked upon this big campaign swing.
Mr. RUDOLPH GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York; Presidential Candidate): We're concentrating on Florida. We've been here for two weeks. We've been campaigning here not quite full time, but just about full time for two weeks. We decided some time back that this is the place where we should put our most emphasis, that it worked our strengths and weaknesses the best.
GONYEA: And he said he has been here just about full time; that's true. It's the only place he's really been campaigning close to full time. But now he no longer has the place to himself. The primary here is at the 29th, so everybody else is showing up. And I can tell you, he once held a pretty sizeable lead here. According to the most recent polls, it has shrunk to virtually nothing, John McCain being the one who's really moving up.
INSKEEP: When Giuliani says Florida works his strengths and weaknesses the best, what strengths and weaknesses does he mean?
GONYEA: As a candidate, you can see that he is very comfortable here. He is drawing enthusiastic crowds. I saw him in Celebration last night. It wasn't a huge venue. It wasn't a theater that holds thousands of people. It was a small atrium at a college. It looked like it held about 300 people, and that's about how many were there. He clearly has a celebrity appeal that most candidates would love to have. But he also - he has some negatives for Republicans.
And again, this is a Republican-only primary. The fact that he's been a supporter of abortion rights doesn't help. He spends a lot of time still talking about his record, responding to 9/11 being, from New York City. You know, he looks back at that day and really uses that to focus on his leadership abilities. But other than that day, being mayor of New York City, a big liberal northeastern city, isn't necessarily a plus.
But here is what he's banking on too. Florida is a southern state, yes, but a southern state with lots of retirees from places like New York and New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia area. A lot of them are northern Republicans, and Giuliani is counting on them really liking his brand of Republicanism and there being enough of them to carry the day for him.
INSKEEP: We should mention that Giuliani has now tried his hard as some of the other candidates for other early primaries and caucuses, as in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina; didn't do very well in any of them, which raises the question of how strong his opponents are after they have been winning those contests.
GONYEA: Yes, and there's also a big question. Can someone, Giuliani, who won just two percent of the vote in an important state like South Carolina, turn around and win in a very competitive field next time down in Florida?
But if you look at the others - McCain comes here very strong and he should have a natural base of appeal here as well. And because South Carolina has that perfect track record of picking the GOP nominee, he comes here with a real feather in his cap.
Mike Huckabee comes here really needing to revive his candidacy. I mean, he has been close, but he hasn't won one since Iowa. As you said, he got strong support from evangelicals in South Carolina, but not as strong as he'd gotten in Iowa, where he won. There is a good evangelical vote down here. He needs them to turn out in a really big, big way for him.
Mitt Romney, of course, does have the fact that he won Nevada over the weekend. So he'll be talking about that.
INSKEEP: And Romney has the money.
GONYEA: And Romney has plenty of money to compete here and to Super Tuesday beyond.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Don Gonyea in Orlando.
Dan, thanks very much.
GONYEA: A pleasure.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Now, Democrats will pay less attention to Florida. Their party is ignoring the state, saying it's scheduled its voting too early. For Democrats, the big focus instead is on South Carolina, which holds the other half of its primary - the Democratic half - this coming Saturday. More than half the voters on Saturday are likely to be African-American.
NPR's Audie Cornish reports.
AUDIE CORNISH: South Carolina Democrats, especially black voters, are growing more and more aware of how much attention the nation is paying to what they will have to say on Saturday.
Reverend CHARLES JACKSON (Zion Baptist Church): I never knew until this year how powerful South Carolina is. I never knew how strong and powerful African-Americans are in South Carolina.
(Soundbite of applause)
CORNISH: Paper fans flickered in the pews and palms waved in the air as the Reverend Charles Jackson preached from the pulpit of Columbia's Zion Baptist Church yesterday.
Jackson was a guest speaker at a local NAACP commemoration, and he gave voice to the excitement and anticipation here over the Democratic contest.
Rev. JACKSON: The hands that once picked cotton are now in a position to pick the next president of the United States.
(Soundbite of applause)
CORNISH: Like most stories about Democratic politics in the South, this one starts in a church. Barack Obama spoke at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the legendary church that once heard the sermons of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards will be back here at the Zion Baptist Church for another King celebration and march to the state Capitol building today. Right now, Obama is leading the race where Clinton once had the advantage here with black and white voters alike.
Last fall, a poll of black voters found that 40 percent did not believe whites would support an African-American presidential candidate. But Obama's strong performances in mostly white states like Iowa and New Hampshire have changed that.
Ms. QUEEN ESTHER DAVIS(ph): Six months ago, a lot of them would say oh no, we're not ready for a black president here. But a lot have come around and said, oh yeah, he's stronger than we thought he might be.
CORNISH: Church member Queen Esther Davis says that while her children and their friends have been big Obama supporters, her friends are just coming around. Shirley Levy(ph), a soprano in the church choir, says she sometimes feels the generational divide in the race.
Ms. SHIRLEY LEVY (Church member): I've been talking with several people. Of course I know the younger group, you know, who have been behind Obama. Because, you know, he brings new ideas, a new focus. And on the other hand, I think a lot of people are still indebted for some reason to, you know, Hillary also brings a lot to the table as well.
CORNISH: Supporters of Clinton includes civil rights heavyweights like Georgia congressmen John Lewis and Vernon Jordan and other surrogate African-American voices. One widely heard radio ad stars basketball great Magic Johnson.
(Soundbite of ad)
Mr. MAGIC JOHNSON (Former NBA Player): Whether it's winning championships or a president who can lead us back to greatness, I always want the most prepared and experienced person leading my team. That's why I'm asking you to join me in voting for Hillary Clinton.
CORNISH: Solita Jones(ph), who says she is not impressed with endorsements, is still weighing all three candidates. One thing she's certain of, however, is that she does not want to see a repeat of bickering that erupted between the Obama and Clinton campaigns over perceived racial slights.
Ms. SOLITA JONES: For me, I notice that especially in candidates, when it's election time and they really don't know what to say about race and they still say something anyway, just say the right thing and don't try to pacify us just because you're trying to get the black vote.
CORNISH: The Clinton and Obama camps may have called a truce over the issue of race. But the emotions over the controversies have yet to completely heal. The three Democrats get one more chance to reach out to a larger audience tonight in Myrtle Beach, where they will all participate in one more debate sponsored in part by the Congressional Black Caucus before the crucial primary takes place on Saturday.
Audie Cornish, NPR News, Columbia, South Carolina.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.
On this Martin Luther King Day, Jena, Louisiana is preparing for conflict. A white supremacist group is marking the holiday with a demonstration. The group will voice its opposition to the so-called Jena Six; those are the black teenagers arrested last year for the beating of a white schoolmate after a noose was hung at a local high school. The black teens were charged with attempted murder, charges that were reduced after 20,000 protesters arrived.
Now it's the white supremacists' turn to rally. Some civil rights groups plan a counter-demonstration, but civil rights leader Al Sharpton says he would rather not march.
Reverend AL SHARPTON (Civil Rights Activist): Those of us that respect Dr. King wouldn't go see the circus on his day. We'd be celebrating him on his day. Nor would we scar, in my opinion, the biggest example of what King preached, and that was a huge nonviolent march that happened in Jena on September 20th. So why would we scar that for some old relics of the Klan?
INSKEEP: Al Sharpton speaking to KALB-TV in Louisiana. He may not march, but Sharpton was in Jena yesterday.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Let's go next to one of many cities where people are remembering Martin Luther King Jr. on this holiday weekend.
Carla Eckels reports from our member station KMWU in Wichita, Kansas.
(Soundbite of singing)
CARLA ECKELS: With temperatures ranging in the mid 20s Sunday, nearly 400 people braved the cold to be part of this celebration. It included a 100-member youth choir, an instrumental ensemble, and lots of interpretative dancers. Between musical selections, Martin Luther King's speeches were recited.
Here, 17-year-old Jonathan Van(ph) quotes his most famous.
Mr. JONATHAN VAN: I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down at the table of brotherhood.
ECKELS: Pastor Lincoln Montgomery told the audience that the words have as much meaning today as in 1963.
Reverend LINCOLN MONTGOMERY: The words of that speech still stir us, don't they? We ought to say amen again. Consider the fact that that was just 45 years ago, so you get some sense of how far we have come, and I simply would remind you this afternoon that although we have come a great distance, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. So let us remember that while we have come a long way, we still got a long way yet to go.
ECKELS: Nineteen-year-old Zachary Dehar(ph) went to the stage to deliver the "Rediscovering Lost Values" speech that Dr. King first gave in 1954.
Mr. ZACHARY DEHAR: But I'm here to say to you that some things are right and some things are wrong, eternally so, absolutely so. It's wrong to hate. It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. It is wrong in America. It is wrong in Germany. It is wrong in Russia. It is wrong in China. It was wrong in 2000 B.C. and it is wrong in 1954 A.D.
ECKELS: Many in attendance say they're glad to be here to celebrate the legacy of a great man. Mayor Carl Brewer is the first elected black mayor of Wichita.
Mr. CARL BREWER: Let's just not celebrate today. Let's live the life that Martin Luther King would have wanted us to live and let's continue to work on the struggles that were presented before us.
For NPR News, I'm Carla Eckels in Wichita.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
NPR's business news starts with a new video service online.
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: HBO and Time Warner tomorrow launch a service that will allow subscribers to download movies and television shows over the Internet. It's called HBO on Broadband.
A spokesman says the trial will be offered first in Green Bay and Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a free add-on to HBO and HBO on Demand - an opportunity for folks there to gets through the long winter after the disappointment of last night's game. The company hopes the service will retain subscribers who want to watch more content online, or who like the flexibility of watching a movie whenever they want.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Now, on Mondays we talk about technology. And today, we focus on photographs. The Library of Congress has put thousands of old photographs on the popular photo-sharing site, Flickr.
Cyrus Farivar reports.
CYRUS FARIVAR: The over 3,000 photos that the Library of Congress added to Flickr mainly come from two collections: news photographs from the 1910s and government-sponsored photographs of the country from the 1930s and '40s.
On Flickr, all photographs can be tagged. That means anyone can label a photograph.
Helena Zinkham, with the library's prints and photographs division, says the research is more time-consuming for her librarians. For example, one particular image of an early 20th-century baseball player.
Ms. HELENA ZINKHAM (Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress): Well, it took about several hours to go through the newspapers, to confirm the facts, to check everything else. And that was just for one photo. Well, we have thousands.
FARIVAR: Many blogs have been abuzz with activity, digging through these photos to find new favorites. Flickr itself has been surprised by the level of interest, says Flickr's George Oates. She says that having these photos that mingle with everyday snapshots brings an institution like the Library of Congress off of its perceived pedestal.
Ms. GEORGE OATES (Web Designer, Flickr.com): Having content from the Library of Congress just nestled amongst other photos from anyone else around the world just creates a level playing field, you know? It sort of breaks down that idea that museums are something special and authoritative and, you know, important, you know?
FARIVAR: The library is hoping that by adding photos to a popular photo-sharing Web site, that will make history more accessible to the public.
FOR NPR News, I'm Cyrus Farivar.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Now, let's continue our business news by reporting on the business of crime. Criminals are getting more creative and bold when it comes to trying to separate you from your money. One of the newest e-mail scams takes it a step further.
Susan Mittleman reports from member station WABE in Atlanta.
SUSAN MITTLEMAN: Just when you thought you've managed to identify bogus emails, this pops in.
Ms. KATIE STEVENS(ph): I have paid some ransom in advance to terminate you with some reasons listed to me by my employer. It's someone I believe you call a friend. I have followed you closely for a while now and have seen that you are not innocent of the accusations he's leveled against you.
MITTLEMAN: This is what Katie Stevens found: an e-mail from a so-called hitman who said he had change of heart, and if she paid him $8,000, he would betray his employer and not kill her.
Ms. STEVENS: I was scared to death. I mean, I wanted to believe that it's just a hoax. Don't put too much faith in it. But at the same token, when somebody tells you that they have been hired to terminate you, I was scared out of my mind.
MITTLEMAN: Stevens lives in a quiet rural neighborhood in Newton County, Georgia, near Atlanta with her three young children and her husband, who happens to be a police officer. She's pretty savvy about e-mail scams, deleting those overseas lottery winnings and other e-mails asking for money. But this one was different.
Ms. STEVENS: Because it has specific instructions of what I was supposed to do and not to get the police involved, not to put surveillance cameras up. I mean, there was specific instructions, and it wasn't Western Union me or send me cash. It was I'm going to meet you, and you're going to hand it to me.
MITTLEMAN: She was told not to leave her house after 7:30 at night, with threats to her family if she ignored the warnings. The letter stated that upon first payment, she'd receive an incriminating video tape of the person behind all this. Her husband immediately contacted Sheriff Lieutenant Bill Watterson.
Sheriff Lieutenant BILL WATTERSON (Newton County, Georgia): When I initially received this e-mail, we had no knowledge that this was a fraud or a scam. So I approached it with it being a serious threat against her life.
MITTLEMAN: He subpoenaed her e-mail records, and then things started to unravel. First, he says, they asked for $8,000 for a copy of the tape. And then they start lowering the ransom.
Sheriff Lt. WATTERSON: Eventually, they're going to get to a stage where they have her send the money to an address, never meeting them, you know, sending maybe the amount of $2,000 for the tape. And a lot of people would do that, no questions asked.
MITTLEMAN: Authorities traced the e-mail back to AT&T, who's fraud representative said that several servers were highjacked - so to speak - by scammers in Nigeria, India and Estonia.
AT&T's Dawn Benton says they're still investigating.
Ms. DAWN BENTON (AT&T): This is just another attempt for scammers to get personal information and to obtain funds from consumers.
MITTLEMAN: Katie Stevens still felt threatened, despite being married to a cop. She worries that vulnerable people are most at risk.
Ms. STEVENS: It could be an elderly woman who has no family left anymore and gets this email, and it's scary. You know, I know how scared I was. I can't imagine being alone trying to handle something like this.
MITTLEMAN: Authorities are concerned that scammers keep coming up with new intimidation tactics like this to take advantage of unsuspecting victims.
For NPR News, I'm Susan Mittleman in Atlanta.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Okay, so that's technology's dark side. Today's last word in business is putting technology to better use. It's video games and surgery. A study shows that trainee surgeons who played Nintendo's Wii before going into surgery performed better in simulated surgery.
Researchers at the Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona, asked eight student surgeons to warm up on the Wii. They played games that require precise hand movements like "Marble Mania," which involves guiding a virtual marble around a 3-D maze. The Wii players did almost 50 percent better than other students when it came time for the virtual scalpel.
The researchers are now designing Wii software especially for surgical training. One says the $250 is so much cheaper than current devices for training that the Wii can be used by medical schools in poorer countries that cannot afford pricey, high-tech training devices.
And that's the business news on MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
I'm Steve Inskeep.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
On a holiday Monday, it's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
Two more states had their say in the presidential election over the weekend, and there still is no clear frontrunner in either party. Now, it's on to South Carolina for Democrats and Florida for Republicans.
And we're joined now by NPR news analyst Cokie Roberts.
Cokie, good morning.
COKIE ROBERTS: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: And let's start with the Florida primary for Republicans, which is coming right up. This is the first contest in which former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani admits that he is campaigning full time.
ROBERTS: Well, and, you know, that strategy looked pretty ridiculous for a while there. It's one that various candidates have tried over the years and failed. But he is looking pretty smart today because there's still no Republican frontrunner, and they're all - McCain and Huckabee and Romney are all in Florida today where Rudy Giuliani is waiting for them. And he's tanned, rested, and ready while they have been slogging around the country. So, we will see. It is going to be very interesting to see how that strategy have just waiting it out in Florida will play.
INSKEEP: Oh, and somebody like McCain say had won all the contests up to now…
ROBERTS: Sure.
INSKEEP: …and was a dominant force, Giuliani would be in trouble.
ROBERTS: Gone. Gone. He would be completely gone. And even as it is, it's hard to raise money and all that under these circumstances. But he has staked it all in Florida, and we'll see. Right now, the polls are showing all of the four top candidates just bunched together in Florida polls. It is a closed primary -meaning only Republicans can vote. And that does make it harder for John McCain, whose wins had been because he has gotten independents crossing over or signing up for him. And we will see how he does in Florida. Giuliani keeps saying it's a very mixed state; it's much more representative of the country than the states that have gone before. And to some degree, that's true. It's not as true in the Republican Party as it is in the state as a whole.
INSKEEP: Now, did we learn anything significant about Democrats over the weekend? Hillary Clinton won in Nevada, but what else do you learn?
ROBERTS: Well, and John Edwards went nowhere in Nevada - a union state - and he had expected some union support. He got four percent. But he says he's hanging in at least through February 5th. What we also learned is that Hillary Clinton did very well among women, which she has been doing with the exception of Iowa. And for the first time, Hispanics weighed in in a Democratic contest, and they went two to one for Hillary Clinton. So that is something significant. Now, Barack Obama did very well with black people. He got 83 percent of the vote - and young people. That's good news in one way. It's been - is another, it's good news going into South Carolina, which has, about half of the Democratic electorate tends to be African-American, and all of the top Democratic candidates planned to march today on the capital, in South Carolina, which continues to fly a Confederate flag on its grounds, and that has become a source of great upset.
But, you know, Steve, I think this is a really interesting question to consider: If Barack Obama is doing so well in the black vote and he goes into South Carolina and does very well in the black vote there, does it have any possibility of marginalizing him? After all, Jesse Jackson won the South Carolina primary and a bunch of other Southern primaries. And, you know, if he becomes the candidate of the blacks, does that become a problem for Barack Obama?
INSKEEP: Well, let's talk about something that Barack Obama has been saying about his opponent Hillary Clinton and Hillary Clinton's spouse. He said on this program a couple of weeks ago, the Clinton was mischaracterizing Obama's record. He went on to tell ABC over the weekend that he felt that Bill Clinton was supporting his wife in a way that was troubling.
ROBERTS: Yes, he says he - I'm quoting here, "he continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts; whether it's about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas. This has become a habit. And one of the things we're going to have to do is directly confront Bill Clinton." That's what Senator Obama said.
Bill Clinton remains very popular in the African-American community, so Obama needs to take that on. But he also is popular with base Democratic voters of all stripes. And he's saying things that, I think, are probably upsetting the Clinton campaign as much as the Obama campaign. But Obama can actually take him on and Senator Clinton has to say, thank you, Bill.
INSKEEP: Okay. Well, thank you, Cokie.
(Soundbite of laughter)
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Cokie Roberts who joins us every Monday morning.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Now, with the South Carolina Democratic vote consisting most likely more than half African-Americans, the presidential candidates have not been silent on this holiday weekend.
Yesterday, Barack Obama spoke in Atlanta at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached. Obama was endorsed over the weekend by President Bush's spiritual adviser. In Harlem, Hillary Clinton was endorsed by an influential black clergyman.
And we have the details from NPR's Kathy Lohr in Atlanta.
KATHY LOHR: Being asked to speak at Ebenezer Baptist Church is a significant event and is seen by some as an endorsement of Obama. Pastor of Ebenezer, Reverend Raphael Warnock, said it was a special Sunday, one to remember Dr. King 40 years after his death and the time to claim the promise.
Reverend RAPHAEL WARNOCK (Ebenezer Baptist Church): We have to fight, bleed and die just to be able to vote. Now we can select presidents, and now with credibility, and intelligence, and power we can run for president.
(Soundbite of applause)
LOHR: Rev. Warnock called this year's election a serious matter and noted that Obama, a black presidential candidate, was there because of Dr. King's dream. Obama quoted the late civil rights leader saying unity is the great need of the hour and the only way to overcome what he calls this country's moral deficit.
He said Dr. King understood if he could unite people to take a stand, things would change.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): And if enough Americans were awakened to injustice. If they joined together, North and South, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, then perhaps that wall would come tumbling down, and justice would flow like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. Unity is the great need of the hour - that's what Dr. King said - and is the great need of this hour as well.
LOHR: Obama talked about the divisiveness in America and alluded to his battle with Hillary Clinton over her comment that it took President Lyndon Johnson to realize King's dream of racial equality. The Democratic presidential candidates said none of our hands are clean, that the divisions destruct us from our common challenges - war, poverty and injustice.
Sen. OBAMA: We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing each other down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.
LOHR: Obama picked up an important endorsement over the weekend, that of Houston Minister Reverend Kirbyjon Caldwell. Rev. Caldwell, a spiritual adviser to President Bush, says he's backing Obama because of his character, confidence and courage.
Meanwhile, Senator Hillary Clinton was campaigning in Harlem. The New York senator said she traveled to hear Dr. King speak in 1963 and called it a transforming experience. Yesterday, Clinton was endorsed by an influential African-American minister, Reverend Calvin Butts, outside the Abyssinian Baptist Church.
Reverend CALVIN BUTTS (Abyssinian Baptist Church): As a nation we cannot afford four more years of uninspired and uninspiring leadership. In our quest for change, it's time that we return to the fundamentals: experience, ability, respect, and character. It is really time for Senator Hillary Clinton.
LOHR: Commenting on why a black man was endorsing a white woman instead of Obama, Rev. Butts said it is not and will not become a race-based decision for him. He said a vote for Clinton is a not vote against Obama or any community. But both candidates are vying for the African-American vote as the primaries head south to South Carolina this weekend and to Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas on February 5th.
Kathy Lohr, NPR News, Atlanta.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
The undefeated New England Patriots will face the New York Giants in this year's Super Bowl. Both teams come to the championship at their freezing playoff games yesterday. In New England, the Patriots beat the San Diego Chargers 21 to 12. The Giants went into overtime in Green Bay to beat the Packers 23 to 20 in temperatures that were below zero.
We're joined now by Bill Curry, an ESPN football analyst and regular guest in this program.
Good morning, Bill.
Mr. BILL CURRY (Football Analyst, ESPN): Good morning, Steve. How are you?
INSKEEP: I'm doing great. So I was watching the kicker Lawrence Tynes who had a chance to go ahead and miss, had a chance to win the game at the end and missed, and then made the kick in overtime. But I understand, you were watching somebody else during that season?
Mr. CURRY: Yeah. There was a fascinating story. Zak DeOssie, the rookie long-snapper. Imagine, you're a rookie from the Ivy League, Brown University, and you've a made a poor snap on the previous attempt, and you got to run out there and be defined for the rest of your life on how well you do. And the young man pulled it off.
INSKEEP: And is that a pretty tough position to be in?
Mr. CURRY: Well, in 1965, I was in the same position, except that I was the Green Bay Packers' rookie, offensive center. And - on the same field, a little muddier, not quite as cold - and had to do the same kind of thing. So, yes, it's incredibly demanding. And he'll always remember getting that ball back there well.
INSKEEP: You know, there's a moment that you saw on television that hints of the pressure on Lawrence Tynes, the kicker. He missed that first kick in the fourth quarter, and you see him going to the sideline and he's facing his coach Tom Coughlin. And Coughlin's face is all red, the guy's obviously frozen. I mean, he's just screaming at him. It sounds - it looked like he was just screaming, come on, come on, at this guy who just missed a kick.
Mr. CURRY: No. Actually what Tom was saying is, nice try, son.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. CURRY: Coaches are notorious. And Tom is a very intense guy. But here's what matters. Lawrence Tynes, I looked up his record. He was eight for eight beyond 40 yards this year on the season. So kickers like that do have confidence. And he knew if he got the snap and the hold properly, he would get it through. And I sat there with my wife and I said, he's going to make this one. And it was longer than the previous one. So everybody in concern did a great job.
INSKEEP: Now, let's talk about the New England Patriots who have won yet another game even though their quarterback Tom Brady was intercepted three times.
Mr. CURRY: Tom Brady showed us all that he was human, so the Patriots said, ho-hum, we'll do it another way. They lined up with two and three tight ends, ran the ball for 221 yards, 6.3 yards per carry and just rammed it down the throat of the opponents and kept it 21 minutes and 38 seconds of the second half, that's just unbelievable. That's what great teams do.
INSKEEP: Essentially saying passing game isn't working, we'll just win it the other way.
Mr. CURRY: Yeah. We'll beat you anyway you want to play. It's just - it really is amazing.
INSKEEP: So what do you think of this match up between a team that has won 18 in a row, they're 18 and 0 - the Patriots - and the Giants who have won 10 games in a row on the road.
Mr. CURRY: Well, the one question is, are they playing at the Giants home field?
(Soundbite of laughter)
INSKEEP: (unintelligible).
Mr. CURRY: If they're playing at the Giants' home, then the Patriots have a chance. Otherwise, these guys have won 10 in a row on the road, nobody's ever done that, so I think it's going to be a fascinating match-up.
INSKEEP: Are you saying you think the Giants have a shot to knock off the Patriots here at the end of their otherwise perfect season?
Mr. CURRY: I think they have a marvelous shot. They almost did it in the last league game. The score of that game was 38 to 35. Eli Manning has zero turnovers since the start of these playoffs. He has been absolutely stunning in his comeback using Plaxico Burress and all his weapons without a single mistake throughout the playoffs to turn the ball over. That's just unheard of.
INSKEEP: And it's referring to Eli Manning, the Giants quarterback.
Bill Curry, thanks very much.
Mr. CURRY: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: He's an ESPN football analyst and former professional football player. And he's talking with us on this morning that we now know the Super Bowl will pit the Patriots against the New York Giants.
You are listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
Many stores are closed in Gaza today after the only power plant in Gaza was forced to shut down. This plant does not have enough fuel to run because Israel blocked fuel supplies into the Gaza Strip to protest rocket fire that was going into Israel.
Now Hamas officials, who are in charge in Gaza, say at least five hospital patients have died, but Israeli officials say Hamas is exaggerating this crisis for political gain.
And we have more this morning from NPR's Linda Gradstein.
LINDA GRADSTEIN: Hamas officials say at least 800,000 Palestinians in Gaza spent a cold, dark night after the power plant shut down. Hospitals have suspended most operations, and medical officials warned dozens of critically-ill patients could be at risk. Residents are stockpiling food and witnesses said fistfights broke out at the few gas pumps still open. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who've lost control of Gaza to Hamas last summer, has called for international intervention to force Israel to end the blockade.
The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, John Ging, said the situation is growing desperate.
Mr. JOHN GING (Director, United Nations Relief and Works Agency): The hospitals are operating on generator power. What it means is that the vital and medical equipment is functioning, but there's no power for heating. So it's very, very cold in all of the hospitals.
GRADSTEIN: But Israeli officials say Hamas is exaggerating the crisis. They say that Israel directly provides 60 percent of Gaza's electricity and they haven't cut any of it. A spokesman for Israel's defense ministry insisted that not only does the power station have enough fuel reserves to continue functioning, but that Hamas chose to shut it down to get international sympathy. The current crisis escalated when Israel shut down the borders with Gaza on Thursday. That happened after more than 200 rockets and mortars hit Israel from Gaza, wounding several Israelis and damaging homes. Israel also launched a large-scale operation against Palestinian gunmen who fired the rockets. At least 25 Palestinians have been killed in the past week, most of them gunmen.
Linda Gradstein, NPR News, Jerusalem.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Let's go next to Pakistan, where the military yesterday launched strikes against a pro-Taliban stronghold. These strikes came in a tribal region close to the border with Afghanistan, and the target is the man the Pakistan government says masterminded last month's assassination of the former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. That's what the government says. The authorities also say they've made the first significant arrests connected to Bhutto's assassination.
NPR's Jackie Northam is covering this story from Islamabad. And what can you tell us about the arrests?
JACKIE NORTHAM: Well, Pakistani authorities say one of those arrested is a 15-year-old boy, and the police say he confessed to being part of the plot to kill Bhutto on December 27th, and that his role was as a backup. So if the first shooter or suicide bomber failed to kill Bhutto, then this teenager was to move in. Another man was also arrested, and police say he's considered to be the boy's handler. And the authorities here regard this older man as a more important catch, because they figured that he might have a better sense of the network with a conspiracy to kill Bhutto, whereas the 15-year-old would just implemented the plans. And police say both of these men arrested have links to a Taliban leader named Baitullah Mehsud who is considered by Pakistan authorities and the CIA to be behind Bhutto's death.
INSKEEP: So progress in the investigation, according to the government, what the supporters of Benazir Bhutto think?
NORTHAM: They're not satisfied with this answer at all. In fact, you know, many people in Pakistan still see the hand of the intelligence service here known as the ISI as having something to do with Bhutto's death, primarily because the ISI pervasive. It's in every aspect of Pakistani society.
But right from the beginning, the government has blamed Baitullah Mehsud, and he's denied it on several occasions, just any involvement with Bhutto's assassination.
INSKEEP: Baitullah Mehsud, that is the militant in the mountains whose stronghold was attacked over the weekend, right?
NORTHAM: That's right. There's actually been very intense fighting up in that area from all reports. You know, this is an extremely remote tribal region, so it's very difficult to get precise or accurate details. But, you know, from all accounts that we can get, this fighting has been ferocious. The military has been shelling positions held by militants who are loyal to Baitullah Mehsud. And the military said it's captured 40 militants and killed about a hundred. But at the same time, several days ago, Mehsud loyalists overran a key fort up there, killed at least eight soldiers.
So, you know, these kind of attacks, Steve, are real challenge for Pakistan's military. You know, trying to deal with pro-Taliban militants that have increased in numbers and strength over the past few months. And more worryingly, they're making en routes from the tribal regions into towns and villages.
INSKEEP: This must also be a challenge for the United States?
NORTHAM: Oh, absolutely. You know, because a destabilized Pakistan could really have an impact on U.S. efforts in neighboring Afghanistan. You know, this is why in part, there's more talk now that the U.S. would like to expand its military assistance to Pakistan, to train and advise Pakistan's military. But it's unclear if there would be a greater role. For example, whether there would be more special operation forces based here or a broader CIA presence. But, you know, there's been several senior U.S. Military officers visiting Pakistan since Bhutto's death, and this week Navy Admiral William Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, is due to arrive here as well.
So, you know, the problem is there's a really - a very strong anti-American sentiment already here in Pakistan, and it's unlikely a larger U.S. presence would be welcomed by very many.
INSKEEP: We're talking with NPR's Jackie Northam in Pakistan where the government says it has made progress in its investigation into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Thanks very much.
NORTHAM: Thank you very much, Steve.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And let's report on another Asian government that's trying to keep control. Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been battling domestic troubles since a wave of street protests last fall.
Today, U.S. officials, yet again, urged Myanmar's military rulers to open a dialogue with the pro-democracy opposition. Earlier this month, the military junta made a gesture toward that when they agreed to a rare meeting with the country's pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
Zack Baddorf reports.
ZACK BADDORF: Little is known about the meeting, the fourth between Aung San Suu Kyi and military juntas since pro-democracy protest led by the country's revered monks erupted on the streets here in September. Even members of her political party, The National League for Democracy, don't know what was said at the talks between their leader and government Labor Minister Aung Kyi. Still the party spokesman Nyan Win said it's a positive sign.
Mr. NYAN WIN (Spokesperson, The National League for Democracy): We need to talk. Without talking there is no progress.
BADDORF: Nyan Win said he hopes the Myanmar government is taking the talks seriously, but the top American diplomat in Myanmar said the meeting was probably not much more than show.
Charge d'Affaires Shari Villarosa said she's very disappointed that the government hasn't met more frequently with internal political actors.
Ambassador SHARI VILLAROSA (U.S. Charge D'Affaires, Myanmar): Their record has been to do the absolute minimum to get the rest of the world off their backs.
BADDORF: The world may have turned its attention away from Myanmar after last year's dramatic street protests that left at least 31 dead and 74 missing. But in monasteries in the country's second largest city of Mandalay, monks are meeting secretly and planning new protests for mid-April to coincide with Myanmar's New Year's celebrations.
One of the Buddhist organizers says the monks will make the demonstrations larger and more effective this year by incorporating student groups and other organizations.
(Soundbite of rickshaw horns)
Rickshaw driver Sun Nyi(ph) will likely join in the new marches too, despite being beaten, arrested and imprisoned for a month after participating in the last ones. A former monk himself, the 26-year-old university graduate protested primarily for religious, not political, reasons.
Mr. SUN NYI (Rickshaw Driver; Former Monk): I marching for my religion, for monk. Because the monks are my religious people, right. If they shoot - if they kill the monks, I'm just going to die for my monks.
BADDORF: Sun Nyi says he does want a changing government, and despite having signed a document in jail saying he won't join in future protests, he will.
BADDORF: Again, the U.S. State Department's Shari Villarosa.
Ambassador VILLAROSA: I'm not good at predicting the future, but I am very confident that change will come to Burma - it's long overdue here. You have a deteriorating economy. You have unhappy people. So the source of their power is getting more and more fragile. Change will come.
BADDORF: For NPR News, I'm Zack Baddorf.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
If you're feeling down, at least you can say it won't get any worse. If you believe Dr. Cliff Arnall, this third Monday in January is the most depressing day of the year. He says this is when you get billed for your Christmas overspending. And by now it's clear you're failing in your New Year's resolutions. This is, however, a good day for Dr. Arnall, who told NPR last year he was enjoying all the media interest in his theory.
You're listening to MORNING EDITION. I mean, you're listening to MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.
Here's an answer to the real estate mess. If you can't sell your house, turn it into a project for charity. Dennis Kelly and Karen Crawford could not sell their house in Big Pool, Maryland. They cut the price. That didn't work. So they consigned it to a charity, which plans to raffle it off. If people buy enough raffle tickets to raise half a million dollars, the charity will buy the house for $390,000 and then give it away to the winner.
You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
US stock markets are closed today, while other world markets can only wish they were.
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: Stock prices have fallen dramatically around the world today. The London market had its worst day since 9/11. India's main stock index had its worst day ever. The trouble started in Hong Kong, where the Hang Seng index fell five and a half percent. Tokyo's Nikkei lost four percent of its value, almost. And then in Europe, stocks fell around five percent in Belgium, France and Germany. There are already big drops today in Brazil and Argentina. All this comes amid grim news about the American economy, which affects so many other economies around the world.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
If you want to find a frontline between Islam and the West, you can find it in the cities of Western Europe. In recent decades, European cities have absorbed a flood of Muslim immigrants and their descendants. This week we're exploring their world through the eyes of European Muslim women. And today we'll meet one woman who says she faced death threats because of her support for Western values.
NPR's Sylvia Poggioli has been speaking with her. And Sylvia, who is she?
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: Well, her name is Seyran Ates. She is an outspoken women's rights lawyer in Berlin. She's a German of Turkish origin who has been forced to abandon her legal practice because of threats from Islamist radicals.
INSKEEP: What don't they like?
POGGIOLI: Well, they don't like that she's a very independent woman who has embraced many Western values, particularly human rights. She's also not liked by traditionalists, those who believe in the patriarchal family. They see the Western lifestyle as very decadent and the woman, who is the symbol of family honor, is in their opinion the weak link, the one who's most vulnerable to being seduced by the West. So that fear of Western contamination has led to separate parallel enclaves in Germany that are often more conservative than their Turkish homeland is.
INSKEEP: And we should mention, it's not hard to find women, Muslim women, who support these traditional values, but we are going to hear the perspective of this one who believes differently. And where did she get that point of view?
POGGIOLI: Well, she grew up in a Turkish patriarchal family. She learned German very quickly and she wanted to be an active member of German society. So at 17, she ran away from home, and she sought refuge in a shelter for battered women. Coming from a family tradition where she says women have few rights, she found at first that even the smallest decision caused great anguish, even picking a movie listing in a magazine.
Ms. SEYRAN ATES (Women's Rights Activist): To open the magazine and looking for a movie what you want to see, these were really big problems for me in the first half of year. I need much - more than half the year to understand I can't open the magazine and look for a movie and say in this cinema I want to go.
POGGIOLI: Three years later, while she was living at a women's center, a band of Turkish youths broke in and started firing guns. Ates was shot in the throat. The woman next to her was killed. Ates vowed she would become a lawyer and fight for women's rights.
In 2005, Seyran Ates was named Germany's woman of the year for her work in defense of Muslim women in immigrant communities. While defending Muslim women for the last two decades, she's been insulted and threatened by her client's husbands and relatives. She was always able to brush it off, until last year.
Entering a Berlin courtroom with a client filing for divorce, the husband brutally assaulted the two women. Ates says that brazen incident in public convinced her she had to shut down her practice.
As a single mother, she says her life and that of her young daughter have priority. The danger does not come from Islam, says Ates, but from people who use religion for political goals.
Ms. ATES: It's not that I say the Islam has no right to exist and conservative Muslims don't have the right to exist. I mean, we have to look much more critical to some movements inside the Islam that try to infiltrate our democracy. They try to infiltrate every area in the society.
POGGIOLI: Ates says political Islam is getting stronger, and she blames its rise in Europe in great part on what she calls excessive tolerance both by the left and the right of repressive traditions of minority cultures and a widespread unwillingness to integrate immigrants into mainstream society.
The title of her recent book is "The Multicultural Mistake." And she blames supporters of multiculturalism for the poor status of Muslim women in Germany.
Ms. ATES: Because these people stopped us in the last 40 years to talk about the reality of Muslim woman. This is the reason why I shout and talk about the station of the women because they are not able to speak. They are not able to shout.
POGGIOLI: Forced marriages, she says, are locking up German-born Muslims in separate Islamic enclaves. When you have tens of thousands of women so isolated from German society that they're unable even to call an ambulance, Ates believes the third generation is lost.
Ms. ATES: We have in the third generation children who cannot speak very well German. They cannot speak very well their own language. They are not integrated in the culture. They even don't know how big is the city in which they live.
POGGIOLI: Domestic violence and even honor killings take place behind walls of silence. German society, says Ates, is also responsible for not doing enough to help Muslim women who dare to scale those walls and break free from their family ties.
At the few existing help centers, women suffering from depression have a two-year waiting period to see Turkish-speaking psychologists. As women break with family and tradition, they face solitude and alienation.
Ms. ATES: Western world can be very horrible for such a girl. She will come in a cultural shock when she come out of the traditional family and everybody say, you are free now, do what you want. And that can be a big identity conflict because she never learned to be free.
POGGIOLI: Emancipated Muslim women here are a minority, says Ates. Most women remain silent. They don't ask for divorce, she says, because they live in fear their husbands will kill them to protect the family honor. The status of Muslim women is the litmus test, Ates says, for integration of their communities into European societies.
But she believes the situation is getting worse in Germany, with more and more young Muslim girls as early as age 6 being kept away by their parents from sports and biology classes in school.
Ms. ATES: If we don't stop the political/religious movement, I'm sure we have much more Islamization in Germany in the next five and 10 years. If we are going to stop that movement and separate politics from religion, then we will have the chance for Islam to be compatible with democracy.
POGGIOLI: A year after leaving her practice, Ates is ready to take up cases of Muslim women again. This time, however, she'll work behind the scene, and she'll stay far away from the courtroom.
INSKEEP: Sylvia Paggioli, you've been telling us stories based in Germany the last couple of days. What happens when you begin talking with Muslim women in other countries in Europe?
POGGIOLI: Well, tomorrow you'll hear from Britain. And the major difference between Britain and Germany is a much higher level of education and much more widespread knowledge of English, the local language. And there's an important trend among many British Muslim women. They're forcefully asserting their Muslim identity over their British identity. They're breaking down barriers and they're moving into the realm of religion, which for centuries has been dominated by men.
INSKEEP: Okay. We'll be listening tomorrow. NPR's Sylvia Paggioli.
Thanks very much.
POGGIOLI: Thank you, Steve.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
A superstar librarian - our superstar librarian - okay, one of our superstar librarians, Nancy Pearl has dropped by with some more recommended reading. Her favorite kind and what she describes as under-the-radar books - books that she thinks you should be reading but you're not.
And Nancy, I'm so proud because you've sent us this stack of books and this list of books, and if I go to the bottom of the stack, I can go to an under-the-radar book that I have actually been reading. I've been reading "Gimme Cracked Corn & I Will Share" executed by Kevin O'Malley. What is this book?
NANCY PEARL: Well, Kevin O'Malley is one of - I find the most reliable of children's book writers. And his book "Little Buggy" has always been one of my favorites. But I don't think he's ever done any better work that in "Gimme Cracked Corn & I Will Share," which is the story of Chicken, who has a dream of a barn and a large pig who happens to be sleeping on top of a treasure of cracked corn.
INSKEEP: Happens all the time.
PEARL: So Chicken tells his friend George about the dream, and says I'm going to follow my dream, George, do you want to come with me? And George has been feeling a little cooped up lately.
(Soundbite of laughter)
INSKEEP: You're giving us a sense of this book. Go on. Go on.
PEARL: So he decides he will accompany Chicken. And they have many, many adventures.
INSKEEP: I'm just looking at a page at random here. Just a little bit of a dialogue from this wonderfully illustrated book.
(Reading) You must be yolking? What are you, a comedy-hen?
PEARL: Right.
(Soundbite of laughter)
INSKEEP: It's not chicken feed. Wait, maybe it is chicken feed. On and on like this.
PEARL: It's - this is one of those books that I think is perfect for reading out loud, because not only will children who are just getting interested in language play and - with puns will really absolutely love it. But parents will not get bored reading it because there's so much to laugh about in there.
INSKEEP: Let's stay with the animal theme for a moment. I pull from the bottom of the stack again. There's a book called "Fowl Weather" by - how do you pronounce that - Bob...
PEARL: Tarte.
INSKEEP: Tarte.
PEARL: Yes.
INSKEEP: Tarte. T-A-R-T-E. Author of "Enslaved by Ducks." So he's talking about ducks a lot in his work.
PEARL: He is. And we should say that on that the picture of "Fowl Weather," there is the most winsome picture of a duck that I have ever, ever seen.
INSKEEP: Oh, it's a cutie.
PEARL: It does look like it could just waddle off that cover and go into some bathtub and swim around.
There are animal lovers in this world, and then there are Bob and Linda Tarte who lives in western Michigan and take care of animals as their life. It's a book that takes place over - maybe a period of five years - and it's a period in which Bob's dad dies. His mother is kind of sinking into dementia. But mostly it's a book about his love for all the animals that he and his wife have including Birdie the Rabbit, Howard the Dove, Stanley Sue, the grey African parrot, numerous ducks, numerous geese. It's a book that I have to say in many of the places when I was reading this book I was laughing so hard, I could barely breathe because the accounts are so funny.
INSKEEP: I suppose this might be a moment to ask how it is that these books that you described as under-the-radar get on your radar. Do you wander the library stacks?
PEARL: I absolutely. And I think that that's one of the things that people are losing the habit of because you can do so much online. It's just that kind of serendipitous find where you're looking for one book and the title of the book next to it catches your eye and you pick it up and you say, oh, this is just what I was looking for my whole life.
INSKEEP: Well, let's wonder a little bit through this stack. Stella Gibbons' "Cold Comfort Farm," which is described as the comic classic of rural life.
PEARL: And made into actually a wonderful movie, "Cold Comfort Farm" was, but the book is terrific. And the book is about a young woman named Flora Poste who has recently been orphaned, and she has to decide which of her relatives to go live with. And she decides that she will go live with her relatives, the Starkadders, who live on a kind of decaying farm called Cold Comfort Farm. And Flora is one of those determined young women who realizes that if she puts her mind to it, she can change everybody's life for the better. And the Starkadders absolutely need somebody to come in and make their lives better. There's Aunt Ada Doom who's the matriarch.
INSKEEP: D-O-O-M, I assume.
PEARL: Absolutely.
INSKEEP: Okay.
PEARL: Who is the matriarch of the Starkadders and who - something happened in Aunt Ada Doom's background, and mostly what Aunt Ada Doom says is, I saw something nasty in the woodpile.
(Soundbite of laughter)
PEARL: Or the woodshed.
INSKEEP: Well, somebody has to be looking in the woodshed.
PEARL: Yes. And so nothing has happened at Cold Comfort Farm because Aunt Ada Doom keeps such a close tabs on everything. And Flora takes all of this assorted family, and sorts them out and sets them on their way. And it's an absolute delight to read.
INSKEEP: So you've got a couple of books that we might describe as classic chick lit.
PEARL: Steve.
INSKEEP: Before that you've got a couple of books that are, I guess, poultry lit. And let's continue right on here. We've got the - well, we're going to stay with animals.
PEARL: Yes.
INSKEEP: "The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild" by Craig Childs.
PEARL: Craig Childs is a wilderness guide and a naturalist. And this is a book that is filled with his different encounters with all sorts of animals in the wild. It's a book that I have to say, I read it in such a state of heightened anxiety because the things that he does in search of these animals are things that most of us kind of city-bound folks would find it very, very difficult to do.
But here is a quote - this is what he says about the bear. He says, "Most animals show themselves sparingly. The grizzly bear is six to eight hundred pounds of smugness. It has no need to hide. If it were a person, it would laugh loudly in quiet restaurants, boastfully wear the wrong clothes for special occasions, and probably play hockey."
(Soundbite of laughter)
INSKEEP: It doesn't care that you're there. It doesn't care if it goes fishing himself.
PEARL: Yes.
INSKEEP: These are the animals this guy has found.
PEARL: These are the animals. And the scene in this book with the mountain lion and Craig Childs' attempt to keep the mountain lion face to face because the mountain lion really wants to get around to your back so he could snap your neck. That attempt, I think, is - reading about it was as anxiety-building as any thriller could be.
INSKEEP: Nancy Pearl, thanks very much.
PEARL: You're welcome, Steve.
INSKEEP: She's the author of "Book Lust," "More Book Lust," and "Book Crush." You may recognize the last author she recommended. Craig Childs is a MORNING EDITION commentator.
You can read an excerpt from his book and the others on Nancy Pearl's under-the-radar list at npr.org.
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Natural disasters are one thing. After an earthquake, you get a new building codes; hurricanes, evacuation planning. When a disaster takes a century to unfold - it was harder to get people who are most affected to think about it. That's a problem many low-lying countries face.
For our series Climate Connections with National Geographic, NPR's Joe Palca went to Holland. And in the face of the enormous but slow moving threat, the Dutch government, at least, is rethinking its thousand year strategy of keeping all the water out.
JOE PALCA: To understand the history of the Dutch battle against water, a great person to track down is Geert Mak. He's a writer by trade, but he's one of these guys who think deeply about topics. And he's thought a lot about the Dutch relationship with water.
Mr. GEERT MAK (Writer): You see, everywhere here ditches and small old canals.
PALCA: Mak is every bit the urban intellectual. But he also maintains a rural hideaway in Friesland in the north of Holland. That's where I caught up with him. The ditches and canals are not just scenery, they're a critical part of the manmade drainage system that keeps this soggy country from filling up like a bathtub. Mak points out the window of his modern farmhouse at the flat field stretching off to the horizon.
Mr. MAK: This is the pancake country. But way, you look well, you see a very small hills - they call it terrapin.
PALCA: When the Romans were here 2000 years ago, they figured out that making a bit of high ground to build your house on would keep you dry when the floodwaters came in. Beating back the ocean, draining lakes and turning them into farmland, Mak says the Dutch have always worked aggressively to protect themselves from high water. And yet, now, Mak says something puzzling is happening in the Netherlands. People seem to believe that only poor, low-lying countries like Bangladesh are going to be affected by the sea level rise that will come with global warming.
Mr. MAK: I'm amazed all the time because we are a very rich Bangladesh, we are a very modern Bangladesh, but we are a kind of Bangladesh. And we are one of the first victims of the climate changes.
PALCA: It's as if the Dutch have tuned out the threat of climate change.
Mr. MAK: This whole problem with water, with weather, with storm, this climate change, they have the idea it is far away while it is really - it is at your door. They're sleeping. They're sleeping.
PALCA: There was a time some 50 years ago when the Dutch were equally oblivious to their peril. Leave Friesland and head south to a town like Willemstad, not far from the North Sea, and people will tell you about the night of January 31st, 1953 - a night when a horrific storm awoke people to the danger at their door.
Mr. GERRY MEYERMAN(ph): It was a weekend evening and full moon, very strong winds from the northwest, high tides.
PALCA: That's Gerry Meyerman. He was nine years old on that stormy evening. He was living Willemstad. He and his father were walking from a friend's house late that night. They walked to the top of the dike. His father looked at his watch, looked at the level of the water...
Mr. MEYERMAN: And he said, you know, when that tide comes in, it's going to come over to the dike.
PALCA: If that happened, the town would be lost. Gerry and his dad went to wake up the mayor who woke up the city council for an emergency meeting.
Mr. MEYERMAN: We sat in this room with the local notables who simply decided that this could not happen because it had not happened before. And so they would not ring the church bell, they would not wake people up.
PALCA: An hour or so later, the icy water did come over the dike. The dike collapsed and the water came thundering in. The next morning, Gerry went out with the search parties to look for survivors.
Mr. MEYERMAN: And we found my best friend and his family. And basically, we're alerted by his dog who recognized me and came running over, and we found his body, he was also nine years old.
PALCA: The flood damage was widespread. Two thousand people died, 72,000 homes damaged or destroyed. As is typical with natural disasters, people demanded immediate action. The government responded. It launched an overhaul of its North Sea defenses. Engineers designed new storm surge barriers, new dams and giant steel flood gates. The North Sea would never break through their defenses again.
Mr. JOS KUYPERS (Dutch Water Ministry): We are here at the Maeslant Barrier in Hoek van Holland.
PALCA: Jos Kuypers is with the Dutch Water Ministry. Maeslant Barrier is the final piece of that overhaul launch 50 years ago. It's a massive flood gate not far from where the Maas River meets the North Sea.
Mr. KUYPERS: You can compare it with two gigantic doors, one on the north side of the river, and one on the south side of the river.
PALCA: When a storm causes the North Sea to rise, the doors will swing shut.
Mr. KUYPERS: And then they close off the whole river and keep the high tides out.
PALCA: Kuypers says this will protect Rotterdam and all the small low-lying towns nearby. And it's easy to believe him. Standing below this giant steel structure, you get the feeling that it could withstand almost anything nature could throw at it. Even people who lived through the flood of '53 can feel safe now. But that's a problem.
Mr. ERIK BOESSENKOOL (Dutch Water Ministry): Most people in the Netherlands rarely think about the fact that they are living below sea level, or in a sensitive area.
PALCA: Erik Boessenkool is with the water ministry's planning office in The Hague. He says the dams and barriers that were built after the '53 flood might be adequate if it were still 1953, but today there's something more insidious to worry about, which he describes in six words, give or take.
Mr. BOESSENKOOL: Climate change, climate change and climate change.
PALCA: If the Dutch people have tuned out the problem of climate change, the Dutch government has not. And for an American journalist like me, it's, well, unusual to hear a government official more worried about climate change than the general public.
Mr. BOESSENKOOL: One of the issues which we will have to deal with in the coming years is to have - create some type of sense of urgency. But we don't want to stir a panic.
PALCA: But how do you do that? Boessenkool isn't sure. But he says doing it is essential because the government is changing its strategy for dealing with water, and it's a change that will make people uncomfortable. After a thousand years of trying to keep the water back, now the strategy is to let the water in. That's the thinking behind a project called Room for the River.
Mr. RENE PEUSENS (Resident): We are on the farm of Mr. Jacques Broekmans near the Meuse River.
PALCA: Rene Peusens is standing next to the Broekman dairy barn. He's an official with the local municipal government. His job is to help Mr. Broekmans to relocate because this farm is on one of the 40 parcels of land the government ahs designated as flood zones for the Meuse and Rhine Rivers. Is Mr. Broekman happy? No. But Peusens says he will move.
Mr. PEUSENS: Sometimes, we don't agree about the price we have to pay for their farms, but eventually we will make a deal. I am sure of that.
PALCA: Because Peusens believes, and the Dutch government believes, even Mr. Broekman now believes, that the safety of the country depends on it.
Geert Mak says this idea of letting the water go where it wants is going to take some getting used to.
Mr. MAK: The Dutch are used to tame the nature, always to win. But now, they have to accept retreat and to give parts of the country back to the water because it's better and because it's more clever.
PALCA: And because climate change will force them to anyway.
Joe Palca, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Presidential candidates are debating who is best prepared to improve the economy. Three Democratic contenders met last night in South Carolina, and NPR's Audie Cornish was there.
AUDIE CORNISH: U.S. stock markets were closed for the holiday, but the plunge in international markets and the anticipated American recession gave this debate a solemn tone at the outset.
Here's Senator Barack Obama.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Democratic Presidential Candidate): You've got the European markets dropped 5 percent. The expectation is, is that the Dow Jones tomorrow may do the same. We could be sliding into an extraordinary recession unless we stimulate the economy immediately.
CORNISH: Obama, Senator Hillary Clinton and former Senator John Edwards each offered economic stimulus plans, with Edwards proposing the 30-day creation of so-called green-collar jobs, and Clinton citing her proposal to call a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures. But things deteriorated when Clinton's criticism over the true cost of Obama's fiscal policies became an attack on what she called his praise for Republican Party ideas.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Democratic Presidential Candidate): You talked about Ronald Reagan being a transformative political leader. I did not mention his name.
Sen. OBAMA: Your husband did.
Sen. CLINTON: Well, I'm here. He's not. And...
Sen. OBAMA: Okay. Well, I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes.
(Soundbite of applause)
CORNISH: For weeks, Obama has contended former President Bill Clinton has been distorting his record on the campaign trail. While Obama complained of similar treatment last night, Senator Clinton was, if anything, more aggressive than ever before.
Sen. CLINTON: I was fighting against those ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Resco, in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago.
(Soundbite of applause)
CORNISH: Obama denied little more than a passing connection to the Chicago businessman in question, but the pair went on like this for several minutes before John Edwards seized the moment.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Senator, North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): What I want to say first is, are there three people in this debate, not two?
(Soundbite of crowd)
CORNISH: In past debates, Edwards has aligned himself with Obama as a so-called agent of change against Clinton. But this time, he took advantage of the bickering front-runners.
Mr. EDWARDS: This kind of squabbling - how many children is this going to get health care? How many people are going to get an education from this? How many kids are going to be able to go to college because of this?
CORNISH: Edwards also joined with Clinton in attacking Obama's voting record in the Illinois Senate and his ability to take the heat.
Mr. EDWARDS: The question is, why would you over 100 times vote present?
Sen. OBAMA: John...
Mr. EDWARDS: I mean, every one of us - every one - you've criticized Hillary. You've criticized me...
Sen. OBAMA: Right.
Mr. EDWARDS: ...for our votes. We've cast hundreds and hundreds of votes. What you're criticizing her for, by the way, you've done to us.
CORNISH: When the conversation veered back onto the issues, health care drew one of the more impassioned arguments from Clinton.
Sen. CLINTON: I think that the whole idea of universal health care is such a core Democratic principle that I am willing to go to the mat for it.
CORNISH: Similarly, Barack Obama was forceful over the issue of how soon and what approach to take in any plan to withdraw from the war in Iraq, a war he called financially unsustainable.
Sen. OBAMA: We will have spent $2 trillion at least, it's estimated, by the time this whole thing is over. That's enough to have rebuilt every road, bridge, hospital, school in America, and still have money left over.
CORNISH: The second half of the event was a love-in compared to the first hour. Side-by-side in comfy red swivel chairs, the candidates talked about race and gender. Obama appealed to end the rhetoric he says could make the contest racially polarizing. He also managed to make light of a question about Bill Clinton being the so-called first black president.
Sen. OBAMA: I would have to, you know, investigate more, you know, Bill's dancing abilities...
(Soundbite of laughter)
Sen. OBAMA: ...you know, and some of this other stuff before I accurately judge whether he was, in fact, a brother.
(Soundbite of laughter)
CORNISH: It didn't end with a group hug, but the three wound up agreeing their top priority was to unite the party and defeat the man they all seem to think was the strongest Republican in the field: Senator John McCain.
Audie Cornish, NPR News, Myrtle Beach.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The place to be today for Republicans is Florida. It is by far the most populous state to vote so far. With its primary just a week off and polls showing the race there to be tight, Republicans are crisscrossing Florida. Any one of four candidates - Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain or Mitt Romney - could win. Yesterday the candidates tried out some new themes.
NPR's Don Gonyea reports from Orlando.
DON GONYEA: Rudy Giuliani wrapped up a two-day bus tour across Florida's midsection yesterday by taking a lap on the oval track at Daytona Speedway. Florida is considered a must-win for the former New York City mayor, who has taken it easy in the first laps in the earliest primary and caucus states. The idea is to now go full throttle in Florida, a state that's home to hundreds of thousands of retirees from New York and New Jersey who still call Giuliani Mr. Mayor. But while the man many people refer to simply as Rudy once held a fat lead here in the polls, it's been dwindling and is now gone. Yesterday he downplayed that development.
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Mayor, New York City; Republican Presidential Candidate): Florida is Rudy country, right?
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
Mr. GIULIANI: And it is because I believe that this country needs strong, it needs bold leadership. It needs leadership that's going to take us into the next century - better, stronger.
GONYEA: One of several challengers rising to compete with Giuliani in Florida is Mitt Romney. He toured the Kennedy Space Center yesterday and held rallies in Jacksonville, Daytona and Orlando. He also unveiled a new campaign slogan. The words "Washington is Broken" were emblazoned on a banner behind his head.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Governor, Massachusetts; Republican Presidential Candidate): Washington is broken. If you listen to what the politicians have been telling us over the past 20, 30 years - and a few of you have been around long enough to listen to that, those promises - you'll recognize that the things they're talking about today are the same things they were talking about 20, 30 years ago, and just haven't gotten done.
GONYEA: The Romney campaign did something else different yesterday. The candidate's wife, Ann, told crowds at rallies that while she and her husband may seem to have the perfect life, that they, too, have known hardship. She then spoke in an unusually personal manner.
Ms. ANN ROMNEY: I think some of you may be aware that I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a number of years ago, and that was a very trying and dark time in my life. And to have my husband help me through that was a wonderful thing that he did. He was the one that really helped me push through the hardest, darkest days.
GONYEA: As for the other leading candidates, Mike Huckabee started his day yesterday in Atlanta at a memorial service honoring Dr. Martin Luther King at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Afterward, Huckabee spoke with reporters about the civil rights leader.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Governor, Arkansas; Republican Presidential Candidate): Based on his own personal convictions that came from his ministry and his life, he led, and government had to follow. And had he not led, I'm not sure government would have ever gotten the message.
GONYEA: As for the primary, Huckabee also told reporters, quote, "that no one will have this thing wrapped up after Florida." Possibly not, but the man who might come closest is the national polling leader, Senator John McCain, who was in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood courting Cuban-American voters. He made a connection by noting that during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, he was on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise between Cuba and the approaching Soviet ships.
Mr. HUCKABEE: I'm proud to have fought for and defended the freedom of the people of Cuba, consistently calling for continuing the embargo until there's free elections, human right organizations, and a free and independent country.
(Soundbite of applause)
GONYEA: This year, the Florida GOP will award all 57 of its delegates to whichever candidate wins a plurality, making this by far the richest delegate prize so far - just one week from today.
Don Gonyea, NPR News, Orlando.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The Oscar nominations will be announced this morning, and this year there's more drama than usual. With the writers strike underway, the Academy Awards ceremony may look quite different. No red carpet, no glamorous stars, unless the Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers agree on a new contract. Informal talks are likely to resume today.
NPR's Kim Masters joins us to talk about how all things Oscar are shaping up.
Good morning, Kim.
KIM MASTERS: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Let's begin with the big award. For best picture, what films do you expect to get the nod?
MASTERS: Well, I think there are several films that are likely to get the nod. It's a kind of a murky year, just as in politics. I think we're looking at a nomination for "There will be Blood," probably "Michael Clayton," possibly "Juno," a very engaging comedy that's done incredibly well at the box office. Also maybe "Diving Bell and Butterfly"; "Into the Wild," Sean Penn's movie. And I think the likeliest nominee and probable eventual winner is a very dark movie, "No Country for Old Men."
MONTAGNE: So you're not going for "Atonement," the big…
MASTERS: No.
MONTAGNE: …Hollywood-style movie?
MASTERS: You know, people thought that was going to be Academy bait, but it has been snubbed by every guild that matters - the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild. So I think that "Atonement" could get in there but it's a long shot.
MONTAGNE: And a controversy surrounds the best foreign film category this year - as it often does.
MASTERS: Yeah. This was a really big one, though, because there were a couple of movies in particular - a Romanian film called "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," and of course the French film "Persepolis." Those films were considered sort of locks for nominations. There's a short list in this category that emerges before the nominations. And they have been totally snubbed, so there is a quite an outcry over the foreign language category.
MONTAGNE: Okay. Let's go to the acting races. Best actor.
MASTERS: Well, we have several likely nominees. Maybe George Clooney, possibly Johnny Depp for this performance…
(Soundbite of movie, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street")
Ms. HELENA BONHAM CARTER (Actress): (As Mrs. Lovett) Well, can't say the years have been particularly kind to you, Mr. Barker.
Mr. JOHNNY DEPP (Actor): (As Sweeney Todd) No, not Barker. That man is dead. It's Todd now, Sweeney Todd. And he will have his revenge.
MONTAGNE: And he sings.
MASTERS: Yeah, he sings. But the guy who's probably going to get the nomination and win is Daniel Day-Lewis for "There Will Be Blood," in which he plays a money-crazed oilman.
MONTAGNE: And who are you betting on for best actress?
MASTERS: Well, I think we'll see a nomination for a newcomer, Ellen Page in "Juno." But again, I'm going to save my probable winner pick until after we hear Ellen Page's lovely performance as a young pregnant girl.
(Soundbite of movie, "Juno")
Ms. ELLEN PAGE (Actress): (As Juno) If I could just have the thing and give it to you now, I totally would. But I'm guessing it looks probably like a sea monkey right now. We should let it get a little cuter, right?
Ms. JENNIFER GARNER (Actress): (As Vanessa Loring) Great.
Mr. JASON BATEMAN (Actor): (As Mark Loring) Keep it in the oven.
MASTERS: So that was a great performance, but I think the contest is between Julie Christie in "Away from Her," and Marion Cotillard for sort of channeling Edith Piaf in "La Vie En Rose."
MONTAGNE: And Kim, what will - given a striking writers union - what do you expect the Academy Awards to look like this year?
MASTERS: Well, I don't know yet. I know that the Academy has been very clear that the show will go on in some shape or form. They might have to use a lot of film clips. You know, with the Golden Globes, the screen actors, who are supporting the writers thus far, refused to turn out across the board. They announced that no one would show up. Now, whether they maintain that with the Oscars, it's too early to say. It was a disaster with the Golden Globes. I don't know if the Academy can do better.
MONTAGNE: And how much of a hit will this be for the corporations that the Writers Guild is really trying to get to with this strike?
MASTERS: They will hit ABC, which means hitting Disney, which is one of the main members of the small group of people who control the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. And there is no way the Writers Guild would want to give ABC and Disney the millions of dollars that one of the biggest TV shows of the year brings in in ad revenue.
MONTAGNE: Kim, thanks very much.
MASTERS: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Kim Masters on Oscar nominations, which will be announced later this morning.
This is NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
Normally after an election it's important to count the votes. After Kenya's disputed election, we've moved right on to different kinds of counting. The latest election results include 600 people killed and 250,000 driven from their homes.
Now a world leader is hoping to broker an end to the crisis. The former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan arrives today. Several hours before Annan was due to arrive, riot police fired teargas at protesters in the capital.
NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton has this report from the slums of Nairobi.
(Soundbite of crowd)
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON: A man stands on top of a vehicle shouting out a list of names. Hundreds of expectant displaced Kenyans are jostling one another. They're camped outside Moi Air Force Base across the street from one of Nairobi's biggest slums, Mathare. Many residents have fled or been chased out of the shanty town. Relief workers are handing out provisions, including runner beans and gray blankets against the cool Nairobi evenings and unseasonal rain.
(Soundbite of crowd)
QUIST-ARCTON: Among the displaced people desperate for assistance is Mary Akinye Inda(ph), a mother of five from Mathare's slum. She's disappointed. Her name is not on the list. Yet she was forced from her shanty home by men with machetes barking threats. She didn't recognize them, she says. And some people with small children tried to resist, but the attackers brandished their machetes and some people got cut.
Ms. MARY AKINYE INDA: (Speaking foreign language)
QUIST-ARCTON: Mary Akinye Inda is a Luo, the same tribe as Kenya's opposition leader Raila Odinga. He insists he's the rightful president but was robbed of victory in a rigged election. Odinga is demanding a vote recount or a new election from scratch. The tense political standoff between Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, has sparked weeks of ethnic bloodletting. It's allowed grievances over land and privilege which date back decades to resurface.
Now rivals are using machetes, daggers and bows and arrows to settle scores. Dozens of people have been burned alive in tribal violence. Add to that riot police cracking down on opposition supporters who've defied a ban on anti-government protest rallies. It's a murderous mix, and hundreds of people have been killed.
Ms. JOYCE ONEKO (Mothers and Sisters Africa): The way I see it, this is not really a political problem.
QUIST-ARCTON: Joyce Oneko, a counselor, heads the aid agency Mothers and Sisters Africa.
Ms. ONEKO: The politics have just helped to bring things which were already there to the fold. So they've now actually had the opportunity to vent out the anger that they've been having.
QUIST-ARCTON: She's organizing the handing out of relief stocks near the slum. Joyce Oneko says the politicians are responsible because of the way they campaigned in the run-up to the elections.
Ms. ONEKO: I am blaming the politicians because when we were doing the campaign it was very clear that the politicians were working on their own tribesman. The Luos were campaigning for the Luos. The Kikuyus were campaigning for the Kikuyus. And it was very clear that where there was a Luo voter, their person got him because it was Luo.
So I'm blaming this on the politicians because if the politicians talk to their various followers and made them see that as Kenyans - we are all Kenyans - it is not about tribes; they will follow because in this country people do follow their leader.
QUIST-ARCTON: There's still a huge gap between President Kibaki and Raila Odinga, his political rival. And the two men aren't talking.
Since violence erupted in Kenya after the disputed election results were declared late last month, there's been a steady stream of international figures trying to calm the waters. The opposition has been demanding that former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan come help. The government says he's welcome, but has resisted any formal outside mediation, saying Kenya is not at war or even in crisis.
Ms. INDA: (Speaking foreign language)
QUIST-ARCTON: Mary Akinye Inda, the displaced Mathare slum-dweller, says what she wants most is peace. No one doubts that Kofi Annan has a tough peace mediation mission ahead of him.
Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News, Nairobi.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The monster hurricane has come to illustrate climate change for the public, but not for weather experts. There is no scientific consensus on whether a warmer world will mean a lot more destruction from storms like Hurricane Katrina. Actually, there is so much disagreement that a scientific debate can turn into an intellectual smackdown. That's just what happened last night at the American Meteorological Society meeting in New Orleans.
NPR's Jon Hamilton had a ringside seat.
JON HAMILTON: Hurricane science can be pretty hard to follow, even up close. Here's Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Dr. GREG HOLLAND (National Center for Atmospheric Research): The second you go down to the bottom, the standard parameters are vorticity ten to the minus five, relative humidity 50 percent...
HAMILTON: But it's easy to tell when scientists disagree. Here's Holland in an exchange with Christopher Landsea of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Dr. CHRISTOPHER LANDSEA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration): Can you answer the question?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. HOLLAND: I'm not going to answer the question because it's a stupid question.
Unidentified Man: Okay. Let's move on.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HAMILTON: Holland and Landsea represent the extremes in the debate about global warming and hurricanes. Holland thinks it will have a big effect. Hurricanes are powered by warm water, after all. Landsea thinks the effect will be small because it takes a lot more than warm water to make a hurricane.
Each uses the historical record to support his position. Holland uses it to show a rise in the number of the most powerful hurricanes. Landsea says that apparent rise is probably because the historical record is faulty. Before satellites, a lot of storms at sea probably went undetected. And even a few decades ago, storms like Hurricane Wilma in 2005 probably would have been underestimated.
Dr. LANDSEA: If Wilma happened in 1950, 1955, '45, we wouldn't know it was a Cat 5. We wouldn't know was the strongest hurricane on record.
HAMILTON: Landsea and Holland were among a half-dozen scientists who took part in a debate about climate change and hurricanes.
Early on the scientists pummeled each other with claims and counter-claims involving data sets and computer models. But then late in the afternoon the discussion changed.
Kerry Emanuel from MIT described his work linking climate change to the total energy produced by hurricanes. Then he reminded his colleagues that they were in New Orleans.
Professor KERRY EMANUEL (MIT): All this debate we're having up here is a little irrelevant for practical, you know, coastal concerns, unless you're worried about 200 years from now, maybe. What people want to know is whether they're going to get clobbered.
HAMILTON: Johnny Chan from the University of Hong Kong added that many governments outside the U.S. need to know now whether they should start planning for extreme weather.
Professor JOHNNY CHAN (City University of Hong Kong): We as scientists are actually responsible for helping the governments to answer that question. We might not be able to answer it perfectly right now, and that's why we're doing all this, is to try to answer - at least provide some guidance.
HAMILTON: By the end of the session, panelists were emphasizing things they could agree on.
Thomas Knutson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration acknowledged the scientific uncertainty about how much climate change will affect hurricanes. But he said even a small effect could eventually cause big problems.
Mr. THOMAS KNUTSON (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration): We may not experience it ourselves in our lifetime, but our grandchildren and such would. And I think that we owe it to the future generations to understand as best we can what we're doing to the planet, particularly things which may be quite damaging.
HAMILTON: Like a Category 5 hurricane.
Jon Hamilton, NPR News, New Orleans.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
NPR's business news starts with a big sell-off in overseas stocks.
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: It may sound like we're telling you yesterday's headlines, because the same thing is happening today. For the second day in a row, fears of an American recession sent investors fleeing from stock markets in Asia. Japan's main stock index fell more than 5.5 percent. That's the worst drop since 9/11. Markets in Hong Kong, Australia and South Korea also dropped sharply. In Bombay, India, exchange officials halted trading after the main index there plummeted more than 11 percent. Fears about the global economy also hit European stock markets, which are still reeling from yesterday's sell-offs. France's main index fell nearly 7 percent. Britain's FTSE 100 index dropped 5 and a half percent.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And the biggest victim of the global credit crunch in Britain is the mortgage company Northern Rock. When the lender was forced to tap the Bank of England for emergency funding, the country saw its first run on a lender in more than a century. Today, Northern Rock's shares jumped 46 percent, and that was because of news that the British government has approved a deal to save the bank.
NPR's Rob Gifford reports from London.
ROB GIFFORD: Finally, a rescue plan for the damsel in distress. If the British government is the knight in shining armor, it arrived swiftly to fight off the fire-breathing dragon of bankruptcy, but it's been slower in bringing the damsel down to freedom. Now, that looks like it might happen.
British finance Secretary Alistair Darling has announced Northern Rock will issue $50 billion worth of new bonds - basically, IOUs the banks and pension funds around the world to buy.
As the British government is guaranteeing the bonds, it hopes they will be more attractive to investors. So by repaying what Northern Rock owes to the Bank of England for its rescue last fall when the credit crunch began, the government hopes to make the bank more attractive to private investors.
Alistair Darling told the House of Commons yesterday that this was the only way to save Northern Rock.
Mr. ALISTAIR DARLING (Chancellor of the Exchequer): While as conditions are better now that they were before Christmas, they remain difficult. The government's financial advisers believe that there is no chance of achieving a private sector deal backed entirely with private finance in the near future.
GIFFORD: Perhaps, not surprisingly, Alistair Darling proved not to be, well, the darling of the opposition benches.
Conservative Party economics spokesman George Osborne.
Mr. GEORGE OSBORNE (Economics Spokesman, Conservative Party): He wants to the taxpayers of Britain to provide a 25-billion-pound mortgage to Northern Rock for years to come.
GIFFORD: And looming in the background is, of course, a bigger question: With the credit crunch continuing, will there be other damsels in the future to be rescued?
Rob Gifford, NPR News, London.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
One reason the economy seems shaky right now is because of decisions made in the past by big Wall Street firms like Merrill Lynch, which reported its biggest loss in history last week.
To find out why so many smart people made such big mistakes, we turn to David Wessel, economics editor of The Wall Street Journal.
David, good morning.
Mr. DAVID WESSEL (Economics Editor, The Wall Street Journal): Good morning.
INSKEEP: What were they thinking?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. WESSEL: Well, I guess they weren't thinking. It seems that at least two bad calls made by the big banks and investment banks on Wall Street. One, they thought home prices would never go down, except maybe in a few communities. And they thought by slicing and dicing mortgages and turning them into securities that were then turned in to still more securities, somehow they were spreading the risk widely if something went wrong.
INSKEEP: And why weren't they?
Mr. WESSEL: Well, for one thing, housing prices went down.
INSKEEP: Everywhere.
Mr. WESSEL: Almost everywhere. And they didn't count on that. Secondly, the securities were so complicated, structured by these geniuses who they hire on Wall Street that literally - literally - nobody understood them.
So when the market changed, they behaved in ways that were completely unanticipated by the experts and by their computer models. And the third thing is it turns out that some of these securities that the banks thought were spreading risk to somebody else were written in such a way that when things went bad, the risk came back on their books. And that's why we're seeing big write downs by Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Bear Sterns, JP Morgan and all the others.
INSKEEP: Have banks figured out a way around this now?
Mr. WESSEL: Not yet. Right now, we're in what they call on Wall Street the kitchen sink mode, where you say anything that's bad on our books, let's write it down and take the hit now. It's particularly common when you have new chief executives, as a number of these places have.
But there is some talk about things that might be done differently in the future. One thing is either the government or the banks themselves could decide that when you securitize mortgages, you keep a piece for yourself. That means that you have an interest in making sure that the loan that was made is actually paid back.
One of the problems we have here is people made loans, sold them to someone else, and they didn't care whether they got paid back. Another thing is to change the way the rating agencies work.
Surprisingly, very smart, highly paid people on Wall Street looked at these securities, said we don't understand them. But the folks at Moody's and Standard & Poor's - the rating agencies - do, and they stamped triple A, gilt-edged ratings on these securities. And everybody said that's fine. It turns out they weren't triple A.
INSKEEP: So the ratings agencies - which are the ones that determine if these securities and if companies have the credit ratings or not - are they doing anything differently?
Mr. WESSEL: Well, I'm sure they're being much more careful today than they were a few years ago, both in how they evaluate these securities and how they explain their ratings. But it's very likely that there will be some new rules, perhaps even regulations to set standards for rating agencies in the future.
INSKEEP: Who is really harmed if a bunch of relatively wealthy investors on Wall Street get into a bunch of creative financial schemes that they can't control and end up losing a bunch of money that was all on paper to begin with?
Mr. WESSEL: That's a great question. And the problem is all of us.
If the financial system - banks and investments banks - are so concerned about their capital and about the losses they're taking that they all at the same time decide we ought to be a little less ready to lend money to people, the economy will contract. The reason the Federal Reserve and the president and the treasury secretary are so worried about this crisis is that it could spread to the whole economy, because the economy lives on credit. And if the people who give credit pull back, we'll have recession.
INSKEEP: David Wessel of Wall Street Journal, good talking with you again.
Mr. WESSEL: A pleasure.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
No matter how bad things get on the global stock markets, for a few hours on the first Sunday of February, an expected 90 million Americans will tune out the economy and tune in to the Super Bowl.
So our last word in business is Anheuser-Busch. Once again, the nation's biggest beer maker is grabbing the most air time during the big game. Anheuser-Busch has reportedly bought four minutes of commercial time. It will air seven ads. They'll star comedians Will Ferrell and Carlos Mencia, as well as the company's Clydesdale horses. Fox is charging up to $2.7 million for a 30-second spot. But Anheuser-Busch gets the volume discount, which means the beer maker is expected to spend only about $16 million on the Super Bowl ads.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
While the U.S. market was on holiday yesterday, the rest of the world saw a tremendous global sell-off, and that continues today. In some places, it's gotten even worse. India had to stop trading for an hour after its main index fell more than 10 percent. Tokyo's Nikkei has lost almost as much over the last two days. In Europe, the picture is mixed. Some stock indexes have actually gone up in - at least for now. And all eyes are on the U.S. stock markets, which were closed, of course, yesterday, but are be - will be opening today.
NPR's Adam Davidson is monitoring the world markets, and he joins us now. What are people expecting when the New York Stock Exchange opens in just a few hours?
ADAM DAVIDSON: We have a sense of what we can expect because of these stock market futures. These are people around the world who are placing bets on -with their money - on what the markets will do. And they are down. They're down recently dramatically, around five percent on the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ, 4 and a half percent for the Dow Jones. And that is in line with what analysts and others were predicting. Of course, it will be a volatile day. We can expect a lot of trading, and who knows where it'll be when the markets close in many hours. But when they open, it's a safe bet that they will be opening considerably down - something like what we saw yesterday or this morning in Asia.
BRAND: And tell us more about what happened there in Asia and Europe.
DAVIDSON: Well, Asia was really bad today - bad for the stock markets, bad for the stock indices, down even more than yesterday in many places. India had to stop trading because it fell so dramatically. Then when they opened trading, it fell even more dramatically, falling 13 percent today. That's a huge, huge, huge one-day they drop. Tokyo's Nikkei fell more than it did yesterday for a two-day 10 percent fall. That's the sort of technical correction level. You can use the word correction. Hong Kong fell more. Jakarta fell more - really, really dramatic huge drops.
Europe is a totally different picture. It's been bouncing. I've been monitoring it for the last couple of hours. It's been bouncing up and down. Now, mostly, indexes are up a tiny bit in Belgium and France. I see Germany is down a tiny bit, but it was up just the last time I checked. London's FTSE is up. It's been up and down all day.
So what analysts are saying is that in Europe, there are all these rumors that Ben Bernanke in the U.S. Fed is going to do something dramatic later today, and - that will turn this around by cutting interest rates by a full half percent. I'm not saying that's going to happen. I'm just saying that's the rumor. I don't know that those investors know anything we don't know. But that rumor seems to be getting the markets to do a little bit better.
MONTAGNE: Well, that's all tied-in with fears of a U.S. recession. Is that the reason for the falling stocks in the first place?
DAVIDSON: Yeah, this really is - I mean, if we want to look for any kind of silver lining, this - and I don't know if this is one. But we can see that the last two days really reminds us that the U.S. is still very much the center of the global economy, that U.S. demand for goods and services from around the world are the engine that powers almost all economies around the world.
Some thought that 2008 was the year when that would no longer be the case. It would be the year that the rest of the world could kind of hum along pretty well, even if the U.S. was in an economic downturn or a recession. At least the evidence of the last couple of days is that it's not the case. The world really needs the U.S., and the world gets really scared when it thinks the U.S. is getting into a recession.
MONTAGNE: Well, just briefly, how do these dramatic falls in the stock market affect us - the rest of us?
DAVIDSON: The ones who aren't actively trading stocks. The ones who…
MONTAGNE: Right - every hour.
DAVIDSON: Right, exactly. You know, economists talk about the real economy, meaning everyday people, food, rent, you know, your job - that sort of thing. If this was happening in a few sectors or in a few countries, we could probably say it's contained. The fact that it is so broad across all sectors, across all countries really tells you that what's happening is the people who seem to know the economy the best are very pessimistic about the near term. And that is bad news for the rest of us.
MONTAGNE: Adam, thanks very much. NPR's Adam Davidson, recapping the news global stock markets fell for a second day amid fears that the U.S. economy is heading towards a recession. There are worries that troubles in the economy could cause a worldwide downturn. And we'll continue to follow this story as markets open here in the U.S.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
The economy is one issue that may affect this year's political campaigns, and here is another: This day is the 35th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. Pro-life activists are now focusing their attention on states for a new tactic to end abortion. Activists in at least half a dozen states are pursuing constitutional amendments called Human Life Amendments that would grant legal status and rights to an embryo.
NPR's Kathy Lohr reports.
KATHY LOHR: Every year since 1973 when Roe versus Wade legalized abortion, there's been a federal effort to pass a human life amendment in Congress. Support for it hasn't materialized. So like other efforts to limit abortion, pro-life advocates have moved the battle to the states.
In Colorado, a group are collecting signatures to put the issue on the November ballot, which does not even mention the word abortion. News of the initiative has been covered across the state and on the Christian radio program Crosstalk.
(Soundbite of radio show, crosstalk)
Unidentified Woman: I'm so happy to be able to talk about something today that looks like a positive step, a real step in the right direction for pre-born babies in the state of Colorado...
LOHR: In Georgia, pro-life groups have their own human life amendment campaign in the state legislature, which declares that a fertilized egg is a person from the moment of fertilization. Despite cold temperatures, hundreds gathered at the state capital last week for a rally.
Republican legislator Melvin Everson is one of about 50 lawmakers who signed on to the amendment here.
(Soundbite of applause)
State Representative MELVIN EVERSON (Republican, Georgia): It's abundantly clear to me today that the people of Georgia will lead the fight to let the rest of the United States of America know that the unborn children are welcome into this society we call the great constitution, the United States of America.
(Soundbite of applause)
Mr. DAN BECKER (President, Georgia Right to Life): The human life amendment has been the missing link in our pro-life arsenal.
LOHR: Dan Becker is president of Georgia Right to Life. He says state laws restricting abortion including waiting periods, parental consent and more recent efforts to get doctors to perform ultrasounds before an abortion are just small steps that have not allowed them to reach their goal eliminating all abortions.
Mr. BECKER: Georgia has already passed all of the suggested legislation by National Right to Life. We have nothing left to pass that is suggested. We feel this is the next logical step and it goes beyond just incremental gains.
LOHR: The National Right to Life Committee has not endorsed the efforts and did not return phone calls to talk about the issue. But pro-choice groups are gathering forces to fight the measures that they say are much broader than most people realize.
Emilie Ailts is the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado.
Ms. EMILIE AILTS (Executive Director, NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado): It jeopardizes the possibility that women and their families will have access to common forms of birth control, all of which not only prevent the release of the egg and therefore fertilization, but alter the lining of a woman's uterus.
LOHR: Ailts says the amendments also call into question in vitro fertilization, stem cell research, and it could turn out to be a way to prosecute women who have a miscarriage. Since abortion was legalized, there have been efforts to ban it completely, for example in South Dakota where a ballot initiative failed in 2006. Across the states, there have been hundreds of laws passed to restrict abortion. But Nancy Northup with the Center for Reproductive Rights calls the Human Life Amendment a stealth maneuver in the abortion battle.
Ms. NANCY NORTHUP (President, Center for Reproductive Rights): This is another tactic to try to put in place the building blocks, the legal building blocks that would prevent women from being able to access abortion. But to do it in a way that flies under the public's radar screen so that they're not attending to it and at the issue - the fundamental issue about whether women can access abortion - isn't what's being played out in the discussions.
LOHR: Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion, the battle remains over the issue of when life begins and how to maintain the rights of women. It's turning into an all-or-nothing fight and neither side is backing down.
Kathy Lohr, NPR News, Atlanta.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
An airline that tried to serve small cities is calling it quits. Since airline deregulation in the 1970s, America's small towns have struggled to find companies and passengers willing to use their airports. The federal government subsidizes rural air service for about $100 million per year, but many planes fly with most seats empty.
Brian Mann of North Country Public Radio reports on the demise of Big Sky.
BRIAN MANN: A few months ago, Fred deLeeuw's Montana-based Big Sky Airlines was expanding fast, opening routes into the Midwest and Northeast.
Mr. FRED DELEEUW (President, Big Sky Airline): We love serving the North Country. We love serving the state of New York and...
MANN: Big Sky was one of the country's major airlines serving federally subsidized essential air service routes, handling about 10 percent of those flights nationwide. But by last week, that company was imploding with Big Sky officials blaming high fuel costs and the lack of regular passengers.
Mr. ARNIE D. DECKER(ph) (Airline Employee): Let's tear it down. That's what I'm doing, thinking of all the equipment apart.
MANN: Arnie D. Decker who worked in the tiny rural airport in Lake Clear, New York was busy dismantling Big Sky's check-in counter.
So what happens to you now?
Mr. DECKER: Well, I'm out of work. I have to apply for unemployment. That's where I'm headed.
MANN: A 140 pilots and ground crew were laid off, and Big Sky's collapse will eventually leave more than a dozen airports across the country without any commercial flight.
Gary Edwards(ph), account supervisor in Messina, New York, says the loss of daily service threatens to isolate his community at a time when the economy is already struggling.
Mr. GARY EDWARDS (Account Supervisor): We've invested so much money over the years into the airport and we just have to start over.
MANN: Nationwide, about 3,000 people use EAS flights every day, but the cost to taxpayer is steep, about $100 per passenger per flight. In the last decade, federal subsidies have jumped fourfold, topping $109 million last year. On average, about two-thirds of the seats on those flights are empty.
The GAO report issued last April found that 17 percent of the subsidized airports see fewer than five passengers per day. Critics and supporters alike say Big Sky's meltdown revives questions about EAS' future. Congressman John McHugh represents northern New York and has fought hard to keep the money flowing.
Representative JOHN McHUGH (Republican, New York): I'm sure it will be used by those who oppose EAS at all as an example of why we ought to get rid of it because it doesn't work anyway.
MANN: McHugh says subsidies should actually be increased. But Michael Boyd, an aviation consultant based in Colorado, says the problem is that too much taxpayer money is going to airports that aren't truly isolated.
Mr. MICHAEL BOYD (Aviation Consultant): In many cases, EAS is just sort of pork barrel that doesn't bring anything home, and it needs to be totally rebuilt. And the problem is Congress is not willing to that.
MANN: The GAO report found that nearly $25 million is being spent every year to prop up airports that are less than a two-hour drive from major hub airports. Brian Turmail, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Transportation, says his and agency developed programs to wean those airports off the system, but lawmakers backed.
Mr. BRIAN TURMAIL (Spokesman, U.S. Department of Transportation): The Congress refused to fund even such a small demonstration program.
MANN: Pressure for reform may come from the airline industry itself. Subsidies are spread so thin, Turmail says, that carriers like Big Sky can't survive.
Mr. TURMAIL: It's not a very successful business model, so it's very hard for these carriers to remain in business and remain viable.
MANN: The Department of Transportation is now searching for new carriers to take over Big Sky's routes from Montana to Tennessee to New York. So far, only a handful of companies have expressed interest.
For NPR News, I'm Brian Mann in northern New York.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
We're about to examine one measure of freedom in the Arab world. It's what the U.S. Constitution would call freedom of the press.
We begin with the rapidly growing United Arab Emirates. Economic growth there has not been matched by press freedom, as NPR's Ivan Watson reports from Dubai.
IVAN WATSON: Every day before dawn, a crew of Indian workers gathers in the warehouse in Dubai to censor the morning's newspapers. One man goes through a stack of racy British tabloids ripping out pages which advertise phone sex. Another Indian sits cross-legged on a table, covering up photos of women's bare breasts and bottoms with a large indelible marker. Amid the word machinery in the warehouse, a turbaned man named Prem Singh scans other European newspapers, looking for material that could offend the sensibilities from this wealthy Arab sheikhdom.
So what are you looking for?
Mr. PRAM SINGHS: Looking for all - whether the pictures are there - nude pictures - and then anything against these countries, especially for Dubai, and anything against Islam.
WATSON: Every foreign book, magazine or newspaper coming into the UAE needs to first be approved by the National Media Council, an agency run by Ibrahim Al-Abed.
Mr. IBRAHIM AL-ABED (Director General, National Media Council): For example, to have pornography or to have attacks on religions. And religions, I mean, not only Islamic religion - any religion - we are against that.
WATSON: Al-Abed also oversees to more than 150 TV companies from around the world that have set up offices in Dubai. They include this recent edition, MTV Arabia.
(Soundbite of TV ad)
Unidentified Woman #1: (Speaking in foreign language)
WATSON: Last fall, broadcasters in this fast-growing media hub got an ominous warning when local authorities ordered two Pakistani TV stations to stop beaming their news broadcast from Dubai into Pakistan. Critics accuse the UAE of caving into pressure from Pakistan's military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, charges Ibrahim Al-Abed denies.
Mr. AL-ABED: They were shut down, actually, because of taking part in the internal politics of Pakistan, agitating people against other people.
WATSON: On the domestic front, local broadcasters and writers face far more restrictions on what they can say and write. Local reporters say they're under pressure to avoid taboo topics like government corruption, Dubai's thriving prostitution industry and homosexuality, which is illegal here.
Last fall, a court sentenced two journalists from the UAE's Khaleej Times to a two-month jail sentence for libel after they wrote an article about a divorce. The charges were dropped after the ruler of Dubai issued a decree that it was wrong to jail journalists. That has encouraged some to push the boundaries of public debate.
(Soundbite of TV ad)
Unidentified Woman #2: Giving you the chance to air your opinion. Nightline: your voice, your say.
WATSON: James Piecowye is a blond, shaggy-haired Canadian who hosts a live talk show on an English-language radio station in Dubai.
(Soundbite of TV program)
Mr. JAMES PIECOWYE (Talk Show Host): Hello. Welcome to the program.
MALEEKA(ph): Hi. This is Maleeka.
WATSON: Piecowye's show gives callers like this woman named Maleeka a rare forum to broadcast controversial opinions.
MALEEKA: We hardly have a middle class anymore. We have the super rich who can go anywhere to get the treatments they want.
Mr. PIECOWYE: Mm-hmm.
MALEEKA: And you have the laborers who cannot.
WATSON: So far, Piecowye says he hasn't gotten in trouble.
Mr. PIECOWYE: It's like going to school, and everyone's learning - us as well as the audience - is learning by day. Okay, what - how far can we go?
Ms. MASHRAP DAUB(ph) (Talk Show Host): It is self-censorship.
WATSON: Mashrap Daub is Piecowye's co-host. This 24-year-old Indian national has lived in the UAE most of her life. Today, she said she's starting to see a new more assertive streak emerging in the local media.
Ms. DAUB: I do feel that a lot of topics we can speak about right now that were unthinkable a couple of years back.
(Soundbite of TV program)
Mr. PIECOWYE: Same place, same time, 8-10 "Nightline in Dubai" on 103.8. My name is James Piecowye, so long for now.
WATSON: Ivan Watson, NPR News, Dubai.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah has tiptoed toward opening up that deeply conservative society when it comes to freedom of expression and the press. Now, it appears to be stepping back, and its most prominent target? Al Jazeera TV.
NPR's Peter Kenyon reports from Jeddah.
PETER KENYON: When the tiny gulf state of Qatar launched the Al Jazeera Channel in the mid-1990s, it sent shockwaves through Arab states that were used to maintaining tight control over their media. Broadcasting from the Qatari capital of Doha, Al Jazeera stunned viewers by allowing dissenting voices including those of Israeli spokespeople on the air. The channel wasn't afraid to go after leading Arab politicians, and it was especially harsh on Saudi Arabia.
Doha and Riyadh have had strange relations for years, and analysts say Al Jazeera inflamed the situation with its harsh coverage of its larger and wealthier neighbor. Analysts in the United Arab Emirates and in Saudi Arabia confirmed that last fall, a crucial meeting was held at which the Saudis demanded that Al Jazeera be brought to heel.
Dubai analyst Mustafa Alani says, with other regional disputes being overshadowed these days by the political and potential nuclear threat from the Shiite-led Iran, the Sunni members of the GCC or Gulf Cooperation Council decided to set aside their own differences to form a stronger front against Tehran. And that, he says, prompted the Qatari leadership to send a message to Al Jazeera.
Mr. MUSTAFA ALANI (Director of Security, Gulf Research Center, Dubai): Now, we see the six countries here coming closer, try to settle their dispute. Now, the Qataris giving major concession, basically putting pressure on Al Jazeera to have a positive report about the situation in Saudi Arabia. And this was a condition from the Saudis' leadership that Al Jazeera must be controlled.
KENYON: Some Saudi analysts say that before Al Jazeera was muzzled, its negative coverage of Saudi issues sometimes went overboard. Still, they regret what appears to be a step back toward the days when Arab media were docile tools of their governments or of the political party that funded them.
Wahid bin Hashim(ph), associate professor of political science at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, was a longtime contributor to the Okaz newspaper. But he says he never felt free to fully speak his mind.
Professor WAHID Bin HASHAM (Political Science, King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia): When I criticized the university, I was punished. When I criticized some government agency, I was punished. And I've been with Okaz for almost nine years, and I was not able to continue because whatever I write, it's under censorship.
KENYON: Analysts and journalists say in a tightly controlled society like Saudi Arabia there are many ways of punishing unpopular writers and deterring others from speaking out. One example is the arrest in December of Fouad al-Farhan, considered the kingdom's most popular blogger. Interior Ministry spokesman General Mansour al-Turki says Farhan's detention is not part of a general crackdown on bloggers.
Major General MANSOUR AL-TURKI (Spokesman, Interior Ministry, Saudi Arabia): The police has arrested a specific person. I mean, he'd been on the Internet for many years, and there are many others actually who are either on the Internet or who write on the local media. Therefore, actually why we would single such a person, you know, from all the others just because there are - a case against him.
KENYON: But the government refuses to say what law Farhan is accused of breaking. Other writers suggest that Farhan may have been unnecessarily offensive in his comments.
Former journalist Khaled al-Batarfi has maintained a blog for years and says he hasn't been censored.
Mr. KHALED Al-BATARFI (Editor, Al Madina Newspaper): I have written a lot of things. I went against - I criticized the religious establishment in my last article in alarabia.net. I got a lot of responses, but nobody, I mean, no official talked to me or even called me about that, because this is my right to express my views.
KENYON: But Professor bin Hashim says the government knows that with a single arrest, it can send a chill through the online community. He calls it the hot-stove policy - a warning to bloggers to avoid certain topics.
Prof. BIN HASHIM: It always - this hot-stove policy - it works. And to punish one, this means you will prohibit and prevent thousands. This is a fact, you know. We all know it and we feel it.
KENYON: Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Jeddah.
INSKEEP: The Saudis' fortunes depend in part on the strength of the world economy. For two straight mornings now, we've been watching financial markets fall - from Tokyo to London, and now in the United States. Early this morning, the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled around 450 points. It has since gained back most of that ground but is still down. Before the opening bell, the Federal Reserve tried to stop too much damage. It cut a key interest rate by three quarters of a percentage point. This was an unusual and surprising move outside of a regular meeting. The White House, today, would not rule out the possibility of even more help to the economy than has already been discussed. And we will bring you more as we learn more here on MORNING EDITION on NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
Here are two ways to save on gasoline costs. You can buy a plug-in hybrid car. Toyota and Ford show them off at this week's Washington Auto Show. Or you can just have a friend in the oil business. A West Virginia woman worked Sunday morning at a gas station, and police say that until her arrest Madeline Jordan would reset the price at the pumps. Friends and family in South Charleston bought gas for one-tenth of a penny per gallon.
It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
With 35 percent of dogs and cats now obese, Hollywood trainer Gunnar Peterson figures there's a market for an exercise video for pets. Out today, it features cat curls, the owner holds a flashlight while doing crunches, and the cat chases the moving light. There's a dog-stacle course, where the owner leads the dog through a step class. Or you could skip the video and just take a stick and go to the park and see Spot run.
It's MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
NPR's business news starts with the Fed's surprise rate cut.
(Soundbite of music)
MONTAGNE: Facing increasing fears of recession, the U.S.Federal Reserve cut its key federal funds rate by three-quarters of a percentage point. The rate is now 3.5 percent. This morning's is the biggest single move the Fed's made on interest rates in 13 years. It comes after sharp drops in stock markets across the globe. Today, Tokyo's main index was down more than 5 and a half percent after a sharp drop yesterday as well. Officials in India halted trading after stocks there plummeted more than 11 percent.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And then, as things moved west, in London, Paris and other European capitals, stock markets see-sawed on rumors that policy makers in Washington might do something. Then after finding out the Fed actually did cut rates this morning, the reaction in the European stock markets was mixed. Though on the end, most major indices ended slightly higher. John Authers is global investment editor at the Financial Times newspapers.
Mr. JOHN AUTHERS (Global Investment Editor, Financial Times): I don't think anybody is thinking long term enough to really work out what the economic, macroeconomic effects of this will be. When markets get this churned up, this turbulent, it just becomes a game of trying to second guess what everybody else is doing. It's a collective action problem, and it's about gauging the surges of emotion going on around the world. It doesn't look as bad in the U.S. as it looked initially, and therefore, Europe - which was ready for a bounce - has had something of a bounce.
INSKEEP: John Authers, global investment editor of the Financial Times newspaper. Talk about swings of emotion - the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down around 450 points at one point this morning. Then it came back and was close to even - 40 to 50 points down. And just a few seconds ago, it was about 150 points down, having slid a little bit again.
We go now to NPR's Jim Zarroli, who is in New York. And how do things feel there, Jim?
JIM ZARROLI: Well, it - I think things - I feel like they've gotten a bit better. You know, as - this morning, as soon as the market opened, you had this just huge drop right away. You know, the Dow, I think, fell as much as 464 points, and it was very quick. I mean, it was the kind of dramatic, sharp drop that you don't see very often. You saw it this morning.
Within about a half an hour, things had sort of recovered, and it's been kind of up and down ever since then. We still have triple-digit losses, but the losses are a lot less than they were. For instance, Citigroup - which, of course, is one of the banks that's been at the center of this credit market turmoil - was actually down 7percent as soon as the market opened. A little while ago, it was back in positive territory. So who can figure that out?
They're - it's just extreme volatility. Markets don't know what to make of it. I've heard the word panic used this morning. I mean, this is still a very bad market. Barring a big rebound, this is going to be the worst January for major - at least for the major stock indexes that the market has ever seen.
INSKEEP: You could have hoped the surprise rate cut by the Fed - not a surprise that they cut it, but that they would cut it by so much and so quickly. You could have hoped that that would cause stocks to go higher.
ZARROLI: Yeah. That's normally the way it works. And, in fact, that's the point of doing this kind of dramatic, big rate cut, and to do it between meetings, when people aren't really expecting it. It's supposed to have this kind of shock effect, to give people this - just this boost of confidence, a boost - give the economy a kick. And that was what they were hoping. You know, that's what they did. That's what the Fed did after 9/11, for instance. But today, the market - the stock markets almost just seem to disregard it. It was almost as if it hadn't happened - at least at the beginning. I think it says something about the amount of fear there is out there right now. I mean, you know, we had a weak employment report earlier this month for December. We've had just consistent weakness in manufacturing. You know, we've had, you know, just an economy that is clearly slowing down, if not in recession already. And nothing seems to work to make the markets feel better.
We have had talk about a major stimulus package - $150 billion. And the president said this morning it could even be more than that. We have these interest rates falling down. None of it seems to have worked to just alleviate the fears that are out there. Now one point that has to be made is that I think that everybody in the markets knew that a big rate cut was coming. It was just the timing of it that's kind of a surprise today. I mean, chairman Bernanke made that pretty clear last week, as clear as he ever does in his testimony before Congress that a rate cut was coming. The question was just how much. At this point, I think people, you know, especially in the stock market, as it tends to do, it's focusing on what's going to happen next. And a lot of people are saying, you know, when the Fed meets next week, there's going to be another rate cut.
INSKEEP: Very briefly, it's also a reminder, I suppose, of how interconnected world markets are. Things that are problematic in the United States, that eventually causes markets in Asia to fall, which leads to a drop in Europe, which, in turn, causes more trouble in the United States.
ZARROLI: Yeah, yeah. Certainly. I mean, this is a market that is just signaling fear about the world economy. I mean, we had all these problems happening. You know, we've had the big banks in trouble because of the credit crunch, and I think everybody's just reacting to that.
INSKEEP: Is there anything else the Fed can do if today's rate cut doesn't work?
ZARROLI: No. The - you know, the Fed has basically one blunt instrument, and that's rate cuts. And it can keep doing that in that - now, one of the things about a rate cut is that it generally takes a while before it has impact on the economy. It can take as much as a year. That's one of the problems, maybe, for the markets right now, that they don't see this having the kind of immediate impact that they would like. And this is - you know, that's one of the issues that the market is facing right now.
INSKEEP: Jim, thanks very much.
ZARROLI: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Jim Zarroli in New York, where the latest word we have is that the Dow Jones Industrials are down about 150 points today. Could be worse.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
President Bush meant to be reassuring when he proposed help for the economy on Friday. But since then, markets around the world have plunged. The damage continues this morning on Wall Street, and now the White House says it will not rule out additional measures to strengthen the U.S. economy.
NPR's Brian Naylor is covering this story.
And, Brian, the president's plan was thought to be pretty aggressive when he made it. How about now?
BRIAN NAYLOR: Well, now it doesn't look so much - at least the markets don't think so much of it. So there's talk about maybe boosting it a little bit. The White House says they're not closing the door to such an idea. We haven't really seen a plan yet - first, I should say, from the White House - other than the fact that the president came out the other day and said it should amount to about one percent of the gross domestic product that was put about $145 billion.
So, you know, it's anyone's guess is to how much more it - how much higher it could go, but, you know, Congress has not shown any hesitancy about spending more money. And in a case like this where it could be argued that it's truly justified, it's not clear what the upper limit would be.
INSKEEP: I'm remembering yet another crisis situation after 9/11, the president asked for I think it may have been $20 billion in emergency spending and that Congress said that's fine, $40 billion.
NAYLOR: Yeah, right. So, yeah, it's hard to know exactly how high the bidding is going to get here. But I wouldn't be surprised to see quite a bit more than what's on the table right now.
INSKEEP: Now, let's remember what kinds of aid were being discussed. Even though the president was not very specific, we were talking about rebates of some kind, tax rebates, right?
NAYLOR: Yeah. They're talking about perhaps eliminating the lowest tax bracket that - which would amount to rebates of $800 for individuals, $1,600 for couples. That seems to be baseline, and then there's all kinds of things that you could - that you're talking about beyond that. Republicans and the president also talked about - Republicans in Congress - the president talked about tax breaks for businesses to encourage investment.
Democrats say that, you know, the $800 rebate is not going to help those at the very lowest end of the scale who don't pay any income tax and so they want to see things like unemployment benefits extended. They want to see food stamp eligibility increased. And there's also talk about some infrastructure spending. I should say that earlier, or as we speak, the director of the congressional budget office is testifying in a Senate hearing, and he said, you know, logistically, it's going to be several months before the IRS can act on any kind of tax rebates. So it's not clear how soon this money will get pumped into the economy, but Congress wants to act ASAP.
INSKEEP: Does this week's news make it any easier for Republicans and Democrats to get past their differences and pass something?
NAYLOR: Well, it's been interesting, Steve, because last year there was such gridlock. There were arguments over all of the spending bills and pretty much anything else that came up. So far this year, at least on this issue, there's been an amazing amount of bipartisan agreement that something needs to be done, and there hasn't been a whole lot of the kind of bickering back and forth that characterized last year.
INSKEEP: Although it comes back to the point you just made, when Congress acts quickly that's still a matter of months.
NAYLOR: Well, that's right. And I mean, there's talk about getting a package together by the president's State of the Union message, which is next week. I don't know if that's realistic. But they are talking about doing something by the end of February.
INSKEEP: Brian, thanks very much.
NAYLOR: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Brian Naylor, who covers Congress.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
This may be a moment when a Wall Street trader could look around and say it could be worse. The Dow Jones Industrial average is down, but not nearly as much as in early trading when it fell more than 400 points.
Two things happened before the start of trading. Asian markets dove for a second straight day. That raised fears of a stock market crash. But then the Federal Reserve acted dramatically. It cut one of the economy's most important interest rates, the federal funds rate, by three-quarters of a percentage point, which is a lot.
Joining us now is a regular guest on this program, the Wall Street Journal's David Wessel. David, good morning.
Mr. DAVID WESSEL (Wall Street Journal): Good morning.
INSKEEP: Down about 70 points, 51 points, actually, as I look at a live television feed right now. That's like a normal day.
Mr. WESSEL: There's nothing normal about today. But it does suggest that the markets are pleased that the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates three-quarters of a percentage point, instead of saying oh my God, Ben Bernanke's panicking, let's sell, sell, sell.
INSKEEP: Meaning that they could have feared that the Fed was out of control of the situation but they seem to think that maybe the Fed is in control.
Mr. WESSEL: Correct.
INSKEEP: And how dramatic is it to drop interest rates three-quarters of a percentage point, and what does that mean?
Mr. WESSEL: Well, I do think it's pretty dramatic. The last time the Fed moved interest rates by this much on one day was in 1994, when it raised them. We have to go back to the early '80s for any day on which the Fed has cut rates by this much. And even more impressive: the tone of their statement and the market expectations is that there are more rate cuts to come, perhaps as early as next week when the Fed holds a regularly scheduled meeting.
I think this reflects at least two things. One is they're really worried about the economy, which is performing worse than they had anticipated. And B) they seem to have gotten a little behind the curve with the markets. And I think the reason they came in this morning was to prevent this from being the great crash of '08 by signaling that they're on the case and that they're trying to treat the patient.
INSKEEP: Although you could raise the question why this would work, because people were already expecting the Fed to drop interest rates again and nevertheless, markets were sliding. Has anything fundamentally changed about the situation today?
Mr. WESSEL: I don't think markets expected this, so this was more than expected. But I think that, well, it gets easier to borrow. It's cheaper to borrow. Mortgage rates will be lower, businesses will be able to borrow less. The way the Fed influences the economy is by making borrowing cheaper. The question is whether - are things so bad that no one's going to want to borrow anyways and it won't have any impact?
There's a good bet that it's too late to avoid a recession and this will just quicken the end of the recession or make it more shallow. We don't really know yet. So yes, it has an effect. The markets have an effect on how - on the daily course of business and on people's attitudes and how wealthy they are and how much they spend. So the Feds works both through influencing the market and by making borrowing cheaper.
INSKEEP: So what are the fundamental problems that we're facing that the Fed and others - the Bush administration and others - are trying to attack here? Difficulty with credit? What else?
Mr. WESSEL: I think the - the dif - yeah. Oil prices are up. Housing is down and there seems to be a credit crunch. And that does seem to be a triple whammy that the economy is having trouble shaking off. There was hope that the rest of the world would be so strong - Europe, Japan, emerging markets - that somehow they would hold up the sky as the United States economy slowed. But that's now in doubt.
Overseas markets are very uneasy. It's clear that we exported some of our housing problems to banks abroad, and so it seems to be a problem made in America that's spreading. And one of the things the optimists were counting on was more exports this year, and I think we'll get more exports this year, but it may not be quite as rosy as hoped for.
INSKEEP: We're finding out that markets like China and India will have less money to spend than we might have anticipated just a few days ago.
Mr. WESSEL: Exactly.
INSKEEP: David, stay with us if you would.
David Wessel is with the Wall Street Journal. And Renee is going to bring another voice into the conversation.
MONTAGNE: We move now to London. Joining us on the line is Joanna Chung of the Financial Times. Welcome to our program.
Ms. JOANNA CHUNG (Financial Times): Hello.
MONTAGNE: How are the markets there in Europe responding to the Fed's move this morning?
Ms. CHUNG: Well, I think the European markets actually took a little while to decide what to do. They've been swinging around all over the place. Initially after the Fed cuts, for about maybe 10, 15 minutes they sort of jumped for joy, and then they resumed their fall, they started rising again. And with probably 15, 20 minutes left until the markets close here, it looks like they will close higher.
As of two minutes ago, when I last checked, the main index, the (unintelligible) FTSE 100, for instance, is up nearly 3 percent after a 5.5 percent fall yesterday. And the main index that we look at usually in the European markets is up over 2 percent. But...
MONTAGNE: So...
Ms. CHUNG: ...while they decide there has been incredibly wild gyrations because of the question between whether this is actually the Feds panicking or, you know, is this something to find comfort in or not.
MONTAGNE: So a little happier at the end of the day. But let me ask you the same question that Steve just asked David Wessel. Do European investors see a fundamental problem in the U.S. economy that can't be solved by a quick rate cut in the U.S.?
Ms. CHUNG: I think there is - I think there are a lot of people who are increasingly thinking that this is not a question of rate cuts but a question of the availability of credit. And there are many analysts and economists who argue that the Feds or any central bank can help with the price of credit, but not necessarily the availability of credit. And by cutting and slashing rates, you know, by 75 basis points or any other amount is not necessarily going to impact long term the availability of credit.
So I think that is the main issue at this point. And the other big thing for Europe as well as Asia is the idea that thus far everyone has bought in to this idea of decoupling, and the fact that even if the U.S. does tip into recession, the rest of the world economy will be okay because of powerhouses like China and India. But that theory is quickly evaporating even as we speak because people are thinking that actually if the U.S. economy goes down, the rest of the world is in trouble as well.
MONTAGNE: We've seen the U.S. Central Bank take action today. Are European banks likely to follow suit?
Ms. CHUNG: That is very unclear at the moment. Before the U.S. markets opened, before the Fed decision, there were lots of rumors - in the London markets in particular - that there was some sort of coordinated action being planned by the different central banks. But as we know now, the Fed has acted alone. At this point, some people are speculating that the U.S. move might lead to moves by the Bank of England and the European Central Bank as well. But at the moment that's quite unclear. And at least for the European Central Bank, it has continued to sound warning notes about inflation, which makes it seem that they're not - they're not prepared to cut interest rates just yet.
Mr. WESSEL: Can I weigh in on that one?
INSKEEP: David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal, go ahead.
Mr. WESSEL: Yeah. The Bank of Canada, actually, did join the Fed today. So the Fed is not alone. I think that there's a shot that the ECB will move. History suggests that they eventually follow the Fed. The Fed has done so much. And I remember back in 2001, the ECB moved very quickly from very anti-inflation rhetoric to rate cuts.
So I agree that they're sounding pretty tough on inflation. But it's hard for me to imagine that they won't move eventually.
INSKEEP: Well, let me ask David Wessel to wrap up this part of the program. If inflation is a real worry here, we have heard earlier today from reporters in Asia that they're having trouble right now sustaining their intensive growth. They're having trouble getting low enough wages and cheap enough supplies and cheap enough oil to keep providing cheap products to the United States and other places. Is inflation a danger, particularly if the Fed is trying to stimulate the economy here?
Mr. WESSEL: Yes, inflation is a danger. There are good reasons to have - to expect food and energy prices to be high, given the demand from China and India and the rest of the world. And the Fed is worried about that.
But we know that if you have a deep enough recession, demand for oil and other commodities will come down, and so they're counting on that. But mostly they say we have - we're staring at two worries here, and we had to pick one and we decided, the Federal Reserve said, that growth is the much bigger worry.
INSKEEP: David?
Mr. WESSEL: Others may not feel the same way.
INSKEEP: David Wessel of Wall Street Journal. Thanks very much.
Mr. WESSEL: Thank you.
MONTAGNE: And we heard from Joanna Chung, who is a correspondent for the Financial Times, speaking to us from London.
INSKEEP: And we'll continue to keep you updated. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has now gained back nearly all of the more than 400 points that it lost earlier today.
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Next, we'll travel to a country that is struggling to manage a threat within its borders. British authorities had to confront that threat after the London subway bombings. The attacks in 2005 were not blamed on foreign terrorists. They were blamed on British-born Muslims. And Britain is where we go next in this week's examination of Islam in Europe.
We've been learning about European Muslim women, and it turns out that many second-generation daughters of South Asian immigrants are embracing a political form of Islam.
NPR's Sylvia Poggioli continues our series, reporting from London.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: The Islam Channel TV network is located in a sleek glass and steel building near London's financial district. Long tables with computer screens fill the large newsroom. The reporters are mostly women, all with their heads covered. Some reveal only their eyes underneath black Islamic veils. A woman's talk show, "The Muslim Woman's Dilemma," is currently on the air.
(Soundbite of show, "The Muslim Woman's Dilemma")
Unidentified Woman #1: The treatment of women in Islam is a stick that's used to beat Islam with, and at the moment, there's a bigger agenda going on, isn't there? We know that...
POGGIOLI: The show's host is Aamna Durrani. Her headscarf is tightly wrapped around her head and falls into soft drapes over her shoulders. She was born here of Pakistani parents but is increasingly asserting her Muslim identity, especially since 9/11 and the 2005 London suicide bombings that led to what she says are draconian anti-terrorism laws.
Ms. AAMNA DURRANI (Host, "Muslimah Dilemma"): My allegiance to the Muslim, what we say, ummah, the Muslim community, definitely has got a lot, a lot stronger as a result of the war on terror. And it has made the sense of solidarity throughout the world, I think, a lot stronger and definitely for Muslim women here in Britain. You know, it has really made us think - where do our loyalties lie?
POGGIOLI: Analysts here say another cause of British Muslims' growing alienation has been Britain's role in the war in Iraq. They say it has inspired many young Muslims to segregate themselves from mainstream society.
A 2006 Pew poll showed 81 percent of Muslims surveyed here considered their Islamic identity more important than being British. Like some of them, Durrani refuses to take part in the electoral process unless it were to introduce Islamic law based on the Koran.
Ms. DURRANI: If I was going to vote for anything, it would only be for the Sharia law.
(Soundbite of Whitechapel Road)
POGGIOLI: On Whitechapel Road, in the heart of the largest Muslim community in the U.K., there's been a visible increase in women's use of the face-covering niqab over the past year. Many women here have discarded the long colorful scarves typical of their South Asian cultures and now shroud themselves in black.
Unapproachable and faceless, they shop at the outdoor stalls.
(Soundbite of market)
POGGIOLI: Many non-Muslims see the total cover-up as a sign of growing separation. Many Muslim women say it's a political statement, a sign of their newfound identity.
(Soundbite of mosque)
POGGIOLI: The East London Mosque is one of the biggest in the U.K. Its tall minaret and large dome cast long shadows over the street. In the 1990s, this mosque acquired a reputation as a haven for radical young Muslims.
Now this mosque is one of the few in Britain where a new generation of Muslim women is moving into the centuries-old male bastion of religion. Women meet here to discuss the Koran in what they call circles of knowledge. They're using education to open long-closed doors.
(Soundbite of door opening)
POGGIOLI: It's not easy for a reporter to penetrate this world. There's widespread dislike for the media, accused of fomenting what many Muslims call Islamophobia. But some mosque activists, all of Bangladeshi origin, agree to talk.
Katsim Abibi(ph) wears the full face veil, the niqab. She resents Labor Party veteran Jack Straw's 2006 remarks that he would prefer that his Muslim women constituents not wear the face veil when they come to speak to him.
Ms. KATSIM ABIBI (Activist): For him to ask someone to remove an item of clothing I find rather inappropriate. And I don't see why that should all of a sudden be an issue.
Mahera Ruby(ph) and Lubaaba al Azami(ph) talk about their empowerment, saying Islam breaks down all barriers among Muslims.
Ms. MAHERA RUBY: Personally for me, having the Muslim identity has - that's all I have, and it has given me the ability to aspire to achieve whatever I want.
Ms. LUBAABA AL AZAMI: You don't have a nationality...
Ms. RUBY: Yeah.
Ms. AL AZAMI: ...for Muslims, you don't have a color for Muslims, you don't have a language for Muslims.
POGGIOLI: The major concern of the women here is to avoid too much mingling with Western culture. Ruby sends her children to Islamic schools to avoid sex education classes and exposure to what she calls the pagan myth of Santa Claus. And she does not single out the 2005 London terrorist attacks as an act of extremism.
Ms. RUBY: I mean, look at 7/7, how many people died in 7/7? You look at the amount of rape and gun killings, yeah?
Ms. AL AZAMI: Yeah.
Ms. RUBY: Gun crime, twice as more, three times as more people, you know, they're being killed. So when we look at one extreme to the other, these are all extreme. To me any violence is extreme.
POGGIOLI: It's statements like this one that writer and researcher Munira Mirza, a young woman of Pakistani origin, sees as a sign of an increasingly confrontational attitude.
Ms. MUNIRA MIRZA (Writer): At the same time that women are putting on the headscarf, they are also going to work. They're also going into education. They're increasingly vocal in the media. This is the, I think, the confusing thing about Muslim women in the West, is that they are becoming Westernized and at the same time they are adopting their religious identity more strongly.
POGGIOLI: And some young women are giving a Western twist to purdah, the Muslim system of sex segregation.
Unidentified Woman: Well, me and my friends are having a party that night. A fancy dress party. Girls only.
Unidentified Woman #2: I really want to do a, you know, black tie, except without the men.
Unidentified Woman #3: I have so many dresses that I want to wear.
POGGIOLI: Three students, all wearing the Islamic veil, meet outside the Muslim prayer room at the London School of Economics, one of Britain's premier universities. They're members of an Islamic student group active on all British campuses. Their fields range from English literature to Arabic to international relations.
Amal Saffour(ph) is 20.
Ms. AMAL SAFFOUR (Student, London School of Economics): Muslims do have faults, and especially with the way they have been treating women there have been many faults and errors. And it seems to me traditionally that many mosques, you know, their board of trustees, et cetera, have always been men.
POGGIOLI: Roya Soag(ph) is 21.
Ms. ROYA SOAG (Student, London School of Economics): My mother especially tried so hard to get involved with it and was basically shunned. There's a lot of change within the community that needs to happen.
Ms. SAIDA KIDWAI(ph) (Student, London School of Economics): I think our generation, like, as we grow older and as we start taking charge of things more...
Not to sound, like, power-hungry...
(Soundbite of laughter)
POGGIOLI: And Saida Kidwai is just 19. All three students are articulate and confident, and full participants in the Islamic women's awakening.
They claim there's no conflict between their British and Muslim identities, yet they seem indifferent to the possibility that their raised Islamic consciousness could lead not to greater integration but rather to increased separation from mainstream British society.
Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.
INSKEEP: You can hear the first two parts of the series and also see where Muslims live across Europe by going to npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
In New Orleans, groups that work with the homeless say the city's homeless population has doubled since Hurricane Katrina. That's the problem. Here is one solution: thousands of new houses and apartments are being built for the most chronically homeless. There's another problem - they can't move in.
NPR's Joseph Shapiro explains.
JOSEPH SHAPIRO: Austin Earl is so poor he had to find a spot of grass in a city park to sleep at night. But even when you possess almost nothing, it's still not safe to live on the streets of New Orleans.
Mr. AUSTIN EARL (Homeless, New Orleans, Louisiana): I got robbed about a week ago in broad daylight, coming from the grocery store, two youngsters.
SHAPIRO: What did they take?
Mr. EARL: Well, they took the money I had, took my cigarettes and my lighter. I found my wallet about a block away. You know, to rob the homeless is something I really couldn't understand, but there's guys that does it.
SHAPIRO: Austin Earl got a mental illness, but it's been a while since he used the medications that help him. He's 52 and he's been on the streets for four years, even before Hurricane Katrina. That storm destroyed almost all the city's affordable housing.
So New Orleans came up with a bold plan to house the most desperate and hardest-to-help homeless people like Austin Earl. It's building thousands of new apartments and houses.
Mr. CRAIG KUCHUVA(ph) (Developer): Watch your step.
SHAPIRO: And the first of them are going to be ready in the next few weeks, like this cozy three-bedroom house just down the street from the gleaming white Louisiana Superdome.
Mr. GARY GIBBS(ph) (Developer): Bathroom.
Mr. KUCHUVA: Closet space as well.
SHAPIRO: Developers Gary Gibbs and Craig Kuchuva got tax breaks to build this house. In return, they agreed to give low rents to the poor and to set aside at least five percent of their units to the most chronically homeless.
But the developers don't have to hold these units open forever. If homeless people don't apply, they can start renting to other people with low incomes.
Mr. KUCHUVA: As soon as the doors open, they will rent.
Mr. GIBBS: As the housing becomes available, there's really no place for people to be here right now with the devastation from the flood. I mean, once we start building these, we'll be able - people will come back.
SHAPIRO: You have no trouble filling these up?
Mr. KUCHUVA: No, no.
Mr. GIBBS: No, not at all.
SHAPIRO: Congress gave those tax breaks to developers. And they gave millions of dollars to provide the social services the homeless people need when they move into the new apartments. There's one problem - they're not moving in.
Congress never got around to coming up with the third part of the program.
Ms. ANN O'HARA (Co-Founder, Technical Assistance Collaborative): What we don't have are the rent subsidies that will help people pay their rent. That's our problem.
SHAPIRO: Ann O'Hara helps run a national housing group for people with disabilities called the Technical Assistance Collaborative. For the last two and a half years, she's made dozens of trips from Boston to help Louisiana build these homes.
Ms. O'HARA: We're at an incredibly critical point, because if we can get the funding for the rent subsidies from Congress, then Louisiana will have a 3,000-unit permanent supportive housing system that will be in place for years and years and years. If we don't get these subsidies, then the whole program could fall apart.
SHAPIRO: Louisiana lawmakers believe Congress will come up with the $70 million this spring. But that's what they expected last year, and the year before.
On this day, Ann O'Hara visits a man who's waiting for one of those apartments.
Mr. BENJAMIN PARNELL: Yeah, what am I saying. Let me ask you this.
Ms. O'HARA: Sure.
Mr. PARNELL: You can answer this question.
Ms. O'HARA: I hope so.
SHAPIRO: Benjamin Parnell sits outside to smoke. He runs a plastic comb through his long black hair and beard. He's 38 and blind.
Mr. PARNELL: What is it like to see nowadays? I've been like this 15 years -seeing black. What's it like to see nowadays?
Ms. O'HARA: Well, today the sky is blue with a little bit of white clouds, kind of underneath the blue.
Mr. PARNELL: It must be beautiful.
Ms. O'HARA: It is.
Mr. PARNELL: God's creation's awesome, yeah.
Ms. O'HARA: It is.
Mr. PARNELL: Air smells fresh out here, boy.
Ms. O'HARA: Yeah.
Mr. PARNELL: But I'm going to tell you something, Ann. It must be beautiful to see, you know.
Ms. O'HARA: I bet it would be great if you had your own place to live, too, right, Benjamin?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. PARNELL: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: This place where Parnell lives is a nursing home. He's got a room with dull cinderblock walls and a flimsy pink curtain to separate him from the elderly man in the next bed.
Before Hurricane Katrina, Parnell shared a house with friends. He cooked for himself. He had a job. He's living in this nursing home now because he's got no other place to go.
So it's like you don't really need to be in this place.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. PARNELL: You make me laugh, Joe, when you say that. I'd really like my own house. I really would. But I want to get my guitar back, electric guitar to play my slamming Metallica…
(Singing) Landmine has taken my sight, taken my speech, taken my hearing, taken my arms, taken my legs, taken my sight, left me with a life in hell.
(Soundbite of song, "One")
Mr. JAMES HETFIELD (Lead Vocalist, Metallica): (Singing) Landmine has taken my sight, taken my speech, taken my hearing, taken my arms, taken my legs, taken my soul, left me with a life in hell.
SHAPIRO: New Orleans wants to create something called permanent supportive housing. The idea is to give the most chronically homeless people a permanent place to live. Don't require them to first get off drugs or alcohol, or to get their mental illness under control. Just get them off the streets; that's therapeutic in itself, and then offer them whatever services they need to succeed in that house.
It worked for Tyrone Smith(ph). He rents this three-room apartment for $80 a month. It's crowded with the brightly color abstracts and landscapes he paints in the back room.
Mr. TYRONE SMITH: This one is a sunset - of riding over the Causeway Bridge, which is the longest bridge in the United States - 24 miles, correct?
SHAPIRO: After Hurricane Katrina, Smith lived under a bridge. His life was out of control - drugs, depression and confusion. Then a year and a half ago, a group called the UNITY of Greater New Orleans moved him into this apartment - one of just a small number of permanent supportive housing units that already exist.
What was it like when you - the first day you were here?
Mr. SMITH: It was overwhelming. Joy to have a place over your head, to start your life all over again. And after being here for maybe a month, I started soul-searching. I changed my life tremendously because I was depressed, and I just started focusing on my art. And the fun and joy of painting is that you get lost into the world of painting and that keeps your focus on something positive, rather than slipping back into the gutter of the drugs.
SHAPIRO: Smith paints using the name Mouthy. He recently displayed and sold his paintings at two shows. This kind of supportive housing has been used with success in other cities. Now, thousands of homeless people in New Orleans are waiting to try it too.
Joseph Shapiro, NPR News.
MONTAGNE: Another New Orleans man left homeless after Hurricane Katrina was Chris Turnbow. Hear about his family's search for him at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Okay. No big stars right now in U.S. figure skating, but commentator Frank Deford sees greatness for the ages in other sports.
FRANK DEFORD: Ours is a youth-centric culture, and nobody is supposed to care about history anymore. But curiously, it's really quite amazing the attention that sports fans pay to legacy, to how their favorite has-beens rank for posterity. History is history, except for sports. And, with fans, the present is always playing the past. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all - all time?
All this is underscored at this moment because we find an absolute glut of brilliance. Is it possible that right now we have, plying their genius before our admiring eyes, yea verily at their peaks, the greatest professional football team ever? The greatest quarterback ever? The greatest tennis player ever? And the greatest golfer ever?
Of course, part of the mania to designate superiority of sports is because sport is, after all, competitive. But it is also true that it is an article of sporting faith that athletes are always getting better. In no other area do we believe this. The greatest writers and composers and painters are all long dead. They don't make them like they used to. But inasmuch as the cliche tells us that records are made to be broken, then it follows for many that the record-breakers are bound to be better than all the erstwhile record holders of the past.
Only right now the empirical evidence suggests that maybe that sophistry really is so, that the New England Patriots are the best team ever put on God's green grass, and Tom Brady is better even than Johnny Unitas and Joe Montana, and Roger Federer and Tiger Woods have surely come down from Mount Olympus to toy with the poor mortals who would dare take them on.
Because heroes in individual sports are not dragged down by imperfect teammates, it's easiest to rate the likes of Woods and Federer. Since the preponderance of opinion now is that they both are indeed better than anybody who's ever picked up a club or a racket, since that's settled, the new parlor game is to argue is Federer more dominant in tennis than Woods is at golf?
It's impossible to choose, though, because the challenges in the two sports are so different. Woods can have a bad day and survive, but he can't stop some other golfer otherwise a non-entity - like Zach Johnson at the Masters last year - from getting hot and beating him without ever really playing him directly head-to-head.
Federer has to play only one man at a time, so he controls his own fate better. But also, unlike golf, there are no off-days he can recover from. One bad match, and he's gone from the tournament. In the Australian Open the other day, in fact, Federer almost got taken down by tennis' own version of a Zach Johnson.
Down under, Federer's seeking his 11th straight Grand Slam final. That's simply impossible. Even as I sit here and say those words, I think, he must get beat -must. And Tiger can't possibly beat all the world's best golfers at all four majors. And surely it's only the law of averages for Brady to have an absolutely rotten day in the Super Bowl. And the Patriots are ripe to be upset.
But no, no, no and no. Sometimes, I guess they don't make them like they used to because, in fact, they make them even better.
MONTAGNE: Frank Deford joins us each Wednesday from member station WSHU in Fairfield, Connecticut.
You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Everybody who's followed the war in Iraq knows the Bush administration made statements about weapons of mass destruction. Many of those statements turned out to be unfounded.
Now, a Washington group has made a count of just how many statements were not true and when they were made. The group is the Center for Public Integrity, which is devoted to investigative journalism. Charles Lewis founded it.
Welcome to the program.
Mr. CHARLES LEWIS (Founder, Center for Public Integrity): Thanks.
INSKEEP: Okay. How many statements?
Mr. LEWIS: Nine hundred and thirty-five false statements from September 11th to September 11th, '03 - two years. And, of course, a good amount of that is in the 18-month lead-up to the invasion.
INSKEEP: You say from September 11th, that's when you started counting for...
Mr. LEWIS: Yeah. We decided to start then.
INSKEEP: And you're talking about senior administration officials, the president, secretary of state, on and on.
Mr. LEWIS: Right. The president, the vice president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, deputy secretary of defense, national security adviser and the two White House press secretaries.
INSKEEP: You also tried to plot when these statements were made, or clusters of statements were made. Why does the timing matter?
Mr. LEWIS: Well, I'm working on a book about truth and information and how facts disseminate through our society and things, and I was curious to see what that was. I mean, when - how's the selling of the word done exactly, how was this done. And, you know, as I sort of thought we'd find, but I don't know that anyone's done - we actually gridded it out over 24 months, and the spikes go up first, from August to November 2002, and then double that size of the spike right before the war, January to March.
INSKEEP: So August to November 2002, that's when there's a debate in Congress over approving the war, and the administration is saying more.
Mr. LEWIS: And midterm elections also. Yeah.
INSKEEP: And then - and the midterm elections, okay.
Mr. LEWIS: Right. October, November.
INSKEEP: And then right before the war itself, more statements.
Mr. LEWIS: Yeah. Exactly. Which is logical, but again, when you see how many occasions - over 500 events where they chose to say these things and they're all saying essentially the same thing.
INSKEEP: Just so we get an example of what we're talking about, let's play one statement, a rather famous statement in a speech by President Bush. This is from September 2002.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more, and according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. The regime has longstanding and continuing ties to terrorists groups, and there are al-Qaida terrorists inside Iraq. This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.
INSKEEP: Charles Lewis, maybe this statement is worth looking at. This is one of your 900-and-some false statements...
Mr. LEWIS: Right.
INSKEEP: ...as you define them. This is a statement, though, that if you went to the White House, they would say, look, we did have. It said according to the British government. That's what the president said. We did have British intelligence information. We had our own intelligence information. We're passing on the best information we have.
Have you been able to establish that these were knowingly false statements?
Mr. LEWIS: We have established, because we've read and reviewed and gleaned 25 books, whistleblower accounts and government commission and inspector general-type reports. We know what was true at the time and what they knew at the time. And it was much more complex than people say. They were crosscurrents inside every agency and inside the White House. And there was not unanimity about this. But even more relevant, I think, policymakers have information all the time, but speaking about it is a decision and a judgment made by a president, for example. So saying things like this, in a flat, declarative way when, you know, there was mixed views of this in CIA, and inside State, and inside Defense, and even within 9/11, within 24 hours - there was a debate and people saying there's no evidence of this.
INSKEEP: Okay. Charles Lewis, thanks very much.
Mr. LEWIS: Thank you.
INSKEEP: He's the founder of the Center for Public Integrity. They've looked at pre-war statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And you can find a link to their report on Iraq at npr.org.
You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Fallujah 2004 - one of the biggest stories in Iraq. The Sunni city was taken over by al-Qaida. When U.S. Marines finally invaded in force in November of that year, they drove most of the fighters out and destroyed the city. But the problem was those fighters - al-Qaida militants - didn't disappear. And the city needed to be rebuilt. The U.S. had promised to start reconstruction immediately. It didn't actually do so until now, as NPR's Anne Garrels reports.
ANNE GARRELS: Major Andy Dietz, a Marine, is on his second tour in Fallujah.
Major ANDY DIETZ (U.S. Marines): You know, here for the battle last time, now I'm back here fixing it, which is kind of ironic.
GARRELS: Fallujah is still an armed fortress. Anyone coming in has to show a U.S.-issued residency card at checkpoints on the perimeter. It's a pain. But there hasn't been a car bomb here since last March, and local police are now able to secure the city instead of the unpopular Iraqi army brigade, which have been brought in from the Shiite south.
Shopkeeper Yassir al Jumeili(ph) says the changes are dramatic.
Mr. YASSIR AL JUMEILI (Shopkeeper): (Through translator) Insurgents used to kill anyone working in the police force. Now we have 1,300 policemen. This provides incomes for people here, and the police are much better than outsiders - Iraqis or Americans.
GARRELS: As many as 40 percent of the city's residents have still not returned because of the destruction. The big fight now is rebuilding and improving services. Major Dietz says electricity remains the biggest problem.
Maj. DIETZ: Fallujah doesn't have a lot of power right now. Well, what's tied to power? Water. You can't push water if you don't have power at the pumps. You can't move sewage if you don't have power at the lift stations. And it goes on and on.
GARRELS: Children performed at the recent opening of a U.S.-funded business center, their families apparently no longer afraid they would be targeted for supporting a U.S. project.
(Soundbite of child reciting)
GARRELS: This little girl still wants a return to the way things were before the U.S. invasion and al-Qaida. She wants her old school back. She wants to see her grandmother, who's no longer in Fallujah. It's not like it was, but Yassir al Jumeili says at last contractors feel safe enough to take on projects.
Mr. AL JUMEILI: (Through translator) Not so long ago people couldn't work here because armed groups extorted money from them, or they were simply killed for taking bids from the Americans.
GARRELS: The Americans are widely seen as the engine behind the rebuilding. Asked if he felt he was still being neglected by the Iraqi government, Sheikh Hamid al-Alwani, the head of the city council, didn't miss a beat.
Sheikh HAMID AL-ALWANI (Fallujah City Council): (Through translator) Yes.
GARRELS: The Iraqi government has spent far less on rebuilding than the U.S. predicted.
Sheikh AL-ALWANI: (Speaking foreign language)
GARRELS: Sheikh Hamid, a Sunni, thinks the Shiite-led government is deliberately shafting Fallujah for sectarian reasons. He says it claims there are still a lot of bad people here. But there are a lot fewer bad people than there were, and the sheikh and the Americans argue there would be fewer still if there were more jobs.
Sheikhs like Hamid who spearheaded the fight against al-Qaida remain vulnerable, especially outside the city perimeter. This week, a 12-year-old managed to get through guards around a leading supporter of the U.S. The boy was supposed to be paying respects; instead he blew himself up. He missed his target but killed five others.
The youngster was a relative of the sheikh. Successful attacks like this are often inside jobs. This poses a problem for tribal leaders who want to reintegrate former al-Qaida members. Marine General John Allen says tribes demand the former fighters make amends for killings in the past in a very specific way.
General JOHN ALLEN (U.S. Marines): You must commit yourself in public, and in the light of day, to opposing al-Qaida, and you must go fight al-Qaida. You must equalize this blood feud. You've got to get al-Qaida blood on your hands.
GARRELS: But trust is still a problem, and there are some former fighters whom General Allen will go after no matter what.
Gen. ALLEN: Each one we end up having to treat separately.
GARRELS: You'll notice a number of interviews in this report were conducted by phone. It's still risky for a foreigner to walk the streets of Fallujah. In the past, engineer Amin(ph) said he couldn't consider for a minute hosting a foreigner in his house.
Mr. AMIN: (Through translator) I would have been killed and any foreigner too.
GARRELS: He discusses with his family whether it's safe enough now to have a foreign visitor. The conclusion: soon, but not yet.
Anne Garrels, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep. Good morning.
There was a moment when it seemed like people could count on the global economy to prop up the United States. Other nations were booming just as the U.S. was struggling. A quick look at world markets this week suggests that it's hard to count on anything. Asian markets did recover today after two straight days heading downward. It helped that the Federal Reserve cut interest rates. But it is not clear that will be enough. European markets are slipping today.
NPR's Jim Zarroli reports on the economic dangers abroad and at home.
JIM ZARROLI: Carmen Reinhart, an economist at the University of Maryland, studies banking crises. She says they almost always follow the same script. There is a big run-up in the price of some asset like stocks or houses. People see how much money is being made and they want in on it. Foreign investors rush in, people borrow a lot. And then in the heady atmosphere that follows, Reinhart says banks start to relax their lending standards.
Professor CARMEN REINHART (University of Maryland): You start making riskier loans, engaging in riskier projects, and those start to go sour. And that's how the bubble is pricked.
ZARROLI: Reinhart says once banks start losing money, they get scared. They're reluctant to lend. And Reinhart says the subprime mortgage crisis that erupted last year is almost a classic bank crisis. Bank crises can do a lot of damage to the economy. If enough banks stop lending, businesses can no longer get the capital they need to operate. They stop buying things. They lay people off.
Reinhart says a sharp economic slowdown is a veritable certainty this year.
Prof. REINHART: I would be surprised. We would be incredibly lucky if we didn't have one because a lot of wealth is being destroyed.
ZARROLI: This kind of systemic downturn, in which lending activity slows down, is something that scares a lot of economists because it can be hard to shake off. Once confidence erodes in the economy, it can be difficult to restore. That's what happened in Japan in the 1990s when housing and stock prices cratered and no one wanted to invest, even with interest rates near zero.
And Bernard Baumohl of the Economic Outlook Group says the U.S. could face a similar prospect this year.
Mr. BERNARD BAUMOHL (Economic Outlook Group): That's the concern, I think, that everybody has right now, that we're in a recession that could get a lot worse, and that this recession has been induced largely by a deterioration in the financial sector. And when you have that kind of a problem, then it's much more serious than a typical kind of recession.
ZARROLI: And this is happening at a time when the economy is facing other risks already. For instance, one of the real bright spots for U.S. companies right now is exports. Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America are prospering, and with the dollar so weak, people in those places are buying more American-made products. But the turmoil in overseas stock markets this week suggests that those economies could be headed for trouble too. If that happens, the export boom may not last.
Nariman Behravesh is senior economist at Global Insight.
Mr. NARIMAN BEHRAVESH (Economist): Indeed, if growth weakened overseas significantly, then the recession in the U.S. could be deeper and longer.
ZARROLI: But other economists say it's by no means clear how far the subprime damage will spread. For one thing, compared to Japanese central bankers in the 1990s, Federal Reserve officials responded to the crisis pretty quickly - if not quite quickly enough to satisfy some of their critics. They cut interest rates several times, the most recent being the surprise three quarter point reduction yesterday morning. And U.S. officials are discussing measures like tax rebates to stimulate growth.
The University of Maryland's Carmen Reinhart says these efforts should eventually bear fruit.
Prof. REINHART: It doesn't impact what's going to happen today or what's going to happen next week because monetary policy works with a lag, but it's certainly a major step in the right direction.
ZARROLI: Reinhart says the truth is that most bank crises end without doing any significant damage to the economy. But there have been notable exceptions. How much the subprime crisis can be contained is unclear, in part because so much is still unknown. Most banks don't yet have a real grasp of how much they have lost in the mortgage downturn. Until they do, the real impact of the crisis can't be determined.
Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Investors in the rest of the world are trying to determine the extent of the impact of the financial crisis on them as well. Stocks in Asia responded well to yesterday's rate cut, and that may be continued proof that Asia's economy is still closely linked to the U.S. economy.
That's what our labor reporter, Frank Langfitt, has been hearing. He spent a day at factories in China and joins us now from Dongguan City. Hello.
FRANK LANGFITT: Hey, Renee. How are you?
MONTAGNE: Fine, thank you. First of all, tell us about Dongguan City. It is one of China's key factory towns. What is it like?
LANGFITT: It's amazing. It would be great if some Americans could come and see this because they'd really got a sense of where all those toys and all their furniture and all those other things they see that are made in China come from. I'm looking out my window right now, it's 11th story of a hotel, and it's just apartment block after apartment block, and then there are these huge factories. I mean, some of them are the size of aircraft hangers. And there are, you know, many of these factories employ three to four thousand workers, and they're working all the time, producing for the - mostly, you know, for an export market.
MONTAGNE: And we just heard in Jim's earlier piece about deep concerns here in the U.S. about a downturn in the economy. Are people there, working in Chinese factories and also owning them and involved with them, are they concerned about this downturn?
LANGFITT: Absolutely. They are very worried about it, and they see these economies as pretty closely linked. I had lunch today with a fellow named Michael Ling(ph). He's a Chinese Canadian, and he works for a U.S. furniture company and he sources furniture for them. And after lunch, I asked him this question...
So if there were a U.S. recession, what it would do to what you do, the people you deal with, and to the city here?
Mr. MICHAEL LING: I think it's already happening, actually. We see a lot of suppliers either closing down or they're moving to other countries or laying off people. And because of this, we find it getting difficult to find good qualified suppliers for our products.
MONTAGNE: Now, that's the voice of someone who acquires furniture for a U.S. firm. What about the workers inside the factories? What were you hearing today?
LANGFITT: Well, I heard the same thing. I talked to two factory managers today, and they're both quite concerned about the U.S. economy and the U.S. market. And what was really interesting - I talked to a young woman, she's in her early 30s, her name is Becky Sueng(ph). She's a sales manager at Creation Furniture Company here in Dongguan City, and they sell to Lazy Boy and J.C.Penney. And I asked her about sort of what she's seen in the last few months.
Have you felt the slowdown as well here from your customers? Are they ordering less?
Ms. BECKY SONG (Sales Manager): Yes. They do order much less than before - 20 percent. They said the housing crisis, so nobody want to buy the furniture.
MONTAGNE: So there in Dongguan City a factory worker is very aware of the housing crisis in the U.S.
LANGFITT: Yes. She's the sales manager of this company. And what she's saying is the subprime lending crisis in the United States is directly affecting her company, her workers. There have been a lot of other problems here too, but recently they had to close down two of their factories and lay off 1,300 hundred workers.
MONTAGNE: Frank, there's a popular economic theory that's called decoupling, the idea being that Europe and Asia are not as dependent on the American economy as they once were because they trade with each other. And economists apply this idea especially to China, because its economy has become so strong. Would you say your evidence supports or debunks that idea?
LANGFITT: I haven't talked to anybody today who thinks that's the case at all. In fact, when I talk to people in Chinese and English, they use the word globalization and interdependency. And the idea is that every year this country and the rest of the major producers in the world are more tightly and tightly connected. And so when something happens to one big market, it really ripples through the other ones.
MONTAGNE: Frank, thanks very much.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Renee.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Frank Langfitt, speaking to us from Dongguan City, China. You can track the ups and downs of Fed interest rates since the last recession at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Tributes are pouring in for actor Heath Ledger with Australia's prime minister calling him one of our nation's finest actors. An autopsy is planned today on the 28-year-old star who was found dead yesterday in his Manhattan apartment with sleeping pills nearby. Police say there is no obvious sign that he took his own life.
Speaking from the Australian city of Perth, Ledger's father Kim called his son's death tragic, untimely and accidental.
Mr. KIM LEDGER: He was a down-to-earth, generous, kindhearted, life-loving, unselfish individual who was extremely inspirational to me.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Kim Masters has this remembrance.
KIM MASTERS: Heath Ledger was a handsome young man and a serious actor. His work impressed critics like David Thompson.
Mr. DAVID THOMPSON (Critic): You think of people like River Phoenix, go back a bit further - Montgomery Clift, James Dean - actors of extraordinary ability, people who moved millions of people, had their careers cut short. And Ledger was not even 30.
MASTERS: Ledger grew up in Perth, Australia. He developed an interest in drama as a child, and at 16 made the journey to Sydney to pursue an acting career. After picking up a number of stage and television roles he came to the United States. In 1999, Ledger starred in a teen comedy "10 Things I Hate About You," a modern take on "The Taming of the Shrew" in which he serenaded co-star Julia Stiles.
(Soundbite of movie, "10 Things I Hate About You")
Mr. HEATH LEDGER (Actor): (As Patrick Verona) (Singing) You're just too good to be true, can't take my eyes off of you. You feel like heaven to touch, I wanna hold you so much.
MASTERS: Ledger was offered similar heartthrob roles, but turned them down, saying he was interested in pursuing parts that he liked. He gave a more serious performance as Mel Gibson's son in the Revolutionary War drama "The Patriot." And he played Billy Bob Thornton's suicidal son in "Monster's Ball." But the part for which Ledger will be remembered best was his tragic gay ranch hand Ennis del Mar in "Brokeback Mountain." This is the performance that earned him an Oscar nomination.
(Soundbite of movie, "Brokeback Mountain")
Mr. LEDGER: (As Ennis del Mar) The bottom line is, we're around each other and this thing grabs hold of us again in the wrong place, in the wrong time, and we're dead.
MASTERS: In an interview supplied by Universal Pictures at the time of "Brokeback Mountain's" release, Ledger said he knew he would find it difficult to play the love scenes in the film.
Mr. LEDGER: Not being gay, I knew that would be a challenge for me, and I knew that I could use that to my advantage. I knew that I could use my personal fears in playing this role and I could parallel them to Ennis's fears in playing out his love.
MASTERS: Critic David Thompson was impressed with Ledger's decision to take the part.
Mr. THOMPSON: Just consider for a moment what a brave choice that was for a young male, manly actor. And what a great performance he gave in the film.
MASTERS: Ledger's love life often made the news. He dated actress Naomi Watts, but then was linked romantically with his "Brokeback Mountain" co-star Michelle Williams. The two had a child together but split last year. More recently, gossip pages linked him for a time with troubled actress Lindsay Lohan.
On screen, Ledger was last seen as one of several actors playing Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes's film "I'm Not There." His last role was as The Joker in "The Dark Knight," the follow-up to the 2005 film "Batman Begins." That movie is set for release in July.
Kim Masters, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
To understand this story, you need to know some geography in the Middle East. You need to know that the Gaza Strip, a crowded and isolated Palestinian area, shares a border with Egypt. You need to know that there's a security wall along that border. And finally you need to know it would be more accurate to say there was a security wall. Gunmen bombed it today. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are now streaming across the border into Egypt. They're leaving the Gaza Strip on foot and donkeys to get supplies after being locked in.
NPR's Eric Westervelt is at the scene.
And Eric, what do you see?
ERIC WESTERVELT: Steve, I'm actually standing inside Egypt. The security wall has been completely blown down in huge sections - about three football field lengths of the security wall have been completely destroyed and Palestinians are streaming across using donkey carts, using tractors. I see them coming across carrying cement, cigarettes, cooking oil. It's a chaotic scene but the Gazans are happy and exuberant. They're saying we've been trapped inside Gaza for months. Now they're getting a chance to stock up on some food and fuel items they say they've gone without. Prices have risen steeply inside Gaza. Now they're coming into Egypt and stocking up on things for half, sometimes even less the price.
INSKEEP: I want to understand this. Are you saying this is in effect a desperation shopping expedition?
WESTERVELT: It is. I never thought there could be such exuberance over cheap Egyptian cement, but people are piling it onto their shoulders and carrying it back, so the it's a giant, happy, chaotic shopping spree here in Egypt on the border.
INSKEEP: Now, this was a border, which I presume means you had border guards on both sides. What are Palestinian authorities doing? What are Egyptian authorities doing?
WESTERVELT: There are no Palestinian security guards on the Palestinian side. And I'm standing near some Egyptian soldiers, and they are doing absolutely nothing. We tried to speak with the Egyptian soldiers and they just would not speak with us at all. But essentially they don't want to have any comment on that fact that they're just completely looking the other way, and in some cases facilitating these thousands of people streaming across to shop. And people coming back and forth. I talked to families who said I haven't seen my family inside Gaza in six, seven months. We're going to see our families for the day and hopefully, they say, make it back across.
INSKEEP: We should mention the context for this. The other borders of Gaza are bounded by Israel, and Israel imposed a complete closure on Gaza, reports of fuel and food shortages as a result. The Israelis now saying that they're worried about what's going on and they expect Egypt to take care of it. It doesn't sound like Egypt is terribly interested in doing what Israel wants.
WESTERVELT: No, it doesn't. And this could exacerbate already strained relations between Egypt and Israel. Israel's complained bitterly, Steve, in recent weeks that Egypt is not doing enough to secure this border, saying that in some cases Egyptian authorities are aiding and abetting, they charge, in smuggling arms and explosives across the border. And certainly today's scene will only exacerbate those tensions between Israel and Egypt.
INSKEEP: What does this mean for the Palestinian group that is running Gaza, Hamas?
WESTERVELT: Well, it's hard to say. It could strengthen them. Certainly people are fed up with Fatah, the ruling group that was ousted last June violently by Hamas. But right now people aren't really talking about Fatah or Hamas. They're just sort of swept up in this moment.
INSKEEP: Had Israel been hoping that pressure on the Palestinians in Gaza would put pressure in turn on Hamas?
WESTERVELT: Yeah. That's been the hope. We talked to some Israeli officials. They say we hope that the people inside Gaza eventually sort of turn on Hamas. And I've seen no sign of that up and down the Gaza Strip, been here the last two days. Certainly today's event if anything may end up strengthening Hamas.
INSKEEP: NPR's Eric Westervelt has walked across the border from the Gaza Strip into Egypt, a path that many Palestinians are taking today.
Eric, thanks very much.
WESTERVELT: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: And we have word now from Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, that he deliberately let the Palestinians cross. He told reporters in Cairo - and this is a quote - let them come in to eat and buy food, then they go back, as long as they're not carrying weapons.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
NPR's business news starts with some recovery in Asian stock markets.
The sudden rate cut by the U.S. Federal Reserve did the trick, at least for now, at least in Asia. After yesterday's three quarter of a percent cut in the key federal funds rate, investors in Asian stock markets regained some confidence and some money yesterday after the big sell-offs earlier in the week. But the recovery is tentative. Investors in Asia are still nervous about the U.S. economy, and they're waiting to see what Wall Street and the Fed do next.
NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Beijing.
ANTHONY KUHN: Japan's main stock index ended the day 2 percent higher after posting its biggest single loss yesterday since 9/11. South Korea's main stock index managed to eke out a gain of just over 1 percent while Australian stocks posted gains of about 4.5 percent. The biggest recovery was in Hong Kong, where the Hang Seng index ended trading on Wednesday more than 10 percent higher - the best one-day performance in nearly a decade. Shares in mainland China companies did especially well. Investors in Chinese companies were actually relieved by this week's declines, saying it let some air out of the country's stock market bubble.
Andy Xie is an independent economist based in Shanghai.
Mr. ANDY XIE (Economist): (Speaking foreign language)
KUHN: Hong Kong's stocks are now approaching a fair price, he says. After posting big losses, U.S. banks had to reign in their credit and this cost overvalued stocks here to fall back to Earth.
Despite the rebound in stock prices, many in the region are still nervous and they're seeking safer investments like government bonds. They're keeping a close eye on the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is scheduled to meet again in a week. The hope here is for more interest rate cuts.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Beijing.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
As Asian markets closed European markets opened, but investors there aren't as heartened by yesterday's rate cut by the U.S. Fed as their Asian counterparts. Share prices in top European companies are down in the early trading, and we'll keep you updated throughout the morning.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
We'll take a look now at the labor market, as we do on Wednesday. We focus on the workplace, and that focus takes us to San Francisco, a city with some of the most worker-friendly employment rules in the nation. The city has high minimum wage laws, mandatory paid sick days, and now San Francisco wants nearly all companies to help pick up their workers' health care costs, which has prompted some businesses to stage a revolt.
NPR's Elaine Korry has more.
ELAINE KORRY: San Francisco has an estimated 82,000 uninsured city residents. A recent appeals court decision means many more of them will be eligible for health care, and city officials say that's cause for celebration.
Ms. JOANNIE CHANG (Office of Labor Standards Enforcement): The policy behind the ordinance is to address the health care crisis in the city, and so it is a huge relief that there will be health care available to folks working in San Francisco.
KORRY: Joannie Chang oversees compliance with San Francisco's landmark health access ordinance, which passed in 2006. Since the recent court ruling, Chang's phone hasn't stopped ringing with calls from concerned employers. The law requires employers with 20 or more employees to provide a certain level of private health insurance or pay a minimum of about $200 per month per worker into a city fund for medical services.
Mr. DAN SCHEROTTER (Restaurant Owner): We're at Palio d'Asti restaurant. I'm Dan Scherotter. I'm now the chef and owner. I started here as a line cook at, what, nine bucks an hour about 11, 12 years ago, and now I own the place.
KORRY: Scherotter has 49 employees, many of them part time, working for minimum wage plus tips. He already offers private health insurance with an employee co-pay, but according to the city, his plan doesn't cost enough. In order to comply with the ordinance, he'll have to spend more, $70 more per employee per month. Scherotter is unhappy about the extra cost and even more aggravated about the extra paperwork he faces.
Mr. SCHEROTTER: It creates a pretty amazing accounting nightmare, especially when you have all different types of employees, part-time employees, employees who don't live here. So it's incredibly difficult. And I think although it sounds good, in reality more people lose than win.
KORRY: Scherotter says he already operates on razor-thin margins, so if his labor costs go up, he may have to lay off employees, plus he'll have to raise prices, and he says so will his butcher, his fishmonger and produce supplier. He doubts that city officials understand how even small price increases can ripple through the local economy, hurting small businesses.
Mr. SCHEROTTER: You're ending up seeking the most vulnerable businesses with the biggest burden. It's at the point where it doesn't make any sense to be in business here anymore.
KORRY: Scherotter belongs to San Francisco's Golden Gate Restaurant Association, which has about 900 members. The association proposed an alternative to the city's employer health care mandate. Why not raise the local sales tax by a quarter penny? But that proposal was shot down, so restaurant owners sued, charging the city law violates federal laws governing employee benefits, and their lawsuit will proceed, even as Joannie Chang's office gears up to begin implementing the ordinance. She says it actually benefits employers like Dan Scherotter because it levels the playing field, requiring all businesses to do their part in tackling the city's health insurance crisis.
Elaine Korry, NPR News, San Francisco.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And for our last word in business, we go to the Swiss Alps, where more than 1,000 CEOs, state ministers and other movers and shakers are gathering for the World Economic Forum in Davos. The word is: economic sense. The global financial turmoil is dominating discussion this year, and as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bill Gates and the CEOs of Google and Citigroup hash out solutions, they'll be aided by unusual aromas. Conference organizers have set up perfume machines to pump fragrances into the rooms, apparently to enhance discussion.
The French chemist who oversaw the job reportedly spent months experimenting with the odor of market turmoil. He says, quote, "The aroma of subprime was particularly interesting." The fragrances he came up actually have names like Gigabyte and Happiness. He says the goal was to have the perfume overcome the gloom. A corporate executive at Davos calls the whole idea, quote, "bizarre."
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
If you believe the Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Republicans and Democrats are ready to act together to help the economy.
Secretary HENRY PAULSON (U.S. Department of the Treasury): I'm optimistic that we can find common ground and get this done long before winter turns to spring. It must be swift. The legislation must be enacted quickly, and the elements of the legislation must have immediate impact. If we miss this, we miss the mark.
MONTAGNE: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. More on how difficult it might be to meet the mark in just a moment.
But first, around the world, stock markets seem a bit calmer today. Most of Asia's main stock indexes closed up. The Nikkei was up two percent. Hong Kong's main index, the Hang Seng, was up more than 10 percent for the day. But everywhere, the message seems clear: investors liked the surprise rate cut yesterday by the Federal Reserve. The question is, did they like it enough? Will we avoid a recession?
NPR's global business correspondent, Adam Davidson, joins us to talk about that. And Adam, for most of the last two days, the markets all moved in the same direction - down. Today, things are much more mixed. Is that good? Is that bad? What?
ADAM DAVIDSON: Well, what's really struck me in the last couple of days is how we, you know, we have this globally-interconnected economy, but here we're being reminded that time zones really matter; sunlight really matters.
We have, you know, President Bush made his announcement on Friday about his fiscal stimulus package. It took until Monday for Asian markets to open and respond - they didn't like it, they plummeted.
Europe was responding both to the Asian markets and to President Bush before the U.S. markets had a chance to wake up and respond. Ben Bernanke came out with his statement and his dramatic rate cut move.
Now, Asia is getting a chance to respond to that. It's sort of - everybody is, a little bit, playing catch up with whoever came before as the globe keeps spinning - which I find kind of fascinating.
But it does seem like everyone's slowly getting on the same page, that the drama, at least for a little while, may have passed and things will be calming down. And down is the word. I mean, over the last two days, even though they climbed up a little, they are - all the indexes are heading down for the week.
MONTAGNE: Well, with a moment to breathe, can you put the past two days in perspective? How dramatic of a sell-off was it?
DAVIDSON: These were very dramatic numbers. In the last two days, some of the main indexes lost well over 10 percent. And even with today's - in Asia, with a lot of the indexes gaining a lot of ground - I didn't see any that gained all the ground they lost. I mean, these are still pretty dramatic losses for a day or two.
But I spent the morning looking at charts for most of the major indexes all around the world - Asia, Europe, the U.S. - and what I saw was a consistent story. If you go back two years, three years, five years - all of these are way, way up. And what they've lost in the last two days, in the last few weeks, is nowhere near the gains they've made.
So if you're a long-term investor, if you have 401(k) that you don't monitor on an hourly basis, you're still doing pretty well over the last few years, and it's probably best not to pay too much attention to these short fluctuations.
MONTAGNE: Looking ahead to the next few days and weeks - and this is on, obviously, many people's minds - how will we know if there is a recession, or a recession coming?
DAVIDSON: Yeah, the - there are going to be investors and economists and business reporters obsessing over every piece of economic news that comes out.
Tomorrow, there's going to be existing home sales numbers for December, released. On Monday, there's going to be new home sales. On Tuesday, there's going to be consumer confidence. Later next week, there's going to be numbers on personal income and personal spending for December. All of these numbers are going to be poured over.
And this is a time, if you care about whether or not we're going into a recession, this is a time to pay attention to those because they are going to be the things that tell us if we are heading into a recession.
There are four or five states where there's no question, the economies are contracting, there is a recession. There are some sectors, like housing, that are clearly doing really poorly. But for the average American, it's not yet clear how the next few months are going to be for you.
MONTAGNE: And is there any place in the world that things look good, Adam?
DAVIDSON: It's hard to see. This is what we had hoped, and this is sort of what the last two days, you know - it killed a bit of the hope that some people had. There was hope that Asia could kind of keep the global economy growing, could demand U.S. goods, U.S. exports; that they could keep things humming along. What the last two days seem to suggest is that the global economy is linked, and is linked to the U.S. economy, and there isn't a lot to hope for in the short term.
MONTAGNE: Adam, thanks very much.
DAVIDSON: Thank you.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Adam Davidson.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Here in Washington, Republicans and Democrats alike say they want to help the economy. Both sides are suggesting they can work together. And we'll find out soon if they can do that any better on the economy than they have on so many other issues.
NPR's David Welna has this report.
DAVID WELNA: As stock markets continued on a southward slide yesterday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other top congressional leaders tried to convey a sense of urgency. They sat around a table with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, but took no questions from the reporters they'd invited in to record the scene. Pelosi did declare, though, that Congress now has another reason to act.
Representative NANCY PELOSI (Democrat, California; Speaker of the House): And whether it's by herd mentality or restructuring of their markets or whatever it is, the world's markets are reacting to the situation in the United States. For this reason, but especially because of the impact on households of America, it's important that we have a stimulus package that is timely, that is temporary, and that is targeted.
WELNA: And when President Bush met with these congressional leaders at the White House later in the day, he was upbeat about the prospects of getting such a stimulus package.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: I believe we can find common ground to get something done that's big enough and effective enough so that - so that a - an economy that is inherently strong gets a boost to make sure that this uncertainty doesn't translate into, you know, more economic woes for our workers and small business people.
WELNA: The White House would like to inject about $150 billion into the economy. As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid left the White House meeting yesterday, he was asked whether that's enough money to revive the economy. Reid sounded dubious.
Senator HARRY REID (Democrat, Nevada; Majority Leader): If we were able to legislate today, for me personally - I think that's a good number. But we aren't legislating today. With what's happened in the markets, today even, we have to take another look at this.
WELNA: Whatever Congress comes up with, Reid wants it finished by the time lawmakers leave for their Presidents Day break three and a half weeks from now. His Republican counterpart in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, agreed on that goal, but he also warned that a stimulus package has to do two things - create jobs and cut taxes.
Senator MITCH McCONNELL (Republican, Kentucky; Minority Leader): It would be broad-based for maximum effect and it won't include wasteful spending on programs that might make us feel good but would have no positive impact on the economy.
WELNA: Republicans in general question the kind of extended unemployment benefits and increased food stamps that Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy called for yesterday on the Senate floor.
Senator EDWARD KENNEDY (Democrat, Massachusetts): We must do the most for those who need the help the most. Targeting families at the very bottom of the economic ladder is essential because it also provides the biggest economic boost. Every dollar a low-income household receive is spent on basic needs, putting money back into the local economy right away.
WELNA: But New Hampshire GOP Senator Judd Gregg was skeptical.
Senator JUDD GREGG (Republican, New Hampshire): That money will be spent, but does it stimulate our economy? I'm not so sure. So much of the product that we buy in America today, that we consume in America today, is produced outside the United States - maybe it stimulates the Chinese economy, but I'm not so sure it stimulates our economy.
WELNA: Agreeing on the need for a stimulus was clearly the easy part. The hard part will be coming up with one quickly.
David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
The Democratic candidates face another bellwether primary this Saturday. South Carolina, where more than half of those going to the polls are African-American, will be the first state to measure the black vote. Perhaps not surprisingly, the two leading candidates - Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama - stepped up their attacks and counterattacks in recent days. And Senator Obama is spending the entire week in South Carolina.
We reached him in Greenville, where he'd just given a speech criticizing President Bush's stimulus plan, accusing the president of neglecting low-income workers and the elderly.
Senator Obama, thank you for joining us.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): Thank you.
MONTAGNE: If you were president today, what would you do that's different from what the president is doing?
Sen. OBAMA: The first thing I would do is not leave 50 million people, potentially, out of a tax rebate plan, as the president has proposed. You know, I, very early on, said we've got to get money into the pockets of Americans right away, to shore up consumer spending and confidence in the markets and to keep the credit markets functioning. And the best way to do that is to provide tax rebates or supplements to Social Security that move out rapidly.
But it's also important to the lowest-income working Americans, that they get a break as well. They're the ones who are most likely to spend the money and most likely to spur the economy immediately. That's an area where the president, I think, has fallen short, and I think it's absolutely critical that that's reflected in any plan that is bargained for with the Democratic Congress.
MONTAGNE: You, yourself, have said it's easy to offer, propose plans and policies when you're on the campaign trail. You can make all sorts of promises, even tell people what they want to hear, but it's hard to make this happen. If you were president and you couldn't get everything you wanted in terms of various economic policies, would you sign a bill that was a compromise?
Sen. OBAMA: Listen, I think politics is full of compromise. And, of course, you're never going to get everything that you want, and I don't think that I would be doing my job as president if I was so ideologically rigid that you couldn't listen to others who have different opinions, but I...
MONTAGNE: But even if it meant, say, for instance, leaving out those elderly people that you just spoke of, the many elderly Americans who need some sort of tax relief?
Sen. OBAMA: Well, you know, I think that I start from a basic principle that is both practical and fair, which is the more we help the bottom rungs of the economy and the middle class, the more sustainable economic growth and prosperity is. And so I don't want to sign some piece of legislation that I don't think is going to work for our long-term economic health. That doesn't mean that I might not compromise and have to swallow some things that I'm not wild about.
MONTAGNE: I want to turn to the campaign trail and the actual politics of becoming president. You have complained, most particularly this week, that Hillary Clinton and her husband, Bill Clinton, have been out on the campaign trail distorting your record. And here's an exchange from the Democratic debate earlier this week where you were speaking on the subject, in this case, of some comments you made about Ronald Reagan.
(Soundbite of Democratic Presidential Debate)
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): You talked about Ronald Reagan being a transformative political leader. I did not mention his name.
Sen. OBAMA: Your husband did.
Sen. CLINTON: Well, I'm here. He's not. And...
Sen. OBAMA: Okay. Well, I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes.
Sen. CLINTON: I, you know, well...
MONTAGNE: Former President Clinton seems to be playing the role here that a vice presidential candidate would traditionally play and will play in a general election, something that might ungraciously be called an attack dog. You sounded testy there. Won't you have to take this sort of thing if you're the Democratic nominee and up against the Republicans?
Sen. OBAMA: You know, listen, this has been going on for a month and, of course, I will. And I'll have my vice president to respond to these things. But, you know, my concern is not that President Clinton is going out of his way to help his wife. That's perfectly acceptable. What's not acceptable is folks just making things up. And that example that you just used about Ronald Reagan, I was very clear about saying Ronald Reagan was a transformative political figure, not that I was praising his ideas. You know, the reason I think this is important is, what we can't continue is this perpetual campaign style in which records are distorted, and games are played, and as a consequence, nothing gets done.
MONTAGNE: You may be able to change it if you were to become president. But the reality is you're going into - you're in a campaign, and if you're the nominee, you will be in a campaign where these are the sort of arguments that get made. Are you being baited and are you falling for it?
Sen. OBAMA: Well, no. The - Renee, you know, the fact is is that if somebody says something untruthful about you, you have to respond. And we've learned that from the past. If you don't, then, unfortunately, it starts seeping into the truth. I think John Kerry learned a painful lesson that way.
MONTAGNE: Senator, thanks for talking with us.
Sen. OBAMA: Thank you so much, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Senator Barack Obama spoke to us from the campaign trail in South Carolina.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And we can now tell you for sure that the winner of the Democratic nomination will not be facing Fred Thompson this fall. The former senator and actor ended his Republican campaign after disappointing results in the early voting states.
And we're going to learn more now from NPR News analyst Juan Williams.
Juan, good morning.
JUAN WILLIAMS: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: Wasn't Fred Thompson supposed to be the next Ronald Reagan?
WILLIAMS: He was. But what you had here, I think, is a political failure to launch. There was much anticipation that he would rocket to the front of the GOP pack last spring, but he waited, hoping for a tremendous build up to lift off, you know, and he wanted to be, as you say, the 21st century Ronald Reagan - a reliable conservative, long-time opponent of gay marriage, abortion, supporter of gun ownership, small government. But he had internal staff confusion, especially with the role of his wife. I think he had a rambling, easygoing speaking style, but it didn't convey any urgency. And he especially got lost in terms of any - making any mark on the debates. So, you know, initially, he even decided not to participate in a debate and appear on the Jay Leno show. At times, it seem like he really wasn't into this contest.
INSKEEP: Well, there was a Newsweek cover - I believe it was Newsweek - at the time when he was well - doing well on the polls. And the cover said: Lazy like a fox. Was that fair?
WILLIAMS: Well, you know, the thought was, like a fox, that there was some strategy behind it that it would appeal - this kind of easygoing style would appeal to the voters. But I think that what came across instead of him being an authentic personality and someone the voters could relate to easily was that there was a lack of rationale to the candidacy. You know, you need a context, even. And this campaign overall is about change, for candidates on both the Democrat and Republican side.
And when he was asked about this, Fred Thompson's response was, no. I think I stand for leadership. Well, exactly, you know, what kind of leadership? I mean, he tried to represent Southern conservative values. But others become more conservative in reaction to him in some ways, especially Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani.
The evangelicals really saw Mike Huckabee as their representative, someone who came into the race - and again, likable, authentic. And in that context, it seemed as if his brand, Fred Thompson's brand, just kind of slipped away from him, and he wasn't fighting to get a grip and reclaim it.
Richard Viguerie, the long-time conservative fundraiser, issued a statement yesterday quoting Dorothy Parker, saying on the death of Calvin Coolidge, "How can they tell?"
(Soundbite of laughter)
INSKEEP: Oh, goodness. Well, let me just ask very, very briefly, Juan Williams. Is there something that he has now in common - Fred Thompson has in common with people like Phil Graham or even Howard Dean - superstar candidacies that didn't seem to get anywhere in the end?
WILLIAMS: I think that's right. This goes back to the context, the rationale thing, you know. Exactly, these are outstanding people, but, you know, what the whole idea of a party divided, he needed to really make it clear why he was to be the representative of the party, and the branding effort didn't make it this time around.
INSKEEP: Juan, thanks very much.
WILLIAMS: You're welcome, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's News analyst Juan Williams.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
U.S. figure skating championships are getting under way in St. Paul, Minnesota today. The championships are the most important annual event in one of the most popular Olympic sports.
And we're going to learn this morning from USA Today columnist and author, Christine Brennan, regular guest to this program.
Welcome back.
Ms. CHRISTINE BRENNAN (Columnist, USA Today; Author): Well, good to see you.
INSKEEP: Is there a young skater who is going to burst out of this, emerge?
Ms. BRENNAN: There could be one. There could be two. And this really all about looking ahead to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.
INSKEEP: Mm-hmm.
Ms. BRENNAN: So this is the breakout time. And there are two young ladies to watch: Caroline Zhang, 14 years old, and Mirai Nagasu, also 14. Now, you're saying 14, what are...
INSKEEP: Yeah, yeah.
Ms. BRENNAN: ...they doing in women's figure skating? The reality is being 14 now means, of course, you'll be 16 in two years at the Olympics - perfect age to potentially win a medal. Both Zhang and Nagasu, they're really building now to 2010.
INSKEEP: What makes the difference between a 14-year-old who can handle the pressure of the competition and the pressure of scrutiny from people like us, and a 14-year-old who can't?
Ms. BRENNAN: Oh, well, everything. I mean, the bottom line is you think about Michelle Kwan when she was 14. Now that was way back in 1995, but she can handle it. Tara Lipinski could handle it. And what you see when they do well, they won Olympic gold medals. Three of the last four women's Olympic gold medalists have been either 15 or 16. That's the importance of being 14 two years before the games. And that's why the U.S. looks pretty good in this case.
INSKEEP: And try to build up. But as you're trying to cover this, as you're trying to pick a winner, do you look at the skater? Do you look at who surrounds the skater, who coaches the skater, the parents of the skater? What matters most?
Ms. BRENNAN: Great question. And you really look at if they can handle the pressure. I mean, the reality is it's two and a half minutes for the short program, four minutes for the long program. They're out there by themselves. This isn't football, where you've got 10 other teammates. So you're out there, the music starts, you're creating the action. It is intense pressure. And someone like Caroline Zhang or Nagasu - both of these little kids have competed on the world stage. They've been first or second at the world junior level, which is fantastic at this stage. So it is. It is about being able to handle that pressure, land the jumps, and also, of course, have a body that you can actually bend backwards.
INSKEEP: Mm-hmm.
Ms. BRENNAN: I mean, the stuff that they're doing, we'd be in traction. But...
(Soundbite of laughter)
INSKEEP: Well, I would be. Perhaps not you.
Ms. BRENNAN: Well, I don't know about that.
INSKEEP: So is this a sport in search of a star right now?
Ms. BRENNAN: Oh, it absolutely is. I mentioned Michelle Kwan a few moments ago. I mean, she was, of course, at the time of the game for almost a decade. Everything in sports these days, Steve, is about the personality. We're in a cult of personality face of sports: Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady.
Every sport has a name or a big face. Skating is really in trouble because it doesn't have that. And Kwan, with her dominance - now she's gone. She's unofficially retired, but she might as well be. And the sports was lacking and really, really searching, I think, for another year to two until these gung kids build the bigger names, or Kimmie Meissner - you know, she's all of 18 years old now, but the reality is she also is almost too old going into 2010. So the next young one is what we're looking for.
INSKEEP: Does the absence of stars point to some failure of management in the sport?
Ms. BRENNAN: Well, I think the sport is in trouble. I mean, every sport is cyclical. Tennis was up, tennis was down. Golf- up, down. I do think this about skating, is that they have the brand, the 6.0. You could throw things at the television set as you're watching, you know, Michelle Kwan gets a 5.8 from the U.S. judge, and then a 5.2 from the Russian judge and you're furious and you're mad you're throwing things at the TV.
They had reality TV before there was reality TV. And then they threw it away with this point system that's supposed to be fair, but in reality is not. And it's indecipherable, frankly, Steve, for the viewers. So, I think, that's really hurt the sport as much as anything, and they should try to get back to their brand, that magical 6.0.
INSKEEP: Christine Brennan is our star sportswriter.
Thanks very much.
Ms. BRENNAN: Thank you, Steve.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
The company whose name embodies big bucks coffee has decided there's profit to be made in a one-buck cup. The Wall Street Journal reports Starbucks is once again offering a short coffee. The dollar coffee is an experiment only in Seattle, and customers also get free refills. The move appears aimed at both customers feeling financially pinched and the competition now that McDonald's will soon offer espresso.
It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
A Maryland man wanted to give his opinion about mortgage foreclosures. He opened the phonebook, looked up the governor's office - and he was surprised when the person answering said, hi, sexy. The phonebook number was a misprint. It connects to an X-rated service. The mistake had gone undetected two years. Now, the phone company will mail a correction to customers, meaning that every customer can now go look up the wrong number.
You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
NPR's business news starts with global stock markets still on edge.
Yesterday's sudden rate cut by the US Federal Reserve pacified investors in Asia, at least for now. But while Asian stock markets saw some big improvements over the last couple of days, the leading markets in Europe are all trading about 4 percent lower today. And we have more this morning from NPR's Rob Gifford, who is reporting from London.
ROB GIFFORD: They say that if America sneezes, Europe catches a cold. Certainly, European markets have reached for their handkerchiefs this past few days, though opinions seem divided about whether the Fed rate cut in the U.S. was a smart move or a sign of panic. The Bank of England won't confirm whether it'll follow the U.S. Federal Reserve with a rate cut of its own, but the bank's governor, Mervyn King, did sum up the pessimism that's currently stalking the British markets.
Mr. MERVYN KING (Bank of England): We face a difficult balancing act in the course of 2008. And to put it bluntly, this year we are probably facing a period of above-target inflation and a marked slowing in growth.
GIFFORD: Still, problems in the U.K. economy such as the housing market have not yet been as pronounced as in the U.S., and there is some continued optimism. Veteran financier George Soros agrees that recession in the U.S. and the U.K. is likely, but that's not the whole picture globally.
Mr. GEORGE SOROS (Financier): You've got China, India that are earning significantly more than they are spending. So I'm not looking for a worldwide recession. I'm looking for a significant shift of power and influence away from the U.S. in particular.
GIFFORD: Soros says that shift away from the U.S. and Europe as drivers of the world economy is the bigger message.
Rob Gifford, NPR News, London.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
All this week we've been hearing about the status of Muslim women in Europe. One thing we've heard is that some daughters of South Asian immigrants in Britain are turning to a political form of Islam. They've been motivated by the September 11th attacks and by the London suicide bombings back in 2005. And now British authorities warn that a militant form of Islamist feminism is emerging.
As NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports, authorities worry that some Muslim women could begin to pose a security threat. And a warning to listeners, this report contains graphic material that may be upsetting.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: In October, Britain's Channel 4 TV network broadcast a thriller about a brother and sister, British-born Muslims pulled in opposite directions. In this scene, Nasima, the sister, a secular political activist, distributes leaflets outside a mosque when she's confronted by the imam.
(Soundbite of TV show)
Unidentified Woman #1 (Actor): (As Nasima) Mobilize for the local elections. Campaign against the police state. Fight the demonization of Islam worldwide.
Unidentified Man (Actor): (As Imam) This is no place for a woman.
POGGIOLI: Unexpectedly, it's the woman in the story who breaks with the system and becomes radicalized by anti-terrorism laws many Muslims consider draconian. She embraces the cause of jihad and becomes a suicide bomber. But that was just fiction.
A few days later, this is what Britons heard on the news.
(Soundbite of news broadcast)
Unidentified Woman #2 (Anchor): A former in Heathrow Airport who called herself the lyrical terrorist has become the first woman in the country to be convicted under new terrorism laws. Twenty-three-year-old Samina Malik was found guilty of possessing records likely to be used in an act of terrorism.
POGGIOLI: The materials included an al-Qaida manual, a booklet on mujahedeen poisons, and bomb-making instructions. But it was Malik's poems that shocked the British public. Here's a reading of some of her verses.
Unidentified Woman #3: How to behead. It's not as messy or as hard as some may think. It's all about the flow of the wrist. Sharpen the knife to its maximum. And before you begin to cut the flesh, tilt the fool's head to its left. Saw the knife back and forth.
POGGIOLI: As a shop assistant at Heathrow Airport, Malik was familiar with sensitive security procedures. She spent much of her time at work writing about her desire for martyrdom. The judge gave her a nine-month suspended sentence but told her, In many respects you are a complete enigma to me.
Britain is being confronted with a wave of enigmas - the increasing number of British Muslim women who have taken to wearing not just the headscarf, but the full face veil known as the niqab.
This Islamic reawakening comes at a time when the British government is trying to enlist Muslim women in an effort to combat extremism. It has created the National Muslim Women's Advisory Group to give Muslim women a greater voice in British society.
But writer and researcher Munira Mirza says many young Muslim women are starting to embrace radical ideals and even support al-Qaida.
Ms. MUNIRA MIRZA (Writer): There is a misconception, I think, that - amongst politicians in Britain - that if you involve Muslim women in the dialogue process, then somehow that will soften the men, which is obviously a complete misperception because, you know, why should women be any less angry? Why should they be any less radicalized? It actually is a quite sexist idea that women are just softer.
POGGIOLI: Recent polls have shown that as many as four in 10 British Muslims want Sharia, or Islamic law, applied in Muslim-populated areas of Britain. Sharia, which is practiced in many parts of the Islamic world, is a religious code of living, but also specifies stoning and amputations as normal punishment for some crimes.
Combating radicalism and alienation have become priorities also for moderate Muslims, and women are being enlisted in the most extensive effort by moderates to combat disaffection and extremism among Muslim youth.
The Mosque and Imams National Advisory Board has drafted new guidelines that would give Muslim women a greater role within mosques, Islamic centers, and faith schools. The guidelines include condemnation of domestic violence and forced marriage. But radical groups have reacted negatively.
Hizb u-Tahrir, one of the most controversial groups in Britain, has railed against the new guidelines as selling out Muslim principles and an attempt at government control over Islam.
Hizb u-Tahrir is banned in Germany and most of the Middle East for its stated aim to establish a global Islamic state. It also calls for the destruction of Israel. The group claims to be nonviolent, but former members have described it as a conveyor belt to terrorism, and it's been very active in recruiting women with a form Islamic feminism.
Investigative journalist Shiv Malik says Hizb u-Tahrir has been very successful in creating a support network for young women who would like to defy their patriarchal family and seek an education or assert the right to choose their own husbands.
Mr. SHIV MALIK (Journalist): They have that conflict, and of course who is going to help them through that? It's the radical groups who say, well, look, if your family is now saying get out of the house, we'll support you, we'll take you in, we'll give you friends, we'll give you a firm network. But yet you can go get an education.
POGGIOLI: Hizb u-Tahrir's goal is to promote a global Islam, cleansed of all ethnic or cultural traditions. And women are an essential tool. Journalist Shiv Malik says the group has set up two schools in Britain for primary age children.
Mr. MALIK: And if you look at the curriculum, all these radical ideas are there. So they are educating children from five years up to 11 years as primary school, and it's women who are doing this, not men.
POGGIOLI: Anthony Glees, professor of Intelligence and Security Studies at Brunel University, says a form of religious apartheid already exists on many British campuses. And he points out that rising religious radicalism among British Muslim youth is having broader effects.
Professor ANTHONY GLEES (Brunel University): One meets an increasing number of British Muslim students who are becoming devout, and one meets an increasing number of British Muslim mothers and fathers and grandparents who are being, in a sense, radicalized by their children and grandchildren, who are saying to them, look, you know, you've come to Britain but you should go back to the veil, you should go back to our traditional ways.
POGGIOLI: Glees says extremist Islamist groups appear to have shifted tactics away from terrorist attacks and now appear to be using women to pursue what he calls a long-term subversive strategy of self-ghettoization.
Prof. GLEES: This demand for separatism, it's not about terrorism, but it is about a separate Islamic or Islamist identity. And what you will have will be the establishment of Islamic or Islamist enclaves within British mainstream society.
POGGIOLI: Glees and other security analysts stress that the extremists are a minority. But they warn that the movement toward separatism is gaining ground and could seriously undermine Western values and the cohesion of British society.
Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.
MONTAGNE: Tomorrow we go to one of Europe's most rigidly secular societies, France. Religion is relegated to the sidelines in France, but Muslim women feel right at home in many parts of that country's society.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Some of New York's top musicians are playing in a tribute band.
(Soundbite of song, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club")
THE FAB FAUX (Beatle's Tribute Band): (Singing) We're Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. We hope you have enjoyed the show,
INSKEEP: It's The Fab Faux - that's F-A-U-X - in the tradition of The Beatles. They're performing this weekend in Hollywood which is where The Fab Four first appear on the West Coast in 1964.
Journalist Ashley Kahn reports on how this group adds something unexpected when you know every note of the song.
(Soundbite of fans screaming)
(Soundbite of song, "Rock 'n' Roll Music" as performed by the Beatles)
Mr. PAUL McCARTNEY (Singer, The Beatles): (Singing) Just let me hear some of that rock and roll music...
Ms. ASHLEY KAHN (Journalist; Author, "A Love Supreme"): In 1966, a British reporter stopped Paul McCartney outside of Abbey Road studios in London and asked him why The Beatles were no longer touring.
Unidentified Man: If you never toured again, would it worry you?
Mr. MCCARTNEY: Ah, I don't know. No, I don't think so. Because we can't develop when no one can hear us, you know what I mean? So for us, to perform, it's difficult, it gets difficult each time. We want to do it, but if we're not listened to, and we can't even hear ourselves, then we can improve in that. We can't get any better.
(Soundbite of song "Rock 'n' Roll Music")
Mr. MCCARTNEY: (Singing) If you want to dance with me.
Ms. KAHN: Perhaps it was just as well that The Beatles had stopped performing publicly. Much of the music they recorded after 1966 could not be re-created onstage.
Mr. FRANK AGNELLO (Vocalist and guitar player, The Fab Faux): They didn't really have the technology to bring some of those studio ideas to the stage. Right before the Sgt. Pepper sessions is where The Beatles decided to become a recording band.
Ms. KAHN: Frank Agnello plays guitar and sings in The Fab Faux, five musicians who focus on the songs of The Beatles. But don't expect matching suits, shaggy haircuts or Liverpool accents.
Mr. AGNELLO: A lot of the bands who play Beatles music, they go more for the theatrical bent, you know, there's music and there's the acting component. And we concentrate more on the records, I would say, in a way, we're a Beatles records tribute band.
(Soundbite of song "Got to Get You Into My Life")
THE FAB FAUX: (Singing) I was alone, I took a ride I didn't know what I would find there, another road where maybe I could see another kind of mind there.
Ms. KAHN: Will Lee plays bass for The Fab Faux.
Mr. WILL LEE (Bass Player, The Fab Faux): On our level, it was to try to see if we could get all these great textures that The Beatles had on their records, for instance, percussion parts, keyboard parts, doubling the vocals.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. LEE: When you do see a four-piece look-alike band, you don't really get the satisfaction of hearing all those great textures that the records have.
KAHN: The members of the group are all full-time musicians and singers. Will Lee can be seen on late-night TV as part of the David Letterman band, while Frank Agnello is an in-demand music producer and sideman. With guitarists Jimmy Vivino and Jack Petruzzelli, and drummer Richard Pagano, they are a collective that's about attention to detail.
(Soundbite of song "Penny Lane")
THE FAB FAUX: (Singing) In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs.
Ms. KAHN: Like including a real string section on "Yesterday." Or a real piccolo trumpet on "Penny Lane."
(Soundbite of song "Penny Lane")
Ms. KAHN: Or even a fire-truck bell.
(Soundbite of song "Penny Lane")
THE FAB FAUX (Beatle's Tribute Band): And then the fireman rushes in.
Ms. KAHN: Remember, they're doing all of this while in live performance.
(Soundbite of song "Penny Lane")
THE FAB FAUX (Beatle's Tribute Band): (Singing) Penny lane is in my ears and in my eyes. There beneath the blue suburban skies I sit, and meanwhile back. Penny lane…
Ms. KAHN: All the talent that's in The Fab Faux's makes it possible for them to take apart The Beatles' music, and then put it back together again.
Mr. AGNELLO: It gets really nerdy after a while. Never has so much research got into live performance.
Mr. LEE: And we'll keep researching and keep finding new bits of information and alter stuff, you know, it's a never-ending tweakage(ph) on this music. In the case of "Back in the USSR" there's a couple of bass parts happening, and one of them, I'm pretty sure is something like this.
(Soundbite of song "Back in the USSR")
Mr. LEE: (Singing) Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC.
Right? Real basic.
And I think on another track, there might be something more active going on.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. LEE: (Singing) Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC.
With that much movement.
Ms. KAHN: What McCartney had done in the studio was layered those baselines one on top of another, something that's difficult to do on stage.
Mr. AGNELLO: I've economized and made sort of a amalgam of those parts when we do out live version.
(Soundbite of "Back In The USSR")
Ms. KAHN: Not everything The Fab Faux does is about faithful recreation.
Mr. LEE: "Drive My Car" for example, it doesn't have an ending; it has a fade as records often do. And wouldn't it be great to bring to the stage what the song would have sounded like had it continued on into a nice jam?
Mr. AGNELLO: There are a few songs like that, "Hey Bulldog" is another.
(Soundbite of song "Hey Bulldog")
Mr. LEE: We have such great players in this band that it would be a waste not to let somebody take a solo.
(Soundbite of song "Hey Bulldog")
Ms. KAHN: Not long ago, Will Lee actually had a chance to play with Paul McCartney — and felt he had to come clean about The Fab Faux.
Mr. LEE: I approached him, and said, Look, I know that you have a history of low tolerance for Beatles bands, but I just have to admit to you, here and now, that I - okay, I do have a little tribute band. We focus on the later stuff and the stuff that people heretofore thought impossible to do on stage. So he kind of challenged me and said, Do you do "Tomorrow Never Knows?"
(Soundbite of music)
And I said, 'Oh, of course. That was one of the first ones we learned.
(Soundbite of song "Tomorrow Never Knows")
THE FAB FAUX (Beatle's Tribute Band): (Singing) It is not dying, it is not dying.
Ms. KAHN: Because The Beatles stopped performing before they recorded "Sgt. Pepper," means that they never had the chance to perform their most carefully crafted music live.
(Soundbite of song "Day In The Life")
THE FAB FAUX: (Singing) I read the news today, oh boy.
Ms. KAHN: What The Fab Faux do is take away that historical oversight and make it possible to hear what could have been.
(Soundbite of song "A Day in the Life")
THE FAB FAUX (Beatle's Tribute Band): (Singing) I woke up, go out of bed, taxi dragged the comb across my head.
INSKEEP: Not a bad way to wake up this morning.
Ashley Kahn is author of "A Love Supreme," the story of John Coltrane's signature album.
And here are some of The Fab Faux's recreations and find more new music at npr.org/music.
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Many people get recommendations from a doctor they find online at Web sites like findadoc.com or doctorscorecard.com. That Web site name suggests a way that consumers are changing their approach to doctors. They're using the Web to rate their physicians for the benefit of other patients.
Deirdre Kennedy reports from San Francisco.
DEIRDRE KENNEDY: Dr. Vail Reese is one of the most highly rated doctors on local San Francisco search engines.
Dr. VAIL REESE: I'm Dr. Reese.
Unidentified Woman: Hello. Nice to meet you.
Dr. REESE: Pleasure to meet you. So what brings you in today?
KENNEDY: As a dermatologist, Reese sees patients with the usual embarrassing skin disorders - athlete's foot, acne, scary moles. In his beautiful art deco offices, he gives every wart and blemish personal attention, peering at them through a large magnifying glass.
Dr. REESE: We'll talk about this mole, but it really should be fine.
KENNEDY: Reese says about half his new patients find him through sites like Yelp, a social networking site that lets users share their experiences about their doctors.
Dr. REESE: These review sites, they will blog and comment on everything in an office. So they'll talk about what the nurse said or did. They'll talk about the way the receptionist was on the phone. They'll talk about their interaction with the billing staff or service.
KENNEDY: The kind of patients who choose Dr. Reese this way are people like David Victor, a computer professional in his 20s.
Mr. DAVID VICTOR (Computer Professional): I was a little skeptical. I wasn't sure of how easy it would be to taint the system.
KENNEDY: There's no doubt that doctors can procure positive reviews from friends, relatives, or even patients. So Victor checked to make sure the reviewers had written about other doctors or topics and weren't just online to rave about Dr. Reese. Victor ended up giving Dr. Reese a try and writing a favorable review himself.
Mr. VICTOR: You know, my expectations were met and probably exceeded.
KENNEDY: Health insurance companies have been rating doctors for years on their performance, but consumers seem to prefer the opinion of their peers over a company that might have a financial interest. WellPoint, the nation's biggest insurer, is apparently paying attention. It recently teamed up with Zagat, famous for its restaurant and hotel guides, to provide a rating system for doctors based on consumer input.
Founder Nina Zagat.
Ms. NINA ZAGAT: And the separate categories are trust, communication, availability and environment.
KENNEDY: Zagat says the physician rating tool serves what she calls the soft part of the patient's choice.
Ms. ZAGAT: We were very careful not to include any criteria that we felt the individual consumer was not in a position to rate; for example, the technical abilities of a doctor.
KENNEDY: But while the touchy-feely part of the patient-doctor relationship is definitely important, choosing a doctor solely on superficial qualities can be a disaster, says Dr. Robert Wachter, author of "Internal Bleeding," a book about medical mistakes in America.
Dr. ROBERT WACHTER (Author, "Internal Bleeding: The Truth Behind America's Terrifying Epidemic of Medical Mistakes"): Spectacularly good doctors every now and then have patients who die. Terrible doctors most of the time have patients who do just fine. People are pretty resilient. So when you look at one experience and try to extrapolate from that - is this the person I want opening my chest up and fixing my heart? - scientifically it's not the way you would want to go.
KENNEDY: He says patient reviews are skewed because they're usually only written by people who either hate or love their doctors. He also mistrusts insurance company sites, which rate their own doctors because they tend to steer patients to the cheapest rather than the best physicians. But, he says, at least these sites can tell you how many procedures a doctor has done.
Dr. WACHTER: If all else is equal, I would rather see the doctor who's done this particular surgery that I need a hundred times as compared to the doctor who has done it three times. There is in medicine, like many things in life, a practice-makes-perfect kind of curve.
KENNEDY: Particularly with challenging medical conditions, says patient advocate Trisha Torrey. After being misdiagnosed with a rare, fatal lymphoma, she urges patients to search several sites to get the full picture of a doctor's background.
Ms. TRISHA TORREY (Every Patient's Advocate): Perhaps when they graduated from med school, whether or not they are board-certified in their specialty area, how long they've been in practice - that's all good information to have.
KENNEDY: But health care safety advocate Robert Wachter says what patients really need is an independent national database.
Dr. WACHTER: What patients can do collectively is put pressure on doctors, hospitals, the government and others to create a set of information to allow patients to make truly informed rational choices.
KENNEDY: Some states are working with insurance companies to help forge national rating standards, but it could be another few years before they're in place.
For NPR News, I'm Deirdre Kennedy in San Francisco.
INSKEEP: You can get the latest scientific findings on eye surgeries, food from cloned animals, and caffeine at npr.org/yourhealth.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
In Your Health today, the pros and cons of finding a doctor online.
But first, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there's a simple way for older adults to protect themselves from shingles, whooping cough and other diseases - get vaccinated.
NPR's Allison Aubrey reports.
ALLISON AUBREY: If you've long thought of vaccines as shots for children, infectious disease experts and the CDC want you to reconsider. For starters, there's the shingles vaccine; only 2 percent of adults over 60 have gotten it. But experts say the shot could stave off many of the one million new cases each year. Many people may think they're not at risk. But speaking to a group of reporters during a press conference yesterday, shingles expert Michael Oxman laid it on the table.
Dr. MICHAEL OXMAN (VA San Diego Healthcare System): Everyone who has had chicken pox, and that's basically everyone in this room, is at risk of getting shingles.
AUBREY: That's because the chicken pox virus can lay dormant and reactivate decades later, causing shingles. Oxman says adults 60 and older should get the vaccine, since the risk increases with age. He explains shingles usually appears as a blistering rash on one side of the face or torso.
Dr. OXMAN: Nearly everyone who gets shingles has pain. Many people describe the shingles pain as the worst pain they've ever endured.
AUBREY: The story is similar with the pertussis or whooping cough vaccine. The incidence of this disease is on the rise, but less than 2 percent of adults have gotten the shot. People usually survive pertussis, but it can persist for weeks and lead to broken ribs, the cough is so intense.
The CDC's Anne Schuchat says the low immunization rates for adult vaccines is sobering, not just with pertussis and shingles but for flu and pneumonia vaccines as well. Part of it's lack of awareness; some of it may be cost.
Dr. ANNE SCHUCHAT (CDC): We obviously have a lot more work to do, and it involves literally rolling up our sleeves.
AUBREY: To get more adults vaccinated, Schuchat says she hopes doctors and health care providers will lead the way. The CDC survey found that most people say they'd go ahead with the shots if their doctor recommended them.
Allison Aubrey, NPR News, Washington.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
Barack Obama has opened up a lead in the polls ahead of Saturday's Democratic primary in South Carolina. While he has overwhelming support from African-American voters there, he's struggling to attract white voters.
Scott Huffmon, who is a political scientist at Winthrop University in South Carolina, said the explanation might seem obvious.
Dr. SCOTT HUFFMON (Winthrop University): You assume, oh, well, you know, a huge racial divide - you know, whites voting for white people, blacks voting for a black man. But it's really not necessarily like that.
MONTAGNE: Huffmon says South Carolina, like many southern states, has experienced a political shift in recent decade. White Democrats who leaned conservative have become Republicans. That means the whites who still call themselves Democrats are on average more liberal than African-Americans. They are traditional party Democrats, many low income and many fondly remembering the good economic times under Bill Clinton.
This is pretty much what NPR's David Greene found when he spent yesterday in predominantly white Greenwood County, South Carolina.
DAVID GREENE: The Dixie Drive-In, it's been an institution in Greenwood for decades. Scott McGreevy's family owns it. He is in the kitchen with rows of sizzling burger patties in front of him.
Mr. SCOTT McGREEVY (Dixie Drive-In Owner): We're famous for the Dixie Cheese half and half. It's a cheeseburger plate with half fries and half onion rings. It's made a lot of people fat in this town. It's a good fat.
GREENE: He's got regulars who come in and sit at the lunch counter every day, like Bobby Driver, an insurance broker. He's checking the front page of the local paper.
Mr. BOBBY DRIVER (Insurance Broker): The headline is Barack Obama says he is fired up and ready to go.
GREENE: The photo shows Obama in Greenwood the day before. But Bobby Driver says he's leaning towards voting for John Edwards.
Mr. DRIVER: I think he's a good guy. He's from my area. He grew up in the textile end of it. He worked hard. He doesn't like these big corporations which seem to be running the country. He may not get the nomination. It doesn't look good. But that's just - I'm just going to vote my conviction this time around.
GREENE: Another one of the Drive-In regulars is Curtis Wilson, 74 years old; spend his life driving a truck around the country.
Mr. CURTIS WILSON (Truck Driver): Not many roads I haven't been on.
GREENE: Now he is retired and he says he is driving towards one thing.
Mr. WILSON: Get Bush out of White House.
(Soundbite of laughter)
GREENE: Wilson will be voting Saturday.
Mr. WILSON: And it will be for Hillary.
GREENE: Now, what about some of the others like Barack Obama? Are you thinking about him?
Mr. WILSON: I'm not ready for him yet.
GREENE: Why is that?
Mr. WILSON: I don't know. I don't want to say something that make you think it's a racial issue. But it's not - I just don't believe we are ready for him yet.
GREENE: What do you like about Hillary?
Mr. WILSON: Because she is Bill's wife. And I love Bill.
GREENE: What do you like about Bill?
Mr. WILSON: Everything he'd done. Except maybe a few things inside closed doors.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. WILSON: But other than that, I thought he made us a good president.
GREENE: It's the kind of summary of eight years in the White House that might make the Clintons wince, unless of course it's what gets them back there in 2008. Listen to people in Greenwood and you hear a lot of affection for the Dixie Drive-In, like this from Isabel Watson(ph).
Ms. ISABEL WATSON: A lot of people here met their husbands at the Dixie. I met mine at the Dixie - isn't that right, Barbara(ph)?
GREENE: Isabel Watson says she and her husband both like Barack Obama.
Ms. WATSON: He's been really good about, you know, talking about helping people. He - I think he worked in Chicago when - helping people that were losing jobs and that type of thing. Well, you know, I think he would have an idea, you know, of what happens to people.
GREENE: But what really motivates them is the issue of health insurance.
Ms. WATSON: Even as a first lady, I know she did not have anything official. But she was there, and I know she knew a lot that was going on. And she tried to do some things. Like all the first ladies take on something, you know, that they want to work with. And she was working with the health care. And I like that.
GREENE: This Saturday in South Carolina, and again in a score of states on February 5th, these are the memories Hillary Clinton is counting on to bring her victory.
David Greene, NPR News, Greenwood, South Carolina.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Here's something else Hillary Clinton is counting on. Bill Clinton is campaigning for his wife, denouncing Barack Obama and facing accusations of making distortions. Some of Obama's allies see a racial element to all this.
And the leading South Carolina Democrat says Mr. Clinton needs to, quote, "chill," which he's not - as NPR's Audie Cornish reports.
AUDIE CORNISH: During the Democrats' debate earlier this week in South Carolina, Barack Obama complained that at times he didn't know who he was running against - Hillary Clinton or her husband or both.
For weeks the Clintons have waged a frontal assault on Obama, from comments the Illinois senator made about Ronald Reagan to accusations of voter suppression by the Obama campaign in Nevada.
Weeks back, when the former president referred to Obama's Iraq war opposition as a fairy tale, some considered it as going too far. Obama supporters insist that it's time for Bill Clinton to dial it down.
Senator PATRICK LEAHY (Democrat, Vermont): That's beneath the dignity of a former president.
CORNISH: That's Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy yesterday in Washington. Leahy has endorsed Obama.
Sen. LEAHY: There's a great deal of good things you could say about Senator Clinton, but - so to say the good things about her. Don't take cheap shots at Senator Obama.
CORNISH: Bill Clinton was anything but contrite. He accused the Obama campaign and the media of focusing on race and on the bickering between the two camps. At a campaign stop at a Charleston restaurant yesterday, the former president heard one voter refer to race bating in describing the recent back and forth. But Clinton says this isn't about race.
President BILL CLINTON: When you try to state a fact, it is wrong to accuse somebody who has a difference with Senator Obama of being a racist or somebody that has a difference with Hillary being a sexist. This is what we've been - some of us living for for our whole lives, waiting until we could all freely run and say whatever the heck was on our mind.
CORNISH: Clinton says some of the more, quote, "edgy stuff" was just part of honest debate. But voters who came out to see the 42nd president weren't so sure.
Nancy Olsen is a Clinton supporter on Goose Creek, South Carolina.
Ms. NANCY OLSEN: I guess I'm a little discouraged about that. I can't say he's done her any big favors lately. I'm very supportive of his being supportive of her and I'm glad he's out there, but I think his tone has been a little bit too strong.
CORNISH: Audrey Robinson and Marilyn Payett(ph) are both Clinton fans but undecided voters from Charleston.
Ms. AUDREY ROBINSON: It seems as though being that he's been in that office, he knows exactly, you know, what things are going on and have the inside scoop, so it seems as though he would take a different route on how he...
Ms. MARILYN PAYETT: He should not have gone that way. I think it's improbable for him being a former president to go that route. That's too much bickering. You know, he should stay political and go straight ahead and what the issues are.
CORNISH: But Joqata Jones(ph) says Clinton is doing no worse for his wife than any other candidates' spouse on the campaign trail.
Ms. JOQATA JONES: Nobody's going to push Michelle Obama around, you know? When they criticize Senator Edwards about some haircut or something, his wife nearly lost it. You know, she's tackled everybody who thought they had a criticism. So it's just that because he's so prominent that of course whatever he said ended up being engrained in people's minds.
CORNISH: Which may be why this week the Obama campaign announced it was starting a so-called truth squad to follow Bill Clinton around the state. The good news for both candidates is that none of the voters here say the bickering will affect their vote. Of course there are still two more days to go before Saturday's primary.
Audie Cornish, NPR News, Columbia, South Carolina.
INSKEEP: I've been reading this rundown of the politics and issues at stake in Saturday's Democratic primary in South Carolina, and you can read it as well, if you like. Just go to npr.org/elections.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Let's spend a few minutes inspecting the office of New Orleans' first inspector general. He's been on the job for nearly six months, but the office is not up and running. Bob Cerasoli made a name for himself uncovering problems with Boston's Big Dig construction project. But now, he might have met his toughest challenge - New Orleans bureaucracy. Today, the man charged with auditing city finances and uncovering local corruption hopes to finally get approval to hire a staff.
NPR's Carrie Kahn reports.
CARRIE KAHN: When I met Bob Cerasoli five months ago, just days into his new job as New Orleans' inspector general, he didn't have an office, was using his personal cell phone for business calls, and was struggling to get around town after refusing a free car from the city. I, like other reporters, would end up giving him a ride once the interview was over.
Mr. ROBERT CERASOLI (Inspector General, New Orleans, Louisiana): After you left and I didn't have rides anymore, I spent three and a half months taking the bus. And I've actually get in buses when they've broken down and had to get out and walk. I mean, I've been through it all. And I realize what the people here go through. And I think that's one of the things we're going to take a look at.
(Soundbite of laughter)
KAHN: Cerasoli, a Massachusetts native if you couldn't tell, has a laundry list of things he wants to start investigating. New Orleans astronomical crime rate, how local trash contracts are awarded, and why so many employees use city cars with free gas.
Mr. CERASOLI: I'm willing to bet that there could be as much as $12 million spent on cars and gas.
Ms. CYNTHIA HEDGE-MORRELL (Councilwoman, New Orleans, Louisiana): I think his department is going to save this city a lot of money.
KAHN: Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell heads the city's budget committee, which approved the inspector general's $3.4 million budget and the lease on his new downtown office. But opposition has surfaced in recent weeks as Cerasoli, who makes as much as the mayor of New Orleans has tried to get final approval to hire 25 inspectors, auditors and engineers. Some of Cerasoli's engineers will start at pay grades above comparable city employees.
Morrell says she's confident the snags can be worked out. She says it's critical that the I.G. be up and running this year, just as hundreds of millions of federal Katrina relief dollars are finally making their way into New Orleans.
Ms. MORRELL: Having him here is going to do so much for the morale of this city. Having someone who is going to go in and make sure that we are running every department as efficiently as - you know, he is really not eager to be, you know, on a witch hunt.
KAHN: Overseeing Cerasoli is the newly created Ethics Review Board headed by Loyola University's President Reverend Kevin Wildes.
Reverend KEVIN WILDES (Chairman, Ethics Review Board, New Orleans; President, Loyola University): I'd like to call our meeting to order. And the first item of business is approval of…
KAHN: At this month's meeting, Wildes told members that he realized that it's been a tough fight to finally get New Orleans the oversight it's been lacking, but progress has been made.
Rev. WILDES: We have a budget. We have space. So things are moving. And so I just - we have much to do, but it's good to remember that we have done a lot already.
KAHN: There certainly is much to do. New Orleans' 2006 audit was just published this week. And among the many jaw-dropping findings was the city's failure to remit federal payroll taxes for the last four months of that year.
Cerasoli says he's already received anonymous calls from citizens and plenty of tips from city employees.
Mr. CERASOLI: You know, what we really want to do here, as the inspector general, is we want to change systems. We want to change the way the government does business. We want to make it more efficient, more effective, more productive.
KAHN: Cerasoli says he hopes today's vote goes his way, and that he can start hiring staff as soon as possible because he anticipates being very busy.
Carrie Kahn, NPR News, New Orleans.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Next we're going to rate the health of the world financial markets as reported by a cliche. Here's a phrase that made the news again and again when stock markets slipped this week: When America sneezes, Asia catches cold.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
A Chinese newspaper said more specifically that when the U.S. sneezes, Shanghai catches cold.
MONTAGNE: In Europe, Britain's Telegraph newspaper reports that when America sneezes, Britain catches a cold.
INSKEEP: The diagnosis was more vague in Johannesburg, where a business publication reports that America sneezes and things get a little feverish in South Africa.
MONTAGNE: That's not vague. That's creative, Steve. The chief economist from Marketwatch.com pulled together all those reports and provides the following analysis. Quote: "When the U.S. sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold."
INSKEEP: When the world's great economic minds gathered for a summit this week in Davos, Switzerland, they scheduled a debate on the question - if America sneezes, does the world still catch a cold?
MONTAGNE: We put that very question to NPR health reporter Allison Aubrey, who's skeptical.
ALLISON AUBREY: Yeah, I am skeptical. I guess the typical spray from a sneeze is only a few feet, which is obviously much shorter than the distance between America and Hong Kong. If the Hang Seng Index catches a cold, it's far more likely to come from shaking America's hand, which is a much more likely way of transmitting a cold.
MONTAGNE: And it may be time to rethink the entire cliche. Maybe when America drinks too much, then Nikkei gets a hangover.
INSKEEP: Or even when the whole world repeats the same stock phrase, we all lose money together.
(Soundbite of recording)
Mr. JIMMY DURANTE (Singer): Ethyl, if you're catching a cold, let me sneeze for you.
Ms. ETHYL MERMAN (Singer) Boy, you've got the equipment.
Mr. DURANTE: What do you mean? What do you mean?
Ms. MERMAN: (Singing) I mean that if I catch a little cold...
Mr. DURANTE: (Singing) I'll sneeze for you.
Ms. MERMAN: (Singing) ...on a frosty winter day.
Mr. DURANTE: (Singing) I'll freeze for you.
Ms. MERMAN: (Singing) If you're restless, I will sail the seas for you to prove that we're...
INSKEEP: You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
NPR's business news starts with eBay losing its chief auctioneer.
eBay's CEO is stepping down. Meg Whitman has been at the helm of the online auction giant for the last 10 years. She has guided the company from young startup status to its current position as $7 billion e-commerce colossus.
In the process, she became one of Silicon Valley's most famous CEOs. Her decision to retire at the end of March, at the age of 51, comes as the company faces slower sales growth. Whitman hands the reigns to another eBay executive, John Donahoe.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Let's check in now on the old economy - the auto industry. Toyota has been creeping up on General Motors with many people predicting the Japanese automaker would overtake GM as the world's number one in terms of sales. Hasn't happened yet. The latest numbers are out and GM is still ahead - just barely. Analysts are calling it a virtual tie.
NPR's Anthony Brooks has more.
ANTHONY BROOKS: If this were an election, the results would be contested and would probably have to be settled in court. That's how close the competition is between General Motors, which has held the title of world's largest automaker for the past 76 years, and Toyota, whose share of the U.S. market has more than doubled since 1990.
Here are the numbers. GM says it sold just over 9,369,000 vehicles last year. Toyota says it sold roughly 9.37 million vehicles. In other words, the global sales race is too close to call. But Paul Eisenstein, publisher of the CarConnection.com, says the numbers show that Toyota is poised to take the lead.
Mr. PAUL EISENSTEIN (CarConnection.com): Barring some unforeseen setback, it almost certainly will take the title as the number one automaker in the world come 2008. The big question is, what does that mean? Does it really matter?
BROOKS: The answer is yes and no. Being number one certainly gives a company bragging rights. But more important is profitability, and on that front Toyota has been ahead of GM for some time. But the new sales numbers show encouraging news for GM as well. It sold more than a million vehicles in China last year and sales are booming in Latin America and Russia.
Anthony Brooks, NPR News, Boston.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
What else to call it but a wild ride this week on global markets. Fears of recession sent markets dropping as much as 11 percent; then the big rate cut by the Federal Reserve sent other markets rising just as sharply. Today, Asian markets ended trading mostly higher. Japan's lead index is up 2 percent. The bounce follows yesterday's rise in the Dow, which ended 300 points higher. If you're feeling dizzy, well, join the crowd.
From Seattle, NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports on how some investors are handling the turbulence.
WENDY KAUFMAN: Members of WEAL, Women Earning and Learning, are seated around the table poring over their year-end returns. The small investment club had a very good year in 2007, beating the market and posting a sizeable profit. Still, the overall market is down from its high-water mark in October. The Dow, for example, is off above 14 percent.
Nonetheless, Lisa Robertson(ph) and others in the club are confident that they have picked solid companies to invest in, and they're not about to panic now.
Ms. LISA ROBERTSON (WEAL Member): Am I nervous? I don't like it, but it just looks like there's some buying opportunities...
Unidentified Woman: Exactly.
Ms. ROBERTSON: ...coming in now. So no, I'm not pessimistic. I just want to get it over with quickly.
KAUFMAN: Graphic artist Beth Bronson(ph) takes a similar view, though she admits watching the market fall more than 450 points first thing Tuesday morning was a bit unsettling.
Ms. BETH BRONSON (Graphic Artist): And I went, whoa, are we in for a rollercoaster here. But it did start to come back, and I'm not nervous. And I agree with Lisa. I think it's a good opportunity to buy. In fact, we have a little pile here of things that we're going to be looking at our meeting on next Monday.
KAUFMAN: And since one of the companies they own stock in is being bought out for a sizeable amount of cash, Bronson says they'll have some new money to work with.
Ms. BRONSON: I think there are some stocks out there that are reacting to the market and that are still good companies to invest in, but the prices are dropping because everything is dropping. And you know, that's what we do in our club, is we look for good buying opportunities.
KAUFMAN: Their club, which takes a long-term view of the market, is assisted by betterinvesting.org, the nation's largest non-profit organization dedicated to investment education. Its investment philosophy looks at company fundamentals and price to earnings ratios. The women have no illusions about the challenges facing the economy, and they don't expect the Dow to be back at 14,000 anytime soon.
Here's Beth Bronson's prediction for the coming year.
Ms. BRONSON: The market will not be at 14,000, but neither will it be at 6,000. I would bet it's roughly where it is now.
Ms. ROBERTSON: I would say maybe up 5 percent from where it is now.
KAUFMAN: That's retired accounting manager Lisa Robertson.
Ms. ROBERTSON: I think it will go down a bit and then it'll come back in the second half of the year. You know, it won't be upstanding. But it'll - it's going to recover from where it is now.
Mr. GARY BALL(ph) (Investor): If you go back to even 1926, there's been 14 major downturns, and after every single one of them, the market comes back.
KAUFMAN: Gary Ball is another middle-aged Seattle area investor. As part of the Better Investing program, he teaches classes to neophytes.
Mr. BALL: And I usually ask people, what do you think is going to happen this time? And then just hearing that, they're most likely going to say, well, geez, I guess it'll come back.
KAUFMAN: Ball, a retired engineer, is also in the market for the long-term and he too believes there are and will be lots of good buys in the stock market, so long as you do your homework. He offers one other bit of advice. Don't check your portfolio on a daily basis. That way, when the market is on a downward spiral, you can sleep better at night.
Wendy Kaufman, NPR News, Seattle.
MONTAGNE: And now that the Federal Reserve has cut rates, is it time to refinance your mortgage? You can get the answer to that question - one that's been asked over the last few years - and learn about how market developments are affecting consumers by going to npr.org.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And our last word in business today is Bogglific.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
That's a word.
INSKEEP: Is now.
MONTAGNE: Hope you're not planning to use it in Scrabble.
INSKEEP: That is the other last word in business, by the way - Scrabulous. Bogglific and Scrabulous are online versions of two popular games, Scrabble and Boggle. The toy company Hasbro owns both the original games and it has ordered the creators of both online versions, one in India, one in New Zeeland, to cease and desist. Bogglific is now gone, though its online creator disagrees that he violated any copyright law. Scrabulous remains online, raising speculation that its creators may have reached a deal with Hasbro.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
We're moving closer to seeing the shape of a permanent American military presence in Iraq. Next month, the Bush administration begins formal negotiations with Iraq's leaders. The talks may cover anything from U.S. military bases to U.S. military commitments to defend the country, and more.
NPR's Guy Raz is here to report on what happens next. And, Guy, how important are these talks?
GUY RAZ: Well, Steve, if you listen to administration officials, it seems pretty run-of-the-mill, you know, sort of normal fare, in a way that they describe what these negotiations are all about, using terms like these:
President GEORGE W. BUSH: We're now building an enduring relationship with Iraq.
Ambassador RYAN CROCKER (U.S. Ambassador to Iraq): A long-term strategic partnership.
Secretary CONDOLEEZZA RICE (U.S Department of State): And we look forward to a relationship with Iraq for the long term.
Secretary ROBERT GATES (U.S. Department of Defense): They mutually agreed an arrangement whereby we have a long and enduring presence.
INSKEEP: Sounds pretty benign.
RAZ: It's pretty vague language, I would say. But I don't think that the people we just heard from - the president, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Condoleezza Rice, Secretary Robert Gates - are really letting on how significant these negotiations actually are.
INSKEEP: Okay. What's a different way to describe these talks?
RAZ: Well, there's a congressman from Massachusetts, Bill Delahunt, and here is the way he describes it:
Representative BILL DELAHUNT (Democrat, Massachusetts): The most consequential decision that this country will make in the course of this year.
RAZ: And he is talking about basically secret negotiations that the administration is holding with the top members of the Iraqi cabinet. And Delahunt has launched congressional hearings to look into this. And he's invited members of the administration as well.
Rep. DELAHUNT: We have issued invitations to a number of administration officials and we have yet to receive a reply.
RAZ: And, Steve, neither has NPR. The Pentagon, which is actually leading these negotiations, didn't respond a request for comments. And critics of this process think that both the White House and the Pentagon want to keep this issue out of the spotlight.
And so, a lot of skeptics suspect that the Pentagon right now is essentially laying the foundation for something more permanent, which is what Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi political activist, believes.
Mr. RAED JARRAR (Political Analyst; Consultant, Middle East Peace Building Program, American Friends Service Committee): Permanent bases and permanent intervention in Iraq's domestic issues for the next decades.
RAZ: Now, we should give a little background for a moment.
Last November, the president and Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a joint letter; it was called the declaration of principles. And the letter is a blueprint for how the relationship between Washington and Baghdad ought to be in the future. And it includes a pledge to basically defend Iraq's system against internal and external threats. And it's that sentence that's really raising alarm bells in certain quarters on Capitol Hill, including among people like Congressman Delahunt.
Rep. DELAHUNT: This amounts to a treaty.
RAZ: But the administration denies this vehemently, and it's because a treaty would require Senate ratification. And the administration essentially believes that they won't be able to get that kind of approval from the Senate.
INSKEEP: So are they negotiating something that would look like a treaty and talk like a treaty and act like a treaty, but not be called a treaty?
RAZ: Well, that's what critics say, as well as, legal experts, including Kenneth Katzman, who is with the Congressional Research Service. And he suggests that the administration might be splitting legal hairs.
Mr. KENNETH KATZMAN (Specialist in Middle East Affairs, Congressional Research Service): The declaration of principles obviously was quite broad, and it would appear to commit the United States to basically keeping the elected Iraqi government in power against internal threats. I'll leave it to the lawyers to determine whether that's the definition of a treaty or not. But it certainly seems to be - is going to be a hefty U.S. commitment to Iraq for a long time.
RAZ: And, also, perhaps unprecedented in the history of American foreign policy because, in simple language, it could be the most wide-reaching security arrangement with a foreign country that the U.S. has ever actually had.
(Soundbite of American Forces Network commercial)
Unidentified Man: It affects almost everything, from the way you shop, conduct business on a daily basis, and even the way you live.
RAZ: Now, this is a TV commercial from the military's Armed Forces Network. And it describes what U.S. troops in Korea can and cannot do. They fall under what's called a status of forces agreement. And the U.S. has about a hundred of these agreements with countries around the world.
Now, in the case of Iraq, both the White House and the Pentagon say, you know, this bilateral relationship won't be any different from status of forces agreements. And by law, the president can actually broker status of forces agreements alone, without any approval from the Senate.
And I asked a retired Army General, Michael Nardotti, who was the Army's top lawyer, about this issue.
Major General MICHAEL NARDOTTI JR. (Former Judge Advocate General): The president, as the commander-in-chief, can enter into an agreement. And in theory certainly as complex an agreement as he deems appropriate and necessary and of the circumstances.
RAZ: But, of course, in the case of Iraq, even the most optimistic assessments don't expect that country to look anything like Korea or Japan, for example, which is why someone like Raed Jarrar, the Iraqi political activist, is skeptical when he hears officials describe it as a status of forces agreement.
Mr. JARRAR: Bases of the U.S. around the world are not situated in an occupied country. For example, the U.S. forces in Japan can't just go out of the base and have a checkpoint in Tokyo. They can't go out on Tokyo, you know, arresting Japanese people.
RAZ: Right. And in Japan and Korea, the U.S. military isn't allowed to maintain internal stability either - or for that matter, in any other country in the world.
INSKEEP: It doesn't have to maintain internal stability in those countries.
RAZ: It's not allowed to. And in the few cases where the U.S. military is actually committed to defending allies from outside threats, from external threats, they are all treaties. And as required by the U.S. Constitution, they've all been approved by the U.S. Senate. NATO is probably the best-known example of this.
But the White House has already made it clear that in the Iraq agreement, it won't go to Congress to ask for permission. So critics of this agreement, like Congressman Delahunt, believe that White House and Pentagon lawyers will carefully construct the language of the agreement to make it appear as if it's not a treaty.
Rep. DELAHUNT: And that language is, to me, profoundly disturbing.
RAZ: And it's disturbing, he says, because it will commit the U.S. to Iraq for a long, long time to come.
Rep. DELAHUNT: To embrace an agreement that could be invoked in the event of an Iraqi civil war, I think is an extremely dangerous course to take.
RAZ: Now, for their part, Iraqi officials don't mince words, they actually call this a treaty. Listen to Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, just a few days ago.
Minister HOSHYAR ZEBARI (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Iraq): (Through translator) Our leaders have agreed to set a group of principles for the long-term treaty, and…
RAZ: Now, nearly half of Iraq's parliament have signed a letter demanding a full U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq within the next two years. But it's the Cabinet officials, the people who essentially depend on U.S. military protection, they're the people who are negotiating the deal on Iraq's behalf. And they've implied that they will require large numbers of U.S. troops in the country for at least another decade. And it poses a problem because Congress has passed three laws that prohibit any U.S. funding for permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq.
And I spoke to Kurt Campbell, who's a top Pentagon official during the 1990s, and he said there are actually ways around that as well.
Dr. KURT CAMPBELL (Chief Executive Officer, Center for a New American Security): While no one will say anything about permanent bases, there are lots of ways to create a potential for bases to be in Iraq for decades to come.
RAZ: So White House and Pentagon lawyers might simply opt to use adjectives like enduring or continuing instead of permanent when they write up this agreement.
Dr. CAMPBELL: This is an attempt in the last days of the Bush administration to hand a new administration a done deal.
RAZ: And, of course, a done deal that could solidify the administration's very complex legacy in Iraq.
INSKEEP: We're listening to NPR's Guy Raz.
And Guy, this does raise a question. If the administration negotiates this agreement - whether you call it a treaty or not this agreement - is it going to be binding on the next president?
RAZ: Well, it will be binding, essentially, whether it's an agreement or a treaty, because traditionally in the history of U.S. foreign policy, presidents try not to break agreements or treaties that have been negotiated by their predecessors. So until it's renegotiated, it will essentially and could essentially become policy for the next administration.
INSKEEP: Which doesn't mean you could never withdraw from Iraq. The United States withdrew from its commitments in Vietnam, for example, but it became an embarrassment.
RAZ: And it becomes difficult because once you establish a large military presence in a country, it's unusual for that presence to then diminish significantly as, of course, we see with Osan in South Korea, Okinawa in Japan and the several installations in Germany.
INSKEEP: NPR's Guy Raz. Thanks very much.
RAZ: Thank you, Steve.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
World markets are surging today. They followed a dramatic u-turn on Wall Street. The Dow, a leading market average, was down more than 300 points at lunchtime but it finished the day up almost 300 points. So that helped Asian and European markets recover today, but it didn't necessarily help Asia and Europe recover from concerns about where the world economy is going in the near term.
Joining us is Gillian Tett. She is world markets editor at the Financial Times. And she's with world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week where concerns about a recession are at the top of everyone's minds.
Hello.
Ms. GILLIAN TETT (World Markets Editor, Financial Times): Yes. Good morning.
MONTAGNE: And how would you describe the mood there with all the talk that the U.S. might be slipping into a recession? Is the mood gloomy in Davos?
Ms. TETT: Well, that I think is extraordinarily contrast with this time last year. The last year at Davos meeting everyone was fantastically upbeat about the global economy and the markets were in something of a boom time. This year, the mood is extremely nervous. People are worried that the global economy could be slowing down. That the U.S. is in considerable trouble and that the emerging markets may not be as resilient as we thought. And of course, there is this crazy rollercoaster ride in the markets right now, which is reflecting a lot of fear about the financial sector.
MONTAGNE: Well, one person who is optimistic is Condoleezza Rice. She's at Davos as well. And yesterday, she addressed the economic anxiety being expressed in many parts of the world. We have a clip of that.
Secretary CONDOLEEZZA RICE (U.S. Department of State): The U.S. economy is resilient. It's structure is sound, and its long-term economic fundamentals are healthy. And the United States continues to welcome foreign investment and free trade. And the economy - our economy - will remain a leading engine of global economic growth.
MONTAGNE: That's Condoleezza Rice's view. What's your response to that?
Ms. TETT: Well, the America officials are clearly in Davos this week on a major sales pitch to try and persuade everyone that the economy is not going to slip into a deep recession. That the government is going to unveil the necessary stimulus to avoid that. And they're also trying to convince everyone that they have the financial sector problems under control. The problem is, though, that every time a bit of good news comes out, it seems like another bit of bad news comes out as well. And certainly, the mood here is pretty skeptical.
MONTAGNE: Among those who were gloomy was billionaire financier George Soros. He suggested that it would be, quote, "very difficult to avoid recession in the U.S. and the U.K." And here's a clip of his remarks.
Mr. GEORGE SAROS (Global Financier): Markets have been left to their own devices, and the authorities came to rely on the markets to right themselves. They ought to have known better.
MONTAGNE: Is that correct?
Ms. TETT: Well, there is certainly a view here that something has gone fundamentally wrong in the way that Western finance is conducted in recent years. There was actually a poll conducted by - of the delegates yesterday, which showed that 60 percent of the economists, and policymakers, and bankers, here, think that central banks have lost control of the situation in recent months. That is a stunning result. And the problem is that there is no consensus, at the moment, about how to right the financial problems.
And on top of that, you have oil prices, which are still high. And we've also got the housing market in the U.S., which remains a source of considerable unease for just about everybody.
MONTAGNE: And with all that, though, the European Central Bank, which is the equivalent of the Federal Reserve, insisted yesterday that it will not cut rates in the wake of the Federal Reserve cutting rates. Is this because of concern about inflation?
Ms. TETT: Absolutely. One of the really ironic problems right now is that people are very much worrying about inflation in Davos. This year, there's a lot of discussion about food prices, about energy prices, which are topics that weren't really dominating the debate this time last year. So there are certainly inflationary pressures coming through. And that adds to the Central Bank's challenge.
MONTAGNE: Thanks very much for joining us.
Ms. TETT: Thank you.
MONTAGNE: Gillian Tett is world markets editor at the Financial Times and speaking to us from Davos, Switzerland.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And it's time again to hear your comments.
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: Many of you wrote about our visit last week to Lancaster, South Carolina. It was part of our coverage of the economy in a state holding an important presidential primary. And we met people like Carolyn Summers. She's out of work at age 63 after a textile company shifted business to Brazil.
Ms. CAROLYN SUMMERS: That's probably the hardest thing I have ever gone through. I went through a marriage and a divorce. I lost my father at an early age. I lost my mother in '99. But nothing compares with losing a job and not knowing - especially at my age - not knowing what you're going to do.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Our listener Shari Shelton(ph) writes: I'm about as far removed from the laid-off textile workers in South Carolina as you could imagine. She continues: I'm Jewish, I live in Southern California, and I'm a professional with multiple college degrees. However, the beautiful, respectful coverage of their stories made me feel like these people were my friends and neighbors.
INSKEEP: We got a different response from Joseph Bovey(ph) of North Attleborough, Massachusetts. He writes: while one has to feel sympathy for anyone who loses a job, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that there was also a small feeling of payback as well. The textile city that I grew up in - New Bedford, Massachusetts - went through the same loss of textile jobs years ago. The only difference was that rather than losing textile jobs to Brazil, they were losing them to the Carolinas.
MONTAGNE: Now, a comment on one of our newscasts. In a report on Brazilian President Lula da Silva's visit to Cuba last week, NPR cited unnamed Latin American experts claiming a lack of U.S. interest in the region. That report caught the attention of Heidi Brunki(ph), spokesperson for the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs.
INSKEEP: And she fired off a letter reading: to contend that visits by other Latin American leaders to Cuba are an indication of lack of U.S. concern for the region is a subjective conclusion. She goes on: The president has traveled to the region eight times during his tenure in office. And with bipartisan support, assistance levels have doubled since the beginning of the Bush administration. Moreover, she adds, we have negotiated 10 free trade agreements in the region.
MONTAGNE: Finally, listener Susan Roden(ph), of Cocoa, Florida, e-mailed after hearing librarian Nancy Pearl's latest chat about recommended reading.
INSKEEP: I awoke this morning to the words of Aunt Ada Doom, and immediately knew someone was talking about one of my all-time favorite books, "Cold Comfort Farm."
Ms. NANCY PEARL (Librarian): Mostly, what Aunt Ada Doom says is I saw something nasty in the woodpile.
(Soundbite of laughter)
INSKEEP: That's Nancy Pearl. And Susan Roden goes on: Even as a high school student, I found the dark humor, laugh-out-loud funny and spent several years searching for my own copy. "Cold Comfort Farm" became my travel book, helping me cope with Greyhound bus trips while a poor graduate student, and later, long flight delays.
MONTAGNE: Don't you delay dropping us a note here at npr.org. You can do it by clicking on Contact Us.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
The sky is no longer the limit for Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Airlines. Branson has another company he calls Virgin Galactic. It's planning to send paying customers into space. And the company's first spaceship is said to be almost ready.
NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports on the technology and the man who wants to launch it.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE: When Sir Richard Branson makes an announcement, you know it's not exactly going to be low key. So the music was pumping when he unveiled a scale model of Virgin Galactic's spacecraft at a big press event in New York City.
Sir RICHARD BRANSON (CEO, Virgin Group): Five, four, three, two, one.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The new ship is based on the same technology as something called SpaceShipOne. That vehicle got a big prize in 2004 for being the first private craft to carry humans into space. It was a tiny, cramped capsule with just three seats.
The new spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, is much bigger. It will carry six passengers. It looks like a silver corporate airplane, and it goes into the sky strapped to a mother ship with a wingspan of 140 feet. To get into space, SpaceShipTwo detaches from the mother ship and rockets up. The passengers will be able to float in weightlessness for a few minutes until the ship glides home. Virgin Galactic says test flights should begin this summer. Richard Branson says it's a big step.
Sir BRANSON: 2008 really will be the Year of the Spaceship. We're tremendously excited about the prospects for this system. We're excited about everything that it will be able to do.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: After unveiling the models, the company showed a humorous video of Branson and other future space travelers, spinning around in a centrifuge.
(Soundbite of music)
GREENFIELDBOYCE: They grimaced and laughed, and even played air guitar as they experience the same G-Forces they'll feel during their flight. Virgin Galactic's Stephen Attenborough says they've tried this for about 80 customers so far. Only a handful have been turned away for medical reasons.
Mr. STEPHEN ATTENBOROUGH (Vice President for Astronaut Relations, Virgin Galactic): So overall, we proved conclusively during that period that ordinary people actually can go to space. And, in fact, almost all of us have the right stuff.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Of course, there's some stuff that not all of us have: $200,000. That's the price of a ticket. Still, Virgin Galactic says it already has over 200 people who have made deposits, many of them were wandering around the press event in snazzy, black uniforms.
B.J. Bjorklund is a financial adviser from Dallas, Texas. Years ago, he wanted to be an astronaut. Then, while visiting an air show recently, he learned that Virgin Galactic was offering commercial flights.
Mr. B.J. BJORKLUND (Portfolio Manager, Citigroup's Smith Barney): I actually signed up for it before I even told my wife. And I called her that night on the phone and said, you're not going to believe what I did.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: He expects to be one of the first 100 people to go up, although he doesn't have an eTicket.
Mr. BJORKLUND: I'd like to see what the ticket looks like.
(Soundbite of laughter)
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Luxury travel agents expect that the unveiling of the new design and the test flights will sell more tickets.
Anne Morgan Scully is president of McCabe World Travel in McLean, Virginia. She's one of Virgin Galactic's accredited space agents. In her office, there are posters of Italy and California, but also a model of a spaceship.
Ms. ANNE MORGAN SCULLY (President, McCabe World Travel): I don't think a regular seat on a plane is ultimate travel anymore. This is something extraordinary that's about to be launched. It's the ultimate dream. It's the ultimate vacation.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: For now, even paying customers can only dream about this ultimate vacation. Virgin Galactic can't say how long it will take for SpaceShipTwo to get through flight and safety tests.
Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: This is NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
It's been a busy week for the general who replaced Pervez Musharraf as Pakistan's military chief. General Ashfaq Kayani held meetings with the head of the U.S. military's Central Command. And all week, the Pakistani army has been battling militants loyal to a Taliban commander that Pakistan blames for last month's assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Kayani now holds the most powerful position in Pakistan. In his two months in office, he started to make some fundamental changes while keeping a low profile, at least, compared to his predecessor.
As NPR's Jackie Northam reports from Islamabad.
JACKIE NORTHAM: For eight years, since he seized power in a bloodless coup, Pervez Musharraf was both Pakistan's president and its military chief. It was an arrangement that was at best tolerated. But the country's patience with Musharraf ran out last year when he purged the Supreme Court and altered the constitution in order to hold on to power. Swelling anger and opposition finally forced him to relinquish his army post, but the reputation of Pakistan's military was left badly damaged.
Ayaz Amir, a political commentator, says Musharraf's successor, General Ashfaq Kayani, had to act quickly when he replaced Musharraf two months ago.
Mr. AYAZ AMIR (Political Analyst): The first thing that you would expect a new army chief to do is really to try to rehabilitate the tarnished image of the army. And the obvious point to begin from was to say, all right, enough of politics. No politicians coming to general headquarters and no military men going to politicians.
NORTHAM: That is exactly what Kayani has done. Earlier this week, he issued two key directives. Kayani barred all senior military officers from having any direct involvement in Pakistan's politics. That includes meeting directly with President Musharraf unless they have Kayani's prior approval.
Air Marshal Asghar Khan says that looks good on paper, but it may not be practical, especially for Musharraf, who has decades-long ties with military officers.
Captain ASGHAR KHAN (Air Marshal, Pakistan Air Force): Personal contacts, personal relationship and all that. And he has gone to (unintelligible). I think it won't be realistic to expect that you cut off even his social contacts. That wouldn't be impossible. So it was a really complicated thing.
NORTHAM: General Kayani also has called back hundreds of military officers from plum civilian positions that were handed out as perks by Musharraf, powerful positions in ministry such as transportation, communication, and the water empower authority. Air Marshal Khan says he's pleased Kayani is trying to curb a reward system that's created resentment and militarized the government.
Capt. KHAN: It's a very good thing, I think, far too many officers doing civilian jobs. Even the postmaster general as a military man. It's ridiculous.
NORTHAM: Kayani's directives were issued while Musharraf is in Europe, trying to drum up support for his teetering regime. Analysts are split as to whether Kayani's move is seen as undermining Musharraf's position or has the president's blessing.
Retired Army Lieutenant General Talat Masood, a defense analyst, says either way, it's clear Kayani is taking steps to distance the Armed Forces from politics in the hugely unpopular Musharraf. Masood said it's imperative to build Pakistan's fate in its military again.
Lieutenant General TALAT MASODD (Retired, Pakistan Army): These Armed Forces in this country cannot afford to have a civil-military divide. This is one time when we need the full support of the people of Pakistan to fight, especially in this war on terror and extremism. If we do not have the support, we cannot fight this war effectively.
NORTHAM: Kayani is asserting himself in his new role as military chief. Over the past two months, he has regularly visited Pakistan's tribal areas, where the army is fighting pro-Taliban militants. Unlike his predecessor, Musharraf, Kayani is seen as focusing on military matters rather than on running the country. But political commentator Amir says, since its early days, he says the military's dabbling in politics is ingrained in Pakistan. Kayani has to prove he has no political aspirations.
Mr. AMIR: No. But he has taken a few steps, but that doesn't qualify for any glorification of General Ashfaq Kayani. I mean, he's an army chief, but I don't see any reason to glorify him. He is not the knight on a white charger that Pakistan has been waiting for, who'll step into the (unintelligible) General Kayani and his white charger is saying, all right, I salute the Pakistani nation. I'm going to go back to general headquarters. That's not going to happen.
NORTHAM: The calls for Musharraf's resignation from every quarter continue to grow stronger every day. Amir says the critical test for Kayani will be how long he, and by extension the military, backs the president - and how much power Kayani will assume if or when Musharraf is toppled.
Jackie Northam, NPR News, Islamabad.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
However chaotic Pakistan seems, its problems are minor compared to the Democratic Republic of Congo. A war in that African nation formally ended five years ago, yet that has not prevented rebel groups from going right on the battle loosely controlled government forces. That leads to a thread of full-scale civil war. But yesterday, the worrying rebels and militias signed a peace deal with the president of Congo, Joseph Kabila.
Michael Kavanagh was at the peace conference in the town of Goma.
President JOSEPH KABILA (Democratic Republic of Congo): (Speaking in foreign language)
(Soundbite of applause)
MICHAEL KAVANAGH: When Congolese president, Joseph Kabila, officially closed the peace conference, the room full of government officials, representatives from the international community, and rebel leaders erupted in applause.
(Soundbite of singing)
KAVANAGH: Outside the conference, a group of women broke out in song.
Unidentified Woman: (Speaking in foreign language)
KAVANAGH: This bystander said they're singing for joy because there's finally peace.
The International Rescue Committee estimates that that Congolese conflict has resulted in over 5.4 million deaths in the last decade, making it the world's worst conflict since World War II. In the last year alone, international aide group say that almost half a million Congolese have fled their homes, they were escaping fighting between government troops and the armed group led by diffident Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda. Rene Abandi is the spokesperson for Nkunda's movement.
Mr. RENE ABANDI (Spokesperson, Transitional Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo): We are very happy to see at the end an agreement between parties. We will continue fighting, but the fight will become political.
KAVANAGH: Nkunda considers himself the protector of the Congolese Tutsi who are widely despised in eastern Congo for alignment fells with the invading Rwandan army during the Congolese wars. The peace accord calls for Nkunda to disarm. For its part, the government will provide for the safe return of the 40,000 Congolese Tutsi refugees. They will also repatriate the remaining Rwandan-Hutu militia groups who first fled to Congo after the 1994 Rwandan genocide. All parties to the accord agreed to a ceasefire and the deployment of United Nation's peacekeepers to create buffer zones between armed groups. The agreement also calls for amnesty for militia members except those responsible for war crimes or crime against humanity.
The U.S. and the E.U. along with other members of the international community also signed the agreement and will formally oversee the process. Tim Shortley was the chief negotiator for the U.S. during the peace conference.
Mr. TIM SHORTLEY (Chief Negotiator for the U.S.): I think that is what sealed the deal ultimately is a pledge of the international community to play an active role, not a passive role, not just an observing role - but an active role in the implementation of the agreement.
KAVANAGH: For its part, the United States has pledged millions in donor assistance to Congo as well as military training to improve the notoriously unprofessional Congolese army. Shortley says the U.S. is interested in improving security in the region as well as addressing Congo's humanitarian catastrophe.
Mr. SHORTLEY: The situation on the ground has become intolerable - the suffering of the people, the refugees - and we're showing U.S. leadership to try to bring an end to this crisis.
KAVANAGH: But many Congolese are skeptical the peace will hold. The Congo is rife with other problems. For all its vast natural resources, Congo is a country with only 300 miles of roads, few opportunities for employment, and no reliable justice system.
The wounds from the past decade of war are deep and will take at least a generation to heal, says Anneke Van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch who advised the negotiations. Still, she remains optimistic.
Ms. ANNEKE VAN WOUDENBERG (Researcher, Human Rights Watch): I feel like today, a breath of life was given to the people of eastern Congo. I have never seen this kind of a process before, certainly in my 10 years here. It's the best chance I've seen for peace for these people. I don't think the road ahead will be simple but they've been given a good start today.
KAVANAGH: For NPR News, I'm Michael Kavanagh in Goma.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
A group of Canadian teenagers got in trouble for stealing cars. All four of them were ordered to attend a counseling program in Winnipeg, which simply left the problem of how to travel to the counseling session. It was 40 below zero in Winnipeg, too cold to walk, according to the local paper. And that may explain why the four teenagers showed up for the anti-car theft counseling session while driving in a newly stolen car.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
Thieves in Malaysia fled the scene after losing control of their getaway car and crashing into a tree. They left behind their loot, a cow. Then villagers made off with the bovine booty. Police haven't managed to catch any of the thieves. So the question lingers, how did they squeeze a full-size cow into the backseat of a mid-size sedan?
You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
In this week of turmoil in stock markets around the world, congressional leaders and the White House have reached a tentative deal on a stimulus package for the U.S. economy.
It comes as many fear the U.S. is headed toward a recession, and it includes tax rebates for individuals and families as well as tax cuts for businesses.
NPR's Brian Naylor joins us now from the Capitol to tell us where the agreement stands.
Good morning.
BRIAN NAYLOR: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Give us the highlights of this stimulus plan.
NAYLOR: Well, first, let me just say that this is all very tentative. It's still being shopped around to lawmakers. But what the sides seem to have agreed on is a package of business and individual tax incentives. For individuals, what they're talking about right now is checks - rebate checks of up to $600 for individuals, $1,200 for couples. Plus there's a child bonus. If you have a kid, you get another $300 or so. And there is a limit on this. If you make up to $75,000 a year, you'll get the checks. Above that you won't. $150,000 for couples. At least that's what's being talked about right now.
MONTAGNE: Now, this agreement came after days of negotiating between House leaders and the White House. And at one point Democrats and Republicans seemed pretty far apart.
NAYLOR: Well, you know, it's actually interesting because these talks have been going on really seriously only for the last day or so, I'm told, and that they came to agreement on these terms pretty much in the course of three meetings yesterday.
So while there are ideological differences, I think both sides agree that there is a need to get something done, to show that Congress is concerned about this economy and takes the idea of the stimulus seriously.
MONTAGNE: And did the Democrats, Republicans, did either one of those sides have to sacrifice a lot to get this plan?
NAYLOR: Well, you know, that's what's being talked about now. I think there are some Democrats who feel they may have given up too much because there - there originally was talk about extending unemployment benefits, about making food stamps eligibility, broadening food stamp eligibility. Those parts of the package are out now. In exchange, Democrats got a rebate for virtually everyone who works. Republicans gave up the idea that they wanted to keep these - they wanted to make these rebates larger and keep them more focused on the middle class, whereas as opposed to giving them to people who don't pay income taxes.
So I think the Republicans gave up the high end and the Democrats may have given up a little bit something on the low end, although they do argue that more people will be getting these rebates now than had originally been proposed.
MONTAGNE: And of course the point of such a plan is to stimulate the economy, which means speed.
NAYLOR: Right.
MONTAGNE: The plan still has to get through Congress. How do you see that playing out?
NAYLOR: Well, that's going to be interesting too. I mean, I think that you're seeing a bipartisan agreement in the House. Pretty much everybody agrees that they've got to do something. And if the Speaker and the Republican minority leader agree on something, they'll probably be able to push it through the House.
The Senate, though, wants to have its own say. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said today that he wants to have hearings next week. And so they're going to want to tinker with this as well. Everyone, though, wants to get something done ASAP. And so I think that this is still on the fast track. They're still talking about getting it done by the middle of next month or so.
MONTAGNE: Well, a moment of bipartisanship.
NPR's Brian Naylor at the Capitol, thank you.
NAYLOR: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: And he's reporting on an economic stimulus plan agreed today by Congress and the White House.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports from Paris.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: When the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, announced the appointment of the first Muslim - a woman, no less - as justice minister, the French media could hardly contain its shock.
U: (Speaking French)
POGGIOLI: Forty-one-year-old Rachida Dati is the 12th child of a Moroccan laborer and an Algerian mother. Here the TV reporter describes Dati as an icon of the values of the secular French republic. Dati is not the only Muslim woman with a senior portfolio. The foreign undersecretary for human rights is Senegal-born Rama Yade, and the undersecretary for urban affairs is Fadela Amara, an activist from the immigrant housing projects.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD NOISE)
POGGIOLI: Amara has come to Epinay Sur Seine, one of the many immigrant ghettoes that encircle Paris. Here poverty, unemployment and youth violence are endemic. The 43-year-old woman known as the ghetto warrior has organized the first town hall meeting in this desolate, graffiti-laced project. She feels right at home. Facing a mostly female audience, Amara lashes out at sexist patriarchal cultures that she says harm young women.
M: (Speaking French)
POGGIOLI: You have to speak out, she tells them, and denounced violence against women in the ghetto and the growing number of forced marriages. And, Amara warns, you must be more vigilant against Islamist preachers who pollute the heads of our young men with fundamentalism. The daughter of Algerian immigrants, Amara was a teenage political activist.
POGGIOLI: Amara is a firm believer in the secular values of mainstream French society, and she demands that France live up to its ideals of liberty, equality and brotherhood for all its citizens. One young woman echoes the challenge.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NOUVEAU FRANCAIS")
M: (Singing in French)
POGIOLLI: Habchi says discrimination against men and women of foreign origin is widespread.
M: We don't understand why they want to build this wall between us and the rest of society. I can represent all the French. I'm French since a long time, you know, and I can defend the values of progress also.
POGGIOLI: Habchi believes the only outlet for women in the ghettoes is political activism. But some French Muslim women are following another path.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOSQUE)
POGGIOLI: At the grand mosque of Paris, the Friday call to prayer is inside the elegant Moorish courtyard. Nadia, a young woman whose head is covered with a tightly folded black headscarf, glides over the smooth marble floor toward the woman's gallery. We asked Nadia if she feels better represented now that there are three minority women in the cabinet.
NADIA: Other Muslim? No. Because here it's very difficult to understand what is a Muslim. It's a real choice of faith to be Muslim, and it's not enough to be just Arabic origin. So it's two things different.
POGGIOLI: One graduate is Noura Jaballah, mother of five and spokeswoman for the French League of Muslim Women. She wears the Islamic headscarf, but she has no patience with certain traditional interpretations of Islam.
M: (Through translator) I don't know how in the world they came up with the claim that women were created to stay home and take care of household chores and cooking. It's absolutely false. Women, like men, have the responsibility to make order reign on Earth.
POGGIOLI: Dounia Bouzar, a sociologist and Muslim, studies the new female Islamic consciousness, in which, she says, the Muslim woman has discovered her individuality and learned to say I. Bouzar believes that by growing up in a secular society, French Muslim women have shared experiences and blended with the rest of the French population.
M: (Through translator) By working side by side with men, with non-Muslim women, with people who don't believe in God, by being friends with an Elizabeth who might be Buddhist - well, this totally contradicts traditional teaching. No preacher or father can convince you that your close friend Elizabeth is an infidel. This kind of argument just doesn't carry weight anymore.
POGGIOLI: Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.
INSKEEP: Previous stories in the series are at npr.org.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Unidentified Man: Clinton, Clinton, Obama...
PAM FESSLER: Unidentified Man: Obama. Obama.
FESSLER: Hear that paper? There were actual ballots to count.
RUSH HOLT: The good news is that in New Hampshire there is a verifiable voting system.
FESSLER: New Jersey Democratic Congressman Rush Holt has been pushing for years to require some form of paper for all voting. He's just introduced a new bill to give federal funds to any jurisdiction that changes to a paper-backed system by November.
HOLT: Unless we act, you can be sure that there will be some doubt in some counties or states this year about the federal election results.
FESSLER: This set off an anti-machine buzz in the blogosphere. But Chris Whitmire, a spokesman for the State Election Commission, says the problem was not the equipment.
CHRIS WHITMIRE: Any voting system is dependent on its user following the proper operating procedures, and in this case Horry County election officials missed a step.
FESSLER: That step was closing out tests performed on the machines before the elections, which left some test votes still recorded and any affected machine locked up.
WHITMIRE: It's really a good thing. We don't want the voting machine to allow itself to be open with votes already on it.
FESSLER: But the incident has led to fresh calls for the state to replace its voting machines, which are, as one advocate notes...
WARREN STEWART: The same equipment that they used in Sarasota County in November 2006.
FESSLER: Warren Stewart is with Verified Voting, a group pushing for paper ballots. He notes that several states voting February 5th, such as Georgia and New Jersey, will also use machines without a paper backup.
STEWART: If there's questions or a razor-thin margin and there's some issues that need to be resolved, there's really no way to resolve them.
FESSLER: But most election officials say they do have confidence in the machines, that there's no evidence anyone has ever manipulated one to change a vote. In fact, they think they're more reliable than paper, which can be lost or damaged. But these officials, including Ken Baird of Kings County, California, are increasingly resigned to a changing mood.
KEN BAIRD: The security issues, while they're important, I think have been kind of blown out of proportion. But at the same time, if these systems have been portrayed, you know, so negatively that voters have no confidence in the systems, then it may be time to move on to something else.
FESSLER: Pam Fessler, NPR News.
INSKEEP: To learn how other early primary states are turning back to paper ballots, go to npr.org/elections.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
And it's time now for StoryCorps, the project in which Americans talk about their lives. And today, we'll hear from Harley Spiller. He's a collector. For 40 years, he has stockpiled things like the world's largest private collection of takeout menus. And that earned him a place in the Guinness World Records.
HARLEY SPILLER: A couple of hundred funky neckties.
INSKEEP: I mean, I know it's unusual, but I think I've got it under control. I think I'm right on the border between obsessed and intelligent about these things. I don't really care about the stuff. That's the bottom line. I don't care about my menus. If they were to disappear tomorrow, I'd still know everything I know about them, and that's what matters.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: That's collector Harley Spiller at StoryCorps in New York City. His interview will be archived along with all the others at the Library of Congress. And you can subscribe to the StoryCorps Podcast by going to npr.org.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
And this week, Imran Khan came to Washington as a kind of ambassador for Pakistan's opposition. In public speeches and private meetings, he is urging Americans to end their support for a major ally in the war on terror, President Pervez Musharraf.
M: General Musharraf has done a brilliant PR job here, where he has convinced the people that he is one man holding these hordes of terrorists, the bastion against these extremists. And that...
INSKEEP: In an effort to change that image, Imran Khan met this week with congressional leaders from both political parties. He also packed the room, where he spoke at a Washington think tank, The Center for Strategic and International Studies.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
INSKEEP: And he agreed to let us follow along as he raced to yet another spot.
U: Can I ask you to please stay in your seats so that our visitor can leave and make his next appointment?
INSKEEP: Everyone makes way as he heads for the door. Imran Khan is in his mid- 50s now, still trim, in a dark blue suit. His black hair flies about a bit as he and an aide step into the elevator.
M: You have a live CSPAN at the Press Club right now?
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
U: Don't stop.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
U: (Unintelligible)
U: 10 minutes, five minutes.
INSKEEP: As he crosses the sidewalk to his car, he is stopped by a TV reporter.
U: Do we expect that you will accept some sort of sharing power with Musharraf?
M: Absolutely not.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DOOR CLOSING)
INSKEEP: You said in there that you thought Musharraf had done a brilliant PR job. How can you counter that now?
M: Well, this is basically trying to counter it. Well, first of all, the facts on the ground - everyone in Pakistan knows, across the spectrum from the right to the left, people want Musharraf to go. So that's one. Anyway, I mean, the U.S. administration must be getting this information, that in Pakistan, and according to all the polls, they are backing someone who is deeply unpopular in the country.
INSKEEP: Do you think U.S. backing is significant enough that the United States government could cause a change in government or prevent a change in government, either way, in Pakistan?
M: Well, at the moment, the only backer of General Musharraf is the U.S. government. The army is only backing him now because they think that the U.S. government backs Musharraf. So if the U.S. government - all we want them to say is to insist on the reinstatement of the constitutional judges of Pakistan. That's all we want. And once that happens, then, the constitution will take its course.
INSKEEP: You mentioned in a couple of your speeches this week, Pakistani Americans - the importance of Pakistani Americans to your political party and to the situation there. In what ways are you trying to mobilize them to lobby for your side?
M: Well, I think Pakistani Americans have more awareness. They understand what a democracy is. They understand the concept of separation of power, and checks and balances, independent judiciary, rule of law - more so than people living in Pakistan because they have never experienced this.
INSKEEP: Is it disappointing to you that some of your strongest supporters are in the United States and not necessarily in Pakistan?
M: Well, it is disappointing to have your best brains leave the country because you cannot provide them a system where they can fulfill their potential.
INSKEEP: I guess what I'm asking is - is that a sign of how far you are from political success or changing the system in Pakistan?
M: Not from political success. The community here is supportive, you know? But we will become a force in Pakistani politics whenever we have free and fair election. These fraudulent elections, of course - we, along with our coalition partners, have boycotted, subject to the restoration, the reinstatement of the judges. And sooner or later, we will have to have free and fair elections. Any government coming out of these fraudulent elections is not going to last long.
INSKEEP: One of my colleagues is pointing out that you are about the same age as Benazir Bhutto was. How well did you know her?
M: Well, we were in university together. Both of us read the same subject at Oxford. And we were friends. We knew each other even after university. We knew each other - we were in touch with each other until she became the prime minister. And after that, there was no contact.
INSKEEP: Why?
M: Well, I think - well, first, because she was the prime minister or she was in politics - I wasn't. Secondly, I didn't really agree with her politics, and especially, you know, the corruption cases that dogged her government.
INSKEEP: Now, that you've had a few weeks to absorb the news of her assassination, do you believe the situation in your country is fundamentally different than it was a month or two ago?
M: Of course, I think such a, you know - it's a landmark event in our history; one of the most tragic events. I have never seen such show of emotion and pain throughout Pakistan as after assassination. And, of course, it's had an impact.
INSKEEP: It may also have increased American interests in Pakistan, which is reflected by Imran Khan's brutal schedule as he races across Washington, D.C. That black SUV deposits us on a sidewalk. It's right around the corner from the White House.
M: What is this? This is the Press Club?
INSKEEP: This is where he's been told he has another speech. As he steps into the elevator, an aide says it will be carried on C-SPAN, which causes Imran Khan to ask, what's C-SPAN?
M: It's a radio?
U: It's a radio and TV channel...
U: Political TV station.
U: ...political TV station, which airs all kinds of news, opens....
U: It's just a political TV station.
M: My team is, as you know, insisted that I should come here and inform the public here about events in Pakistan - or give the other picture.
U: It's a global world. It's a global village we're living in, everybody has an effect in everything as it was...
U: And especially...
INSKEEP: Seconds later, Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan steps before a room full of cameras, hoping to make his case to America once again.
U: Now, I want to introduce Mr. Imran Khan.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
As NPR's Scott Horsley reports, this week's news guaranteed there would be just one leading topic.
SCOTT HORSLEY: Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney seized the opportunity to tout his credentials as a successful business consultant and private equity investor.
M: I spent my life in the private sector. I know how jobs come and I know how they go, and I'll make sure that we create more good jobs for this nation. And one way to do that is by holding down taxes and making those tax cuts permanent.
HORSLEY: Romney's campaign has been busy pointing out press clippings, in which his chief rival, Arizona Senator John McCain, confesses a limited background in economics. But McCain showed no such modesty during last night's debate.
INSKEEP: And I have been a consistent fighter to restrain spending and to cut taxes. And my credentials and my experience and my knowledge of these economic issues I think are extensive and I would match them against anybody who's running.
HORSLEY: Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee expressed some reservations about the stimulus plan, which will send $600 tax rebate checks to most working Americans. He says the government might be better off building new highways to help traffic-weary Floridians and keep the money at home.
M: One of the concerns that I have is that we'll probably end up borrowing this $150 billion from the Chinese. And when we get those rebate checks, most people are going to go out and buy stuff that's been imported from China. I have to wonder whose economy is going to be stimulated the most by the package.
HORSLEY: Huckabee also reminded his rivals that a few months ago he was the only Republican sounding the alarm about the economic challenges facing working class voters.
M: And if you pay attention to the people who are the single moms and the working people who barely get from paycheck to paycheck, you'd find out months in advance that this economy was headed for a downward turn.
HORSLEY: Candidates also fielded questions on issues of special concern to Floridians, including a catastrophic insurance pool to help homeowners in hurricane prone areas. Romney said he'd back some kind of cooperative effort among high-risk states. McCain, however, was wary of too large a federal role.
INSKEEP: I'm confident we can do it together working with the insurance companies, not setting up another huge federal bureaucracy of $200 billion, which still nobody has said how you're going to pay for.
HORSLEY: Most recent polls show McCain holding a slight lead among Republicans in Florida, with Romney close behind. McCain has been forced to spend time away from Florida, raising money though, while Romney can partially fund his campaign from his own pocket. The multimillionaire refused to say last night how much of his own money he has put in.
M: One thing's real clear. Given the contribution I made in this race, I know I owe no one anything. I don't have some group there that I have a special obligation to that raised money for me.
HORSLEY: One-time front-runner Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, has slipped in the polls to third or even fourth place. The former New York mayor insists his unconventional strategy of largely sitting out the earlier contests will pay off in Florida.
M: I believe that I'm going to have the same fate that the New York Giants had last week...
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
M: ...and we're going to come from behind and surprise everyone. We have them all lulled into a very false sense of security now.
HORSLEY: Scott Horsley, NPR News, Boca Raton, Florida.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
NPR's Jim Zarroli reports.
JIM ZARROLI: The bond insurance business is one of those little-known but vital corners of the financial world.
KATHLEEN SHANLEY: Basically, firms such as MBIA and Ambac have provided a security blanket for investors.
ZARROLI: Bond insurance is a huge business. Two and a half trillion dollars worth of bonds are insured, and until recently it was a very safe business. The firms hardly ever had to pay a claim because they dealt mainly with county and municipal governments that rarely defaulted.
SHANLEY: And the problem was, that was a low-margin business, and they moved into some of these more exotic securities that have turned out to be more risky than people originally anticipated.
ZARROLI: The bond insurers began writing policies to cover a lot of the new highly structured debt products like mortgage-backed securities. Now that the mortgage business is in such trouble, a lot of these securities are suddenly worth less, and these insurers are unexpectedly having to shell out a lot of money for claims, says analyst Rob Haines of CreditSights.
ROB HAINES: We've seen a huge increase in the expected losses that we're going to see on a lot of these structured products, far in excess of what these companies had modeled and far in excess of the capital that these bond insurers hold.
ZARROLI: This week, regulators in New York have been huddling with the firms and the banks to try to find a way out of this quagmire. David Neustadt, a spokesman for the state insurance superintendent, said the problem won't be solved overnight.
DAVID NEUSTADT: Clearly, it's important to resolve issues related to the bond insurers as soon as possible. But you must understand that these are very complicated issues. It involves a number of parties, and any effective plan is going to take some time to finalize.
ZARROLI: One idea reportedly under consideration is a $15 billion bail-out package. Neustadt wouldn't comment on that, but analyst Rob Haines said such a package would buy the bond insurers some time.
HAINES: What the $15 billion would do is it would prop up the companies for the near term or immediate term, and it will allow the companies to continue to write(ph) business over the next three to four years as these losses came in.
ZARROLI: Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
And in Park City, Utah, the drama is winding down. The Sundance Film Festival ends this weekend, and the stars and dealmakers and purveyors of swag head home, along with our intrepid film critic Kenneth Turan. Renee got him on the phone from Sundance, where he's been making the rounds.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
And Ken, well, you're making those rounds I guess all bundled up.
KENNETH TURAN: Yes. It's been really, really cold here. It's been below zero a couple of nights.
MONTAGNE: And of course you'll mostly have been in theaters. I gather you're averaging about four films a day.
TURAN: I am. And actually it's been a good year for films. Some years you average three or four films a day and it's just three or four occasions to tear your hair out. This year there've been overall numerous films that I've really enjoyed.
MONTAGNE: Let's start with the documentaries. What stands out?
TURAN: Well, the documentaries are always the strength of Sundance. And they're especially strong this year. One is called "Stranded," and it's about the people whose plane crashed in the Andes in 1972 and only 16 people were left alive. They survived for 72 days. And that movie named "Alive" - best-selling book named "Alive" based on their story - this is the first time now the real people tell their story. And the filmmaker, who grew up with them, he took them back to the crash site, and it's kind of amazing to hear these people talk about what they survived.
MONTAGNE: There's another documentary, "Troubled Water," also in its way a film about people who were stranded.
TURAN: Yes. This is a film about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It starts with really kind of riveting home movie footage that two residents of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward took, terrifying shots of the water rising and them fleeing for the attic of their house to stay alive. And then the rest of the film becomes how these people survived, what it was like to try and put their lives back together. It's quite a powerful story. The woman who is the focus of the film, a woman named Kim Roberts, feels so strongly about getting this message out that she came to Sundance literally nine months, two weeks pregnant, and in fact gave birth to her baby the day after the film premiered.
MONTAGNE: Wow.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
MONTAGNE: Maybe more exciting than some of the films.
TURAN: Absolutely.
MONTAGNE: The Grand Jury Prize for feature films will be announced on Saturday night. Talk to us about what you've been seeing.
TURAN: This year I felt there were more films that when I first heard about Sundance this is the kind of film I thought would be here. There've been some really beautiful artistic American films - very spare, beautifully shot, with really involving stories. I think my favorite is a film called "Frozen River." It stars an actress named Melissa Leo, and it's set on the Canadian-New York state border. She becomes involved with a Native American woman, and they become involved in smuggling people across the border. That's a very simplistic way to talk about it. It's really an amazingly gripping film. Most of the critics here have really been taken with it.
MONTAGNE: And one other thing, people were talking about the writers strike in relation to Sundance, and some saying that actually the strike would lead studios or distributors to make deals there - because there's a lot of product - that they may not have otherwise.
TURAN: Well, in fact, that really hasn't happened. Buying and selling has only started over the last few days and it's much less than usual. I think the fact that the economy is kind of in trouble turned out to be a more powerful factor than the writers strike. And the troubled economy meant that all the distributors, all the people I talked to that were up here acquiring films, they were all nervous. They wanted to be as sure as they could possibly be that this film would make money. They weren't leaping in and throwing millions of dollars away the way they have in the past.
MONTAGNE: Well, keep warm - as always something to say at the end of our conversations about Sundance. And we'll talk to you soon.
TURAN: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Kenneth Turan is film critic for MORNING EDITION and the Los Angeles Times. And he spoke with us from Park City, Utah, where the Sundance Film Festival is wrapping up.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Sundance is the place for big studios to buy up the next big independent movie hits. As Kenneth Turan pointed out, this year the studios are worried about losing money on these deals. So one studio is turning to unusual experts to help pick the best films. And by experts we mean moviegoers of a certain age. NPR's Kim Masters has our final act in this morning's drama.
KIM MASTERS: It's Sunday night on Main Street in Park City, Utah, and a crowd is pouring out of the Egyptian theater. They've just seen "Mancora," a sexy film set in Peru. It made quite an impression on two college kids - Charles Lee(ph) and Jessica Pasola(ph).
MASTERS: It was phenomenal. It was so well done, and I've never seen such a pretty cast, actually.
MASTERS: Apparently everyone in Peru is a model. Everyone.
MASTERS: So provocative and sexy, I almost blushed in my - I probably did blush in my seat.
MASTERS: Lee and Pasola are undergraduates at DePauw University in Indiana. They've come to Sundance as part of a winter-term program. That's where Tom Bernard comes in. He's co-president of Sony Pictures Classics and he heard about the class trip from a friend at a funeral. He thought this might just be an opportunity for his company.
MASTERS: You just have sort of an odd idea, you know, to have a bunch of students show up here. Let's get them to interact with us.
MASTERS: Bernard comes to Sundance to buy films. Of course he's been out of college for a few years, and he says it's hard for him to gauge how a movie will play in the real world because Sundance is such a peculiar environment.
MASTERS: You've got industry people and people that are native people from Utah that, you know, a lot of Mormons, and it's a very superficial environment when you go to these screenings.
MASTERS: So maybe the college kids could help.
MASTERS: We have mission control in our office who's going to be their e-mail pal, Seth. And so Seth is going to bounce back and forth with them throughout the festival. Maybe we'll try and help them get into some parties, you know, they'll give us information.
MASTERS: For the students, sending in the e-mails was not meant to be homework.
MASTERS: They were, like, don't make it pretty. Don't spend a lot of time on it. Tell us exactly what you think. Don't sugarcoat it.
MASTERS: We met up with Jessica Pasola and Charles Lee at a coffee shop on Main Street. Initially, Lee said, there were things about this plan that bothered him.
MASTERS: The idea that we'd be helping this gigantic film company just, you know, be these cool finders or something, you know, tell them what to buy.
MASTERS: But he did some research and realized that some of his favorite films were released by Sony Pictures Classics, including "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
MASTERS: I consider myself, you know, a cinephile - whatever pretentious word you want to attach that. But Sony Pictures Classic, although a branch of a gigantic company, are not trying to sell us trash. There is something much more substantive there than "I Am Legend," or you know, "Rush Hour 9," or whatever we're being fed.
MASTERS: And they're excited about some of the same films I am, which - it's really nice. I really am interested in "Sunshine Cleaning," and we tried to get tickets today, but alas, no luck.
MASTERS: But the mere fact that these students are interested in "Sunshine Cleaning," a comedic drama about two sisters who tidy up crime scenes, is enough to pique the interest of the Sony film executives. The picture didn't sell right away and the studio is keeping an eye on it. Meanwhile, the company is teaching the students a bit about how Hollywood works.
MASTERS: It's a risky kind of very informal business. Actually, you have to go to parties and wait until like 1:00 in the morning, 2:00 in the morning, and then even the parties are constantly just doing business.
MASTERS: And there are other ways in which this is a mutually beneficial relationship.
MASTERS: They give us swag, like buttons and hats and all that.
MASTERS: Kim Masters, NPR News.
MASTERS: We just saw on Olsen twin.
MASTERS: Yeah, we did.
MASTERS: So we just had the celebrity disillusionment.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
And from Paris we have more this morning from Eleanor Beardsley.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY: Societe Generale's CEO Daniel Bouton said the trader had been able to conceal his own mini-company from the rest of the bank.
M: (Through translator) He was intimately knowledgeable about our control processes, so he was able to build his own positions and hide them each time by other positions that were completely fictitious.
BEARDSLEY: Kerviel had been betting Societe Generale's billions over the last year but was only discovered last week. The company frantically closed out its remaining exposure to his trades early this week as markets whipsawed. The bank's losses were magnified by the market plunge, says economist Catherine Lubojinsky(ph), but this has happened before.
M: (Speaking French)
BEARDSLEY: Now out of jail, Leeson says the system needs more reforms.
M: There should have been, you know, there should have been checks and controls in place to stop him stepping outside of those limits. You're still looking at a system or a situation where the systems and the controls aren't good enough. The people in place to look after those systems and controls simply aren't good enough, either.
BEARDSLEY: For NPR News, I'm Eleanor Beardsley in Paris.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Welcome to the program.
M: It's good to be here.
INSKEEP: How does this work? The Fed funds rate is money loaned from one bank to another overnight. What does that have to do with the economy precisely?
M: Well, the way the Fed gets to influence the economy is that it can loan more or less money to banks. And by loaning more money to banks, it injects money into the financial system, and the price of loans is the interest rate. So when the Fed injects more money into the system, it essentially lowers interest rates, and it lowers the interest rate that banks charge each other. And once that comes down, the interest rate on all sorts of other things comes down, like the interest rate on car loans or credit cards.
INSKEEP: Why do banks make overnight loans to each other?
M: Well, the way the financial system works, there's money moving around all the time, so banks are constantly lending money, not only to consumers but also to each other in order to shore up positions or move money around to different investments. This will increase economic activity. Fed interest rate cuts take some number of months to wash through the economy, typically six to nine.
INSKEEP: So banks have a little easier time loaning money to each other. Is it that banks don't trust their other banks to pay the loans back or is it they don't actually have money to lend?
M: The fundamental problem we're facing here is not some sort of short-term loss of confidence or short-term loss of liquidity as much as it is the fundamental problem of we need to work ourselves out of this huge housing bubble. And so while the Fed can mitigate the downturn somewhat, either keeping us out of recession or more likely making the recession that's coming less deep, it can't solve the fundamental problem. The Fed can't make the housing bubble go away.
INSKEEP: David Leonhardt of the New York Times. Good talking with you.
M: Thanks for having me.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
In 2002, a trader at Ireland's largest bank stole $750 million from his firm to pad his salary, though that's almost too small to count compared to some other cases. An executive in Japan's Daiwa Bank racked up $1.1 billion from unauthorized trades in 1995. And then there's the trader at the hedge fund Amaranth, whose shady deals in natural gas contracts in 2006 cost the firm $6.4 billion. The fund folded.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
If you are away from the news all week, you might glance at the stock markets now and think nothing happened. Many of the world's stocks and stock exchanges have recovered their massive losses from the start of the week. Yet, there's been a huge drama to get right back where we started. We're going to look more closely at what happened and why in this part of the program. The climax of that drama was Tuesday, ahead of the opening bell on Wall Street. CNBC had live coverage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
A: A very intense floor. We're getting pushed around. These guys are assigned to do their job. We're in their territories. As the NASDAQ...
INSKEEP: Adam, who are they?
ADAM DAVIDSON: Now, of course, there are millions of investors all over the world. They have different goals, different attitudes, different perceptions. But we're going to kind of boil it down to what the investor was thinking and when our story starts last week, they - investor was a very anxious person.
INSKEEP: Now, you said, last week. Of course, we're not going to begin this drama on that climactic moment on Tuesday morning. We're going to find out what led up to it. I'm sure we can go back months or years if we needed to. But let's go back to Thursday, 8:30 in the morning. This is last Thursday, a week ago yesterday. What happened?
DAVIDSON: A lot had happened up until that point. For the previous months, we had been hearing more and more talk about a possible recession or severe economic slowdown in the U.S., maybe around the world. This was spurred by a crisis in housing. And at 8:30 in the morning, a week ago yesterday, last Thursday, there were housing numbers coming out and everybody in the investor community was watching those housing numbers.
INSKEEP: And what did they see?
DAVIDSON: They saw that home construction for December had fallen 14 percent. That is a huge one-day drop; the biggest drop in 16 years; they were terrified by that number. And then, immediately after 8:30, all eyes were on Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. He was heading the Capitol Hill and he's the guy who might solve the crisis.
BEN BERNANKE: In the months ahead, we will be closely monitoring the inflation situation, particularly inflation expectations.
INSKEEP: Inflation?
DAVIDSON: Exactly. This is not what investors wanted to hear. Bernanke is talking about inflation, meaning he's cautious, meaning he's not going to pump money into the system. You're just talking about that phrase. He's going to be worried, and investors want money out there. He wants Bernanke - they want Bernanke to take aggressive, quick action. And so, they - this testimony of Bernanke made them even more nervous.
INSKEEP: And then it comes to be Friday morning, and President Bush decides to speak up.
GEORGE W: To keep our economy growing and creating jobs, Congress and the administration need to work to enact an economic growth package as soon as possible. As Congress considers such a plan, there are certain principles that must guide its deliberations.
INSKEEP: Adam Davidson?
DAVIDSON: President Bush goes on to explain that what he'd like to - that he wants to see a big stimulus package. But here's the thing. He doesn't explain exactly what's going to be in the stimulus package.
BERNANKE: Democrats and Republicans accusing each other of not taking care of the economy properly. This is going to take time and this economic stimulus package is going to get bogged down in White House, in congressional politics. And we're not going to get the relief we need.
INSKEEP: And Friday, as I recall, a week ago today, was a lousy day on Wall Street and the markets closed for the weekend. What happened next?
DAVIDSON: NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Beijing.
ANTHONY KUHN: In Mumbai, India, the Sensex index plummeted 7.4 percent, its second biggest drop ever in percentage terms.
INSKEEP: So we move from time zone to time zone. Asian markets dropped, then it comes to be Europe's turn. European markets dropped. But it's Monday, and American markets were closed. What was happening on that seemingly quiet day on Wall Street?
DAVIDSON: And so on this holiday Monday, we're told that Ben Bernanke had a planned trip to go to New York. He cancels his trip. He runs to the office. He calls all the people on the open market committee. These are the guys who have to agree on any major action by the Fed. This is highly unusual. The Fed usually works in slow, deliberative ways. And the Fed is never supposed to respond to these short-term market fluctuations. But the market is tanking; Bernanke is worried. He's getting these guys on the phone in an emergency phone call.
INSKEEP: And doing something that normally they'd never do.
DAVIDSON: What were you thinking when you woke up this morning?
PETER FEDERHOLTS: I thought it was going to be a pretty volatile day based on what happened overseas.
DAVIDSON: I mean, were you feeling afraid?
FEDERHOLTS: Not really afraid. I've been doing this a long time. But you're a little nervous on days like today because it's a kind of day when you can get yourself in trouble if you're not careful.
INSKEEP: No kidding, stocks dropped hundreds of points in the early minutes there.
DAVIDSON: Right. And the anxious investors wanted some kind of rate cut. They thought it would come next week. Out of the blue, Ben Bernanke comes with this three-quarter percent rate cut. This is huge. And it's huge that he did it in between meetings, not on a regularly scheduled meeting. And it showed the investors, Ben Bernanke is no longer talking about inflation, he's no longer taking this cautious mode. He is worried. He's just like them. And they like hearing that.
INSKEEP: Well now, Adam Davidson, let me just ask one final question to wrap this up. Because the markets have now recovered; things have come back. Are the fundamentals of the economy any different than the fundamentals that were worrying investors at the beginning of the week?
DAVIDSON: There are some really good signs for investors. Ben Bernanke is on their team. President Bush and the Democrats have reached - it seems have reached an agreement. Those are all good signs. But the main drumbeat, the bass note of this economy is negative. This is an economy clearly heading for a slowdown, maybe a recession. And there really isn't that much that the president or Bernanke or the investor can do about it.
INSKEEP: Adam, thanks very much.
DAVIDSON: Thank you.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Adam Davidson taking us through a number of days when it seemed that everything changed, and then perhaps in the end not very much. And he'll continue to watch for later developments for us.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
NPR's Linda Wertheimer has been talking with voters in south Florida about their choices.
LINDA WERTHEIMER: Campaigners were recruiting in the student union when we were there, including an enthusiastic Jesus Valentino(ph) for Ron Paul.
WERTHEIMER: And while I am not gay myself, I think they should be allowed to get married. But I don't think I want to spend more taxes dollars to do so.
WERTHEIMER: We met with Cuban American members of the Republican club at FIU. They are finding their choices difficult.
WERTHEIMER: Frankly, I'm terrified of Giuliani's foreign policy. Republicans are, you know, originally from their foundations, isolationists and more, you know, intra-America rather than, you know, the interventionist foreign policy - originally. And none of these candidates are so much in that mold.
WERTHEIMER: So where does that leave you, do you think?
WERTHEIMER: In a nice little state of limbo here, you know.
WERTHEIMER: Juan Carlos Robina(ph) is majoring in political science. He voted early for McCain, who proved to be the favorite with this group.
WERTHEIMER: He's always stuck to his guns, but has been willing to compromise like immigration which is a big issue for me. Maybe being Hispanic gives me a different perspective, but I see the fact that people already here, we need to realize that they're not going anywhere. We need to start getting them into the system, how - whatever word you want to use for it.
WERTHEIMER: Johnny Betancourt(ph) is a chemistry major. I asked him about Cuba.
WERTHEIMER: Coming from a more Americanized family, that actually wouldn't be a voting issue for me or probably my parents. In fact, national intervention in Cuba might be seen more like an analogue to spreading democracy in the Middle East.
WERTHEIMER: We met with members of the Broward County Republican Club at a law firm where Lee Monty(ph) was one of several who described themselves as investors. Lee Monty is for Mitt Romney.
WERTHEIMER: I like to think Mitt fits. I think his experience as a CEO is very valuable because since I'm interested in the markets and investments, every conservative thing that I want him to be he is. I mean, think he's perfect.
WERTHEIMER: Jack Fernari(ph) is a retired businessman, and he was critical.
WERTHEIMER: I find his behavior offensive. I find him calling himself a Catholic offensive. If you can't control your own family, you're not going to control this country. And if you can't control your libido, I have a problem about what kind of president you're going to make. We went through that in the '90s with Bill Clinton. I wouldn't like to see it done on our side.
WERTHEIMER: Ron Price(ph) says he is a libertarian Republican like Alan Greenspan. Price told us he is supporting McCain, but only sort of.
WERTHEIMER: I'm making a pragmatic decision. I don't think Romney's electable because of his religion. I don't think Giuliani's electable because of what you've heard said here tonight. And they're probably two of the best qualified. I would say McCain is electable and probably the only one of the candidates that has a possibility of winning in November.
WERTHEIMER: Linda Wertheimer, NPR News, Fort Lauderdale.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Good morning.
MARA LIASSON: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: Hillary Clinton - if you open your newspaper or Web site this morning, you'll find out Hillary Clinton got the endorsement of the New York Times.
LIASSON: Yes, she did. And I suppose if she didn't get the endorsement of her hometown paper that would have been a very big surprise. But it was a strong endorsement. It did include a warning to Mr. Clinton to change the tone of the campaign because the New York Times said it's not good for the country and it could do long-term damage to her candidacy if it continues (unintelligible). Yeah.
INSKEEP: Can I just stop you for a second? You said a warning to Mr. Clinton. That wasn't a (unintelligible).
LIASSON: No. No. I mean Senator Clinton.
INSKEEP: Oh, Senator Clinton.
LIASSON: Well, actually, it was a warning to both of them.
INSKEEP: That's what I'm asking.
LIASSON: It mentioned both Senator Clinton and her husband. And, of course, that is the big news of this week - the way this campaign is being waged.
INSKEEP: Which you mean what?
LIASSON: And I should also point out that Obama also pulled the radio ad this week, a very tough response ad, saying that Senator Clinton will, quote, "say anything and change nothing."
INSKEEP: What are other Democrats saying about the way that Bill Clinton has weighted into this campaign and attack Obama?
LIASSON: And Democrats are uncomfortable with this because this is what they think the Clintons used to decry - the politics of personal destruction. It's one thing to be swift voted by the Republicans. They don't like it when they see a Democrat doing it to another Democrat.
INSKEEP: In just a couple of seconds, could this hurt the Democratic Party in the long run?
LIASSON: Well, Hillary Clinton continues to say they were all going to be unified in the fall. Of course, what she's saying is once she gets the nomination, she expects Barack Obama will be out there campaigning for her. Democrats are nervous about this. They see that this strategy, tactics could backfire, cause a rift in the party. But more importantly, if Senator Clinton is the nominee, it could remind voters of all the things they didn't like about both Senator Clinton and her husband...
INSKEEP: Thanks very much.
LIASSON: ...and this will be used against them by the Republicans.
INSKEEP: This is NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Egyptian police in riot gear tried to shut the border with the Gaza strip today. This is the border that was blown open by explosives, knocking a wall down earlier this week. The effort to shut that border didn't work. Palestinian militants in bulldozers have smashed new holes in the chain and concrete fence. Crowds of Palestinians cheered as that fence collapsed and now they're pushing across, once again, into Egypt. This is a scene much like the one three days ago when militants first struck and tens of thousands of residents crossed over to stock up on supplies. The destruction of wall was a big political victory for Hamas, the Islamist group that governs the Gaza strip. But the triumph may be short, as NPR's Eric Westervelt reports from Gaza.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD NOISE)
ERIC WESTERVELT: Hamas worked quickly to take advantage of the euphoria over the border opening. Thursday afternoon, Hamas militia men help shepherd into Gaza huge truckloads of Egyptian sugar and cement - items that have become expensive and scarce here in recent months. How they ever really closed the border, Mahmoud Abonisham(ph) asks, adding more than half the population of Gaza is already in Egypt. The portly Gaza truck driver is only mildly exaggerating. His big flatbed truck is loaded down with new Egyptian furniture he'll sell in Gaza.
M: (Through translator) We loved it. We hope this is the end of the siege. But we don't want - we don't like to be a part of Egypt. We want to be independent.
WESTERVELT: With perhaps overstated optimism, Hamas political figures here called the temporarily open border the beginning of the end of Gaza's isolation.
M: Actually, it's more than just looking for medical or food supplies. It's something like a sense of relief, sense of freedom.
WESTERVELT: Ahmed Yousef is a senior Hamas official and the political adviser to Hamas' Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh. Yousef predicts the toppled border wall will create a new political dynamic for Gaza and serve as a potent blow to Israeli and American policy.
M: The first step; to lift the embargo and the fear(ph) for Olmert-Bush(ph) policy - actually, to break the will of the Palestinian people. It's like a moral victory for - not just for the Palestinian, even for Hamas, that the movement, the government, that they stood fast.
WESTERVELT: Yousef says Hamas now hopes to hold talks with Egypt on a new arrangement for controlling the southern border and, he says, to open a new dialogue with the West Bank Palestinian leadership that Hamas violently ousted from Gaza last summer.
M: Once we start talking about solving the passage with Egypt issue, it's going to be open the door for the rest of the issues.
WESTERVELT: Sami Abadlah, the plant's chief engineer, says if Gaza's power woes continue, residents will again face the ripple effect as water and sewage pumps break down due to the lack of power.
M: I told major issues are affecting the people's life. When the sewage flooded through Gaza - some of the Gaza streets. This is a big problem. And some people - I know that sometimes they spend two days without electricity and they spend two days without water. And these things they cannot be available when you're opening the border with Egypt.
WESTERVELT: Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Gaza.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
You just heard a reference to people going two days without water. That touches on one of the major issues of our time. And in this country, Southern California faces a water shortage. There's a ribbon-cutting ceremony there this morning for a project that could provide some relief, a massive new water purification system. It is cause for a celebration, although it sounds a bit unsavory to some outsiders because this half-billion-dollar project gets drinking water from the toilet.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Now, before I get into this new plant that you've got there and what it exactly does, was all that sewage water being sent out to the ocean before?
MONTAGNE: That's correct. It actually was being sent to the Orange County Sanitation District, our partner in this project. And they were treating it and discharging it out into the ocean.
MONTAGNE: So, lost, really, in a sense.
MONTAGNE: That's how we view it. We view waste waters as valuable resource. And by us purifying it, we're able to create a new drinking water supply that's reliable and drought-proof.
MONTAGNE: Now, it's been dubbed toilet to tap - this project - but, thankfully, it isn't that straightforward at all. What, in fact, is the journey that this sewage water takes before anyone can put it in a glass and drink it?
MONTAGNE: After that, this water doesn't actually go to the taps, as the toilet to tap implies. It actually goes in the ground where it'll stay for at least six months to a year before being pumped out of the ground by the cities and agencies for our customers.
MONTAGNE: So it sounds like, by your description, sparkling water.
MONTAGNE: It is, to the eyes. It's very pretty. It reflects a lot of the light but has a very tropical feel to it. But that's just the view; the actual water quality is superb.
MONTAGNE: Still, how do you know, for certain - for certain, for certain, for sure - that the water is safe?
MONTAGNE: But we have a third step, which is ultraviolet light with hydrogen peroxide, which is designed - if we did find anything that was able to get through, this step would be able to address it. And we're not saying that anything is getting through our treatment process right now.
MONTAGNE: Now, all this is very convincing in this conversation. I'm wondering if this is the sort of arguments that you use to convince folks in Orange County to get over the ick factor.
MONTAGNE: If you explain to them that they're drinking waste water, of course they're going to be concerned. But if you explain to them the natural water cycle where we get our water from, and then you explain this treatment process, many people understand why we're doing it. So I believe people have gotten over that ick factor.
MONTAGNE: Well, there is one criticism that has been leveled at this project, and projects that might follow like this. And that's that dry regions should be looking more towards conservation efforts because it seems like trying to treat water so one can use more water can really add up.
MONTAGNE: We agree, conservation is an important part of your water supply portfolio. But that can only do so much for you. And we need to make sure that this water supply is available, but at the same time, get out there and promote conservation as much as we can.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for talking with us.
MONTAGNE: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Shivaji Deshmukh is the program manager of the Groundwater Replenishment System for Orange County.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
It's MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Presidential candidates are taking their turns with David Letterman. Last night, Barack Obama offered his top 10 campaign promises. He says he'll appoint Mitt Romney as secretary of looking good.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: It's MORNING EDITION.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
This next story is difficult to hear. And we want to give a warning to our listeners: Some of the language is explicit.
Female genital mutilation is an ancient rite in sub-Saharan and North African countries. Many Muslims in that part of the world wrongly believe it is dictated by Islam.
In recent decades, the practice has spread to immigrant communities in Europe. And women activists in France led a campaign prosecute those responsible for excisions performed on young girls. The United Nations now considers the procedure a human rights abuse.
In the sixth and final part of our series on Muslim women in Europe, NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports from Paris on this disturbing subject.
Unidentified Group: (Speaking in foreign language)
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: Half a dozen women, mostly from Mali, are chatting while a French woman takes a phone call, and another types at a computer. A large poster on the wall shows the photo of a beautiful African woman and the words: Our daughters will not be cut.
This is the headquarters of GAMS, the French women's association for the abolition of sexual mutilations. GAMS estimates there are more than 50,000 mutilated women in France. One of them is Aissata, a young woman from Mali who holds her sleeping 2-year-old daughter, Dawli(ph).
AISSATA: (Through translator) I come from a village in Mali where excisions are always practiced. My sister had a daughter, and when the baby was not even 2 years old, she was mutilated. When I was four months' pregnant and my doctor told me it was a little girl, I was scared for her and I ran away to France. I didn't want my daughter to undergo what they did to me when I was young.
POGGIOLI: But Aissata is here illegally, and she has come to GAMS to file a request for political asylum.
Khadi Diallo, a 53-year-old woman who works at GAMS, says on average, six women come every day, five days a week, seeking asylum in France to protect their daughters from being subjected to mutilation in their home countries. She claims GAMS has a 99 percent asylum success rate.
Diallo was mutilated when she was 14, and the brutality of the practice is etched in her memory.
Ms. KHADI DIALLO (Member, GAMS): (Speaking in foreign language)
POGGIOLI: I was mutilated against my parents' will, says Diallo. It was during the summer visiting my father's family in a village near the capital Bamako. In Mali, it's the father's relatives who decide everything in the family.
And Diallo describes how several women held her down as one of them inflicted excruciating pain.
Supporters of female genital mutilation say it dampens a girl's sexuality and protects her honor. Diallo says she can't even begin to list the psychological traumas she has since suffered.
Ms. DIALLO: (Speaking in foreign language)
POGGIOLI: They cut off my sex, says Diallo. It was as if they cut off my finger. They took away a piece of me. They imposed customs of a society where it's not permissible for a 14-year-old girl to remain intact.
In most cases, the excision involves the removal of the clitoris and minor labia. The most extreme form is infibulation, where the vaginal opening is stitched closed.
Often, knives or razor blades are used in unsanitary conditions. The result is scar tissue that not only makes sex difficult and unpleasurable, but can also create complications for childbirth and long-term infections.
Ms. DIALLO: (Speaking in foreign language)
POGGIOLI: There is such a strong taboo against sex that girls often learn they were mutilated at an early age only when visiting a doctor, says Diallo, or after their first sexual experience, when their boyfriend says you're not normal, you're not like the others.
Female genital mutilation is alien to the great majority of Muslims in Europe, but GAMS claims there's a growing number of fundamentalist imams, funded by Islamist movements from abroad, who preach that removal of the clitoris is endorsed by the Koran.
Women activists here have enlisted rap singer Bafing Kul to help convince poor and uneducated immigrants to stop mutilation, saying the practice is backward and harmful.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. BAFING KUL (Singer): (Singing in foreign language)
POGGIOLI: May my ancestors forgive me, he sings. Not all traditions should be preserved. Islam does not endorse this one. African women, you're victims of an evil custom. It's awful. It's horrible. Excision is bad. Excision is mutilation.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. KUL: (Singing in foreign language).
Unidentified Group: (Singing in foreign language).
POGGIOLI: The producer and distributor of Bafing Kul's CD is lawyer and human rights activist Linda Weil-Curiel.
Ms. LINDA WEIL-CURIEL (Producer): The aim of the mutilation is to deprive the woman of her own sexuality. She is only left to be a baby-maker.
POGGIOLI: Weil-Curiel is the person most responsible for making France the leader in tracking and prosecuting both perpetrators of female genital mutilation and the consenting parents.
Representing the interests of child victims over the last 15 years, Weil-Curiel has been involved in most of the 40-odd trials that have led to convictions.
She says clitorectomies have all but been eradicated in France. But the tragedy continues. Families started taking their daughters to their homelands for summer vacations, so she and other activists go to schools. But it's not easy, she says, to warn children about the risks.
Ms. WEIL-CURIEL: And we are there, saying, beware, be very careful, because your parents are planning to send you over and this is what will happen. And each time you have two to three girls, we can observe tears running down their face, so you know that in the family, if it is not for them, it has happened.
POGGIOLI: But last year the law was toughened. It's now illegal for any girl who lives in France to be sexually mutilated, whether it happens in France or not, whether the girl is a citizen or not.
Doctors are obligated to report cases they discover, and parents could be prosecuted for neglect, even if they say it was done elsewhere, without their knowledge.
Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.
SIMON: You can hear Sylvia Poggioli's complete series on Muslim women in Europe and explore where they reside on the continent at npr.org.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
The Russian city of St. Petersburg is considered one of the world's architectural marvels. After years of decay, money from the country's energy-fueled economic boom starting to flow into the city. But some residents contend that far from saving St. Petersburg, the new wealth is ruining its unique style and destroying some of its social fabric.
NPR's Gregory Feifer reports from the city that many Russians call the Venice of the North.
GREGORY FEIFER: Originally planned as a fortress to defend Russia from attack, St. Petersburg became a projection of the czar's imperial might. Pushkin wrote that it was Russia's window on the West, but it was expanded to show that Russia could build its own modern European city.
Peter the Great built Russia's new capital on swampland here on the windswept shores of the Neva River 300 years ago. Behind me is the extravagant colonnaded sprawl of the winter palace. In front of me across the icy water is the golden needle spire of The Peter and Paul Fortress. Now, much of this architectural museum city is under threat.
The Russian Revolution began here, but the Soviets moved the capital to Moscow and Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was renamed, became something of a backwater. More than a million people died during a Nazi blockade in World War II, but the ruined buildings were rebuilt. And then decades of neglect actually helped preserve the city's architecture. The end of communism left St. Petersburg impoverished, but Russia's new oil and gas wealth is now sending real estate prices soaring. New high rises are going up, and old buildings are sprouting incongruous new additions that compromise St. Petersburg's elaborate neoclassical style.
Historian and preservationist Alexander Margolis blames corruption.
Mr. ALEXANDER MARGOLIS (Historian, Russian): (Through translator) Much of the architecture here is protected by law. But under our style of capitalism, developers bribe officials to condemn sound buildings, and allow them to build whatever they want. It's not clear how much of the old St. Petersburg will survive that process.
FEIFER: A tram moves down a street flanked by grandiose apartment buildings. But inside many of those buildings lie dilapidated Soviet-era communal apartments. St. Petersburg still has the country's largest concentration of communal housing; some of it belonging to the scholars and other intellectuals who give the city its liberal reputation. As developers move in, those residents are being pushed out.
Legislative aide Alla Moskvina unlocks the door to her apartment building near the Hermitage Museum.
Ms. ALLA MOSKVINA (Legislative Aide): (Speaking in foreign language)
FEIFER: Moskvina describes growing up with her parents in one room, in an apartment building with more than 10 other families who shared one kitchen and one bathroom.
After the end of communism, Moskvina bought her own three-room apartment. But now, she says, a wealthy businessman who owns an adjacent building wants to take it over.
Ms. MOSKVINA: (Speaking in foreign language)
FEIFER: He's bribed officials to falsify ownership documents, she says. He sent thugs to break in and he's threatened to have us beaten. We've filed suit, but the authorities have done nothing to stop him.
One project in particular seems to symbolize the new reality in St. Petersburg. The giant state-controlled company Gazprom wants to build a 1,300-foot glass tower on a small island in the Neva River. The union of architects calls it an architectural crime, and UNESCO says the tower would threaten the city's world heritage status.
But the building's Scottish chief architect, Tony Kettle, dismiss the suggestions the soaring tower would ruin St. Petersburg's low, horizontal skyline.
Mr. TONY KETTLE (Architect): There are certain elements within the city that are celebrated, and these are always vertical dominants. And now, we have one of the world's most important companies and one of the key issues of our time, which is energy. And I think it's perfectly right and fitting that Gazprom, as a global energy company, should be celebrated within the city.
FEIFER: Others disagree. Anna Chernova is one of four local residents who filed suit to stop the construction.
Ms. ANNA CHERNOVA (Resident, St. Petersburg, Russia): (Speaking in foreign language)
FEIFER: It would be a catastrophe, she says. One building like that would be enough to destroy the entire city's architectural unity.
Some St. Petersburg residents believe the authorities are deliberately trying to take away St. Petersburg's unique culture, although historian Margolis blames bad taste. He says the pressure of money and power behind the projects means it would take another revolution to stop them.
Gregory Feifer, NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
We're listening to the music of The Whigs. They've been described as part garage rock, part Southern charm - a sound that caught the ear of another Southern rocker, Dave Matthews. Their second album "Mission Control" was released this week on Mr. Matthews' label ATO.
(Soundbite of song, "Mission Control")
Mr. PARKER GISPERT (Lead Singer, The Whigs): (Singing) Mission control thought you can see it's tired of where they lead you.
SIMON: And joining us now are The Whigs' lead singer, Parker Gispert and drummer, Julian Dorio. They're in the studios of WABE in Atlanta.
Thanks so much for being with us, gentlemen.
Mr. JULIAN DORIO (Drummer, The Whigs): Thanks for having us.
Mr. GISPERT: Thank you.
SIMON: You've got a lot of nice attention on this new album released, including from Rolling Stone. But I have to ask, Parker Gispert, you've been quoted as saying, "Rock is probably as unpopular as it's ever been."
Mr. GISPERT: I think that's true. It's unfortunate, but rock has a way of prevailing always. We're optimistic.
SIMON: So, you guys haven't thought about getting into a kind of a growth industry rather than rock.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GISPERT: My parents would probably a little more happy about that maybe.
SIMON: Well, let us a bit about that song we opened with, if we could, "Mission Control."
Mr. GISPERT: "Mission Control" was one of the first songs that we wrote when we completed the first record and took us probably the longest to finish of any of the songs on the record. We played it in various forms for about a year, I guess.
SIMON: What's the story of the song?
Mr. GISPERT: I sort of thought of it as sort of space blues. And it's just kind of a song about getting to where you want to go on your own terms.
(Soundbite of song, "Mission Control")
Mr. GISPERT: (Singing) Mission control. Oh, mission control. Start out to rest now. All of us evil are known (unintelligible). Stay, I want to rest, you know. I'm (unintelligible). Baby…
SIMON: The one thing I knew about you when they first brought your name to me was that - well, I think I knew about you. Your first album was self-released, right?
Mr. GISPERT: Yes, sir.
Mr. DORIO: Yeah.
SIMON: And you've bought the instruments to record it on eBay and then sold them back on eBay. Is that true or is that just somebody's public relations story?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. DORIO: No, it is actually true. We didn't have many resources to record the first record and we took the little money we had and bought recording equipment off the Internet pretty much. And then once we were done recording, you know, we didn't need that equipment anymore, we just turned around and put it on eBay and actually, I think, I remember making a little bit more money that I'd paid for in a couple of items.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. DORIO: So all of a sudden, we were profiting from this album.
SIMON: Let me ask about another song, if we could here. There's a song called -we're going to hear a little of it, "1,000 Wives."
Mr. DORIO: Yes, sir.
(Soundbite of song, "1000 Wives")
Mr. GISPERT: (Singing) Well, I met my match at the kingdom of (unintelligible) the evening song. Now, my shoulders (unintelligible), my arm was still (unintelligible). No, no. In the meadow, there's a (unintelligible) I had a thousand wives, a thousand wives.
SIMON: What's the message behind that refrain, a thousand wives?
Mr. DORIO: The song started out as a song about, I guess, greed with women and being a young guy and…
SIMON: You don't mean wives at all, do you?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. DORIO: The first way that song was written, you're kind of dreaming about being with all these women and it kind of got in the way of you ending up with the person that you original were in love with.
(Soundbite of song, "1000 Wives")
Mr. GISPERT: (Singing) I miss my, I miss you right now. Don't quit right now. Don't quit right now. Don't quit me better than now.
SIMON: I have to ask, if I could, Julian Dorio, that name, The Whigs, I should have spelled it for people who want to be able to find your music. That's W-H-I-G; the olds-many-years-gone political party. Why did you appropriate that name for your band's name?
Mr. DORIO: Well, we're a young band and we go down to the bar and book our first concert. And we're all really excited and our excitement kind of ends when he asked us what's your band name, and we kind of looked at each other and thank God, we've sort of missed the big part of this process. It's a little embarrassing.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. DORIO: I have nothing to say. I literally told him I'd call him back. So we just kind of have about half an hour in the parking lot and just - saying a bunch of names to each other and someone said The Whigs. And I think the one thing that I did like about it is that the name, The Whigs, didn't really connotate any particular sound. It didn't sound like, you know, the Black Death rebels or something and you would have something in mind or, you know…
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: Yeah.
Mr. DORIO: The daisy singers or something. It was just sort of a neutral name and, you know, hopefully the way the music sounds will be what people associated with that name so.
SIMON: I do want to ask, February 5 - it's being referred to as the Super Tuesday, a series of primaries. I guess, about a third of the country - Georgia is included. In your estimation, not to put both of you on the spot, what kind of guitarist is Governor Huckabee?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. DORIO: That's a really good question.
Mr. GISPERT: That's a great question.
Mr. DORIO: He used to do a little Bill Clinton and get himself on TV and shred a little bit for the young…
Mr. GISPERT: Yeah, the young audience will be sold quickly.
(Soundbite of guitar playing)
SIMON: Well, gentlemen, it's been wonderful talking to both of you. Thanks so much.
Mr. DORIO: Hey, thanks so much for having us on the show.
Mr. GISPERT: Thank you. Peace out.
SIMON: We're going to go with another track from your album. This one is "Like a Vibration."
Mr. DORIO: All right.
(Soundbite of song, "Like a Vibration")
Mr. GISPERT: (Singing) Like a vibration, my reputation. It's staying around my nerve. It's getting in and out in (unintelligible).
SIMON: I've been talking to the lead singer Parker Gispert and drummer Julian Dorio of The Whigs. Their second album, "Mission Control" came out this week.
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
A tough security week for the U.S. economy. The stock market made a steep decline then staged partial rebound. Federal Reserve board made a surprising cut in a key lending rate. And the White House and Democratic leaders made a rare and quick agreement on an economic stimulus plan.
But as NPR's Brian Naylor reports, there's still another hurdle before any checks are in the mail.
BRIAN NAYLOR: The ink is barely dry on the agreement House leaders hammered out this week with the Bush administration, and already there's talk of how it might be changed in the Senate. The $150 billion stimulus plan relies on a combination of individual tax rebates and business tax cuts to spur the economy. The president, who spoke to Republican House members at their annual party retreat in West Virginia yesterday, says he thinks it's fine the way it is.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: I understand the desire to add provisions from both the right and the left. I strongly believe it would be a mistake to delay or derail this bill.
(Soundbite of applause)
NAYLOR: The agreement is likely to sail unscathed through the House within the next 10 days according to the speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi. But even she wouldn't hazard a guess as to what happens next.
Representative NANCY PELOSI (Democrat, California; Speaker of the House of the Representatives): Far be it for me to ever predict what the Senate may produce with their very senatorial rules.
NAYLOR: Already, Democratic senators are lining up with their plans to add on to the measure. The most likely additions are two things Pelosi dropped during her negotiations with congressional Republicans and the White House - money to extend the jobless benefits, and making more people eligible for food stamps. That was a mistake, says Democratic Senator Robert Casey of Pennsylvania.
Senator ROBERT CASEY (Democrat, Pennsylvania): Food stamps - not just because it helps individual Americans and their families, but we know that by investing in that strategy, they will spend money quickly. That's what we need. We need people to spend money very rapidly to dig us out of the hole that we're in. Food stamps, unemployment benefits and aid to the states.
NAYLOR: Another suggestion yesterday came from Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota.
Senator BYRON DORGAN (Democrat, North Dakota): One of the quick ways to put people back to work and also invest in America's future to help build America is in infrastructure - roads and bridges and dams and all the things that have been deteriorating.
NAYLOR: Dorgan said the infrastructure plan he proposed might best be part of a second stimulus bill to be acted on by Congress a bit later down the road. Democrats in the Senate have also been talking of a summer jobs program and giving states money to help with their Medicaid costs. The Senate has traditionally been more free-spending than the House, a tendency House Minority Leader John Boehner tried to temper yesterday. He said it would be irresponsible for Senate Democrats to, as he put it, load this bill up with pork and other spending.
The Senate Finance Committee says it will begin writing its version of the stimulus bill next week.
Brian Naylor, NPR News, the Capitol.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
We're joined now by our man from the world of business, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera in our New York studios.
Joe, thanks for being with us.
Mr. JOE NOCERA (Columnist, The New York Times): Thanks for having me, Scott.
SIMON: The market's dropped another one and a half percent on Friday.
Mr. NOCERA: Yeah.
SIMON: But it was nothing like the way they opened the week.
Mr. NOCERA: Well, yes.
SIMON: Do we take a deep breath or prepare for more?
Mr. NOCERA: Oh…
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. NOCERA: …you know, I think that we are headed for a pretty rough stretch. My own barest view, admittedly, is that the economy is in pretty bad shape, the financial system is pretty rocky, and that cannot mean good things for stocks. I talked to a bunch of people this week who really thought that 2008 is going to be a rough year. And that's pretty much where I am myself.
SIMON: But why don't more people see this as just a correction, I think, is the term of art, because, I mean, the Dow is 75 percent higher than it was 10 years ago.
Mr. NOCERA: Well, a correction is 10 percent down. Bare market is considered 20 percent down, technical terms. And so, there are parts of the market that are 15, 16, 17 percent down in certain indices, and then there are certain indices that are in bare market territory. It's a kind of pointless argument because, you know, is this market finally out of gas is the big question.
SIMON: There are people who keep offering the evidence that most sectors of the economy are doing pretty well.
Mr. NOCERA: Well, Scott, they are and they aren't. I mean, you can definitely make that argument right now. But let's think about what's happened just in our own lives, just - in other words, forget about Wall Street for a minute, just think about Main Street.
We've been through, first, the stock market bubble, the tech bubble, and then the housing bubble. And one of the things that characterize the housing bubble is millions upon millions of people borrowed money against the equity of their home. That became a piggy bank, and it became a way people supported the lifestyle that they wanted. If those prices go down as they have, suddenly, guess what, you have all these debt. You have to pay it back.
And one of the things that's been startling to me as I've looked into it this week is realizing how much and how fast debt has run up in the first eight, seven-plus years of this century. Mortgage debt has doubled. Credit card debt and consumer debt has doubled in seven years. And that has to be unwound, and that's going to be painful.
And so my argument would be that paying back that debt and kind of coming to terms with the fact that your houses and price isn't going up anymore is going to have a damper on consumer spending, which in turn will have a damper on corporate earnings, which in turn will keep the stock market from rising anytime soon.
SIMON: In your column on Saturday, you hark back to the period between 1969 and 1982, when the markets barely budged. Remind us what would happen if we slid back into a period of no growth in the markets.
Mr. NOCERA: Well, one of the reasons baby boomers don't remember that period is because it didn't really matter to our lives. We didn't have 401(k)s. We weren't putting kids through college. So, you know, the real issue here is that when the stock market stops rising and if it were to go flat for a long time, it's very, very meaningful to the lives of many, many people. And it would have a dramatic effect on how baby boomers retire.
SIMON: What do you expect on Monday? Markets were closed last Monday, and we saw what happened around the world.
Mr. NOCERA: Well, you know, only idiots predict what's going to happen when the markets open on Monday.
SIMON: I know that, that's why - that's the question.
Mr. NOCERA: Because that's why - yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My old friend, Peter Lynch, he used to run Fidelity Magellan back in the '80s. He used to say he hated Mondays because he said over the weekend people become amateur economists. They read all the gloomy stories in the newspaper and then they just want to sell. And he actually had a statistic showing that Mondays were, by far, the worst day of the week for the market. So, I'm not predicting, but I'm just saying that Peter Lynch usually knew what he was talking about.
SIMON: Joe Nocera, thanks so much.
Mr. NOCERA: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
We've all heard the old adage: Whenever the U.S. economy so much as sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. These latest round of problems may be much, much more.
Krishna Guha is chief U.S. economics correspondent for the Financial Times. He joins us from his office in Washington, D.C.
Krishna, thanks very much for being with us.
Mr. KRISHNA GUHA (Chief U.S. Economics Correspondent, Financial Times): My great pleasure.
SIMON: And we're reviewing some of the ways in which obviously the U.S. economy has been having its problems. How would you characterize the rest of world right now?
Mr. GUHA: Well, the rest of the world looks better than the U.S., but certainly not immune to the problems coming out of the U.S. and the financial markets. Growth in Asia, in particular in the emerging Asia - China, India, and some of the other fast-growing economies there - is very rapid, looks quite robust. In Europe, Europe is doing okay. Britain seems to be in more trouble than continental Europe. But everyone is really trying to figure out just how much of an impact the problems from the U.S. will have in the other parts of the world.
SIMON: 2008 was supposed to be the year of what's called decoupling. Wasn't in which the rest of the world would…
Mr. GUHA: That's right.
SIMON: Yeah. Well, has - do recent events suggest that that hasn't happened quite yet or what?
Mr. GUHA: I think it's a question of degree. The world today is somewhat less reliant on the U.S. than it was in times past. You have new growth polls, the emerging markets I talk to you about. Continental Europe looks in better shape than it's been for a number of years.
But at the end of the day, the U.S. is the biggest economy in the world. The U.S. financial markets are at the heart of the global financial markets. The U.S. banks and other financial institutions are at the heart of the world financial system. So people who argue that the U.S. can go into recession and that has no effect on the rest of world are being far too optimistic.
SIMON: We often get the impression that the rest of the world will follow the movement in the U.S. market. But this week, Monday was a holiday here in the United States so, of course, the rest of the world went first. Should we read anything into that?
Mr. GUHA: I think what it tells you is just how globally integrated the financial markets are these days. It's less a question of saying that people in Europe are following what happens in Asia or people in Asia are following what happens in the U.S. This is one global financial market. There are trades around the clock in different time zones, and a lot of the big financial institutions and players are making investments in multiple different markets, shuffling money from different assets and different places. So we're all in it together.
SIMON: Of course, the chairman of the Fed, Ben Bernanke, stepped in with the cut in the interest rates which certainly seem to steady the markets in this country for the time being. What about reaction in the rest of the world?
Mr. GUHA: Well, the other global markets also responded very positively. After all, they're hoping that the U.S. won't have a deep recession because if it did, it would cut down their exports to America and possibly make financial conditions in general difficult for everybody.
SIMON: If the U.S. should fall into a recession, is the world economy set up in such a way now? Does the rest of the world have to follow or is this something that can caught our eyes?
Mr. GUHA: The rest of the world doesn't have to follow the U.S. into recession. That is providing the U.S. doesn't go into a really deep and brutal recession.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Mr. GUHA: But the rest of the world won't get off scot-free either. You would expect to see some slow down in growth in other parts of the world and you'll also, I think, start to see much more differentiation between the performance of other foreign economies. There are some countries like China and India, where the fundamental economic growth story is so strong it will probably - mostly run through with only a small moderation in growth.
There are other countries - the Thailands, Indonesias, Malaysias, Philippines -of this world who've been doing okay but are potentially squeezed on the one hand by China and India, and on the other hand, of course, by the more advance economies. They're in this sort of no man's land. They might be vulnerable if global times get tough.
SIMON: Krishna Guha, chief U.S. economics correspondent of the Financial Times, thank you so much.
Mr. GUHA: Okay. A pleasure.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
A regional war ended in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002. But since then, two million people have died, mostly from disease and malnutrition. Let me repeat that, two million people. It is at least four times as many people who've died in Darfur. The crisis has received a good deal of more publicity. The Congo figure comes from a recent study published by the International Rescue Committee.
Dr. Richard Brennan is one of the authors of the report, and he joins us in our studios.
Dr. Brennan, thanks very much for being with us.
Dr. RICHARD BRENNAN (Health Director, International Rescue Committee): Thank you.
SIMON: In the study, you call the war in the Congo and the time since then as the world's deadliest crisis since World War II.
Dr. BRENNAN: That's correct. Between 2000 and 2007 now, we have done five mortality surveys in the Congo. And we have been able to document that people have died at a very significant rate. And we have been able to make estimates that 5.4 million people have died since the war, August 1998, started.
In making those estimates, we have always erred on the side of being conservative. And we have used our very well-accepted methodology to document that and to document the consistent trends over that period of time.
SIMON: Why are people dying?
Dr. BRENNAN: Well, early on, they were dying from violence and what we would call the indirect consequences of conflict. In fact, the vast majority, well over 90 percent, have died from infectious diseases, malnutrition. What happens with conflict with war zones, clinics stop operating, markets stop functioning, farmers can't till their land, parents can't feed their children nutritious food, and so the most deaths are actually due to these easily, preventable and treatable diseases like malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea.
SIMON: But why the lack of progress in the five years or more that the war has been ended?
Dr. BRENNAN: Well, it's complex. Although the war officially ended in the December 2002, there have been several ongoing conflicts in the east, most notably in recent times the escalation of violence in north Kivu province, where a general has been fighting against other militias and, in fact, the Congolese government.
The other important point to note is that the war and the subsequent conflicts came on the end of decades, of economic decline and political decline. So the entire infrastructure of Congo is being completely disrupted. The economy is being in disarray for years.
SIMON: Why do you think people aren't paying as much attention to Congo? It's a question you must have run through your own mind.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. BRENNAN: Many, many times. There are several reasons. Perhaps, most obviously, is people are dying dramatically. They're not dying acutely. The Rwandan genocide was very violent. The Asian tsunami, people died very dramatically. In Congo, people are dying quietly, day in, day out, year in, year out, of very common causes. So that doesn't grab the attention of the media. That doesn't grab the attention of the men or the women in the street.
I think also of the fact that Congo, in the eyes of our political leaders in the West, doesn't represent a major, political, economic or security interest. It's a complex situation to explain to people, you know, how can we have been having these mortality rates elevated for such a long period of time. And also, there hasn't really been a constituency for Congo, like there has been for Darfur, for example. We don't have a champion in the media, for example. We don't have a politician that's taken this on as a cause. We're ever hopeful that someone will take it on as a cause, but we have obviously got a bit of work to do in that regard.
SIMON: What would the rest of the world contribute?
Dr. BRENNAN: Well, their concern, their moral support, their resources.
SIMON: Well, let's get to the resources part because moral support sometimes won't do much or anything.
Dr. BRENNAN: Well, that's right. It was more of a sort of a general comment. So let me take the issue of security. We do have a peacekeeping force out in the east that goes by the name of MONUC, U.N. peacekeeping troops.
SIMON: How many troops are committed?
Dr. BRENNAN: Right now, about 17,000 for an enormously vast area. Congo itself is the size of Western Europe. Compare that with 60,000 troops in Kosovo, a tiny province in the former Yugoslavia that one could drive around in a day.
Perhaps one of the encouraging findings from our survey was that in areas where they were - we actually did document decline in mortality. Gives us a sense of what's achievable. But it's also important to note that the Congolese government has the key role to play here. They've got to protect their own civilians and reform their own army and police.
SIMON: But in addition to perhaps greater security, what kind or resources are we talking about? Can you begin to put even a dollar - dollar, pounds or euros figure?
Dr. BRENNAN: Sure, sure. If we add all the humanitarian assistance and development assistance that the international community gave in 2007, we're up to about $18 per person per year, about half of what's required to provide just basic vaccinations, bed nets and simple treatment for the common infections.
And given the fact that the resources fall short of what's required, I think we all have to accept the fact that recovery from a protracted conflict, particularly when it comes on the heels of decades of economic and political disruption, is itself a protracted process. This is going to take years for this to turn around.
SIMON: Dr. Richard Brennan, health director for the International Rescue Committee, thank you.
Dr. BRENNAN: Thank you very much.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Time now for your letters.
(Soundbite of typewriter)
(Soundbite of music)
SIMON: Many letters about our interview two weeks ago with Willie O'Ree, the first black man to play in the National Hockey League.
Randy Clan(ph) of Sun Valley, Idaho, watched him play toward the end of his career with San Diego Gulls. He still had that incredible burst, and it was always exciting when he broke out across the ice carrying the puck. I'd also forgotten how eloquent and well spoken Mr. O'Ree is. Thank you for bringing back some fond memories.
Steve Harold(ph) wrote about last week's interview about a study that claims to show that you can hear a smile in someone's voice; they even gave names to certain smiles. He writes: the Duchenne smile was named for Guillaume Duchenne, apparently. And I can't get over what a lucky man he was. If the human race has a higher honor to bestow on its members, I don't know what it is. Just think of Duchenne's fortunate descendants, being able to look at a human face in their happiest moments and say to themselves, ah, there's grandpa.
Many listeners wrote in to say that they were frustrated when they went to npr.org/books, looking for a link to the Daniel Pinkwater podcast that we've promised. If you want to find that podcast or download full-length books by Daniel Pinkwater for free, you can get there now through our Web site, or directly at Pinkwater.com.
Finally, this clarification from Richard Tofel, general manager of Pro Publica, the nonprofit investigative journalism group we mentioned on January 5th, during the interview with John Carlisle of the National Legal and Policy Center.
On your program three weeks ago, in introducing a guest, you indicated that George Soros' Open Society Institute was among the backers of our new nonprofit investigative journalist organization Pro Publica. That is not correct. In fact, there is no connection between either Mr. Soros or his Open Society Institute and Pro Publica.
Thanks for setting this straight.
We welcome your letters. Just come to the NPR Web site and click on Contact Us. Please tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Mutton busting, as it's called, has been around for a long time. The concept is fairly simple.
Mr. ASHER KARK: It's where you ride on a sheep.
SIMON: That's a panicked sheep, by the way.
Mr. A. KARK: And they see who could stay on for the longest.
SIMON: The rodeo event is just for small children. Six-year-old Asher Kark, whom you heard from, recently competed in mutton busting at the National Western Stock Show in Denver.
Zachary Barr went to Asher's home as he started his training.
ZACHARY BARR: Asher Kark is dealing with a bit of a handicap. He signed up for mutton busting in just two days. But his family lives in Denver and they don't exactly have a ranching background.
Do you have any sheep here at your house?
Mr. A. KARK: No.
BARR: Have you ever ridden on a sheep before?
Mr. A. KARK: No.
BARR: But do you know about sheep, really?
Mr. A. KARK: Hmm, not really.
BARR: So to get Asher some practice, big brother Jacob regularly pretends to be a wild, bucking sheep. Jacob puts on their father's wool-lined jacket - inside out, of course - then gets down on all fours. Asher climbs on his back and the ride begins.
Unidentified Man: One.
(Soundbite of shouting)
BARR: And with this training, Asher is ready for the rumble.
(Soundbite of mutton busting competition)
BARR: The Denver Coliseum is packed to the rafters. Moments before the event kicks off, a rodeo staffer helps the children get prepared.
Unidentified Woman: We're putting on hockey helmets and flak jackets to protect their heads and bodies.
BARR: Wow, flak jackets.
Unidentified Woman: Flak jackets. That protects them when they fall in case the sheep steps on them.
BARR: Once suited up, it's show time.
Unidentified Announcer: Time for the mutton busting.
BARR: The children enter and thousands of people turn their attention towards one end of the arena. All the kids stand perfectly still, awaiting their fate.
The first contestant is thrown off in the blink of an eye, but the second child stays on for a few seconds.
(Soundbite of audience screaming)
BARR: And then, it's Asher's time.
(Soundbite of applause)
(Sounbdite of bell)
Unidentified Announcer: Not so much.
BARR: It's over very quickly. The rodeo clowns pick up Asher off the ground and he returns to his place in line. He glumly stares straight ahead.
Eventually, one child is deemed the winner, but all the kids get really tall trophies. Afterwards, Asher explains how real mutton busting differs from riding on top of his brother.
Mr. A. KARK: So at first, like, it stops together, so it's harder to hold on.
BARR: Older brother Jacob is nearby, and like most 10-year-olds, he doesn't sugarcoat his opinion.
Mr. JACOB KARK: I expected a lot more.
Unidentified Woman: What do you expect?
Mr. J. KARK: I should rescue him to win.
BARR: For NPR News, I'm Zachary Barr.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Coming up, rockin' and rollin' with The Wigs.
But first…
(Soundbite of drilling)
SIMON: Behold the sound of a crumbling facade. It's no mere metaphor. The sound of construction workers repairing the facade of NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., after a couple of chunks of the building fell off last year. No one was hurt.
(Soundbite of drilling)
SIMON: Look, I know traditional media platforms are getting weaker - but so literally? The New York Times building in midtown Manhattan is having problems, too. Twice this winter, glass panes on that building have been broken by high winds, shattering on the streets below, and ceramic rods that are part of an energy screen on the building have formed dangerous icicles, forcing the city to close off the sidewalk below.
All over America, some of the newest architectural marvels are revealing problems. Frank Gehry is being sued by Massachusetts Institute of Technology because they say his design for the Stata Center in Cambridge is faulty and already growing pockets of mold.
Are innovations in architecture outpacing our ability to build and maintain these new creations? Are the ahs worth all the watch-out-below?
Robert Ivy is editor in chief of Architecture Record magazine. He joins us from our studios in New York.
Thank you so much for being with us.
Mr. ROBERT IVY (Editor in Chief, Architecture Record): Good to be here.
SIMON: Is stuff being designed and put up that can't be maintained?
Mr. IVY: We're building so many kinds of buildings right now. We've had a tremendous boom and construction and tremendous innovation and design. We have complex buildings that we've never seen before. And in some of them, we are witnessing problems. But it's a small percentage, I think, as a percentage of the whole volume of construction that's being done.
Falling ice that you mentioned is an obvious problem, and it's a safety…
SIMON: This on the New York Times building.
Mr. IVY: That's correct.
SIMON: Yeah. Now, one would think - because as I understand it, the ceramic rods kind of hold the energy screen in place, right?
Mr. IVY: The ceramic rods are part of the energy screen at The New York Times tower. They are actually an innovative system that surrounds the building like a screen and keeps the sun out. Now, the other side of that is that there are 170,000 of these ceramic rods, like a cage, around the building. And on December 14th, a number of them filled with ice and slush. And apparently, as they warmed during the course of the day, they let go of that ice.
And as you questioned in your intro - well, are we making buildings that are too complex to keep, in a question like this, people are going to be pointing fingers for a while. We know that the falling ice is definitely a problem. But the owner maintains, in this case, that it was extensively tested.
I know that they studied and tested them for snow load, for ice, for heat, for a variety of weather conditions. However, we're human beings, and I do not know whether the variable was introduced of - let's say, of a rod that warms slightly and then is subjected to a high wind.
There's another set of variables, though, that goes beyond the question of testing, and that's these big complex buildings have been built and they're built by people.
SIMON: I mean, to be plain about it, you're talking about the human factor entering into workmanship.
Mr. IVY: Absolutely. A complex building may literally have hundreds of thousands of individual parts and pieces. And we rely on the process - the construction process today to put these things together. And our construction processes are, again, remarkably sophisticated but have not been reinvented in the same way that our design abilities have.
So in some cases, we are relying on the skill of an individual or the way they feel that morning as they're completing a single detail on the facade of a building. There's this balance between design and construction that we have to constantly monitor.
SIMON: Are some of these absolutely remarkable buildings we're talking about, are they being built with a life expectancy in mind?
Mr. IVY: Depends on the kind of building that you're talking about. We have buildings that are built by developers and strip malls that might have a 10-year lifespan.
On the other hand, a building in a university, which is going to own the facility throughout its lifetime and try to attract and retain faculty and students, for instance, might have 100-year lifespan or even greater.
Therefore, the investment that goes into the building depends on what the owners' needs and desires and budget are.
SIMON: So if you're putting up a Frank Gehry design, one assumes that whoever is putting that up is even thinking it might be there 200 years. That's worth any investment, they might think.
Mr. IVY: Well, in the case - let's think about signature buildings that Gehry has done himself. His iconic building, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, that building has been worth the effort for the city of Bilbao and for northern Spain. It's, in essence, changed our own perception of what that place is all about. And that is an iconic building that serves a specific purpose.
SIMON: Robert Ivy, editor in chief of Architecture Record magazine, thanks so much.
Mr. IVY: You're welcome.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
This week, congressional leaders reached an agreement with the White House on the economic stimulus package. Democrats campaigned in South Carolina. Republicans geared up for next week's Florida primary. And, chaotic scenes from the Egypt-Gaza border as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians poured into Egypt.
NPR senior analyst Dan Schorr joins us.
Hello, Dan.
DANIEL SCHORR: Hi, Scott.
SIMON: And let us, please, begin with the economy…
SCHORR: Yes.
SIMON: …because on Monday, when U.S. markets were closed, around the world, they fell early…
SCHORR: Yeah.
SIMON: …in the week, seemed to rally toward the end of the week. How do you characterize the week?
SCHORR: Well, but the Wall Street looks so very nervous as a week in - on Wall Street closes. I think that the air of confidence that was breathed by the administration has some effect on foreign markets. But they're really in the state of teetering and of emergency. I think you're going to see them go up and down as they try to learn how much trouble are we really in.
SIMON: And the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, without a scheduled meeting with the Fed board, cut a key interest rate.
SCHORR: That's right. And they're apparently hoping that by cutting the interest rate, it would be able to provide a shot in the arm for this lagging economy. And, you know, it's sort of, you do your best. There's nothing else they can do except to try a monetary approach to it rather than fiscal, and hope.
SIMON: The White House and the House of Representatives were able to reach an agreement pretty quickly on the economic stimulus package. It still has to get through the Senate. How do you see that process playing out? Any differences?
SCHORR: I think what's happened is that it really is an agreement and everybody believes that nobody will gain from lagging at this point. So they really are in a hurry. What they simply did was to strip the package of whatever it was that the Bush administration wanted, which was to make the tax cuts permanent and strip it of what the Democrats wanted, which was to get more money for unemployment, insurance and food stamps, and leave in it what they could both agree on. It looks as though it will pass the Senate - apparently it promises to pass it by mid-February.
SIMON: Recognizing the predicting in politics and sports and economics, particularly, is hazardous. What do you see the effect of the stimulus package being…
SCHORR: Well, that's what everybody is waiting to see. I'm not an economist. But having read along the material on it, the way I get it, it goes like this. The stimulus that comes from this package will be very minor and very late. It is almost as though when I speak not very, in economical terms, it is really almost as if somebody tells his friend he has cancer. And the fellow says, oh, that's too bad. Have a cookie, you'll feel much better.
SIMON: To the week in politics. Three Democratic candidates - Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards debated in South Carolina, Monday night. What were your impressions of the debate and the campaign week that followed?
SCHORR: Well, increasing sovereignty between Senator Obama and Senator Clinton, and the beginning of the rifts among voters on the race alliance was everybody on Democratic side had tried to avoid, but it appears to be coming. It's hard to tell if they do split on racial alliance who have been the more prominent. But already, you're beginning to see signs of trouble. John Edwards sat there during the debate, while the other two were tussling with each other and saying, I represent the mature wing of the Democratic Party.
SIMON: And let me ask, of course, about the Republican side of the ballot. Rudolph Giuliani was ahead for months. Senator McCain and Mitt Romney now seemed to have closed that gap, and Mayor Giuliani's a few points behind, at least according to the polls, and they've been wrong.
SCHORR: Well, Senator McCain is clearly now the Republican frontrunner. And Florida will become very important at that point for Giuliani because he has bet so much on it. He avoided a lot of the other places. It didn't matter. He said just wait until you see me in Florida. Well, having set Florida as a testing ground for him, he better do very well or he's in trouble.
SIMON: Chaotic scenes this week in the border between Egypt and Gaza strip with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians pouring in over Egypt to get supplies.
SCHORR: Yes. The Hamas broke a big hole in the wall and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians went through it because they were hungry. They wanted food. They don't have food. It's fairly clear that they don't even have electric power at home because the fuel comes in a very short supply. And this is a whole new element in this awful, awful situation there, as now you got this 100,000 going into Egypt ready to go back. But they want some place where they can go get something to eat.
SIMON: NPR senior news analyst Dan Schorr.
Thank you, Dan.
SCHORR: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
The Sundance Film Festival is under way in the small town of Park City, Utah. The glamour, the stars, the crowds, the cold, had all made its way to Kim Masters' reporter's notebook.
KIM MASTERS: It's sort of incredible given the many long years that I've covered Hollywood, but I've never been to a film festival before. It may sound weak, but I approached Sundance with dread. I checked around and many Hollywood executives told me that Sundance is the seventh circle of hell: terrible weather, congested streets, no parking. I believe them.
Odd as it seems that it is quite cold in the seventh circle of hell.
(Soundbite of moving vehicle)
I think that we've lost our ability to feel.
MASTERS: The next day, I'm supposed to talk to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, so we brought a satellite phone in a heavy metal suitcase. It won't work in the condo that we've rented even after our intrepid producer, Amy Walters, puts the dish on the snow-encrusted barbecue on our balcony. So we drive out and parked in a snowy field. We put the dish on the roof. We're connected.
(Soundbite of recorded clip)
MELISSA BLOCK: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL: And I'm Robert Siegel.
Our own Kim Masters is among those making their way through the snowdrifts at Sundance. And I gather everything's just freezing solid there where you're at?
MASTERS: We had actually seen our thermometer going to minus three, and there's quite a lot of snow.
So now we're launched. We get our interviews with studio executives.
Hi.
Unidentified Man: How are you? We've met for years, though.
MASTERS: Then deal with the serious business of Sundance. We check out a few movies.
We're four seats away from Robert Redford.
But we also want to see the other side of Sundance, the carnival.
(Soundbite of music)
MASTERS: This is a big branding opportunity and dozens of companies are giving away their wares. Many of the shops on Main Street have been transformed into swag dispensary.
Unidentified Woman: It's really a fusion, if you will.
MASTERS: Project Greenhouse features what is described as luxury eco design. While you check out the environmentally correct jewelry and clothing, you can also get a free facial and massage. We, at NPR, are not supposed to accept really good swag, but it seemed okay to sample a little eco lotion and indulge in a hand massage.
Unidentified Woman: One of these two base ingredients are organic shea butter and organic cocoa butter. How does that feel so far?
MASTERS: That feels pretty good, actually.
(Soundbite of music)
MASTERS: You know, it is cold, crowded and congested at Sundance. But, really, it's not all that.
SIMON: NPR's Kim Masters sounds as if she has very relaxed, soft hands, doesn't she?
SCOTT SIMON, host:
A man wheeled a cart into our office area yesterday and dropped off nine boxes addressed to a man who no longer works here. Now, getting mail for someone who is no longer with you is common in most workplaces. Just the other day, I think I saw something addressed to John Wilkes Booth. Sometimes, I take some small pleasure in knowing that long after I'm gone, my children can still stop off to pick up mail with my name on it.
"Look, our daddy still gets the Victoria Secret catalog here."
So we opened the nine boxes. They hold 225 copies of next month's issue of a classy home-decor magazine. Well, 224 now - I took one home to look at the page of jute grass cloth wall coverings. Nine boxes of the same magazine. Why not at least nine boxes of different magazines or nine boxes of Krugerrands, Cartier watches or Chipotle burritos? What are you supposed to do with nine boxes of something that you didn't order and don't want?
So we called the distribution company, who said it's not their problem. We left a message with somebody who was identified as some kind of supervisor. So far, he hasn't called back. Why should he? How much effort should he spend to retrieve 225 copies of a magazine that will soon be too old to sell?
Mistakes were made, case closed, move on. To throw them out seems wasteful. On the other hand, giving 225 copies of the same home décor magazines to, say, a public library would be at least 220 copies too many. Giving them to a homeless shelter, prison or nunnery where they hardly have a choice of jute grass cloth wall coverings seems insensitive.
I predict, with more confidence than I would ever try to forecast the winner of a primary election or the Super Bowl, that those nine boxes of magazines will sit in our conference area for a couple of weeks, we'll make a few more phone calls, a few people will help themselves to a few copies, and then, they'll be thrown away.
It seems wasteful. On the other hand, how many hours of our finite time on this planet should we waste each week on hold with customer service, shipping, the accounting department or the lost luggage office, leaving increasingly strident messages that are never returned because the person hearing them just doesn't have time for another problem?
How many of us keep bed sheets that were delivered in the wrong color, or CDs that have a skip because it's too bothersome, time-consuming, or costly to repackage and return them?
And one day, you look at the phone in your hand and realize you've spent more time this week on hold with customer service or computer help lines than you have speaking with your own parents, reading stories to a child, or urging public officials to do something about Darfur.
For a lot of us, the day seems to slip away before we can grab hold of it. How do you make time for the things that are really precious and important when you have to get nine boxes of something you don't care about out of the way?
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Coming up, a pitch-perfect political speech.
But first, several TV networks have all but pledged to change the way they develop and debut programs. NBC Universal was the first to say it will scale back the number of pilot scripts it orders. CBS, FOX, The CW, also plan to cut production of pilots. The lost of revenue during the writers' strike seems to be one reason but all the networks are interested in trying to reduce the cost of developing and making new TV programs.
Marti Noxon joins us. She's a former executive producer for "Grey's Anatomy" and served as show runner for "Private Practice" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
Thanks very much for being with us.
Ms. MARTI NOXON (TV Writer/Producer): Oh, my pleasure.
SIMON: And do you think this is going to affect the way you do business?
Ms. NOXON: You know, short term, absolutely, although what's interesting is NBC actually said they were going to order fewer pilots but as many first episode scripts, which means, their plan is to order lots of scripts and no longer make pilots but actually go from script to series.
So what they're going to do is order six episodes instead of just a pilot. But, you know, short term, the fact that a lot of pilots around town are just not going to get shot, it absolutely impacts everybody.
SIMON: Well, explain how.
Ms. NOXON: There's a very big business in work that never gets seen by the general public here. A lot of writers have written countless pilots that never get made, or countless pilots that got made but never got ordered to series. So there's a real industry in unseen entertainment, and that's going to shrink for a while.
SIMON: From the audience's point of view, is it going to be harder for, let's say, a show that's quirky and not immediately apparent on the printed page as to what its terms could be, but somebody makes a pilot and somebody likes it -harder for those kinds of shows to get picked up?
Ms. NOXON: Yeah, obviously. I think the reason that networks have ordered so many shows is because of that unpredictability. You know, there can be a wonderful pilot on the page, and any number of intangibles, you know, end up making not such a great show. And the opposite is true, which is why they take such - in the past, they've taken such a broad approach to development. You make a lot of pilots and often are surprised by the results, you know, the ones that turn out and the ones that don't.
SIMON: Can you give us some idea just based on your own experience, Ms. Noxon, as to how many pilots of a given season will get produced, and how many go nowhere?
Ms. NOXON: It's typical that as many as 40 to 60 scripts get ordered, 10 to 16 pilots get made, and then anywhere between four to eight actually get on the air.
SIMON: Networks said that they need to dramatically cut costs. Can we appreciate how expensive it is to just put on a pilot?
Ms. NOXON: It is kind of stunning how much money goes into the development process. I mean, a pilot can cost anywhere from two to $8 million. As the writers on strike, I've been looking at the economics of the business, and I know how much money is at stake if something works. So it all kind of makes sense when you crunch the numbers that way.
SIMON: The networks have been famous in recent years for pulling the plug on a series after sometimes just one or two episodes. Do you think this will make networks less likely to pull the plug so early on shows because they don't have as many things in the pipeline to replace them?
Ms. NOXON: I actually think that would be a good result of this. I don't know. I think that it would be great. In some cases where something is just a little corky or need some time to get on its feet if they did let it breathe a little bit. And certainly, some shows have proven to be a success after a year or more.
SIMON: A truncated pilot season will, among other things, mean employment for fewer writers, it sounds like.
Ms. NOXON: You know, what's interesting is this contraction as a business is really more of a reflection of these much bigger changes going on, which I believe that in the next five years, network television won't look anything like it does now. And in some cases, I think that'll be good for the viewer. They're going to have a lot more control over what they watch. They're probably going to be able to go onto an NBC site and pick the show they want to see when they want to see it, just like they'll be able to do with HBO pretty soon.
Is this good news for writers? I think, creatively, it might be really good news for us because there'll be more time to develop projects. But, financially, I think there's just going to be a big shift in the business. And I think in terms of finances, yeah, well, I think it's all changed. And I think there's going to be a less money per project.
SIMON: Marti Noxon, show-runner for "Private Practice." And she also served as executive producer last season on "Grey's Anatomy."
Thank you so much for being with us.
Ms. NOXON: My pleasure.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
All Democrats vote in South Carolina today. Republican candidates competing down to the wire for Florida's primary on Tuesday.
The Democrats aren't campaigning there because the national party has stripped them of their delegates because they moved up the primary day. Now, on the Republican side, the most recent polls show John McCain and Mitt Romney going back and forth in the lead, followed by Rudolph Giuliani, who used to be ahead of them, then Mike Huckabee.
Lance DeHaven Smith is a political scientist at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He joins us from a member station there, WFSU.
Professor, thank you so much for being with us.
Professor LANCE DeHAVEN SMITH (Political Science, Florida State University): Glad to be here, Scott.
SIMON: What's your analysis of why it seems that Mayor Rudy Giuliani is limping a bit towards the finish line now? He's certainly been campaigning assiduously there and there are lots of New Yorkers in Florida.
Prof. SMITH: There are a lot of New Yorkers in Florida. Fairly 10 percent of Floridians are originally from New York State. But most of those New Yorkers are registered Democrats.
SIMON: And what about the effect of negative stories that have been coming out about Mayor Giuliani that have to do with his marital life or allegations about his administration in New York?
Prof. SMITH: Well, they certainly hurt him. And you have to understand in Florida, the electorate is skewed a bit toward the senior citizens, toward the retirees. And they're about 35 to 40 percent of the voters. And they are pretty conservative in terms of family values, social issues.
SIMON: St. Petersburg Times' poll this week has John McCain a couple of points up on Governor Romney. A lot of Senator McCain's votes, at least so far at this primary season, have come from independents. In Florida, as I understand it, only registered Republicans can vote. Is he a bitter fit for some Florida Republicans than he might be in other states?
Prof. SMITH: He's taken positions that have been difficult for him outside of Florida. His moderate stance on immigration, I think, will appeal to, of course, to non-Cuban Hispanics but the Cubans as well. He's been concerned about global warming. We have a lot of concern about the environment here in the state. And that's true of Republicans, as well as Democrats. We're impacted by hurricanes. We're worried about rising sea levels.
Now, Romney…
SIMON: Yeah. Where is his strength coming from?
Prof. SMITH: Well, he's from the Midwest, and we have about 20 percent of the Florida residents originated in the Midwest, in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio. They tend to be Republican. They're fairly well-off.
The problem for Romney is going to be in the Central Florida area where you have Wall Street Journal Republicans, the people who are pro-business and want small government. Whether he can appeal more to them than McCain is, I think, the big question. And I'll be looking at the Orlando area and the Tampa area to see how the vote turns there because I think that's really the hinge on which the election will turn.
SIMON: And Governor Huckabee? I don't want to overlook him.
Prof. SMITH: Well, Governor Huckabee has got an evangelical base in Central Florida, just north of Orlando. I don't mean to say that he is exclusively drawing votes from the evangelical Christian right. But the problem for him is he's got two very capable competitors who are quite strong on these economic issues. Huckabee is geographically isolated into Central Florida in large part, and demographically. It's just - there's nowhere for him to go because the competition is too tough.
SIMON: Professor DeHaven Smith, what issues have been capturing most attention in the campaign?
Prof. SMITH: Well, in Florida, the big issue has been the economy. The state has a very fragile economy in many ways. And we have experienced a dramatic drop in the housing values. Everybody in the country has had this housing value bubble that's burst. But in Florida, the bubble was bigger and the fall is a lot further. And together, the gas taxes - the gas prices, the weak tourism, the home value bubble-bursting - all of those things have converged to greatly weaken Florida's economy.
SIMON: And is that influencing some of the choices people are making for candidates?
Prof. SMITH: I think it's helped Romney enormously coming into Florida. You know, if you've discounted the economic issue, McCain would be the odds-on favorite, hands down. But as the economy deteriorated that issue came to the top of the policy agenda, and there Romney was well positioned as a businessperson who's been successful in business. Definitely come up with new ideas and some of them are appealing to particular constituencies, and that's helped him a lot.
SIMON: Lance DeHaven Smith, professor of public administration at Florida State University. Thank you so much.
Prof. SMITH: You're welcome.
SIMON: And you can read up in what's at stake today in South Carolina's Democratic primary and see results as they become available at npr.org/elections.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Okay, Elaine, cue the crowd.
(Soundbite of people cheering)
SIMON: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.
It is a great and undeserved privilege to address such an audience as I see before me. At no previous time in the history of civilization have greater problems confronted and challenged the ingenuity of man's intellect than now. Let us look around us. What do we see on the horizon? Whither are we drifting? Under what mist of clouds does the future stand secure? The crucial test for that solution of all these intricate problems is the sheer and forceful application of those immutable laws, which have always guided the hand of man, groping as it were for some faint beacon light for his hopes and aspirations.
What then is our duty? Shall we continue to drift? No. With all the impetus of my being, I hurl back the message. No, drifting must stop. We must press onwards and upwards toward the ultimate goal to which we all aspire.
But I cannot conclude my remarks, dear friends. That touching briefly upon a subject, which I know is steeped in your very consciousness, and I refer to that spirit, which gleams in the eyes of the newborn babe; that animates the toiling masses; that sways all the hosts of humanity. Without this energizing principle, all commerce, trade and industry will perish as surely as the crimson sunset follows the golden sunshine.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
(Soundbite of people cheering)
SIMON: An all-purpose political speech suitable for any candidate of any political persuasion at anytime. "Any Event" was written by Andrew Parker Nevin, Princeton class of '95 - 1895. It first appeared in the Princeton Alumni magazine, October 28th, 1905.
And thanks very much to our listener Donna DeLay(ph) for sending it our way.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
Ever daydream about owning a sports team? More than 27,000 fans realized that fantasy this week. And how? Of course, the Internet. Last spring, Web site myfootballclub.co.uk offered shares in a new football club. For just 35 pounds or about $70, they pledged that all of the team's decisions from trades to starting line-ups will be determined by an online vote of all the owners.
Tim Glynne-Jones is one of the founding owners of the club now called Ebbsfleet United. He joins us from just outside London.
Mr. Owner, thanks for being with us.
Mr. TIM GLYNNE-JONES (Co-Founder, Ebbsfleet Club): It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
SIMON: Could we use the term Minor League without offending you?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GLYNNE-JONES: If you want to call it Minor League, I'm happy with that.
SIMON: We should explain: They will only play Manchester United in their dreams.
Mr. GLYNNE-JONES: No. They've got to be promoted, what, four times in order to be in the same division as United.
SIMON: Isn't it a little cumbersome when you have to have 27,000 people vote?
Mr. GLYNNE-JONES: Well, no, because as you mentioned it's the Internet, and the Internet is capable of making instant decisions because it's actually much cumbersome than trying to get seven or eight people sitting around the table to come through any kind of agreement.
SIMON: If you have to decide who to hire as coach, how do 27,000 people decide what 10 to interview, and how do they conduct those interviews?
Mr. GLYNNE-JONES: You know, there's a lot of collaboration. Basically, the 27,000 can make their views felt via the forums from the Web site. At the same time, there are people that will handle the day-to-day running and make sure that things don't get bulked down in red tape.
SIMON: There's a coach already?
Mr. GLYNNE-JONES: Yeah, there is. And he's embraced the whole idea to be regularly appearing on the site before every game, informing the members how the players are performing and training and giving his opinion as to what sort of line up he'd look for.
SIMON: How many places, for example, are the owners coming from? Probably not just Ebbsfleet.
Mr. GLYNNE-JONES: Oh, absolutely, no. I mean, it's an international club. You know - I think, English football has a following around the world already. And there were a lot of people who would love to be able to get more involved, but obviously they can't do that from their own chair. Now, this gives them the opportunity.
SIMON: Is it fun being an owner, Mr. Glynne-Jones?
Mr. GLYNNE-JONES: Well, I haven't really got stuck into it yet, but I think it's so - it's groundbreaking to be in a position where you can actually have genuine influence over the club and how it performs. And I think that's a source of heated frustration for, probably, a fan of any other sport. They go along, they pay their money and they support their club, but when it comes to actually having an influence, there's a barrier. And we've broken down that barrier.
SIMON: But you can't blame the owner when you lose.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GLYNNE-JONES: Well, that's the beauty for the manager, isn't it? Taking (unintelligible) around and blame the fans.
SIMON: That is great, come to think of it.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GLYNNE-JONES: So you're starting to see the merits of it, yes.
SIMON: I don't mind telling you, I'm going to go to the Web site and become an owner myself.
Mr. GLYNNE-JONES: Well, welcome aboard.
SIMON: Thank you. Thank you.
Mr. GLYNNE-JONES: Then we get to meet you over at the ground sometime.
SIMON: Yes, when we owners get together.
Mr. GLYNNE-JONES: Absolutely.
SIMON: Tim Glynne-Jones, who's one of about 27,000 founding owners of Ebbsfleet United.
This is NPR News.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Coming up, why would you ever want to burn an unpublished Nabokov novel? Because the author said to.
But first, the buildup to the Super Bowl, which will be played on February 3rd, has already begun. Was Tom Brady limping when he left his girlfriend's townhouse? Can the younger Manning match not only his older brother but please his father? Is this an Old Testament story or Super Bowl XLII, as the Romans used to say? All these storylines, the agony, the ecstasy, the pomposity.
Will Leitch has a new book out, "God Save the Fan," in which he argues that sports have been essentially hijacked by a sports entertainment industry that hyperbolizes to promote itself. Millions of people check in to Mr. Leitch's Web site, deadspin.com, a sport site, each month. He joins us from New York.
Thank you for being with us.
Mr. WILL LEITCH (Author, "God Save the Fan"): Of course. Thanks for having me.
SIMON: A recurrent theme in your book seems to be - in fact, I wrote it down. To quote it, "Just don't tell me, being a sports fan involves blissful ignorance of the outside world, and that's just fine."
Mr. LEITCH: I think people that work in sports media, they see the passion plays. This is their entire kind of life, and they have to put it on a larger context. But I think the average sports fan doesn't necessarily see sports that way. I think they see it as a place to kind of duck in and enjoy, and then to distract them from their regular, everyday lives a little bit.
SIMON: I mean, I have to point out, you were certainly devoting your professional life to sports.
Mr. LEITCH: I think a mistake a lot of people make when they write about sports it's it turns into a controversy. It turns into, I take this stand and now you take this stand. And, you know, it leads to this - just basically almost the…
SIMON: Skip Bayless and Woody Paige barking at each other on ESPN.
Mr. LEITCH: Yeah. And I think - you know, I think when you get into that kind of idea where everyone's on one side or everyone's on the other, and there has to be this clash, I think that gets away from the way people actually interact with sports.
SIMON: Give us an example that's on your mind. I don't mean the recent thing with Dana Jacobson.
Mr. LEITCH: Yeah.
SIMON: But the way, you know, for example, somebody says, I mean, like, could you believe he call that play?
Mr. LEITCH: Yeah. Yeah, it's funny because basically it all does turn into that. One of my favorite examples is to talk about Skip Bayless. And everybody has their shtick. His shtick is contrarianism. And certainly if - I always imagine Tiger Woods won four majors in a row and Skip Bayless will be like, yes, but can he fly?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. LEITCH: I generally think that's kind of the direction you see a little bit, and it's kind of a shame because certainly it becomes to be - this one person named Tiger Woods is great, and nope, he lacks wings.
SIMON: Mr. Leitch, I would feel remiss if I didn't raise what I find to be the most disagreeable part of your book with you.
Mr. LEITCH: Okay.
SIMON: You have some sections, which are mostly very funny, called glossaries…
Mr. LEITCH: Mm-hmm.
SIMON: …where you list, you know - Armstrong, Lance, genetic freak Texan who'd defy the laws of reason by sparking a brief interest in the deathly boring sport of cycling. That's pretty funny.
Mr. LEITCH: All right. Thank you.
SIMON: And you know, I mean, you've got them for lots of people. Most of these are very good-natured, but more than once - and you mentioned Tiger Woods. I'm going to read a Tony Dungy entrance - entry to you, if I could.
(Reading) Beloved Colts coach who overcame the suicide of his son to become the first black coach to win the Super Bowl, despite not really being black, not really.
And you make that comment about a number of African-American athletes. And I'm puzzled, and I don't know what to make of it. On top of everything else, where do you get off deciding who's not black really and who is.
Mr. LEITCH: Well, certainly I would hardly call myself the arbiter of that, to say the least. There is an element of a quick joke to that, I will confess. But certainly I think that, you know - and Dungy's a bad example, too, because he - even if he has been quite the leader of men in a lot of ways, but certainly I think that, you know, I claim no moral authority on that, to say the least. But I do think it's fair to point out, you know, there's a joke - there's an essay in the book where I talk about how literally the first black man my sister had ever seen was a Cardinal centerfielder.
And I think that's - in a lot of ways, there's a misunderstanding among a lot of mainstream sports fans, along with - and particularly in very rural communities, the only interaction they really have with African-Americans is through the world of sports. And I think sometimes that get skewed a little bit. But certainly, I will confess that may be an example of going to a cheaper joke than probably is fair.
SIMON: You know, I hate to keep coming back to this, but I just flipped a page. Gumbel Greg, Bryant's bushy haired brother, who somehow manages to be more boring and white than his sibling. You got a problem.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. LEITCH: I don't think so. But I suppose in that context, it might sound that way, yes.
SIMON: Sometimes in this book you complain that advertisers will reduce sports fans to, you know, a stereotype - eating chips, drinking beer, going (unintelligible) with each other.
Mr. LEITCH: Yes.
SIMON: And then in a lot of your glossary entries, you seem to go straight to talking about an athlete's sex life or their flatulence. And I think it's all - we've already reviewed their race. So, how are you different?
Mr. LEITCH: There's no sort of claim in the book that, like, come with me sports fans and I will lead you to freedom, sort of thing. I mean, you know, as to me, the fun of the - a lot of the fun of sports is to be able to make jokes and laugh around a little bit. And certainly, I will confess that I'm not always - I think when you're trying to be funny, there are things that you won't always be taking the high road all the time. But I think, hopefully, most people that tend to interact with the site and with the book, they tend to recognize what's all and fun.
SIMON: Will Leitch, author of the new book, "God Save the Fan," and editor of the sport blog Deadspin.com.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
The name Lolita is singed into many minds because Vladimir Nabokov chose it for one of his most vivid characters. Could he do the same for the name Laura? We may never know. "The Original of Laura" is the title of the author's final work. Nabokov had filled 30 to 40 index cards with a handwritten draft of the novel before he died in 1977. He left instructions for his heirs to destroy them. He didn't want a rough draft to appear as a book.
And yet, "Laura" still exists. Nabokov's son, Dmitri, is on the verge of deciding what to do with the manuscript. And Ron Rosenbaum, columnist for Slate, has corresponded with Dmitri Nabokov about the decision and recently wrote the article Dmitri's Choice.
Mr. Rosenbaum joins us from our studios in New York.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Mr. RON ROSENBAUM (Columnist, Slate.com): Thanks for having me on.
SIMON: And why wasn't "Laura" burned, in fact, as the author wanted?
Mr. ROSENBAUM: Well, Dmitri is in a Hamlet-like position. He has the orders of a stern, dead ghostly patriarch - his father, Vladimir - saying destroy the manuscript. And when Vladimir died in '77, he asked his wife to burn this final unfinished manuscript.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Mr. ROSENBAUM: By 1991, when she died, she hadn't done it. And one can understand her reluctance. And the task then passed to Dmitri, who is now 73, and sooner or later has to make a decision about whether to obey his father's final wishes or to preserve for posterity, for scholars, for greedy people like myself who have loved Nabokov's work. And - so, you know, curiosity certainly drives us to want Dmitri to preserve it. But on the other hand, it raises the question of shouldn't we respect an artist's wishes not to have his unfinished final work published?
SIMON: You've been on all sides of this question, haven't you?
Mr. ROSENBAUM: Yes. When I first learned about the existence of "The Original of Laura," which now reposes in a safe deposit vault in Switzerland, I wrote a column for the New York Observer, saying, please Dmitri, don't burn "Laura." But then, after it came out, I found myself having second thoughts because I thought, well, you know, where is the respect for Nabokov? Does an artist's right to a work of art end when he dies and then we could just disrespect it or can we disrespect it because he's a great artist? Should we punish him because he's a great artist, and by saying that we're allowed to disrespect his wishes for posterity?
It made me sympathetic with Dmitri's dilemma, and I still don't know how it's going to end up. After my Slate column appeared, I got an e-mail from Dmitri, all in capital letters...
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. ROSENBAUM: ...in which he was someone agitated at all the attention it had brought, although part of me thinks that he may enjoy the attention. Nonetheless, he said that when I make the decision, I will do it privately and - I think he said, tell no one. So for all we know, after Dmitri's death, someone may open the safe and find just ashes within it or will find those index cards, and scholars will begin to puzzle out whether it tells us something more about this amazing writer's work.
SIMON: Do you know anything about the book?
Mr. ROSENBAUM: Well, it's interesting. A 1911 New York Times article called The Original of Gretchen was about a controversy over Goethe's Faust and the character Gretchen in it and who was the model for it. So I guess the original of is a kind of literary term, in other words "The Original of Laura" would indicate that she is a fictional character...
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Mr. ROSENBAUM: ...and the original of Laura would be a real person upon whom Laura was based. And there are some - there was someone who, through secondhand knowledge, I think, said something about it being about a lost love. Otherwise, we know very little about it and Dmitri has been very enigmatic about it.
SIMON: I mean, on the other hand, it could also be a story about a turtle.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. ROSENBAUM: You know, odds are it's not about a turtle but more likely a butterfly. Those were - if it's Nabokov and it's an animal, it's likely to be a butterfly, possibly a caterpillar.
SIMON: The request that Vladimir Nabokov made for "The Original of Laura" to be burned, it's a request made of someone who is not his literary executor per se, it's his son.
Mr. ROSENBAUM: Well, you know, he is now his literary executor. He is.
SIMON: But a son has different considerations than a literary executor. I'm just talking about...
Mr. ROSENBAUM: I know. He's - I think Dmitri is very divided.
SIMON: Yeah.
Mr. ROSENBAUM: He's a son. He's a translator and co-translator with Nabokov and he's a literary executor. So he's divided in three...
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Mr. ROSENBAUM: ...at least.
SIMON: Has he ever said anything to you that indicates that he's read the index cards?
Mr. ROSENBAUM: Oh, yes. He did say that he had made a copy onto more conventional manuscript pages of the contents of the index cards. So that might be another way of finessing the...
SIMON: Yeah.
Mr. ROSENBAUM: ...ultimate decision. He could burn the cards and keep the copy. And he's characterized it a couple of different ways, or perhaps they're not different. He said final distillation of my father's art, and he said a radical departure from the past. It's not necessarily in conflict, but he may be the only one who knows.
SIMON: Ron Rosenbaum, and his most recent book, "The Shakespeare Wars," is just out in paperback. Thank you so much.
Mr. ROSENBAUM: Thank you, Scott.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
From one literary giant to another.
We're joined now by our friend Will Grozier, a cab driver in London by profession but a great reader by passion. We talk to him from time to time to get his book recommendations.
Will, so good to be back with you.
Mr. WILL GROZIER (Cab Driver): Good morning, sir. How are you?
SIMON: I'm fine. Thanks.
Mr. GROZIER: It's been far too long.
SIMON: Far too long. And before we get to your books, what do you think of the - what do you think Dmitri Nabokov ought to do, since they're kind of asking for advice?
Mr. GROZIER: Keeping a very simple take on this. If Nabokov couldn't do it, then neither should we. The fundamental question is, was Nabokov capable of destroying this manuscript in his lifetime. Was he physically capable of that act? But, obviously, he was filled with doubts, and so my guess is that if we were to read this in its proper context, he's really saying this is too big a decision to me. I'll leave it to my heir and, obviously, Dmitri is now wrestling with the same problem.
SIMON: Wait, Will, what are you reading in these days?
Mr. GROZIER: Well, what I'm reading right now is - it's a book by a young man called Robert Macfarlane, called "The Wild Places," and it's an excursion into what remains of wilderness in the United Kingdom, which is very much as you can probably imagine. And he has a wonderful prose style. He has a wonderful turned-description and it's really about a journey that he makes across the west and the northern parts of the U.K....
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Mr. GROZIER: ...to discover what's left of the set of isle. And he talks about writers such as John Faust and a guy rejoices in the name of William Least-Heat Moon, and deriding the U.K. as being paved-over metropolis.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: Well.
Mr. GROZIER: And he sets out - and really in the journey to discover if there's any truth in this negativity or whether in fact, you know, the wonderful wilderness used to exist across the whole of this British Isles still exists, and he does. He finds pockets, and he organizes the book into a series of paragraphs that run something like island, valley, moor, forest, cape, summit. And so each piece of wilderness is given its own chapter. And for anyone that's seeking an escape from the winter urban blues, it's a wonderful book to take you in the journey into the countryside.
SIMON: Now, you never read more than just one book at a time, Will?
Mr. GROZIER: No. That's true. I was bogged down in a parallel race between T.C. Boyle's "Drop City…"
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Mr. GROZIER: …and an English author called Kate Mosse, spelled with an E. What she does in this book "Sepulchre." It essentially informed by the power of the terror and it's following two parallel stories, one in the late 1800s and a modern-day heroine, who happens to be American, so I think that would be very reader-friendly for you folks over there. It's not profound literature, but it's very well-told story and it's a great page turner.
SIMON: We got out some of the reviews. News of the World calls it essentially a meaty "Da Vinci Code."
Mr. GROZIER: Yeah. It was a little bit more to it than that because I know you have reservations over that particular oeuvre but…
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: Oeuvre.
Mr. GROZIER: Oeuvre.
SIMON: Yeah.
Mr. GROZIER: Oeuvre.
SIMON: Oeuvre. Thank you. Yeah.
Mr. GROZIER: Well, oeuvre I think is something that I have picked up from Ron Rosenbaum's rant. I just want to pick up on some of the back jacket notes.
SIMON: Yeah.
Mr. GROZIER: Sorry. I have to just go back to Robert Macfarlane.
SIMON: Oh, yes, "The Wild Places."
Mr. GROZIER: Our old friend Will Self…
SIMON: Yeah.
Mr. GROZIER: …has.
SIMON: Whose novel - a great novel about the London taxi cab driver…
Mr. GROZIER: Yeah. Exactly.
SIMON: …inherits the world. Yes.
Mr. GROZIER: Exactly. He was invited to pronounce. He says a beautifully modulated call from the wild that will ensorcell any urban prisoner wishing to break free. Now, you know, I know this man is a wordsmith par excellence, but ensorcell? I had to go to an online dictionary, and it's a derivative of old French, to bewitch.
SIMON: Oh. Ensorcell, okay.
Mr. GROZIER: E-N-S-O-R-C-E-L-L.
SIMON: All right. Thank you. Oh, ensorcell - because I'm going to start using that a lot.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: Now, you're also reading a T.C. Boyle book, right?
Mr. GROZIER: I have just completed T.C. Boyle's "Drop City." This was a publication in 2003 so it's not that old. But it was set back in the '70s in the heydays of the hippie communes in California.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Mr. GROZIER: And it's - the fundamentally the story of a hippie commune that implodes on itself as these things did. They then make the long trek to Alaska to escape prosecution by the Californian authorities. And it's the story of a fur trapper who is living in Alaska; the sparks that fly when these two diametrically opposed elements of society can't come into close contact.
SIMON: What did you find, as the French say, ensorcelling about this book?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GROZIER: Its construction of plot, his attention to detail, his observation of character. I've read one book by him before, "Talk Talk…"
SIMON: Yeah.
Mr. GROZIER: …and I thought this a writer worth reading again.
SIMON: Mm-hmm.
Mr. GROZIER: And I was not disappointed.
SIMON: Oh, Will, you are always a source of ensorcellment.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GROZIER: Ensorcell.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIMON: Nice to with you again.
Mr. GROZIER: And you, Scott. Hope to see you soon.
SIMON: I hope so. Will Grozier, from London, always a pleasure.
(Soundbite of music)
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. Have a good weekend. Ensorcell yourselves. I'm Scott Simon.
SCOTT SIMON, host:
London taxis used to be stolid, reliable and somber-shaded black. Nowadays, London cabs are blooming. More than a quarter of London's 25,000 taxis have been painted with bright advertisements, many of them for American tourist spots, including Las Vegas, Memphis, and the Great Lakes.
A number of the cabbies have been schooled to give a spiel at the wheel, too, about the place their cab has been painted to promote. Drivers are never going to keep their mouths shut. That's what London cabbies do, says the general manager of Taxi Media Advertising, we capitalize on that.
Now, some government regulators have expressed concern that letting the driver used that 15 minutes he'll have a passenger in the cab for sales pitch infringes on the passenger's right to silence. But so far, they say they've received no complaints.
With the dollar just about half as valuable as the pound these days, more Britons are flying over to scoop up bargains like clothing, shoes, iPods and, of course, U.S. banks.
Coming up, our book critic on wheels, London cabbie Will Grozier tells us what he's reading between stops in his commercial-free taxi.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
While that puzzle challenge is certainly food for thought, you probably need some food to think. How about some Iraqi pastry stuffed with cheese?
NPR's Daniel Zwerdling is here for our occasional segment on food and cooking and he's going to teach us how to make them.
First of all, hi Danny(ph).
DANIEL ZWERDLING: Hey, Liane.
HANSEN: What are these things called?
ZWERDLING: Cheese Sambouseks. And these are savory pastries, by the way. They're not sweet. They make really great party appetizers for the next time you're going to have a party for 200. And, actually, I'm not going to make them. We are going to bake them with a wonderful cookbook writer named Greg Patent.
Now, Greg has just put out a book called "Baker's Odyssey." And the reason I like this book is because it's filled with the recipes of immigrants and immigrants' children and immigrants' grandchildren whom he tracked out all across the country. It's sort of like a global tour through food: Mexico, Norway, South Africa.
HANSEN: Neat. But I have to ask you, you're an investigative reporter, why do you want to investigate the mysteries of these cheese pastries?
ZWERDLING: Food was one of my first passions when I came to NPR many, many, many, many, many years ago. I wrote a lot about farmers and agriculture and the food industry and cooking and chefs. So when I heard that you were having an occasional food segment here, on WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY, I thought this would be the place where I could say in baritone tones the sauce was sulking(ph).
(Soundbite of laughter)
ZWERDLING: Just kidding, of course. Although we did this cooking segment a little differently.
HANSEN: Yeah.
ZWERDLING: I mean, Greg Patent, the cookbook author, went to his kitchen, which is in Montana. Unfortunately, I stayed here in the studio. And so through the miracle of modern technology, he cooked and gave us a blow-by-blow description of what he was doing while we chatted.
Mr. GREG PATENT (Author, "A Baker's Odyssey"): I'm going to have to move a little bit because you have to indulge me, Danny.
ZWERDLING: And, Liane, before we dive in, talked about the cooking of immigrants. Listen to this, Greg Patent learned this recipe for cheese sambouseks from his mother who learned it from her mother who was an Iraqi Jew living in Iraq in the early 1900s. But Greg Patent's grandmother moved with her family to India and then to China and Greg grew up in Shanghai. And his granny, as he calls her, did most of the cooking.
Mr. PATENT: The apartment where we grew up was - it was one room and I mean one room. It was like about 12-by-15 feet. It had to be a bedroom, it had to be a dining room, it was kitchen. Granny slept on a cot, my parents slept on a couch that had a hide-a-bed in it, so that every morning everything was kind of folded up and put away. We had a small bathroom which did not have hot water, so anytime we needed to take bath we actually had to order it. So, it was a Chinese servant who would carry these big wooden buckets of hot water and he would carry them up three flights of stairs where our one-room apartment is located and the empty them into the tub.
ZWERDLING: And before we keep talking, I guess we shouldn't forget the recipe. And while you're flinging flour, you can, you know, I want to hear how you put this book together and all the research.
Mr. PATENT: The recipe is cheese sambouseks which are pastries filled with cheese. And it comes from my grandmother, granny, and this was a particular pastry she would make very frequently, and I would eat when I came home from school.
ZWERDLING: Okay. Take it away.
Mr. PATENT: Okay. We start off by putting flour and salt and baking powder and then you'll need to add some cold butter. And then I'm going to pulse until the butter is cut into very, very small pieces. And I'm going to pour in the water until the dough gathers into bowl.
ZWERDLING: I've always felt suspicious of food processors, do you really find it that the processor can make a flaky, tender dough?
Mr. PATENT: Yes. Danny, I make practically all of my pastries and doughs in a food processor.
ZWERDLING: Sacre bleu.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. PATENT: There. And then I'm going to divide the dough into 24 pieces and then let the dough rest for about 20 minutes.
ZWERDLING: Can you remember the time, you know, the moment - a moment when you were pattering in your kitchen or whatever, when you thought, aha, I have got to put together a cookbook with recipes from immigrants and their families like my own?
Mr. PATENT: Well, my last book was "Baking in America" where I told the story of America through about 200 years of baking. And that story really had to do with the way Americans adapt and change recipes and - because we always love new things. The flipside of "Baking in America" is learning recipes from immigrants who want to hold on to their homelands in a way that they can only really do by cooking and the food that they left behind.
ZWERDLING: And before we go on - I should be the evil taskmaster, what do we do next?
Mr. PATENT: The dough is all rested. And what I'm going to do now is I'm going shred the cheese for the filling. And while we're talking, Danny, I'm just going to tap the circles of dough out into four inch rounds. I'll put a piece of cheese on the lower half of each circle, fold the circles in half, pinch firmly to seal, make a little pleat and brush them with my egg wash and then get them into the oven.
ZWERDLING: But, Greg, can I interject for a moment. There are millions and millions of people in the United States who could give you recipes like this from immigrant parents or grandparents. I mean, how do you start tracking down the hundred-some recipes in the book?
Mr. PATENT: Well, any gathering that I would go to, I would ask, do you know somebody who does great Polish cooking? Do you know somebody who can teach me some Lebanese cooking? I met Maria Elena Flores(ph) who was the actual first person that contributed to my book. I met her through her daughter in Berkeley, California, when my son was getting his Ph.D. in linguistics.
And at his graduation ceremony, he introduced me to Belen Flores(ph) who was kind of the administrator of the graduate program in linguistics. And I said, I see that you're Mexican. Do you do any baking? And she said the person you really need to get in touch with is my mother. And so she basically offered me up her mother to teach me pumpkin empanadas and bunuelos and flour tortillas, which were all things that he mother made in Mexico and she continues to make 40 years later in her - the town that she lives in, near Sacramento.
And then I need a Polish baker. And my daughter-in-law and my son were living in Chicago. She told me she would do some checking. And it turns out that next door, her neighbor Liz McDonald(ph), had a housekeeper who is Polish. And so when Liz McDonald asked her Polish housekeeper if the housekeeper knew of anyone who could help me out with some Polish recipes, the housekeeper said he has to meet my mom Christina(ph). And Christina and I got together, I made a special trip up to Chicago, and we had two days of just solid total baking.
Oh, by the way, before we put them in the oven, there's one last step and that is just brush each pastry lightly with the egg wash.
Another thing, Danny, is that a lot of the recipes in the book were traditionally made by many women working together.
ZWERDLING: Ah.
Mr. PATENT: This was a way of socializing. It was a way of catching up on gossip. When I was up and Albany, New York, I worked with a group of Sicilian-American women and I worked in the kitchen with them for an entire weekend. And it was just fabulous just being involved in their conversation and trying to remember what they did last year. These are all recipes that these women had learned from their mothers who were the first-generation immigrants. And they didn't necessarily write everything down. They had a recipe template and they would say, now did I put in the sweet vermouth or the marsala into the cannoli dough last year? So, what these women told me was they said we're so glad you're writing this down because now we will know what to do next year when we make the recipe.
(Soundbite of laughter)
ZWERDLING: I love it.
Mr. PATENT: Okay. Well, now that the pastries, all the sambouseks have been brushed with the egg wash, it's time to put them in the oven.
ZWERDLING: And, Liane, that where Greg Patent and I very sadly said goodbye.
HANSEN: You didn't even get to taste them. You were 2,000 miles apart - no fair.
ZWERDLING: I know. But through the miracle of overnight shipping, Greg has delivered these sambouseks to our door.
Rebecca, could you come in please. Our producer, Rebecca Martinez, is a multitalented young woman and she…
HANSEN: Hey, Rebecca.
REBECCA MARTINEZ: Hi.
ZWERDLING: …heated this up in the oven.
MARTINEZ: Here you go.
ZWERDLING: It literally just come from (unintelligible) in Montana.
HANSEN: Oh, look at those. They look like little empanadas.
ZWERDLING: Every culture has stuffed savory pastries like this.
Here you take the first bite.
HANSEN: Really?
ZWERDLING: Maybe you'd like to describe the, you know, the taste.
HANSEN: Well, it's very flaky. The pastry is very, very, flaky and buttery, so when you put in your fingers, you know, it leaves this lovely grease on it and of course all the flakiness down into the - on to the plate. So you take bite.
ZWERDLING: Shaped like a moon.
HANSEN: It is shaped - half moon.
(Soundbite of chewing)
HANSEN: Mm-hmm.
(Soundbite of deep breath)
HANSEN: Mm-hmm.
ZWERDLING: Stuffed with cheddar.
HANSEN: Is that it? Mm-hmm.
ZWERDLING: And I think a mixture of cheese. These really are lovely.
HANSEN: I've been told by the mother not to talk with my mouth full, but, of course, I…
ZWERDLING: I won't tell her.
HANSEN: …have to avoid this.
So, what's your next assignment?
ZWERDLING: Off to Antarctica.
HANSEN: Really?
ZWERDLING: I'm going to see if the continent is really melting.
HANSEN: Oh, hard - another investigative report.
NPR's Daniel Zwerdling.
Hey, Daniel, thanks a lot for being a part of our food segment today. Have a great trip. And, boy, I really look forward to cooking with you in future segments.
ZWERDLING: Well, yeah, me too. Thanks.
HANSEN: You can find recipes for Iraqi sambouseks and Australian lamingtons at npr.org/books.
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News.
HANSEN: I'm Liane Hansen.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
And joining us is puzzlemaster Will Shortz.
Hi, Will.
WILL SHORTZ: Hi, Liane.
HANSEN: How are you?
SHORTZ: Doing fine. How about you?
HANSEN: Very well. Thanks. So you left us with a challenge that we haven't had in a long time, last week. It involved a spoonerism. First of all, define spoonerism and then remind us of the challenge.
SHORTZ: Well, a spoonerism is where you reverse the initial consonant sounds of a phrase or a word to make something different. And the example I gave was right lane. You spoonerize that and you get light rain. And I said, think of a familiar two-word phrase for an activity in a riding stable, spoonerize it and you'll get another familiar two-word phrase for something a stable worker handles. What is it?
HANSEN: Just to show you how long it's been, a lot of people had trouble with this because we only had about 100 entries from people who solved the puzzle. What was the answer, Will?
SHORTZ: Well, the activity in a riding stable is horse care. And something a stable worker handles is coarse hair.
HANSEN: Oh. Our randomly selected winner is Jeanne Colley from Morrow, Ohio.
Hi, Jeanne.
Ms. JEANNE COLLEY: Hi.
HANSEN: How long have you been playing this puzzle?
Ms. COLLEY: Since the beginning.
HANSEN: All right. Will reminded me last week that we've been doing this on the air 21 years and one week, right, Will?
SHORTZ: That's right.
HANSEN: Yeah. What did you get me?
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: A lapel pin.
SHORTZ: Another puzzle. Yeah.
HANSEN: Oh, thank you so much. Anyway, Jeanne, you've been waiting for so long. Are you ready?
Ms. COLLEY: I guess so.
HANSEN: Okay. Will, meet Jeanne. Let's play.
SHORTZ: All right, Jeanne. Every answer today is a familiar three-word phrase in the form blank the blank. I'll give you rhymes for the first and last words in the phrases. You tell me the phrases. For example, if I said lease the reels, you would say grease the wheels.
Ms. COLLEY: Okay.
SHORTZ: All right? Number one is swallow the reader.
Ms. COLLEY: Follow the leader.
SHORTZ: Follow the leader is right. Number two is throw the missile.
Ms. COLLEY: Blow the whistle.
SHORTZ: Blow the whistle. Good. Grace the station.
Ms. COLLEY: Liane, help.
HANSEN: No. I'm going through my alphabet.
Ms. COLLEY: Face the nation.
HANSEN: Good for you.
SHORTZ: Face the nation.
HANSEN: I don't get to see it. I'm on the radio.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SHORTZ: Ruffle the check.
Ms. COLLEY: Shuffle the deck.
HANSEN: Good.
SHORTZ: Shuffle the deck. Good. Bring the booze.
Ms. COLLEY: Sing the blues?
SHORTZ: Sing the blues. Shake the sponge.
Ms. COLLEY: Shake the sponge?
SHORTZ: Uh-huh.
Ms. COLLEY: Take the plunge.
SHORTZ: Take the plunge. Good. Churn the hopes.
Ms. COLLEY: Learn the ropes.
SHORTZ: Learn the ropes. Best the daughters. I think I've - off the top my head, I can think of only one rhyme for daughters.
Ms. COLLEY: Otters.
HANSEN: Yeah, me too.
SHORTZ: Oh.
HANSEN: No. There's two rhymes for…
(Soundbite of laughter)
SHORT: Maybe you…
HANSEN: Squatters.
Ms. COLLEY: Waters. Test the waters.
SHORTZ: Waters?
HANSEN: Waters. Test the waters.
SHORTZ: Test the waters.
HANSEN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: Excellent. Right. Try this one. Thrill the queens.
HANSEN: This is something you do when you tell a secret.
SHORTZ: Yeah, it's right.
Ms. COLLEY: When what?
HANSEN: When you tell a secret.
Ms. COLLEY: I'm stumped.
HANSEN: Spill the beans.
Ms. COLLEY: Spill the beans.
SHORTZ: Spills the beans. Good one, Liane.
HANSEN: I feel I should whisper it to you, Jeanne. Spill the beans.
SHORTZ: That's correct. Okay. Here's your next clue. Quit the throttle. Quit the throttle.
Ms. COLLEY: Quit the throttle.
SHORTZ: Quit, Q-U-I-T.
Ms. COLLEY: Hit the bottle?
SHORTZ: Hit the bottle. Good. Take the yank.
Ms. COLLEY: Walk - no, ain't it.
HANSEN: Yeah.
Ms. COLLEY: I just got the plank. Walk the plank but…
HANSEN: That works for me.
SHORTZ: No. But walk doesn't rhyme with take.
HANSEN: But I like it.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: Take the yank.
Ms. COLLEY: Take the…
HANSEN: Bank. Break the bank.
SHORTZ: Bake - break the bank.
Ms. COLLEY: Break…
HANSEN: Break the bank.
Ms. COLLEY: Good.
SHORTZ: Good one. Good one. Praise the spoof.
Ms. COLLEY: Praise the spoof? Raise the roof?
HANSEN: Yeah.
SHORTZ: Raise the roof is right. Mute the sleaze. If you're just gossiping or chatting with someone, this is what you…
Ms. COLLEY: Oh, shoot the breeze.
SHORTZ: shoot the breeze is right. And here is your last one. Cheat the jock. And if you are…
Ms. COLLEY: Beat the clock.
HANSEN: Yes.
SHORTZ: Beat the clock is correct. Nice job.
HANSEN: Kick. Kick. Oh, Jeanne, was it worth the wait?
Ms. COLLEY: Yes.
HANSEN: Okay.
Ms. COLLEY: Yes. I'm just happy to be here.
HANSEN: This was a lot of fun. Did you have fun?
Ms. COLLEY: Yes, I did.
HANSEN: Good. Good. Well, in addition to the fun, obviously, you know that you're going to get some things today. You're going to get the WEEKEND EDITION lapel pin, the 11th edition of "Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus," the "Scrabble Deluxe Edition" from Parker Brothers, "The Puzzlemaster Presents" from Random House Volume 2, Will Shortz' "Little Black Book of Sudoku," and "Black and White Book of Crosswords" from St. Martin's Press, and one of Will Shortz' "Puzzlemaster Decks of Riddles and Challenges" from Chronicle Books.
Jeanne, what member station do you listen to?
Ms. COLLEY: I'm a member of two great stations, WVXU in Cincinnati and WNKU in Northern Kentucky.
HANSEN: Jeanne Colley from Morrow, Ohio. Thank you so much for playing with us today and for all the support you give to your hometown stations.
Ms. COLLEY: It's a pleasure.
HANSEN: Okay.
Will, a challenge for everyone listening this week.
SHORTZ: Yes. It comes from listener Toby Gottfried of Santa Ana, California.
Take the three bird names, egret, crane and owl. Rearrange the letters to spell three other bird names. And I tell you they are all very common names.
So, again, egret, crane and owl. Rearrange the 13 letters to spell three other bird names. What birds are these?
HANSEN: Okay, don't be shy, don't be scared. When you have the answer, go to our Web site at npr.org/puzzle. Once again, that's npr.org/puzzle and click on the Submit Your Answer link. Only one entry per person, please. Our deadline is Thursday, 3 p.m. Eastern time. Please include a phone number where we can reach you at about that time and we'll call you if you're the winner, and you'll get to play puzzle on the air with the puzzle editor of the New York Times and WEEKEND EDITION'S puzzlemaster, Will Shortz.
Will, thanks a lot.
SHORTZ: Thanks, Liane.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen.
Think about this when you next use the Internet: You risk an encounter with other users who want to harass you.
Ms. JANE HITCHCOCK (President, Working to Halt Online Abuse): In January of 1997, they began posting controversial messages, saying that I was into, say, the masochistic sex and that I wanted to share fantasies anytime of the day or night, and then listed my home phone number and my home address. And it went from there.
HANSEN: That's Jane Hitchcock. Today, she's the president of Working to Halt Online Abuse, a group that helps cyber stalking victims. Her story begins in 1996, after a fake literary agency tried to con her online. Hitchcock tried to put a stop to the scam by warning other users. The fraudsters didn't appreciate her efforts and came after her, virtually and physically.
Ms. HITCHCOCK: It was just a nightmare because they started doing things to me offline. I work for the University of Maryland, and they tried to get me fired from there. I was followed in a parking lot at one of the campuses one night. It was frightening. They were - these people were just nasty about everything that they did to me, and I didn't know what they would do next. And they had me so paranoid at one point that - and especially after the time I was followed at the parking lot, that I would actually get under my car and check it and make sure there wasn't a bomb or anything or my tires haven't been punctured.
It was really frightening never knowing what was going to happen next and, you know, once I got over the fear, that's when I got very angry and, you know, making sure that if other victims came for help that we would be able to help them because there was nothing like that out there when it happened to me.
HANSEN: In the final chapter of this month series on cybercrime, we're going to examine the problem of cyber stalking. Jane Hitchcock's volunteer organization receives reports of about 75 cases of online harassment a week. A large number of the victims are women between 18 and 30.
Ms. HITCHCOCK: The average cyber stalker that we found is male. All of the female stalkers have been rising over the years, but they're usually white collar. They usually don't have a criminal record. But most of them do it because it gives them an ego boost, makes them feel more powerful thinking that they can harm somebody, whereas, I'm sure if you ask most of these people, if you've met your victim in person, would you have done that, and I know that most of them would say no. They're basically cowards at heart.
HANSEN: Law enforcement is beginning to understand how widespread cyber stalking is. Tim Wedge is a computer crime specialist at the National White Collar Crime Center. He provides training and technical assistance to law enforcement agencies across the country. This is his definition of the term cyber stalking.
Mr. TIM WEDGE (Computer Crime Specialist, National White Collar Crime Center): Using the Internet to find out where the person has moved to, find personal information on them to support their physical stalking, going into chat rooms and harassing the person, appropriating that person's online identity. There are just tons of things that could be online harassment. It's a very wide field of things. I think what really constitutes stalking is whether it's perceived as stalking.
HANSEN: Are there other ways the Internet has changed traditional stalking?
Mr. WEDGE: I think yes. One of the things - I think when we talk about online stalking or cyber stalking, you really lower the threshold for somebody to become a stalker. You know, back in the olden days, if you wanted to stalk somebody, you had to at least get up out of the house or pick up a phone and there's at least a risk that somebody would recognize your voice.
HANSEN: When you hold your training classes for law enforcement personnel, how do you prepare them to deal with these, sort of, cyber-stalking scenarios?
Mr. WEDGE: We do have several case scenarios in several of our classes that involve physical stalking with an electronic component as well as cyber stalking. And we actually have them go extract evidence sometimes from a suspect's computer from a victim's computer and sometimes even actually from the Internet. We do have a basic online technical skills class where they have to go on the Internet and find certain things and trace certain Internet activities to a street address and a phone number.
HANSEN: The ability to trace Internet activities proved useful for one California woman. Jane Hitchcock recalls the victim's story.
Ms. HITCHCOCK: She had men coming to her door saying that they had read online that she was into rape - home-invasion rape fantasies. And somebody have been posting as her and actually posted a floor plan of her apartment, how to get them pass the security alarm because she had one and just saying it was a game to her, supposedly. The message is retraced back to a man that she had met at a church function at her church and had asked her out and she had said no, and he didn't like her saying no.
HANSEN: The woman's harasser pleaded guilty to stalking and solicitation of sexual assault. He received a six-year prison sentence. But cyber stalking isn't limited to individual victims. Companies can be harassed too. Ron Teixeira, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance, explains corporate stalking.
Mr. RON TEIXEIRA (Executive Director, National Cyber Security Alliance): What happens is people who think they've been wrongfully terminated will actually take the information that they have, maybe their log-in information or account information and access to either secrets or even that network and could actually launch an attack or actually put a virus in the network to either destroy files, to cause mischief, to create damage as a way to get back at that company for a wrongful termination.
HANSEN: Disgruntled employees can use the Internet to spread a virus or crash a network, and it can inflict damage far beyond the confines of the company. Ron Teixeira's example is a case in Australia.
Mr. TEIXEIRA: There's a gentleman who's a software engineer who had information on a sewage plant's network and how to get in. He wasn't happy with the company that, you know, fired him. And so to get back at them what he did was he actually broke in through the Internet into the network to this Australian sewage plant and release raw sewage - tons of it - into the ocean. And so it's an extreme example of how, you know, it's not only to hurt the company but also to hurt others, the public.
HANSEN: So this is what Ron Teixeira suggests companies do if they've been attacked.
Mr. TEIXEIRA: One of the first things you need to do is to make sure you collect evidence. A lot of corporations do what they call stop the bleeding, and so they use their technicians to potentially just stop whatever is happening. They need to stop the bleeding but also preserve any evidence they have. The next thing is to make sure that they call law enforcement. And the third thing is to make sure again that you have plugged all the holes that may be left open, any sort of information or account information that person may have or ability to get back into the network.
HANSEN: Throughout the four weeks of our cyber crime series, a recurring question has surfaced: How can people in businesses protect themselves? Law enforcement and the legal system continue to gain ground, investigating and prosecuting cyber criminals, but Jane Hitchcock says the first line of defense against many cyber crimes is the individual.
Ms. HITCHCOCK: People tend to think there's more good out there than bad, and unfortunately, you have the bad people, you have the scam artists, you have, you know, the predators out there and you just have to not be so trusting.
HANSEN: You can hear more in our series about cyber crime at npr.org. Tomorrow on MORNING EDITION, NPR's FBI correspondent Dina Temple-Raston has the first in a series of reports about high-tech advances which will allow the FBI to reopen cold cases and solve new ones.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
(Soundbite of crowd chanting)
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): Thank you.
(Soundbite of crowd chanting)
Sen. OBAMA: Thank you.
HANSEN: Senator Barack Obama rocked South Carolina yesterday, taking 55 percent of the vote in the primary.
Sen. OBAMA: I did not travel around this state over the last year to see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina. I saw South Carolina.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
HANSEN: Senator Hillary Clinton was in distant second with 27 percent, and John Edwards came in with 18 percent.
Here's how South Carolinians reacted last night.
Unidentified Man #1: I think it's going to propel him to win the entire presidency. On Super Tuesday, he'll take most of the states. He'll close the gap between him and Clinton. And I think his speech today was the best speech I've ever heard him make. And I think if he keeps that message and just drives that home, he can win everything.
Unidentified Woman #1: Yes, I'm a little bit disappointed, obviously, but we still feel that Hillary is the one. She's in it for the long haul. We know next week there are 22 states that are going to be voting. I've seen her speak a number of times, and just am so impressed every time I do.
Unidentified Man #2: I think the media tries to make Barack the Jesse Jackson-type candidate, where he was just going to win the black vote and not take any percent of, like, white votes. And I think South Carolina voters actually spoke up tonight and said that, you know, they're against that type of politics. And Barack is a well-rounded candidate that can pick up white and black voters.
Unidentified Female #2: Well, I'm thinking I wish we could have come in second. But it's not over yet, not over yet. There's still the big Tuesday, February 5th, so never over until it's over.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
The Democratic turnout of more than half a million in South Carolina eclipsed the Republican turnout from a week ago by 100,000 votes. Senator Barack Obama secured his first win since the Iowa caucuses by claiming 80 percent of the African-American votes.
NPR's Audie Cornish has more on the primary results.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
AUDIE CORNISH: Six months ago, Senator Hillary Clinton was not only leading the polls in South Carolina, she was edging out Senator Barack Obama among African-American. But in the end, Obama got four black votes out of five, and they propelled him to an outright majority of the overall vote: 55 percent to Clinton's 27 and Edwards' 18.
Obama's big margin held among African-American women as well as men - women, such as Shirley Spears(ph) of Union, South Carolina, that says she thought the Illinois senator has a unifying campaign effort.
Ms. SHIRLEY SPEARS: So I left home, they have six coming out to your door to tell you to go vote and I don't (unintelligible). And I'm getting phone calls twice, telling to vote for Obama. I think he was a black and white thing, you know, they work together.
CORNISH: About two hours after the polls closed, Obama stood before a crowd that periodically bursts into chants of: Race doesn't matter. He told his supporters they were challenging the assumptions of identity politics.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): The assumption that Republicans won't cross over, the assumption that the wealthy care nothing for the poor and that the poor don't vote, the assumption the African-Americans can't support the white candidate, whites can't support the African-American candidate, blacks and Latinos come - cannot come together. We are here tonight to say that that is not the America we believe in.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
CORNISH: Obama referred several times to his win in Iowa and strong showing in New Hampshire, states with few minorities, repeatedly insisting this primary was not about race.
Sen. OBAMA: This election is about the past versus the future.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
Sen. OBAMA: It's about whether we settle for the same divisions and destructions and drama that passes for politics today or whether we reach for a politics of common sense and innovation, a politics of shared sacrifice and shared prosperity.
CORNISH: The blowout result kept a long week of fierce exchanges between the Obama and Clinton camps. Obama complained of the tone and tactics, not only of Hillary Clinton but of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who has said the Obama campaign has attacked both him and his wife personally. By Friday, both campaigns tried to tone things down by pulling negative radio ads off the air, but in that time Obama saw his support among white voters diminish. Yesterday, he got just 25 percent of the white vote the rest of which went about equally to Clinton and former senator, John Edwards.
Last night, Edwards vowed to push on despite finishing third in his native state, the only state he won in 2004.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): If you're one of the millions of Americans who have yet to cast your vote in this Democratic process, beginning on February 5 and moving beyond, your voice will be heard and we will be there with you every single step of the way.
CORNISH: By the time Edwards was talking about moving on, Senator Hillary Clinton already had. The lights worn out at local polling stations before she was on a plane to a Super Tuesday state. Speaking at a town meeting-style event in Nashville, Tennessee, she congratulated her rival but made it clear this was little more than an evening of the score at two big wins apiece.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): And I've always said that this contest was going to go for a long time as people have dropped out and has gotten just down to a couple of us, and February 5th has always been, for me, the key.
CORNISH: This was the last Democratic contest before Super Tuesday. Florida votes on Tuesday, but the result will not yield any delegates on the Democratic side. The National Party has stripped Florida of its delegates from moving its primary into January in violation of party rules, and the candidates have not campaigned in the state.
Audie Cornish, NPR News, Columbia, South Carolina.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
In Florida last night, John McCain's presidential campaign got a boost ahead of Tuesday's primary. He was endorsed by the state's Republican governor, Charlie Crist. That nod goes with another from Florida's Republican senator, Mel Martinez, a Cuban-American and a symbol of that group's strong ties to the GOP.
The Republican presidential candidates have been enjoying lots of Cuban coffee in Miami lately. But as NPR's Greg Allen reports this campaign season's strong competition for the Cuban American vote has left the community divided.
GREG ALLEN: For former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani right now, there are few places more important than Miami's Little Havana.
(Soundbite of music)
ALLEN: Twenty senior citizens dressed in white with red bandanas are dancing onstage at a community center in Little Havana. Two hundred more seniors are in the audience. Conversation is mostly in Spanish as they wait for the main event.
Unidentified Man #1: (Speaking in foreign language)
ALLEN: Giuliani has a lot riding on Florida, in fact almost everything. While former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Arizona Senator John McCain racked up wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina, Giuliani spent most of his time here in Florida. Fifty-seven delegates are up for grabs in Tuesday's primary, far more than any other Republican event so far. And it's expected that one of every eight Republican votes will be cast by a Cuban American.
To an interpreter, Giuliani talks about his immigrant grandparents and his close ties to the Cuban American community.
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York; Presidential Candidate): I feel very at home here.
Unidentified Man #2: (Speaking in foreign language)
Mr. GIULIANI: I feel very at home here because I've been in the Cuban American community for many, many years. I know it well.
Unidentified Man #2: (Speaking in foreign language)
ALLEN: The banner on stage says Florida is Rudy country, and the former mayor had a strong lead here for months. But now, polls show he slipped to third place behind McCain and Romney. And even among Cuban Americans, with whom he's long been popular, Giuliani is no longer the prohibitive favorite.
Across the street from where Giuliani's appearing Rupert Perez(ph) is drinking, what else, Cuban coffee outside Irwahi's Bakery(ph).
Mr. RUPERT PEREZ: I want to vote John McCain.
ALLEN: And why is that?
Mr. PEREZ: I think that he's going to rise(ph) in Washington and…
ALLEN: Mitt Romney has also made a strong bid for the Cuban American vote in Miami and has run a Spanish language ad featuring his son, Craig.
(Soundbite of a political ad)
Mr. CRAIG ROMNEY: (Speaking in foreign language)
ALLEN: Mike Huckabee has also downed his share of Cuban coffee and received endorsements from key Cuban American leaders. But on Friday, McCain topped that with an endorsement from Florida's highest-ranking Cuban American official, Senator Mel Martinez. Martinez delivered his endorsement just before McCain's speech to the influential Latin Builders Association.
One sign of the group's clout: McCain was actually the fourth GOP candidate to address them on Friday. He talked to the Builders Association about his tie to Cuban Americans, going back to the days when he was a Navy pilot ready to launch from the USS Enterprise during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): My friends, many years ago, I was committed to the freedom of the people of Cuba. I am just as committed today. You can count on me.
ALLEN: Political science professor at Florida International University Dario Moreno notes that for Cuban Americans, this array of choices is a departure. Since they embraced Ronald Reagan in 1980, they've always quickly united behind a Republican presidential candidate.
Professor DARIO MORENO (Political Science, Florida International University): Why you see this split? It's, one, it's the maturing of the community, that the community doesn't view itself as a monolith anymore, if it ever did. And also quite frankly, I think the vision in the Cuban American community kind of reflect a division among all Republicans.
ALLEN: Cuban Americans have long been one of Florida's most reliable Republican voting blocs, but Moreno says even that is beginning to change. Democrats have started to make inroads, and Moreno says one Democrat in particular is very popular in the Cuban American community - another New Yorker named Hillary Clinton.
Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Now, straight from the co-creator of TV's "Cold Case Files," a crime novel called "The Chicago Way" is Michael Harvey's first novel, a modern high-tech story about a private eye who investigates an eight-year-old case. The plot written in classic noir-prose style leads to murder and the mob.
Rick Kleffel from member station KUSP spoke with the author who, as a young man at a Chicago law firm, decided to change the direction of his career.
RICK KLEFFEL: Michael Harvey had enjoyed studying law. But after a couple of years at a law firm in Chicago, he found he didn't have a passion for it. He wanted to write fiction but decided to hedge his bets.
Mr. MICHAEL HARVEY (Author, "The Chicago Way"): I didn't feel at that point that, you know, 26 years old that I was just ready to write the great American novel and I'm probably still not ready to write the great American novel. But I felt like I wanted to write but I wanted to see more of the world as well. And the thought of being a journalist seem like a really great combination.
KLEFFEL: Harvey went back to school for a master's degree in journalism and landed a job working for CBS in Chicago. He went on to co-create "Cold Case Files," a crime documentary show for the Arts and Entertainment Network. But his success in the world of non-fiction television didn't stop him from writing fiction.
Mr. HARVEY: I had, well, 50 pages of - just like a lot of people, I had about 50 pages of this sitting in a drawer for about two years, the first six pages of "Chicago Way," roughly. And it was just sitting there. And I'd written it - I don't know why I wrote it. I just kind of wrote it on a whim. It was in my head and I just started writing it. I thought it would be kind of fun with this - I love this style and I was just kind of messing around, really.
KLEFFEL: His novel might have remained unfinished if he hadn't asked others to read those pages.
Mr. HARVEY: My mom was actually giving me a hard time. You know how moms could be. She's like, you know, what are you going to do with that thing? You know, you have 50 pages. Because she'd read it - you know, she was, like, it's good, so why don't you just go ahead and do it?
KLEFFEL: Harvey had similar response from Chicago-based writer and professor, Garnett Kilberg Cohen.
Mr. HARVEY: I sat down with her and she read the 50 pages and she's like, this is pretty good. Where is the rest? And I said, well, there is no rest. So she gave me two things. She gave me sort of an editorial focus. And she opened up her calendar book and gave me a deadline.
KLEFFEL: The deadline proved to be a helpful motivator.
Mr. HARVEY: And she said, okay, by the end of the summer, your book is going to be done. And that was a big moment because I was like, well, really, all I have to do is stay alive between now and the end of the summer. My book is going to be done. And as bizarre as that sounded, that was like really great to me. Like, okay, cool. And what it did was, I guess, it just quieted all the other voices in my head. And I just said, okay, you know, this is it. For three months or four months, I'm just going to do this.
KLEFFEL: Once the decision was made, Michael Harvey plowed ahead.
Mr. HARVEY: I was just writing. And that the pages begin to add up. The story kind of took hold in my mind. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't have an outline. I had some vague ideas of where I wanted to go but, really, the story just started to take hold in my mind as I wrote it.
KLEFFEL: Harvey's years as a journalist covering crime proved to be a valuable tool when crafting his novel "The Chicago Way."
Mr. HARVEY: There's an old saying you write what you know. And certainly, my experiences in "Cold Case Files" and all the documentary work that I've done - all of that stuff influenced this book, you know, dramatically, certainly in the atmospherics of the book. You know, I understand the rhythm of the language between cops and prosecutors. I sat down with killers and talked to them. I know how they work. I know how they think. I know how they talk.
KLEFFEL: Harvey found that the process of writing fiction changed the way he looked at the world around him. Everything became fodder for the novel.
Mr. HARVEY: A lot of this book I wrote in a coffee shop called Intelligencia, which is in the book. And, you know, I would look out the window and see people walk out - you're in the book, you know? And then boom. Then they go. I mean, it's really as simple as that sometimes.
KLEFFEL: Once he'd finished the book, Harvey still had to find a publisher.
Mr. HARVEY: I didn't know anybody in the business, really. I didn't know anyone in the book business. So I Googled - I started Googling agents and looking, doing some research. And I came across this guy named David Garnett(ph), who has Garnett Company(ph) in New York. And he happens to represent, among other people, John Grisham. Not that I ever thought he would be my agent. But for a first person to send it all to, I figured, why not s at the top? And this seemed like a really good fit. Plus, he represented the kind of thing that I was writing.
KLEFFEL: Garnett e-mailed Michael Harvey the same day he received the novel, accepted him as a client and was able to sell "The Chicago Way" quickly. Harvey has already completed a sequel. This time, he set and met his own deadline.
For NPR News, I'm Rick Kleffel.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
One more story to consider today. A 20,000-pound spy satellite has lost power and could plunge to Earth in late February or March. Federal officials say they have no control over the satellite, and they don't know where the debris might end up. The satellite is likely to burn up during reentry, but there's concern that it could contain hydrazine fuel, which may be hazardous to people on the ground. This isn't the first time a space craft has fallen out of the sky. In 1979, NASA's Skylab Space Station fell from orbit, and its debris dropped into the Indian Ocean. And more recently, in the year 2000, NASA maneuvered a satellite to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. This time around, officials are hoping for another water landing.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Kids tend to ignore the dangers of defying gravity in sleds. Hitting the snow hills at full speed is a winter blast for them. For some parents, the thrill has been replaced with worry.
WUWM Susan Bence reports.
Unidentified Woman: Go, Luis.
LUIS: Oh, man.
SUSAN BENCE: It's a clear cold late afternoon in Milwaukee. Two feet of well-packed snow blankets this popular neighborhood's sledding hill that everybody calls Dewey. Thirteen-year-old Henry Marx(ph) and his 9-year-old brother, Joseph, are squeezing in a few runs before the sun sets.
So listen, have you guys ever crashed into something?
Mr. HENRY MARX (Resident, Milwaukee): Oh, yeah. I almost went unconscious on a tree lately.
JOSEPH: Just today, I hit that tree.
Mr. MARX: And he almost went unconscious just today.
BENCE: Bridget Clementi coordinates the Injury Free Coalition for Kids in Milwaukee.
Mr. BRIDGET CLEMENTI (Coordinator, Injury Free Coalition for Kids): There are quite a few trees in this area. So I would have to say that maybe it doesn't make an A.
BENCE: Where would you put it?
Mr. CLEMENTU: Maybe about a C.
BENCE: Dr. Lynn Cimpello treats emergency patients at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Cimpello wanted to find out just how fast kids speed down the slopes, so she used a radar gun.
Dr. LYNN CIMPELLO (Emergency Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center): We recorded speeds of sledders(ph) going down various designated sledding hills. They were designated by our county parks and rec department as somewhat safe. Nineteen miles per hour was the average speed, with people going up to 25 miles per hour. Really, anybody who's travelling 25 miles an hour down a slope should probably wear a helmet.
BENCE: Back in Milwaukee, Licia Davy(ph) says she's taken her four kids sledding every winter for years. Her 8-year-old, Travis, is the youngest. Earlier this winter, Davis says she was on top of a designated sledding hill with her son. Travis has already taken a few great runs. So neither of them expected what happened next.
Ms. LICIA DAVY (Resident, Milwaukee): There was a big ramp that the older kids had built. He'd hit the ramp and his sled flew into the street. He went up in the air at least five feet and came directly down on his head.
BENCE: Davy says it was 17 hours later when Travis woke up in the hospital. While he doesn't remember anything about what happened on the hill, Davy says she'll never forget it and says, next time, her kids will wear lots of padding and helmets when sledding.
Across town, Henry and Joseph's mom, Mary Marx(ph), watches her son zoom down Dewey. She wants her kids to be able to enjoy that on-the-edge feeling of flying down the hill.
Ms. MARY MARX (Resident, Milwaukee): We all want this oh-so-regulated life that everything is safe. And it's not. My husband and I taught our kids how to bail off quickly. And you'll see the kids, they build jump and all kinds of things. I mean, sledding - it's joyful and it's fun.
BENCE: The Injury Free Coalition for Kids is launching a public awareness campaign to try to convince people like Mary to put helmets on their kids when they're barreling down snow-packed hills his winter.
For NPR News, I'm Susan Bence in Milwaukee.
HANSEN: This is NPR News.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
From NPR News, this is WEEKEND EDITION. I'm Liane Hansen.
Two hours after the polls closed in South Carolina last night, with nearly all the votes counted and his 2-to-1 victory assured, Senator Barack Obama took the stage before a wildly cheering crowd of supporters.
(Soundbite of speech)
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): Yes, we can.
Unidentified Group: Yes, we can.
Sen. OBAMA: Yes, we can change.
Unidentified Group: Yes, we can.
Sen. OBAMA: Yes, we can.
HANSEN: What followed was far from a typical election night victory speech. It was one of Barack Obama's most notable orations to date, easily the equal of his words after the Iowa caucuses or even the speech that launched his national career at the Democratic convention of 2004.
(Soundbite of speech)
Sen. OBAMA: The same message we had when we were up and when we were down…
(Soundbite of cheering)
Sen. OBAMA: …that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we will hope; and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and fear, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words: Yes, we can.
Unidentified Group: Yes, we can.
Sen. OBAMA: Thank you, South Carolina. I love you.
(Soundbite of cheering)
HANSEN: With us to talk about last night is NPR's news analyst Juan Williams. Thanks for coming in, Juan.
JUAN WILLIAMS: Good morning, Liane.
HANSEN: What stood out about this speech for you?
WILLIAMS: Well, I think it was the optimism and the sense of looking at the Clinton campaign in specific. He does not mention Hillary Clinton by name, but there is this sense in which he's talking about the Clintons as the kind of old-school pragmatism - people who say, no, you can't express hope and a sense of vision and hope to succeed in America, that you're going to be defeated by racial politics, you're going to be defeated by the generational divide, you're going to be defeated by cynicism and young people who don't actually turn out to vote. And here was Barack Obama saying yes, we can, and it became a refrain. It became kind of like, you know, the rallying cry of people who were finally sensing that there were other people in America who share their optimism and idealism. And it's so appealing on that level.
HANSEN: Did it make sense, do you think, for him to give a speech like this after, well, first of all, a week of what seemed to be racially polarized campaigning and then the vote?
WILLIAMS: Well, it makes sense in this regard. He's going forward and he's hoping that he can recapture that spirit. Right now, Liane, he has won victories in Iowa and South Carolina, literally one of the whitest states in the nation, one of the blackest states in the nation. And if he has any hope, it really comes down to people having a sense, as he put it in the speech, that you are not defeated by your doubts, by your fears, by the cynicism, but that you believe instead that there is a possibility of coming together. Yes, we can. You know, I don't want to sit here this morning and sound like I'm trying to give his speech again, but I thought it was a really tremendously positive and powerful speech.
HANSEN: Senator Obama got a big endorsement today and the New York Times editorial Caroline Kennedy has endorsed him.
WILLIAMS: And said that in her generation, she has never been touched by a politician the way that she has touched by Obama and that she heard from others that her father touched people in this way, and that she wants now a politician that might touch her children, and she sees that in Obama. An interesting note here: The New York Times earlier this week endorsed Hillary Clinton.
HANSEN: Senator Hillary Clinton came in second last night. She had 27 percent of the vote. How would you advise the Clintons to campaign against Barack Obama at this point?
WILLIAMS: She's got to continue asking hard questions about his take on the issues - where have you been, where have you stood, what's your experience. I think it's a winning ticket for her ultimately, especially as she goes into the big states. So, you know what, a lot of this is inspirational, but I'm the one who's the mechanic when your car breaks down. And if you really want to win, you got to go with me.
HANSEN: NPR's Juan Williams. Juan, thanks a lot.
WILLIAMS: You're welcome, Liane.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards finished a disappointing third in South Carolina, the state where he was born and where he scored an important primary victory in 2004. I spoke to him last night from his primary night headquarters in Columbia, South Carolina.
Welcome to the program, Senator.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): Thank you so much for having me.
HANSEN: You've insisted no matter how you finished in South Carolina you would continue your campaign. Does your third-place finish change your thinking at all?
Mr. EDWARDS: Not one bit. We actually made great progress this week. We came from much further behind to the place that we finished in this primary. I think it's the result of the debate. The debate went very well for me in the subsequent days after the debate when Senator Clinton, Senator Obama were spending a lot of energy attacking each other personally. And I rose above it and talked about jobs, health care, the war, things where people are interested in. And the second thing I would say is in the last two weeks, we've literally had the best online fundraising we've had in the entire campaign.
HANSEN: Where do you plan to focus your efforts between now and the large number of contests that would be happening on February 5th?
Mr. EDWARDS: Well, we'll hit as many places as possible. I know we're going to Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Missouri, California. I think we're going to Alabama. I mean, these are the places I can carry around in my head right now. We may go to other places, too. I'm sure we will.
HANSEN: All the way to California?
Mr. EDWARDS: Oh, yeah. We're - listen, we're - there's no long-term process, and there are three of us taking sizable chunks of the vote. It's very hard for anybody to consistently get 50 percent. And so I think what it means is a practical matter. This thing is going on - as I heard Congressman Clyburn say on television tonight, this thing is headed to the convention.
HANSEN: Many voters in several of the primary and caucus states have identified the economy as foremost in their minds as an issue, and you focus much of your campaign on the economy. But voters don't seem to be responding to your message. Are you concerned that your message isn't getting out?
Mr. EDWARDS: I know it's not getting out. I'm not concerned about it. I know it's not. Because in any place I get heard, it works. That's what we saw happen in South Carolina this week. We just ran out of time. I mean, I'm trying to drive this economic message in giving people a real chance through $200 million campaigns and people - and two candidates who absolutely blitz with national media. And it is difficult to get heard. I'm the - that's what makes me the underdog.
HANSEN: Should, Senator, it become unrealistic for you to become the nominee, do you envision another role for yourself in the campaign?
Mr. EDWARDS: You know, if you're doing this and you're doing it 16, 17 hours a day and you believe deeply in the calls of giving voice to people who don't have a voice, you don't spend any time thinking about that. You spend - this is what motivates me, this is what drives me every day. And the call has in no way dissipated or gone away. And so I'm in this for the long term.
HANSEN: Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards. Senator, thank you very much.
Mr. EDWARDS: Thanks for having me.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
In Jakarta, Indonesia today, former dictator Suharto died after a long illness. He was 86.
NPR's Michael Sullivan has more on the man who ruled Indonesia with an iron fist for 32 years before being ousted in 1998.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN: The year General Suharto seized power, Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, Malcolm X was assassinated, and the first U.S. combat troops landed in the Southeast Asian nation of Vietnam. Thirty-two years later, Suharto was forced to step down amid massive street protests over his alleged abuse of power, including corruption and human rights abuses on a massive scale.
In the year 2000, he was charged with embezzling more than $600 million during his rule, but Suharto never saw the inside of a courtroom. His lawyers and doctors saw to that, arguing that a series of strokes had left Suharto unable to stand trial.
Professor Dewi Fortuna Anwar of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.
Professor DEWI FORTUNA ANWAR (Deputy Chairman for Social Sciences and Humanities, Indonesian Institute of Sciences): In the short term, people will probably remember the negative impacts more. But in the long term, people will be more detach while still be very critical about the lack of civil liberties, the human rights abuses and the chaos that ended his rule.
SULLIVAN: In the beginning, Anwar says, Suharto deserved credit for many things.
Prof. ANWAR: Suharto has been very, very instrumental in bringing Indonesia from the rank of one of the least-developed countries into the rank of the developing country, a middle-level income country. He brought Indonesia into modern world.
SULLIVAN: Sidney Jones, senior Asia adviser for the International Crisis Group, agrees.
Ms. SIDNEY JONES (Senior Adviser, Asia Program, International Crisis Group): He actually did bring a lot of people out of poverty. He increased the education, substantially lowered the illiteracy rate, increased life expectancy in Indonesia, did a lot with family planning program. So on a number of counts, he actually did serve to improve the country substantially.
Many people said that had Suharto stay in power only for two terms, he will be remembered in a sweet memory of the people because he did great things.
SULLIVAN: Long-time Suharto watcher Ambassador Salim Said.
Ambassador SALIM SAID: I remember I was a young man at the time. I remember how our economy fastly improved because of the policy of Suharto. But then, the second part of Suharto, he really became personal ruler in which he enriched his family as well as his crony. That is the black part, the dark part of Suharto.
SULLIVAN: The dark stain of corruption, Said says, was only part of it. The human rights abuses were another - in Papua, in Aceh and in East Timor, among others. And many accused Suharto of unleashing one of the greatest mass killings of the 20th century - the deaths of more than half a million suspected Indonesian communists and ethnic Chinese between 1965 and '67 - human rights abuses that Salim Said says were largely ignored both at home and in the West.
Ambassador SAID: At that time, nobody talked about it. We didn't even know there were human rights at the time. For The west at that time, you can do everything as long as you are not pro-communist. There were some critics - more critic at that time, but I don't even remember there were any serious discussions about death.
SULLIVAN: Nor is there likely to be any now. And Suharto's critics, who wish to see him held accountable, have been thwarted. Again, Dewi Fortuna Anwar.
Prof. ANWAR: Personally, we'd have preferred that Suharto had stood trial a few years ago when he was still lucid. And then, after that, acknowledging mistake that he made and punishments be meted out. And then after that, the country would forgive him.
SULLIVAN: That chance has passed now that Suharto is gone.
Michael Sullivan, NPR News, Jakarta.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen.
As Republicans head into Tuesday's Florida primary, candidates are sparring over policy in Iraq. John McCain says his rival, Mitt Romney, wants a timetable for getting American troops out. Romney says that's untrue and wants McCain to apologize.
While Republicans trade jabs about troop withdrawal, the U.S. military surge is sending soldiers into parts of Iraq where they haven't operated much in the past. Some of these areas have become sanctuaries for insurgent groups.
NPR's Corey Flintoff has been embedded with a cavalry squadron north of Baghdad. He reports on the unit's effort to convince local people to fight al-Qaida.
COREY FLINTOFF: Danny Thomas(ph) is the alias of an interpreter who works for the 132 Cav, which is staging a big operation in this farm country in a bend of the Tigris River.
Mr. DANNY THOMAS (Interpreter): This area is named Beshigan(ph). This is a Dulaimi tribe, just Dulaimi tribe living here. The people, they are simple people. They want peace in this place or in this country. This is just 1 percent there are bad people.
FLINTOFF: That 1 percent, if indeed it is only 1 percent, includes a man called Abdul Qadir(ph). He's a shadowy figure to the Americans but well-known to the people of Beshigan. He's part of al-Qaida in Iraq, known as AQI. Just as importantly, he's the brother of Sheikh Abdul Wahab(ph), the local Dulaimi tribe leader.
Lieutenant Colonel BOB McCARTHY (U.S. Army): Sheik Wahab is clearly the guy in the middle. I mean, he freely admits that his brother is aligned with AQI.
FLINTOFF: Lieutenant Colonel Bob McCarthy knows Sheik Wahab well.
Lt. Col. McCARTHY: And he is a guy that is out there and responsible. When he says approve of a CLC for Beshigan. He has put his name on that line that says we're going to choose our own future.
FLINTOFF: CLC stands for concerned local citizens, the Army's name for the local self-defense forces that pays to resist al-Qaida. Colonel McCarthy's job is to kill the insurgents or drive them out and get Sheikh Wahab to set up a CLC. Sheik Wahab's job is to look out for the welfare of his village. He and the colonel discuss the problems over glasses of sweet tea. Speaking through Danny, the interpreter, he tells the colonel that he is willing to work with Americans.
Sheikh ABDUL WAHAB (Dulaimi Tribe Leader, Beshigan): (Through translator) And I am with them.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Sheikh WAHAB: (Through translator) We are friends. We help each other.
FLINTOFF: The sheikh is a quiet man in his mid-40s. He carries himself like a tribal chief. But he has the sun-browned face and rough hands of a farmer. The self-defense group would employ 50 of his tribesmen and bring more than $15,000 a month into the village in wages alone.
Captain Tony Keller(ph) works closely with Sheik Wahab and knows is concerns.
Captain TONY KELLER (132 Cavalry, U.S. Army): Maybe he understands the big picture, say, if I stand up a CLC, and when they end up getting 50 people killed - 50 men. Sheikh Wahab, you know, it's a thinking man's game.
FLINTOFF: In the weeks leading up to the 132 Cav's offensive in Beshigan, Sheikh Wahab had supplied Captain Keller with the names of 50 men he said would be reliable and interested in joining the self-defense unit.
Capt. KELLER: Then, when it's time, you know, the rubber meets the road, goes a lot harder to get the 50 names to commit.
FLINTOFF: The sheik is able to muster fewer than a dozen young men who are willing to take part. They're not exactly hardened men of the soil either, more like former school teachers and store clerks willing to put on the reflective road worker-style vest that make them seem like easy targets.
Later, at the house that holds Sheikh Wahab's sprawling extended family, Lieutenant Bob Schultz(ph) searches for photos that could help identify the sheik's brother.
Lieutenant BOB SCHULTZ (132 Cavalry, U.S. Army): Where are those pictures?
Mr. THOMAS: (Speaking in foreign language)
FLINTOFF: Sheikh Wahab flips through a dog-eared stack of photos, some quite old, while his little boy hands him more.
FLINTOFF: There is no photo of the brother as a grown man. But the sheikh pauses for a long time, fingering a tattered picture, black and white and turning brown with age.
It shows two curly-headed boys in clean white shirts. The older boy is clearly Wahab himself. The little boy is his brother, now a man who could one day come back to kill him. He holds out the photo. But it's of no value to the men who were searching for an al-Qaida leader. Lieutenant Schultz is ready to go and he wants the sheikh to come with him.
Lt. SCHULTZ: All right. Tell him he'll see his wife tomorrow. We'll take care of them tonight.
Mr. THOMAS: (Speaking in foreign language)
FLINTOFF: In the course of the night, Sheikh Wahab and Colonel McCarthy will come up with a new plan to recruit men from other tribes into the CLC. Colonel McCarthy.
Lt. Col. McCARTHY: That's actually better because it buys in each of the smaller tribes living in the area. Somehow, it's a collective effort. And no single tribe or no single household is standing alone when AQI comes back.
FLINTOFF: For his part, McCarthy says the 132 Cav will keep coming back, along with Iraqi army units to show that Sheikh Wahab has support and firepower behind him. For the sheikh, it's still a potentially deadly game when he's left with a lot to think about.
Corey Flintoff, NPR News.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
President Bush will deliver his last State of the Union Address tomorrow night amid tight security in the nation's capital. He will appear before a joint session of Congress at a time of economic instability - not only at home but around the world.
With us now to preview the president's speech, and to talk about his legacy, is presidential historian Michael Beschloss.
Welcome.
Mr. MICHAEL BESCHLOSS (Presidential Historian): Hi, Liane.
HANSEN: What do you expect to hear from the president at this moment in his presidency?
Mr. BESCHLOSS: Well, he knows two things. One is that this is probably almost the last time this many people will be paying attention to him because it's all now going to go to the presidential campaign and then, finally, to who is ever president next year. And the other thing is that this is his last chance, really, as president, in a big way, to appeal to history. So what we're probably going to hear is a version of his administration, which is intended to not only make current Americans but future historians think well of him. And also, in a political way, he is the head of a party - the Republicans - he'd like to see them win this year. You'll probably hear a few things that are designed to help them do that.
HANSEN: Is that what the country wants to hear?
Mr. BESCHLOSS: I think that will probably be proven, at least, this fall. But what they want to hear probably from him is that he gets it. If this is someone who shows that he knows that there are deep economic problems and that a lot of people in this country are very unsettled by some of the decisions he's made in foreign policy, I think that can only help.
HANSEN: How do you think he perceives himself, his administration, his own legacy?
Mr. BESCHLOSS: He is very much of the mind that he is going to be an example of the presidents in history who were very controversial and unpopular in their time but whom history has borne out. He has often used the example of Harry Truman, who went back to Missouri in 1954, poll rating is in the low 20s. Nowadays, most Americans, most people in my line of work, think of Truman as a great president because, with retrospect we think that he made the decisions that helped us to win the Cold War. I'm not arguing for George Bush's position, but he would argue that future generations of Americans will say that he made tough unpopular decisions that helped to win the war on terrorism and even the war in Iraq. I'm not saying that he's going to turn out to be right, but who knows?
HANSEN: If he is looking toward future generations, how might it affect plans he's going to make for his final year? I mean, he still has a year left.
Mr. BESCHLOSS: That's right. Well, one thing that presidents do in their last year is they begin to think about their legacy. But he is almost been defiant in saying I'm perfectly happy to be unpopular because I am so certain that I will be borne out by history. In many ways, that's a good thing because you don't want a president to be a captive of public opinion. But at the same time, it can sometimes lead him to ignore certain things the public is thinking.
HANSEN: What about internationally?
Mr. BESCHLOSS: That's something that he would argue that, in the long run, you know, foreign countries will say thank God George Bush drew the line against terrorism in 2001 and followed that strategy. And this is the fascinating difference between history and current events. You can argue that one-rounder, flat in real-time. Thirty years from now, we will know how it all turned out. We'll be able to have a definitive judgment.
HANSEN: So he basically is saying, this is what I've done, I've finished. I think I did a good job. Thanks a lot. See you?
Mr. BESCHLOSS: I think that but with a few little tweaks that say don't think of this as unsuccessful presidency. Think of this as a presidency that could be the prelude to another Republican term. Like every president, I guarantee you, he is desperate to have a successor elected who is a Republican.
HANSEN: Michael Beschloss, you have written about many presidents over the years. A daunting task, I might add. But how are you going to write about Bush's presidency as a historian? Have you already given any thought to it?
Mr. BESCHLOSS: Well, it would probably have to be in about 30 years, and I hope I'm still around and writing by then. And particularly, when you have a president who is this controversial, because what you want to do as a historian is to wait until a president really passes from politics into history, where you could look at it not so much through the political lens of the emotions that all of us feel right now, but look at it later on with some dispassion and also knowing how the story turned out. We will know how the war in Iraq ended, we will know what the state of the war on terrorism is in 30 years, whether it's ended or not. That will help us much more clearly to deal with this president.
HANSEN: When you listen to the speech, what would surprise you?
Mr. BESCHLOSS: What would surprise me would be if this is a president who basically says public opinion has moved against me, at least as far as the polls say, and therefore I'm going to make big concessions to that by moving to the center domestically, you know, maybe doing things in the world that are very different from the first seven years. This is not a president I would predict we would see that happen with.
HANSEN: Presidential historian Michael Beschloss.
Thanks a lot.
Mr. BESCHLOSS: Thanks, Liane.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Now, here's NPR's senior news analyst Daniel Schorr with an historical view of State of the Union addresses.
DANIEL SCHORR: From time-to-time, it says in Article II of the Constitution, the president shall give to Congress information of the state of the union. So in 1790, President George Washington addressed Congress in New York, which was the temporary capital. And so an institution was born, giving the president a megaphone to trumpet his accomplishments and proclaim his new objectives.
The message has evolved over the years. President Jefferson didn't like it to look like the British speech from the throne, and so he didn't appear in person. That became the tradition until 1913, when President Wilson returned to the practice of appearing in person before a joint session of Congress.
Some of the best remembered lines in history came from State of the Union addresses. It was where James Monroe spilled out what became known as a Monroe Doctrine, warning Europe to stay out his hemisphere. It was where Lincoln first proposed to emancipating the slaves. It was where Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed the four freedoms: freedom of speech and of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. It was where President Johnson talked of creating a great society and where he launched the war on poverty. And not to be forgotten, it was where the current President Bush denounced Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an axis of evil.
The delivery of the message changed with changing technology. Calvin Coolidge in 1923 was the first to broadcast a speech by radio and President Truman was first to do it on television. President Johnson was the first to deliver the address during a primetime evening hours instead of at noon. So now, President Bush, initiating his final year with his popularity on the low end, mindful of his legacy amid the war and hard times at home.
A lame-duck State of the Union address is a challenge to a speech writer at best. There's been no advance word of any abroad new initiatives in the Bush State of the Union. And with uncertainty no matter how far the economic downturn will go, it will be difficult to offer encouraging words about the economy.
But, as in the past, the shot in their arms will intone the president of the United States. The president will be well received by Vice President Dick Cheney and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the members will applaud, well, many of them, anyhow.
This is Daniel Schorr.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
Marine biologists met in Washington this past week to launch the international year of the reef. Two new reports suggest that world's underwater rainforests need help.
NPR's John Nielsen has more.
JOHN NIELSEN: Since the 1980s, coral reefs in Jamaica have been wounded by manmade problems like pollution and over fishing. But in the summer of 2005, a different threat arrived when freakishly warm waters triggered a so-called mass bleaching event that turned more than 90 percent of Jamaica's reefs into underwater ghost towns.
Hensly Henry(ph), a reef expert with the government of Jamaica, remembers diving in and seeing no signs of life.
Mr. HENSLY HENRY (Reef Expert): More like in shock. You know, in an ordinary dive, you swim around and you go looking of stuff. On this dive, it was pretty much like standing up with your mouth open, looking at something and going what happened(ph).
NIELSEN: Stories like that one were all too common at the first official meeting at the International Coral Reef Initiative. It's one of several Year of the Reef projects and it's sponsored jointly by the Bush administration and the government of Mexico. One thing this initiative wants to do is draw attention to coral bleaching which could become a lot more common under global warming.
Mark Eakin is with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Dr. MARK EAKIN (Director, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration): The problem with coral bleaching is one that's been getting worst. It's continuing to get worst now and we can only expect to continue to get worst in the near future.
NIELSEN: Scientists like Eakin help prepare two new reports that seem to highlight the troubles facing coral reefs. One predicts that severe coral bleaching in the Caribbean could be an annual event by the end of the century, and the other looks at threats to deep water coral reefs that aren't necessarily hurt by warming surface waters.
But Eakin says climate change is expected to make the ocean more acidic which make it harder for all corals to grow, and he's sure that climate change is coming.
Dr. EAKIN: From the global perspective that all these satellites provides, we've been able to see this change around the world and it's a frightening change.
NIELSEN: The Year of the Reef is designed to help devise new ways for countries to deal with these changes.
Australian reef expert Clive Wilkinson says a good first step would be for Western countries to start helping poorer countries start enforcing so-called paper reef protection zones.
Dr. CLIVE WILKINSON (Reef Ecologist): A lot of countries have marine-protected areas. You can find them on a map, but you won't find any evidence of them out in the field.
NIELSEN: Experts like Wilkinson say the U.S. has been both a leader and a lagger in the effort to protect the world's coral reefs. Several years ago, the Bush administration set the standard for coral reef preserves when it created one of the world's largest marine reserves in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, but at the same time, Wilkinson and others say the White House has resisted efforts to require reductions in global warming gases that help to put the rifts at risk.
John Nielsen, NPR News, Washington.
HANSEN: And this is NPR News.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Liane Hansen.
Writing about war experiences and then sharing your work in a group setting can help heal psychological wounds. That's what National Book Award winner Maxine Hong Kingston discovered when she brought together a group of veterans years ago. She has edited and published a collection of their writings called "Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace."
NPR's John McChesney has this story.
(Soundbite of drums)
JOHN McCHESNEY: At a small church in Berkeley, the group's percussionist warm up the audience for a public reading. Bob Joust(ph), a tall, lanky, stooped man with salt and pepper hair takes the stage to read one of his poems, "On Point," about a man who takes the lead position on a reconnaissance patrol in Vietnam. The soldier no longer feels much and doesn't care if he's killed.
Mr. BOB JOUST (War Veteran): On point you can feel fear and a threat of death accelerate him. He's been scarred and scared and numb for months, but on point he can really feel these people behind him would defend on him. And he's good, and he cares or he doesn't know them well. He guesses it's love, and walks out on that narrow road and he's alive for one more night.
(Soundbite of applause)
McCHESNEY: Joust was in the infantry in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. When he came home, he buried himself in work to forget what he'd seen.
Mr. JOUST: It took me over 20 years to come to the point of pain where I need to really do something about it.
McCHESNEY: He's been in Kingston's group for several years now.
Mr. JOE: Writing is a healing - part of the healing process for me. And I hope of a place where I can share with other people and help them to come to the realization that speaking about what they do, writing about what their experience was can help to come to point of healing.
McCHESNEY: Shawn McClain Brown(ph) was a Marine in the First Gulf War. Here, he reads from his prose poem "Spindrift." It's about a soldier named Garret(ph) cleaning a rifle in which the gun nearly becomes a character.
Mr. SHAWN McCLAIN BROWN (War Veteran): Firing any distance greater than 500 yards require compensation for the force of gravity on a spinning bullet known as spindrift. But Garret wouldn't need to compensate - not at this range.
McCHESNEY: As the poem progresses, we begin to realize this is a meditation on suicide.
Mr. BROWN: The bar was clear and clean. He reassembled the rifle, pulled back the charging handle and bolt, and released. The bullet shot forward in the chamber. The action was smooth.
McCHESNEY: Then, Garret reflects back on a time when he and his father tracked a fox through the snow to her den.
Mr. BROWN: His father gave the order. Garret raised the rifle. And the last thing he remembered after he squeezed the trigger was the fox's clear, yellow eyes looking at him. She never blinked.
McCHESNEY: Brown says the piece is based partly on his personal experience.
Mr. BROWN: I witnessed a fellow Marine in the Gulf commit suicide.
McCHESNEY: Brown says he was severely depressed and thought he might harm himself. He wrote to Maxine Hong Kingston after hearing about her work with veterans and she invited him to join the group.
Mr. BROWN: And I came. And that was just the best thing that ever happened to me.
McCHESNEY: Brown says the group literally saved his life.
Maxine Hong Kingston's two brothers served in Vietnam. She says that war had a profound effect on her life. And then, her house burned down in the big Oakland fire of 1991, incinerating a nearly finished manuscript. It was a warlike experience, she says, and her flow of words stopped.
Then, she met a Buddhist monk who was holding reconciliation sessions between veterans from both sides of the Vietnamese war and was inspired to start her own group.
Ms. MAXINE HONG KINGSTON (Founder, Veterans' Writing Group): What I wanted was a community of writers around me and they would be people who had been through war. And, so, then, we were all writing our war stories with a hope that one could go through war and arrive at peace.
McCHESNEY: Since its founding, over 500 writers have participated. Kingston has made Buddhist meditation part of the group's exercises. Some veterans become angry when they first joined because of what they perceive as pacifist attitudes.
Ms. KINGSTON: There's an explosion that happens and there - person shout and acts out and argues with people and swears and then leaves the room, say, goodbye I'm out of here.
McCHESNEY: But they, almost always comeback, Kingston says.
Mr. ANDREW CARROLL (Editor, "Operation Homecoming"): When I first heard about Maxine's group, I was very skeptical of these programs, not in their worth but that anyone really would even show up.
McCHESNEY: Andrew Carroll edited "Operation Homecoming," an anthology of letters and journals by veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The National Endowment for the Arts funded writers to hold writing workshops at military instillations. Carroll ran a workshop at Fort Bragg, and he was astounded when 150 troops showed up.
Mr. CARROLL: I think there's no question, we need these sorts of creative writing workshops going on all across the country. Nothing struck me more in talking with the troops of Fort Bragg. When I asked them why are you all here at this workshop is, along with the fact they find it cathartic, so many of them said I want the next guy to understand what I went through so here she won't feel that they're alone.
McCHESNEY: Andrew Carroll is hopeful that more groups, like Maxine Hong Kingston's, will find the money, energy and talent to come together in the near future.
John McChesney, NPR News, San Francisco.
LIANE HANSEN, host:
When the dark clouds of World War I began to gather over Europe, in America, the golden age of children's literature was coming to an end. Between 1865 and 1914, some of the best known juvenile characters had been introduced - Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March. Their stories became classics and sold very well at the time.
Perhaps because of the turmoil over there, people needed optimism. Perhaps because of the new industrial age, people wanted stories set in Utopian small towns where horses and carriages outnumbered cars. Perhaps because of the sales potential, Eleanor H. Porter's publisher asked her to write a cheerful book.
When "Pollyanna" was published in 1913, it was on the adult best-seller list. Today, the name of the novel's cheerful heroine still echoes in press conferences from Washington to Baghdad.
Lieutenant Colonel STAN COERR (Marine Corps Reserve): No one is as much of a Pollyanna as some who say everything is going well in Baghdad. No one actually believes that.
Unidentified Man #2: And so I think he can speak language in a way that says, without sounding a Pollyanna, we can see this thing through if we make this kind of reform.
Mr. SEAN O'KEEFE (Administrator, NASA): There is no one-trick pony at this. It is not something it happens simply because I send out a memo. I'm not a Pollyanna on that point at all.
HANSEN: Today, as part of NPR's In Character series, we are going to study "Pollyanna" and try to figure out how a beacon of optimism turned into an empty bubble head.
In Eleanor Porter's novel, Pollyanna is a poor minister's daughter, now orphaned, who goes to live with her wealthy uptight aunt who dominates a small town. Whenever Pollyanna encounters an obstacle, she plays what she calls the glad game.
This is from the 2003 masterpiece theater production.
(Soundbite of theater production, "Pollyanna")
Unidentified Woman #1: (As Pollyanna) Father told me it.
Unidentified Woman #2: (As character) What is it?
Unidentified Woman #1: (As Pollyanna) It started when I wanted a doll. And father (unintelligible) people. But he came out, it's just some crutches.
Unidentified Woman #2: (As character) Crutches? Does he know?
Unidentified Woman #1: (As Pollyanna) And the game is to find something to be glad about in everything.
Unidentified Woman #2: (As character) How can you be glad about getting crutches if you want is a doll?
Unidentified Woman #1: (As Pollyanna) Uh-huh, you're glad because you don't need them. I couldn't see it at first. Father had to tell me. I've played it ever since.
HANSEN: Jerry Griswold is a professor of children's literature at San Diego State University. He wrote a history called "Audacious Kids." He says "Pollyanna" came from the same mold as other novels of the golden age.
Professor JERRY GRISWOLD (Children's Literature, San Diego State University): In many respects, it fits perfectly with, for example, "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" and "Little Women," and the girl's tradition. It has a reputation, like "Pollyanna," being a sentimental novel but you really see a young child who's cunning and optimistic. But I think the other thing you see is that this repeating story of the time period that they're orphans, that they're being taken in by a sclerotic and unhappy people. And by having that child in their mitts, that hard-hearted person's heart is melted by this evangelical child.
HANSEN: By 1946, millions of copies of "Pollyanna" had been sold. Nationwide, glad clubs have formed. The novel was printed in 11 languages, produced as a Broadway play and made into several movies, including a silent one starring Mary Pickford. "Pollyanna" also entered the dictionary as a noun. Merriam Webster's definition of the term is a person of irrepressible optimism and a tendency to find good in everything. However, the American Heritage Dictionary's definition reads: A foolishly or blindly optimistic person. "Pollyanna" had fallen out of favor.
Prof. GRISWOLD: I think there's always been a sort of alternation in American cultural life that we see on everyday basis. That is when someone says something sort of upbeat and optimistic, the antidote or the next sort of reply that comes conversationally is, oh, kept real. I think what happened was maybe at this time in America, Americans needed that kind of optimism, that kind of positivity. But after a few years, it began to grow wearisome. In fact, there's a famous cartoon in the New Yorker about a - shows a little girl underneath a car. She's just been struck by a car. And making fun of "Pollyanna," the caption is, oh, I'm so glad it was a limousine.
HANSEN: Although the book's reputation was that of saccharin story about an empty-headed optimist, in 1960, Pollyanna was revived in a big budget Technicolor movie. This is Walt Disney's definition of "Pollyanna."
(Soundbite of movie, "Pollyanna")
Unidentified Man #1: (As character) It means somebody who is so everlastingly optimistic and sunny and cheerful that you can hardly stand it.
HANSEN: "Pollyanna" introduced British actress Hayley Mills to American audiences.
(Soundbite of movie, "Pollyanna")
Unidentified Woman #3: (As character) You know why I hate Sunday? Because it means the starting of another week.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Unidentified Man #2: (As character) Me too.
Ms. HALEY MILLS (Actor): (As Pollyanna) That's when you can play the glad game.
Unidentified Woman #3: (As character) Here it comes, Miss-Goody-Too-Shoes is going to find something about Sunday to be glad about.
Unidentified Woman #4: (As character) Oh lay off, (unintelligible)
Ms. MILLS: (As Pollyanna) Well, there's always something.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. MILLS: (As Pollyanna) You'd glad because…
Unidentified Woman #3: (As character) Well, because what?
Ms. MILLS: (As Pollyanna) Because it will be six whole days before Sunday comes around again, huh?
(Soundbite of laughter)
HANSEN: Hayley Mills made "Pollyanna" when she was 13. She read Eleanor Porter's book when she was 12.
Ms. MILLS: I think Pollyanna is - she's all children, really, before they turn into adults. She's still somehow free of conditioning. She comes into this time that is controlled and run by her aunt, Polly Harrington. You know, she's a bit of a tyrant. She's a bit of a dictator. She even dictates to the church what's going to be served in the sermons. And this child comes in from a completely different world. And it's her originality as a human being that inspires and transforms that community. I think that that's what they've lost. They rediscover their intrinsic joy, and love, and connectedness with life to her. She just is like a mirror up to them.
I don't quite understand, well, I do to a certain sense the way that "Pollyanna" has become this kind of little Miss-Goody-Too-Shoes awful saccharin image of a person. I think she's a normal child.
HANSEN: Shortly after "Pollyanna" became a box-office hit and Hayley Mills received a miniature Oscar, Eleanor Porter's novel went out of print in the United States. But in 1969, two researchers wrote an article called "The Pollyanna Hypothesis." Margaret Matlin, a psychologist at SUNY Geneseo, co-wrote a 1979 book called "The Pollyanna Principle" based on the hypothesis.
Dr. MARGARET MATLIN (Psychologist, SUNY Geneseo): And this focused specifically on how people use positive words more often than negative words in the language. One of the things that is most relevant to "The Pollyanna Hypothesis" comes from the frequency of positive words in various languages. If you look at some of the specific counts in literature, for instance, the Bible has many more positive words than it has negative words, but that even applies to James Joyce and William Blake. I don't think anyone would have called either of them a "Pollyanna."
HANSEN: Why do you think "Pollyanna" became a negative? To be called a Pollyanna was…
Dr. MATLIN: Yes.
HANSEN: …a pejorative.
Dr. MATLIN: Mm-hmm, exactly. I think it's that uncritical optimism. A person who's a Pollyanna according to our current usage is always looking on the bright side and thinking that things will look up, things will get better, and in many cases that's not the case.
I imagine, for instance, many people whom many of us know are saying, well, I'm sure this war is not very pleasant right now in Iraq but things are going to get better. That's a problem that I think we need to deal with, and obviously "Pollyanna" didn't have any kinds of concerns of that nature but if you're simply uncritically optimistic, it is not useful.
HANSEN: It is useful to remember that Pollyanna was different from some of the other juvenile characters created at the time. Her friends were grown ups. There is only one other character in the book her same age. The themes of unrequited love, despair and poverty were adult ones. "Pollyanna" also had a universal appeal. Although her father was a minister and her message to rejoice comes from the Bible, gladness itself did not require faith nor analysis. Happiness simply was not dead.
If a new film version of "Pollyanna" were to be release today, how do you think it would fair?
Dr. MATLIN: I think it would fair wonderfully well because the things that we've just been talking about are perennial. Look at "Forrest Gump." You know, he expected the best and got it.
Prof. GRISWOLD: Oh, that's terribly clever, because, really, what "Pollyanna" is "Forrest Gump" are full figures.
HANSEN: Children's literature Professor Jerry Griswold.
Prof. GRISWOLD: If you just look back at your own childhood, do you remember those moments when you were able to, like, manipulate these huge people called adults in one - and maybe your parents? So there's whole sort of notion that you can, you know, act like Lucille Ball with these big people, these grown ups and finally get your way, shows you that there's this great connection, I think, between the full figure and the child.
HANSEN: Do you think Eleanor Porter became aware of the criticism of her character, that kind of bubble headed optimism?
Prof. GRISWOLD: Her position was she said I've been made to suffer because of "Pollyanna." She says if I was denying that there was any pain or wrongness in the world, she said that that really wasn't what she was doing in "Pollyanna." She was just saying that given a choice, she would rather meet the world in a sort of upbeat and cheerful way rather than in some other way.
HANSEN: The novel "Pollyanna" is back in print in the United States and still sells modestly. Eleanor Porter's archives are kept at Dartmouth University. Hayley Mills is living and working in New York City. And to see the Utopian main street of a small American town where Pollyanna and other golden children still spread sunshine, you have to go to Disney World.
There's more on our character study on our Website npr.org. NPR's In Character series continues tomorrow on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED with Scarlett O'Hara.
What great American inspired you? Nominate your favorite on our In Character blog, we might put your suggestion on the radio go to npr.org/incharacter.
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. Still smiling, I'm Liane Hansen.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
NPR's Jon Hamilton has the story.
JON HAMILTON: In the Maldives, you can climb a small palm tree and be higher than the highest point of land.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER)
HAMILTON: These islands burst through the surface of the ocean thousands of years ago when a chain of underwater volcanoes erupted. They've been subsiding ever since. But the very tops, now capped with coral sand, remain above water.
(SOUNDBITE OF A TV AD)
U: In the remote Indian Ocean, lies a paradise that is called Maldives islands.
HAMILTON: For most of their history, Maldivians lived off of fishing, but now there's tourism.
(SOUNDBITE OF A TV AD)
U: These are islands that are bathed in sunshine and washed with pristine blue waters.
HAMILTON: Unfortunately, those waters are threatening to wash away the entire country. And that's what President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom has spent the past couple of decades talking about, almost nonstop.
INSKEEP: I stand before you as a representative of an endangered people.
HAMILTON: That's Gayoom addressing the United Nations Earth Summit way back in 1992.
INSKEEP: We are told that as a result of global warming and sea-level rise, my country, the Maldives, may sometime during the next century, disappear from the face of the Earth.
HAMILTON: It was a dramatic claim at a time when few people had even heard of climate change. Now scientists agree that the Earth is getting warmer and polar ice is melting.
(SOUNDBITE OF WATER)
HAMILTON: This water has to go somewhere.
HAMILTON: Azeez Abdul Azeez Hakeem runs a marine research lab on the island of Vabbinfaru.
HAMILTON: I'm sure that some of this water would come into the Indian Ocean also, and there's no way that we can prevent this water coming into the Indian Ocean, into the Maldives.
HAMILTON: Azeez says floods are nothing new to the islanders. The 2004 tsunami pretty much submerged the Maldives for several minutes. In 1987, tidal surges flooded the capital, causing millions of dollars in damage. And Azeez says things are only going to get worse.
HAMILTON: We have to survive. We have to find a way to prevent water, sea water coming into the island.
HAMILTON: But how? President Gayoom tried political solutions. The Maldives was the first country to sign the Kyoto protocol to fight global warming. But that hasn't done much yet to slow down sea-level rise. So Gayoom, who's ruled the Maldives for 30 years now, has been experimenting with a more hands-on approach, starting with a project near his presidential palace.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAMMERING)
HAMILTON: Here in the capital of Male, the entire island is surrounded by this massive concrete seawall. And for years, people have been repairing and reinforcing this wall to keep the ocean out.
HAMILTON: Gayoom got the Japanese government to pay for the wall after the floods of 1987. It cost about $60 million, and it did reduce the vulnerability of Male, which is only a mile long but houses a third of the country's population. But the wall also makes Male the least attractive of the Maldives' 200 inhabited islands. So Gayoom - whose power here lets him do pretty much anything he wants - is now trying something a lot more ambitious just across the lagoon.
U: (Speaking in foreign language)
HAMILTON: You catch a ferry from a part of Male where motorcycles clog the narrow streets and fishermen gut their morning catch on the sidewalk.
U: (Speaking in foreign language)
HAMILTON: A few minutes later, you arrive in a brand new world - Hulhumale.
U: (Speaking in foreign language)
HAMILTON: It's an artificial island built by engineers, not volcanoes. You step up onto this island. The streets are straight and wide. There's a new hospital, new schools, new government buildings, new apartments and a brand new mosque, all several feet higher than the rest of the Maldives. Tamal Hussein(ph) is one of the workers who helped create this flood-resistant island. At the moment he's fishing off a small pier.
HAMILTON: (Speaking in foreign language)
HAMILTON: These priorities come as no surprise to Mohammed Chaid of the Hulhumale Development Corporation, which was set up by the government to build and settle the new island.
HAMILTON: So yes, the higher elevation of the land is to address the sea-level rise, but the primary factor is to create a city to ease the congestion in Male.
HAMILTON: Abdulla Naseer is from the Ministry of Fisheries.
HAMILTON: That is an example of how we can adapt to future changes, you know. But then, of course, it involves a lot of costs as well.
HAMILTON: The Maldivian government has spent 20 years telling developed nations that they are causing climate change and that they must help pay for solutions, like taller islands. Hulhumale is only half-finished, and Gayoom wants to raise portions of several other islands. He was fundraising again just a few weeks ago at the U.N.'s climate change meeting in Bali.
INSKEEP: Over half of our islands are eroding at an alarming rate. In some cases, island communities have had to be relocated to safer islands. Without immediate action, the long-term habitation of our tiny islands is in serious doubt.
HAMILTON: Jon Hamilton, NPR News.
INSKEEP: You can see how global warming may affect coastlines around the world in an animation at npr.org/climate connections. There you can also get the latest on climate change from National Geographic magazine.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Tonight at the U.S. Capitol, the sergeant-at-arms will introduce the president somewhat like this.
WILSON LIVINGOOD: Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
INSKEEP: It's a ritual - happens every year. The president is giving his final State of the Union address. It's a moment for any president to reflect on his accomplishments, as President Clinton did in his last State of the Union in 2000.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON'S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)
INSKEEP: Never before has our nation enjoyed at once, so much prosperity and social progress with so little internal crisis and so few external threats.
INSKEEP: It's also a moment when any president will look ahead to what he still hopes to accomplish in the final year. We have been talking about State of the Union speeches with two speechwriters - one who helped with President Clinton's final address, and one who helped to write President Reagan's last State of the Union address, in 1988.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN'S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)
INSKEEP: If anyone expects just a proud recitation of the accomplishments of my administration, I say let's leave that to history, we're not finished yet.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
INSKEEP: We begin with Clark Judge. He helped to write the final State of the Union address for one of the masters at delivering them - Ronald Reagan. This was 1988. Welcome to the program.
M: Good to be with you, Steve.
INSKEEP: Okay, now be honest. It's late in Ronald Reagan's presidency, he has given so many speeches, was it hard to come up with anything new to say at that point?
M: No. I mean, The State of the Union address is very much an address of the great themes of a presidency together with the moment that he's giving it. Reagan is the second president with two terms who's looking at the end of his term when he gives the State of the Union address and is not allowed by law to run again. Only Eisenhower had been in that position before that. This was the time, as it was with Eisenhower and as it was with Clinton after Reagan, of laying out an agenda, an aggressive agenda for the year, moving for a big finish. In all three cases, you have a speech about the future, not about the past.
INSKEEP: Since you mentioned Clinton, let's bring in someone who helped Bill Clinton with his final State of the Union address. Terry Edmonds was President Clinton's chief speechwriter eight years ago. Welcome to the program.
M: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: Now we just heard Clark Judge talking about a president who wanted to do something in his final year, which Bill Clinton, of course, wanted to do many things as well. Was it hard, though, to catch the public's attention at that moment?
M: No. I think it was never hard for Bill Clinton to catch the public's attention because he was such a rock star president.
INSKEEP: Although, come on, this is a moment when his wife is making headlines. She's on her way to the Senate. The Monica Lewinsky thing has come and gone, the vice president's running for president, there's a guy named George W. Bush making headlines in 2000. Isn't that a hard time for a president to break through quite as much?
M: Well...
INSKEEP: Clark Judge is shaking his head. Now he...
M: No, no.
INSKEEP: Go ahead, Terry.
M: It really was not, and we had really three main objectives for that speech. The first, you know, because we had been in office for seven years, we wanted to reflect on the then and now. You know, where we had come from since 1992 and how we got there. And the second part of it was to put forth proposals for the unfinished business of the coming year. Things like the solvency of Social Security and Medicare, prescription drug benefit - those kinds of things. And third, you know, he wanted to lay out some big challenges that the country was facing, not only in the coming year, but in the next decade.
INSKEEP: Can each of you recall for me a particular subject on which you struggle to get just the right phraseology for that last State of the Union speech to get the message out the way you want it?
M: Wow, not really. I think Clark will agree with me, that State of the Unions are the most clunky product for speechwriters. Because what we're trying to do - sometimes they turn into laundry lists of proposals or of things that the president wants to accomplish in the next year. And it's very hard to sort of give it a central theme. The problem is not so much how to frame it, but what to leave in and what to take out.
M: Yeah, what I would say is that some of this is nature of the beast, that is the State of the Union address - what Terry just described. Some of it's the president, too. President Clinton's is a very long list of initiatives and yet an ambitious program for the last year. President Reagan's is far more thematic, but then President Reagan himself was far more thematic. Freedom in the world, revival of the economy. Those are two big themes, and he - revival of the economy through free markets - and you see that running all through that address, that final address. Strength of civil society. These are all discussions that formed the broad themes of President Reagan's last State of the Union address, as they did of his term.
INSKEEP: One last question, gentlemen, if I might. It's commonly said that second terms of presidents have not worked out very well, that the last year may be the worst of all. Did either of you have very much fun working in the final year of an administration?
M: Speaking for myself, it was great. We had a lot of things in the foreign realm come together. And then of course, we had the campaign, which we won. We also had the confirmation of the president's last nominee for the Supreme Court, Anthony Kennedy. So it was a terrific year. It was...
INSKEEP: Even though it had been a tough second term.
M: Oh, sure. But that's - you don't go into these things because you want an easy time. You know, you love the fight. If you don't love the fight, you don't go in. And you - by the way, just speaking about Terry and his colleagues, you like your opponents, too. I mean, you couldn't have the fun with - if they weren't around.
M: Right. It was a great year for us, too, you know. It sort of culminated all the things that we had been trying to do. We left the country in great shape. And then the president was looking forward to some of the big challenges - health care and shoring up Social Security and Medicare, and those things. And he knew that he - we wouldn't be able to perhaps solve all those problems in the last year, but he wanted to at least set the marker - get the country focused on it.
INSKEEP: Thanks gentlemen.
M: Thank you.
M: Thank you.
INSKEEP: It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
NPR's Dina Temple-Raston begins a series of reports on high-tech forensics with a visit to the FBI crime lab in Virginia.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROBOTIC ARM)
DINA TEMPLE: Hear that? That's the sound of a small revolution.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROBOTIC ARM)
TEMPLE: That kind of database would have taken years to put together if human technicians had to do it. The revolution is this robot. It can do 500 samples a day, many more than a human ever could.
TEMPLE: We still use people to find the DNA...
TEMPLE: Jennifer Luttman runs the convicted offender program at the lab.
TEMPLE: ...to look for the stains, to test if it's blood, to test if it's semen, to cut out the stains, because they need to see how much is there, and that's all based on - on experience.
TEMPLE: But Luttman says there are parts of the DNA database-building process that can be done more efficiently by machines. And that's new.
TEMPLE: Once, though, the DNA is extracted in a purified form, we then are starting to do all of the casework aspects on robotics, because that then is a very consistent process. And so we're putting robots into place to allow the humans to concentrate on the areas that they - are most needed.
TEMPLE: Mitchell Holland is a member of the forensic science department at Penn State. He thinks juries are raising the bar on evidence.
TEMPLE: The data is suggesting that interviews of jurors are such that they're saying if they'd only done DNA I would have convicted, when they probably had enough in the case to already convict.
TEMPLE: Expectations are rising because the science is getting better. Not so long ago, forensic experts needed a sample the size of a nickel for processing. Now it just needs to be the size of a pin prick. So cases that were unsolvable just a decade ago are now ripe for reopening.
(SOUNDBITE OF CENTRIFUGES)
TEMPLE: Alice Eisenberg is the head of the FBI's Mitochondrial DNA Analysis Lab, where experts can find clues and evidence that's been sitting around for years.
TEMPLE: Cold cases are our meat and potatoes, if you will. They typically include bones that have been found several years ago and have never been identified as belonging to a certain individual, or it can also include hair samples that have been stored with other evidence for many years and no one ever was able to perform DNA analysis on them until we came along with our mitochondrial DNA technology.
TEMPLE: The newest wrinkle in that technology is a rather innocuous-looking machine called a mass spectrometer. The actual machine is not very big. It's about the length of a kitchen counter and a little over 5 feet tall. Inside, you can see little robotic arms moving trays around a series of short towers.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINE)
TEMPLE: Les McCurdy is a forensic examiner in the DNA analysis lab. He likes to use a coin analogy.
TEMPLE: You have pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. Each one of those coins will have a different weight. So if I have a pocketful of 10 coins and I put that on a very sensitive scale, we can whittle down that number and determine how many pennies, how many nickels, how many dimes and how many quarters. It's the same type of thing that we're doing with mitochondrial DNA with this instrument.
TEMPLE: Essentially, the machine helps them shake out and identify several individuals from a DNA mixture. The robot picks up a plate, reads a bar code on its side, cleans the DNA and then using magnetic beads separates it out so it can be put in the mass spectrometer for weighing. A computer then records the various weights and DNA combinations.
TEMPLE: I got to tell you, as a scientist, this is very exciting. Not only is it technologically advanced and it's cutting edge, but it's also going to have a tremendous application. And I think it's really going to open up all new types of evidence to us, all new types of cases, and I think it's going to have a huge impact on how we can assist different investigations.
TEMPLE: This new mass spectrometer technology is still in its infancy, but it is part of a larger program to expand the use of DNA, and even people outside the FBI, like Penn State's Mitchell Holland, see new uses for DNA.
TEMPLE: The power of DNA is what is beginning to emerge in that by using it just like a fingerprint, you can actually get a match to a previously convicted offender, and that's really exciting.
TEMPLE: Dina Temple-Raston, NPR News, Washington.
INSKEEP: Later today, Dina Temple-Raston looks at audio forensics. Just how do they know those Osama bin Laden tapes are real?
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Florida voters go to the polls tomorrow to choose the winner of the biggest prize so far in the Republican presidential contest. Hundreds of thousands of Floridians have already voted, but candidates are working hard to get the votes that remain, as NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY: Mitt Romney's stock has been rising in Florida, even as the Dow Jones Index has been falling. During a visit to a flight simulator factory outside Tampa this weekend, Romney touted his background as a successful business consultant and private equity investor as just what's needed to rev up the sputtering U.S. economy.
M: Now, I've spent my life in the real economy. I know what it's like to have a job, and I think it's helpful to have a president who knows what it's like to work in the real economy.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)
HORSLEY: That message appealed to Christine Thompson(ph), who has already checked her early voting ballot for Romney. She came to the factory just to see him in person.
M: I'm a - been a small business owner. I know what it's like to hire people and to have to fire people and to deal with the taxes and to know somebody who's been in business, who knows how to run a business. I trust that more than a politician.
HORSLEY: Florida voters are getting plenty of personal attention from politicians, but there is no way to shake hands with all 18 million people in the state. So Romney has also been pushing his economic message with television ads in both English and Spanish.
(SOUNDBITE OF AD)
U: (Spanish spoken)
HORSLEY: According to the Nielsen Company, Romney had run nearly 4,500 TV ads in Florida through last week. That's almost 10 times as many ads as John McCain has run here. But the Arizona senator has picked up a string of high-profile endorsements in Florida, including Republican Governor Charlie Crist, who called McCain the best man for the job.
G: He is a leader on economic issues, and safety and security, which are so important to the people of my state and the people of our country at this critical time in our nation's history.
HORSLEY: Despite all the recent focus on the economy, McCain has tried to change the subject. He hosted a roundtable discussion in Tampa on national security, an issue where he feels he has the edge.
INSKEEP: I know that we are facing difficult economic times. And I still believe the transcendent challenge of the 21st century is that of radical Islamic extremism.
HORSLEY: McCain talked, as he often does, about the many active-duty military and veterans in Florida. His experience is reassuring to Terry Varvle(ph), who wore a Vietnam veterans pin on his lapel.
M: I feel safe with someone that knows the world theater, and not the one where they say on-the-job trained. And that's what I feel like with the other candidates.
HORSLEY: Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani offered his own capsule summary of the race in a speech to Sarasota Republicans. He says Romney is attacking McCain for a shortage of economic know-how, while McCain is attacking Romney for a lack of national security experience.
M: The choice is clear. Floridians deserve someone who's been tested and proven in both areas - and that's me.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
HORSLEY: Political analyst Susan MacManus of the University of South Florida says much of their focus will be along Interstate 4, between Tampa and Orlando, an area that often tips the balance between the social conservatives of Florida's northern panhandle and more moderate voters.
INSKEEP: Look at all these candidates and where they are in Florida today, and they're clumped right here in that I-4 corridor that we lovingly say in our state is the highway to heaven for politicians.
HORSLEY: Scott Horsley, NPR News, Tampa.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Many presidential candidates speak of bringing Americans together, yet their campaigns will seek us out group by group. And this week on MORNING EDITION we'll report on some of the voter groups the candidates want. We begin with a group that is important in tomorrow's Florida primary, a group the candidates often address in Spanish.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL ADS)
U: (Spanish spoken)
U: (Spanish spoken)
U: (Spanish spoken)
INSKEEP: Welcome to the program.
M: Thanks for having me.
INSKEEP: And we'll mention that you're in Miami, waiting for the Florida primary. Let's talk about Latinos demographically first. How or what are some ways that they are different from the general population?
M: Folks here in Florida have been subjected to a battery of Spanish-language advertising that focuses on those two issues - the economy and family.
INSKEEP: Do Latinos vote as frequently as other Americans do?
M: No, no, no. Latinos vote less than other Americans, a little higher among those who are firstborn and recently naturalized, and a little lower when you're talking about folks who are second or third generation and U.S.-born.
INSKEEP: Which raises the next question. Is this partly because Latinos are younger than the general population?
M: Clearly, the most defining characteristic of the Latino community in the United States is its youth. And young people across the board generally vote in lower rates than older folks.
INSKEEP: Would you lay out for us some differences, demographically speaking, between older Latinos and this vast population of younger Latinos, and what they seem to want out of politics and politicians?
M: When you're talking 35 and above, if you're Latino and you're a Democrat, the degree of support for Hillary Clinton is overwhelming. It can go above 60 percent. Part of that is name recognition. Part of that is the association by Hispanics with a perception of economic prosperity under the Clinton administration. And lastly, there is a strong sense that among Latino voters, that they're voting for a co-presidency. And that is appealing to that group of voters.
INSKEEP: And if there's support for a Republican, it would be under the - it will be among the oldest Latinos, most likely.
M: And I think this time around, the only candidate who has that same sort of potential for rapport from Latino Republicans of every country of origin would be John McCain, because precisely of his stance on immigration.
INSKEEP: Luis Clemens of Candidato USA. Thanks very much.
M: Thanks for having me.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Welcome to the program.
M: Thank you.
INSKEEP: What are some of the things that Suharto allegedly did?
M: Well, he has a long record of completely curtailing basic freedoms of association, expression, assembly and so on, basic civil rights. He has been accused of at least encouraging and endorsing, if not actually ordering, the killings of suspected members of the Indonesian Communist Party, and there are an estimated - maybe 500,000 people who were killed in the purges that followed an attempted coup. He's accused of authorizing and indeed supporting the invasion of East Timor in 1975, which led to, by some estimates, over 100,000 deaths. And...
INSKEEP: There were massacres in East Timor going years after that invasion until the country was given its independence, right?
M: And I think that there are a range of other kinds of human rights violations that Suharto is accused of, but I also think it's important to keep in balance that there are many people who see his period of rule as a time of stability and prosperity.
INSKEEP: Maybe that leads to our next question. How did he manage to die outside of prison?
M: He was seen as someone who was effectively untouchable, and it's not completely clear why, except that many of the people who took positions of power following his resignation were people who had grown up under the new order, as his tenure is called, and people who benefited from his rule. So there was a reluctance to actually see him brought to account.
INSKEEP: Are there people in Indonesia who remember him fondly the way that people in the former Soviet Union remember Soviet times fondly now?
M: So among ordinary people on the street there actually is a lot of remembrance of that as one of the good times, the period when they were doing well, better than the present.
INSKEEP: You mentioned non-Muslims. This is a majority Muslim country, one of the largest countries in the world. Did he leave behind a basically stable country?
M: So as Indonesia struggles with democracy now, they're having to deal with that legacy on a day-to-day basis, just very weak institutions and no tradition of democratic rule.
INSKEEP: Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group. Thanks very much.
M: You're welcome.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
NPR's Ina Jaffe reports on how three leading Democrats are campaigning leading up to the big votes on February 5th.
INA JAFFE: Barack Obama began his Sunday morning at the Harvest Cathedral in Macon, Georgia. His sermon text was the story of the Good Samaritan from the book of Luke, though it sounded a lot like the message he preaches every day.
INSKEEP: I am my brother's keeper. I am my sister's keeper. And that our destinies are bound up together.
JAFFE: A central focus of Obama's campaign is his appeal to independent voters, and Georgia is one of the February 5th states that allows independents to participate in the primaries. They can vote in the Alabama primaries, too, so that's where Obama headed next, to the State University at Birmingham, where he looked out on a sea of 9,000 cheering faces.
INSKEEP: Wow. Look at this crowd.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)
INSKEEP: Look at this crowd.
JAFFE: Obama said his landslide in South Carolina was no fluke. He got 80 percent of the African-American vote. He also won overwhelmingly among young voters, though he was backed by just 25 percent of whites. All in all, he said, his victory proved the skeptics in the media were wrong.
INSKEEP: We are going to write a new chapter in the South. We're going to write a new chapter in American history.
JAFFE: There is also a primary in Tennessee on February 5th, and after Hillary Clinton's defeat in South Carolina, that's where she went Sunday morning, beginning a new day at the Monumental Baptist Church in Memphis.
INSKEEP: Oh, this is the day the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
JAFFE: It's a controversial move because she and all the other Democratic candidates signed a pledge not to campaign in Florida after it moved its primary up into January. As punishment for this, the national party has stripped Florida of all its delegates. But Clinton said she'll try to get that changed.
INSKEEP: Florida will once again be a battleground state, and I want the voters in Florida to know that I hear them. Hundreds of thousands of Floridians have already voted. So clearly they are taking this seriously. They believe their voices are going to be heard and should be counted, and I agree with them.
JAFFE: As for John Edwards, he probably isn't in a party mood. He finished third in South Carolina, his birth state, where he won the primary four years ago. On NPR's WEEKEND EDITION, he told Liane Hansen he still plans to campaign in a whole lot of places.
M: We're going to Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Missouri, California. I think we're going to Alabama. I mean, these are the places I can carry around in my head right now. We may go to other places, too. I'm sure we will. Listen, this is a long-term process.
JAFFE: Ina Jaffe, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
He gives that speech again tonight, and NPR's Don Gonyea has this review.
DON GONYEA: The new president reached out to both parties, seeking what would be a signature accomplishment of his first term - school reforms known as No Child Left Behind.
INSKEEP: Measuring is the only way to know whether all our children are learning, and I want to know because I refuse to leave any child behind in America.
GONYEA: But one year later, the nation had been jarred and altered by the events of September 11th. The president that year was all about resolve.
INSKEEP: As we gather tonight, our nation is at war, our economy is in recession, and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers. Yet the state of our union has never been stronger.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
GONYEA: By the time of that speech, the Taliban government of Afghanistan had been overthrown by the U.S. military, and on that night the president made it known he was broadening his definition of the terrorist threat, putting Iraq, Iran and North Korea on notice with a provocative and now legendary turn of phrase.
INSKEEP: States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger.
GONYEA: By the following year, the president was focused on Iraq. The invasion would begin in weeks, and Mr. Bush used the speech to state his case, including this line.
INSKEEP: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
GONYEA: Delivering his next State of the Union a year later, President Bush shifted his rhetoric on Iraq. Prior to the war, he'd warned repeatedly and with certainty that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But with the U.S. military having found no WMDs, the president spoke instead of, quote, "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities."
R: remaking Social Security.
INSKEEP: As we fix Social Security, we also have the responsibility to make the system a better deal for younger workers. And the best way to reach that goal is through voluntary personal retirement accounts.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
GONYEA: In 2006, Mr. Bush's State of the Union made energy policy a focal point and made this startling statement for a former oilman.
INSKEEP: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.
GONYEA: Don Gonyea, NPR News, Washington.
INSKEEP: And you can hear President Bush's State of the Union speech tonight at 9 Eastern on many NPR stations and at npr.org, where we will also be blogging and fact-checking the president's remarks.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Asian markets tumbled today and European markets are also down. It seems the big cut in interest rates by the U.S. Federal Reserve is not enough to calm uncertainty about the U.S. economy. In China, the main stock index fell more than 7 percent; leading indices in Japan and Hong Kong both fell about 4 percent.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Apparently the young employee manipulated the computer systems, as Eleanor Beardsley reports.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY: Some analysts suspect Societe Generale's massive sell-off last week, as it tried to close out of some $70 billion of fraudulent positions, may have actually contributed to the worldwide market slide, a stock plummet that pushed the Federal Reserve to lower U.S. interest rates.
U: (Speaking French)
BEARDSLEY: This morning in a radio interview, Societe Generale's CEO Daniel Bouton insisted that Kerviel worked alone.
M: (Through translator) We have the computer traces of all his operations. We looked at everyone working in his sector. Operations comparable to his were also verified. The security system of the bank was broken by this man, and it is not feasible that anyone else was involved.
BEARDSLEY: But trader John Malbaux(ph), who works at Paris-based investment bank Global Equity, is skeptical. He says even a computer genius could not perpetrate such massive fraud alone.
M: Normally it's not possible you can hide 50 billion euro of position without anybody knowing about such a position. I'm very doubtful and I'm like a lot of guys here, a lot of analysts, about the guy taking the position alone.
BEARDSLEY: Sammy Kabage(ph) is a former French derivatives trader who wrote a book titled "The Art of Trading." He believes that it is exactly the French trading house model that may have allowed Kerviel to get away with it alone.
M: (Through translator) There is an unbalanced hierarchy between the back and front offices in France that doesn't exist in Anglo-Saxon trading houses. The front office has too much power here and the back office not enough. There are times when the back office doesn't even have access to all the information. And the employees in the back offices aren't traders by profession, and this is a problem.
BEARDSLEY: For NPR News, I'm Eleanor Beardsley in Paris.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
NPR's Elaine Korry reports from one of those high-priced markets, San Francisco.
ELAINE KORRY: David Crane, an adviser to Governor Schwarzenegger on economic growth, says access to cheaper credit is exactly what California needs.
M: It's huge; it's really the single largest issue affecting our economy.
KORRY: According to Crane, this proposed change alone could boost economic growth throughout the state.
M: Housing pervades everything because to the extent that people can't finance their homes or they're paying more for their credit than they would otherwise pay, they spend less at the local store, the local dry cleaner, or you know, the local restaurant.
KORRY: Elaine Korry, NPR News, San Francisco.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Our last word in business today is executive sacrifice, because Countrywide has announced that Mr. Mozilo will forfeit the platinum parachute. It may have something to do with lawmakers' complaints given that so many of his customers face foreclosure. Mozilo faces lawmakers on Capitol Hill soon. But now he can tell them he's not only giving up the cash, he will also give up continued use of the company jet.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Good morning, sir.
R: Good morning. How are you?
INSKEEP: What is one thing besides an economic stimulus that you can imagine Democrats working with the president on in the coming year?
R: Democrats are adamant - obviously, we see some reforms that are needed. But more importantly, we pushed hard up against his veto for 10 million children's health care. And he said no to that.
INSKEEP: Although that sounds like another issue where you're not going to be likely to be able to...
R: I don't know, Steve. I think that, you know, election years also have - given it's his final year and his desire - election years have an ability to focus the mind on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue.
INSKEEP: Given the economic conditions, does the president have a chance to extend his tax cuts from 2001?
R: No.
INSKEEP: It will not come up for a vote in the House?
R: Listen. He left us and left this country with $4 trillion in new debt after being handed off a surplus. But we were adamant in negotiations about - on the stimulus, that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts would not be even discussed as being made permanent. And that's something the next president and the next Congress will decide.
INSKEEP: Do you see any chance that Congress could pass a law on another of the president's signature issues, immigration in 2008?
R: So therefore, I think the right thing to do is take a look at what are the pieces that can work in a more salable - given you also have a presidential and congressional election - I think something that is you take the pieces out that are most salable, that you can get done. But the notion that you're going to put together a comprehensive reform given three attempts have failed, I think, it's a little - there's a lot of headwind to that.
INSKEEP: Approach it like health care then, get little pieces passed?
R: As I said - I think 10 million children is a big deal. But exactly, look at what's doable and attack it.
INSKEEP: Are you disappointed that Democrats spent so much time on Iraq in 2007, since the last State of the Union speech, and didn't get that passed and perhaps didn't get other things passed that you'd like?
R: From day one, we went into that war without a political strategy. Four and a half years into it, we still don't...
INSKEEP: Let me stop you right there, Congressman, I want to ask you one other quick question then I got to move on. And that question has to do with the presidential campaign. As you know, Barack Obama won South Carolina handily over the weekend, over Hillary Clinton.
R: Yes.
INSKEEP: You told your hometown newspaper, when asked about your endorsement in that, that you're hiding under the desk.
R: I built a bigger desk.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
INSKEEP: You're still not endorsing anyone.
R: See we have two very good candidates, and they're both very good friends of mine. And there's no - I'm not one for endorsements in this area. I like both candidates a great deal.
INSKEEP: Do they risk dividing their party, particularly Bill Clinton, the way that he is...
R: You know, everybody, yeah, obviously I'm not only watching this, I'm keenly interested. But first of all, let's take a step back. This is not the type of division that you had between Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson over Vietnam. This is not the division that you had when President Carter was challenged in the primary by Ted Kennedy. You know, it's been a little bit of a rough patch. I've been clear about what I think about that, but everybody should just take a step back. This is not even this kind of division that existed between Senator McCain and George Bush in 2000. It's been rough. It's been a rough week. But the fact is, the differences are not large in the sense that they not only endanger our chances in November but that somehow this is insurmountable.
INSKEEP: Congressman Emanuel, thanks very much.
R: Thank you.
INSKEEP: Rahm Emanuel, a member of the House Democratic leadership.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Cokie, good morning.
ROBERTS: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: I want to ask the same question I asked Rahm Emanuel. Are there prospects for Congress getting much done that the president could sign in 2008?
ROBERTS: No, not really. But that's always true in an election year, and there are lots of things that just sort of run out and that they have to redo, re-up, and that's likely to be where they'll be.
INSKEEP: And let's talk about endorsements. We heard Rahm Emanuel say he's still hiding under an ever bigger desk. Ted Kennedy got out from under the desk or is getting out today and is expected to endorse Barack Obama.
ROBERTS: And that's huge. The dean of the Democratic Party really, and he's - it's going to be fraught with symbolism. He's doing it at American University, the place where John Kennedy announced the Peace Corps. He'll have Caroline Kennedy, the president's only survivor, at his side. And that is also a blow to the Clintons who have been his friends. And apparently, Senator Kennedy has said to have been appalled at the behavior of former President Clinton and had some heated conversations with him and - or as has former President Clinton with lots of people in the party over the last couple of weeks. It could also be very big with Hispanic voters, Steve. And Hillary Clinton has done very well there - in Nevada, the only place where Hispanics have voted in large numbers. You've got California, New Jersey, New York coming up, and Senator Kennedy's endorsement could make a difference there.
INSKEEP: Senator Hillary Clinton has decided, apparently, to at least appear in Florida - a state where Democrats had agreed not to campaign because they went too early.
ROBERTS: And she asked Senator Obama to join with her to seat those Florida delegates who have been told by the party that they will not be seated at the convention because of the - breaking the rules. He said no. He'd stick with the rules. But, you know, Florida is a great big state, and now we're into a campaign that's all about delegates. And Democrats are going to be voting in Florida. There's a ballot initiative on the ballot that will make a difference. And, you know, so far, Steve, over half a million people have already voted in Florida, more than Iowa, New Hampshire combined. And we don't know how they're voting in either the Democratic or the Republican contests.
INSKEEP: Of course, Republicans are voting and campaigning openly, and this was considered a big state for Rudy Giuliani. How's he doing?
ROBERTS: Well, in the polls he's coming in fourth, at the moment. But voters have been voting, and who knows how they've been voting. Maybe the people who've started voting in January, when Rudy Giuliani was the only person down there, have already voted for him. That's his only hope at this point, because he really did stake everything there. It looks like, however, it's a two way race between Mitt Romney and John McCain, and they are in a heated race. John McCain has gotten some very key endorsements in Florida - the governor and the senator, and the senator represents the Cuban American community, and that could be huge for John McCain in Florida. He could come out of this a front-runner, but the Republicans are as tight as the Democrats these days.
INSKEEP: How much will this matter heading into February 5th, when so many states will vote?
ROBERTS: It will matter enormously because if John McCain gets a big boost out of Florida it means money, and you need money in all of those states.
INSKEEP: Analysis from NPR's Cokie Roberts, who joins us every Monday morning
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
NPR's Jeff Brady went to the National Western Stock Show in Denver to find out why.
JEFF BRADY: Out behind the show in the stockyards, there's a sound that drowns out even mooing cattle.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAIRDRYER BLOWING)
BRADY: This is a high-powered hairdryer, not for the cowboys and cowgirls, but for the cows - like this one Lisa Stream(ph) is grooming.
M: Got to give them a bath and blow their hair dry, and clip their hair short in some places and long in others - make them look pretty and smell pretty.
BRADY: Stream is a rancher from Sheraton, Iowa. She's brought a few animals here to compete in the stock show. She's heard about the national animal identification system, but her family's ranch is among the two-thirds in the country that still haven't registered. She's worried about the cost of electronic ID buttons that are attached to each animal's ear.
M: Yeah, I've heard the button cost ranges from, you know, like, $1.50 to $3 a button. And then the readers, what they use to scan the tags, can run up close to $1,000 so.
BRADY: Others are worried about sending the government so much information about their business. But agriculture undersecretary Bruce Knight says all that data is kept confidential, and it's used only if there's an outbreak.
M: I'm a rancher myself. I've registered my premise. I'm not asking anybody to do something that I wouldn't do myself.
BRADY: Other countries already have ID systems, but more often they're mandatory. Knight says it would be difficult to establish such a system here.
M: Farmers and ranchers react very strongly against mandatory things and mandates. We have a strong track record of successfully utilizing voluntary programs and saw that we could move forward much more quickly with a voluntary traceability system.
BRADY: So far, nearly 450,000 ranchers have signed up, and about 1,000 more are joining every month.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINE NOISE)
BRADY: Back at the stock show, Gene Steiner(ph) says he registered his small Ohio operation early on. He thinks it's important to the future of the beef industry to be able to locate potentially sick animals quickly.
M: When you look at airborne diseases and how rapidly they can move through the countryside - yeah, we don't worry about days, we worry about hours - and we need to be able to track these animals very rapidly.
BRADY: Jeff Brady, NPR News, Denver.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Good morning, John.
JOHN FEINSTEIN: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: I have to say, I'm relieved this happened, because in major after major, you've had to come on here and tell us basically the same thing - Roger Federer's best effort. Now, you can tell us something else.
FEINSTEIN: Well, Roger Federer may still be the best ever, but he wasn't this week. Novak Djokovic was. He beat him soundly in the semifinals in straight sets. Forgive my voice, I've got the winter cold everybody had.
INSKEEP: You're telling me.
FEINSTEIN: But Djokovic - who had been in four straight semifinals in major tournaments, so this wasn't a fluke. He didn't come out of nowhere. He was the third seed. He's only 20 years old. He is a rising star. And he dominated Federer, ended, as you said, a streak of 10 straight finals in Grand Slam, stopped him from getting his 13th championship overall and then dominated another up-and-coming player, Jo Wilfried Tsonga, in the final.
INSKEEP: Now, when you say Djokovic wasn't a fluke, does that mean he could be one of the greats as time goes by?
FEINSTEIN: Nadal has only been able to beat Federer on clay. Djokovic just beat him on a hard court, which is the most neutral of the three surfaces - grass being the fastest; clay being the slowest. So that indicates, to me, that Djokovic can challenge Federer on all three surfaces, which should be very good for the game of tennis.
INSKEEP: Well, let's talk about the women's side. Maria Sharapova was the winner, obviously, someone who can do a lot more than do commercials.
FEINSTEIN: But now, she's won a U.S. Open. She wins the Australian. The only major title she doesn't have is the French. She's still only 20 years old and she seems to really want to play tennis now, as opposed to do those commercials. And as long as she does that, she can challenge Justine Henin for number one in the world, I believe.
INSKEEP: Seems like she's been around for years and she's only 20 years old.
FEINSTEIN: I know. That's the way it is with the women. They first come on the scene when they're 14 or 15. And by the time they're 25, you're saying, why aren't you retiring?
INSKEEP: Well, let's move over to golf very briefly, because Tiger Woods was playing yesterday. I flipped on the television and it seemed, once again, like he was playing a different tournament than everybody else.
FEINSTEIN: Yeah, exactly. There seems to be a Tiger flight and a B flight in most tournaments these days. First tournament of the year, he'd laid off for about a month, hadn't played a real event since late October. And he comes out and he wins by eight shots. That's got to be discouraging if you're the other guys, especially since where they were playing yesterday, Torrey Pines in San Diego, is the site of this year's U.S. Open. Tiger's now won that tournament four years in a row, should give him just a little bit of confidence going into the Open.
INSKEEP: Had terrible - had a terrible back nine and still won by eight. He's up by 11 at one point.
FEINSTEIN: Yeah. He had three bogeys in a row on the back nine. Nobody could remember the last time they'd seen him do that, and yet, he still won going away. He had an 11-shot lead at one point. That's sort of like leading by 50 yards in a 60-yard race.
INSKEEP: John, take care of your voice.
FEINSTEIN: Thank you, Steve. You too.
INSKEEP: The comments of John Feinstein. His latest book is "Cover-up: Mystery at the Super Bowl."
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton spent time this weekend at the scene of the latest violence in Kenya's volatile Rift Valley.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOTS)
OFEIBEA QUIST: Ma'am, what's your name please?
M: My name is Pamela Rasare.
QUIST: What's your message to the political leaders now from both sides? Because you know that Kofi Annan, the former U.N. secretary general, is trying to mediate in the conflict.
M: They sit down and talk together and discuss all of this issue because of them. Why (unintelligible) not sit down and square all these things instead of (unintelligible), we are suffering.
QUIST: Former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, who's trying to broker peace in the Kenyan conflict, toured the Rift Valley on Saturday. He deplored the violence.
M: We saw gross and systematic abuse of human rights of fellow citizens. And it is essential that the facts be established and those responsible held to account.
QUIST: Meanwhile, humanitarian workers who are trying to help tens of thousands of displaced people are even worried about their own safety in Naivasha, which exploded on Sunday. Abbas Gullet is head of the Kenya Red Cross.
M: This morning, I travel on the road to Naivasha because we are setting up a camp in Naivasha for the last two days for people coming in to Naivasha. And my staff were this morning quite frightened, who said they will go out because there were roadblocks everywhere in Naivasha town and that whole highway.
QUIST: The police claim to have restored order in the Rift Valley. Provincial Commissioner Hassan Noor Hassan insisted they had the situation under control as he boarded an army helicopter to fly over the region.
M: The situation is tensed in the town of Nakuru. Things are tense, but I'm sure we'll be able to overcome it. Of course, people have been burning houses and they're now going for each other's throats, basically, on the basis of their tribe and all these kind of things. It is part of the post-election violence. And we are not taking it lightly. We've been able to contain the situation in many part of the province.
QUIST: Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
She met her boyfriend online, so maybe it made sense that when she wanted to kill her new boyfriend's wife, Ann Marie Linscott allegedly turned to the Internet again. She lived in Michigan. The intended victim lived in Northern California, so she placed an ad on Craigslist. Amid the apartment listings and personals, her ad called for, quote, "freelance work." Police say respondents were offered money to eradicate the other woman.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
From Salt Lake City, NPR's Howard Berkes reports.
HOWARD BERKES: Unidentified Woman: President Hinckley, with your background in media, can we expect more press conferences like this?
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
GORDON HINCKLEY: Unidentified Woman: Second of all...
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
HINCKLEY: You look so formidable out there. I'm - I wouldn't dare make a commitment today.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BERKES: The new Mormon president was 84 years old then, grandfatherly and approachable despite the stiff business suit. Hinckley's tone turned serious with questions about church involvement in politics, about excommunications of dissidents, and about his message for women in this patriarchal faith.
HINCKLEY: Do the best you can and remember that the greatest assets you have in this world is those children whom you've brought into the world, and for whose nurture and care you're responsible.
BERKES: Hinckley took on all kinds of reporters, including the toughest of them all - "60 Minutes" correspondent Mike Wallace.
MIKE WALLACE: His candor, his willingness to entertain any question, no matter how difficult or perhaps embarrassing. He just was absolutely open with me. And the more time that I spent with him, it became quite apparent to me that there was a great deal in the Mormon religion that I genuinely admired.
BERKES: Jan Shipps is an Indiana-based religious scholar who has studied the Mormon faith for 40 years. Hinckley was trying, she says...
JAN SHIPPS: ...to change the image of the Church from being on the margins, from being weird to being not weird, in his language. In my language, it's moving from the margins to the mainstream.
BERKES: Kathleen Flake studies American religious history at Vanderbilt University, and she says international growth is another Hinckley hallmark.
KATHLEEN FLAKE: Making that international church feel, and an actual fact be, an integrated part of what has been an American church - in Nigeria, in Brazil, in Japan. And to make sure that the full component of the church's program was available in those areas.
BERKES: The program included thousands of new chapels and temples around the globe. It included a scholarship loan fund for thousands of poor followers overseas. There was an effort to bolster the faith with pilgrimages to historic sites and a campaign to reread the Book of Mormon. Hinckley was also the missionary-in-chief. In April of 2006 at a gathering of the faithful, he looked back 70 years at where he and the Mormon gospel have been.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED AUDIO)
HINCKLEY: Since then I have lifted my voice on every continent, all up and down - from north to south and east to west, in every great capital of the world. It is all a miracle.
BERKES: Howard Berkes, NPR News, Salt Lake City.
LYNN NEARY, host:
We all like music. Who doesn't? But what would happen if the songs we hear in our heads, what if they stayed and stayed?
NPR's science correspondent Robert Krulwich has the story.
ROBERT KRULWICH: We will begin with the patient, says Dr. Oliver Sacks, neurologist and author.
Dr. OLIVER SACKS (Neurologist): This is an intelligent, very deaf woman.
KRULWICH: Who has a hearing aid now, a cochlear implant, but back when she was in her 60s...
CHERYL C: I had been steadily losing my hearing.
KRULWICH: And then, about fiver years ago, Cheryl C, as Dr. Sacks calls her in his new book, "Musicophilia," she was at home with her husband in bed, reading.
CHERYL C: And all of the sudden I heard horrific noises.
Dr. SACKS: She heard engines going to and fro.
CHERYL C: Trolley cars.
Dr. SACKS: There were sirens, there were voices, there were bells, there was screaming, there was clanging.
CHERYL C: Cymbals.
KRULWICH: And all of a sudden, just pow?
CHERYL C: Just all of the sudden.
KRULWICH: Trolley cars?
CHERLY C.: And I turned to my husband, who was in the...
Unidentified Man (Husband): Yeah, I was there. I mean she jumped up and said I've got these noises.
CHERYL C: I ran out of the bedroom.
Unidentified Man: Such a strange thing happening.
Dr. SACKS: She rushed to the window, expecting to see a fire engine, and there was nothing there. There was nothing.
CHERYL C: And I suddenly realized that these horrendous noises were in my head.
Dr. SACKS: She was having a hallucination, a sort of monstrous hallucination.
KRULWICH: And then after maybe 20 minutes of clanging and banging, just as suddenly...
Dr. SACKS: The noise was abruptly replaced by the sound of music.
CHERYL C: "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore."
KRULWICH: And that song was followed by a slew of other songs.
CHERYL C: Hymns, spirituals, patriotic songs, things (unintelligible)...
Dr. SACKS: And from that point on her hallucinosis took the exclusive form of music.
CHERYL C: Playing intensively. I can't stop it.
KRULWICH: Weren't you worried that you had become a crazy person?
CHERYL C: Yeah, I thought I might be going nuts.
(Soundbite of laughter)
CHERYL C: And that bothered me.
KRULWICH: So she went to see Dr. Sacks, who examined her and did all kinds of tests.
Dr. SACKS: She first wondered if she was going crazy. This was like hearing voices.
CHERYL C: And he assured me that, you know, I wasn't.
KRULWICH: Whatever is wrong with you has a physical explanation, he thought.
CHERYL C: It was neurological. There was something causing it.
KRULWICH: But what was causing it? Dr. Sacks told Cheryl that because her hearing was so compromised...
Dr. SACKS: She was profoundly deaf.
KRULWICH: Hardly any sounds were coming into her brain, so the cells in her brain dedicated to hearing - those neurons were under-stimulated.
Dr. SACKS: If the hearing parts of the brain, they're not getting their normal input, start to produce a factitious, hallucinatory output of their own.
KRULWICH: And therefore the reason there is music in Cheryl's head is she got so deaf, the hearing cells in her brain, desperate for exercise, started making stuff up. That's kind of what he told her.
CHERYL C: Dr. Sacks explained to me that my brain just decided to make some music - and so I'd hear something. That is really what it is.
KRULWICH: Oh, come on. I thought that can't be. But Dr. Sacks says this happens all the time.
Dr. SACKS: This is not uncommon. This is not psychotic. This is often associated with deafness.
KRULWICH: Or even with boredom. People stuck in faraway places.
Dr. SACKS: Where there is a vast silence. They may start to hear things.
KRULWICH: I said, what are you talking about? He said, okay, let's pause. Let's stop the story of Cheryl just for a moment because to understand Cheryl it will help if you met Michael Sandou, a New York City graduate student. I said why, who's Michael Sandou? And he said, well, just ask him to tell you the story that he told me. So I did.
Mr. MICHAEL SANDOU (Graduate Student): I was - it was a story about being extremely bored, really, which is why I was - almost felt silly coming down here and telling you the story.
KRULWICH: But to speed things up, Michael was invited by a school friend to sail on a boat from the Caribbean to Connecticut.
Mr. SANDOU: And I didn't know anything about sailing and just thought it would be exciting to go.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SANDOU: And I found it the opposite.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SANDOU: It was so boring. There is no wind.
KRULWICH: So he spent more than two weeks mostly staring at totally flat water.
Mr. SANDOU: In a few days I had read every book I brought, and it just went on and on and on.
KRULWICH: Until finally one afternoon, sitting on his birth listening to a refrigerator hum, he heard...
Mr. SANDOU: Heavy metal guitar solos.
(Soundbite of laughter)
KRULWICH: There's no radio, no CD, no music playing anywhere, and yet...
Mr. SANDOU: In my head, it's... (makes guitar sounds) ...forever. And I don't like heavy metal. I mean punk, yes. Metal, no.
KRULWICH: Had this ever happened to you before that you remember?
Mr. SANDOU: No.
KRULWICH: But the guitar kept playing and playing and then later he had a second hallucination.
Mr. SANDOU: Highland bagpipe, and I don't know anything about the bagpipe.
KRULWICH: But Michael's brain produced those bagpipes, just as Cheryl's brain had produced "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore."
Brains, even healthy brains, do this when there's nothing real coming in, especially as with Cheryl when you're deaf.
Dr. SACKS: Something like 2 percent of people with severe deafness can get musical hallucinations. And although it may be very annoying or intrusive, things tend to die down and one tends to get used to it.
CHERYL C: I have learned to live with it.
KRULWICH: But that doesn't mean she likes living with it. It never stopped.
CHERYL C: I would wake up in the morning and think, what, what's the tune de jour, what are we going to be hearing today? And there was always one there.
KRULWICH: And that's when she thought about cochlear implants. She heard about an ear doctor.
CHERYL C: He'd had a patient, he had told us about Sacks, who had musical hallucinations, received a cochlear implant, and her hallucinations disappeared. So...
KRULWICH: That makes sense, right? I mean, because if this is idle neurons wanting to do something, if you bring the world back into your head, presumably those neurons would have something to do.
CHERYL C: So I wanted to do it.
KRULWICH: And so she did it. She took a chance. She had the operation. She got the implant. She woke from the operation and...
CHERYL C: I heard the music. It was inside me.
KRULWICH: Oh, still there. Her brain cells for some reason continued to produce their own music, plus she can now hear real music coming through the implant. And the curious thing is the implants have such a narrow range, real music feels flat to Cheryl.
CHERYL C: It sounds tinny. I really don't hear a musical intervals the way you would like to.
KRULWICH: But the music that she hallucinates...
CHERYL C: Yes, it's great. Everything hits the right note. It's fine.
KRULWICH: So for Cheryl, when I sing...
(Singing) Michael row...
(Speaking) ...she hears...
(Singing, tinny) ...Michael row your boat ashore.
(Speaking) Real sounds sound terrible. But when Cheryl's brain hallucinates "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore"?
(Soundbite of music)
KRULWICH: ...oddly...
CHERYL C: It sounds the way music should sound.
KRULWICH: Isn't that weird? So...
CHERYL C: The whole thing is a little weird. But I try not to think about it that way.
KRULWICH: Robert Krulwich, NPR News, New York.
(Soundbite of music)
NEARY: You can hear more stories by Robert Krulwich in his podcast, Krulwich on Science at npr.org/podcast.
LYNN NEARY, host:
On this continent, the winter has been a dangerous one. Twenty-seven people have died in avalanches in the United States this season, including three last week in Southern California's San Gabriel Mountains.
Commentator Craig Childs lives in the West Elk Mountains of Colorado, and this time of year, he doesn't leave home without calculating the avalanche risk.
CRAIG CHILDS: In the summer, Red Mountain Pass is a breathtaking drive. There are no guardrails, hardly a foot of shoulder. Cliffs and canyons soar below.
In the winter, this is the most avalanche-prone highway in the lower 48 states. One hundred-sixty slide paths breach a 20-mile stretch of pavement. I've driven it many times in snowstorms and blizzards, powder snow on the highway, strong crosswinds building drifts.
One night, more than 60 avalanches crossed a five-mile stretch of this highway. The town of Ouray was buried in a sudden four feet of snow. That night, a snowplow driver, Eddie Imel, was killed by the infamous East Riverside Slide. He was the third snowplow driver to perish on that same hundred feet of highway.
The next day, it kept snowing. There was no hope of launching a rescue. But miraculously, Eddie's partner, Danny Jaramillo, survived. For 18 hours, Danny dug straight up, using a flashlight as a shovel, 20 feet through packed snow until he hit daylight.
When the storm ended, I came up with crews trying to reach Eddie's body. About a mile from the buried snowplow, two avalanches exploded at once, right above us. Snow boiled out of the mountain. People started backing away. Then they ran. But it was no use. We couldn't outrun a pair of avalanches. I just stayed put, my gaze fixed, as if staring into the eyes of a snake.
The two avalanches met and roared into the canyon below. They didn't have enough force to climb the opposite side. If they had, we would have been buried. Instead, they sent up a burst of wind, coating us with snow. When the cloud settled, everyone was safe. Some laughed while others staggered around breathless.
I still think about this now when I cross the 100-foot-wide path of the East Riverside slide. I can feel the mountain's gravity. Next to me, a thousand tons of snow hang by a thread. For a moment, looking up through my snow-glazed windshield, I am aware of nothing but the mountain. When I pass safely from under the slide, my gaze returns to the highway, and I breathe again.
NEARY: Commentator Craig Childs' most recent book is "The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild."
You can hear more commentaries from Craig Childs at npr.org.
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Lynn Neary.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
LYNN NEARY, host:
The Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs are separate agencies of the federal government. The Army does not supervise the VA. With that in mind, this next story might sound surprising.
At a military base in upstate New York, someone from the Army recently told the VA to stop helping injured soldiers apply for some of their disability benefits. And the VA said okay.
NPR's Ari Shapiro explains.
ARI SHAPIRO: Fort Drum is an Army base in the part of New York that locals call the North Country, just a short drive from the Canadian border. It's an icy, bright place in January, where the landscape is all brown and white. Just a few miles off the base, I sit in a frigid car with a soldier who was injured in Iraq. He'll only let us broadcast his comments if we alter his voice and keep him anonymous. He's afraid of retaliation.
We just finished breakfast in a nearby restaurant, but he didn't feel comfortable talking into a microphone there. Now, I can see his breath as he tells the story of his interactions with the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Unidentified Man (Army Soldier): I don't feel that there is anything the VA was doing that was unauthorized or illegal or immoral.
SHAPIRO: This soldier and hundreds of others at Fort Drum need help getting disability benefits as they reach the end of their military service. As one of the first steps, an Army doctor gives each soldier what's called a narrative summary of their medical problems. That document helps determine whether the soldier will get an annual disability stipend and health care, so it's very important.
Unidentified Man: If your medical condition isn't worded correctly, you stand a chance of losing percentages of disability.
(Soundbite of noisy crowd)
SHAPIRO: When we sat talking in the restaurant, the soldier pulled his cap low over his eyes and let his food go cold in front of him as he described his first briefing from the Veterans Affairs office at Fort Drum. He said 20 or 30 injured soldiers sat in the classroom. The VA official stood up in front of the group and said, we cannot help you review the narrative summaries of your medical problems.
The man from VA told the class that the VA used to help soldiers with Army medical paperwork, but some Army folks didn't like that. The VA instructor told the troops that an Army team from Washington complained to the VA regional office in Buffalo. The instructor said these Army officials saw soldiers from Fort Drum getting higher disability ratings because of the VA's help. So the Army told the VA, knock it off. Stop helping Fort Drum soldiers describe their Army injuries. And the VA did as it was told.
Talking on tape back in the car, the soldier says the situation seems ridiculous.
Unidentified Man: If the VA is doing an outstanding job in this one particular area, why not make that military-wide, or Army-wide, military-wide, so everybody benefits from that instead of restraining one group that is excelling to lower the standard back to where the rest of the military is.
SHAPIRO: This soldier has been in the Army for years.
Unidentified Man: To be tossed aside like a worn-out pair of boots is pretty disheartening. I always believed the Army would take care of me if I did the best that I could, and I've done that. It's kind of a slap in the face to find out otherwise after all this time.
SHAPIRO: So why would the Army want to stop this soldier from getting help filling out his paperwork?
Well, when I first asked the question, no one knew what I was talking about. The public affairs officer at Fort Drum referred me to the Army's physical disability agency in Washington. They sent me to the main Army public affairs office, where a spokesman said he had no record of the incident. He sent me to the Army surgeon general's office where the spokesperson, Cynthia Vaughan, left a message on my answering machine, saying Army policy is: anyone, including the VA, can help soldiers with their military paperwork.
Ms. CYNTHIA VAUGHN (Spokesperson, VA Public Affairs Office): There is no Army policy on outside help in reviewing and/or assisting soldiers in rewriting their narratives during the 10-day period which they have to review them.
SHAPIRO: Finally, the VA found details about who from the Army took the trip to upstate New York. They were part of what the Army calls a Tiger Team, an ad-hoc group assigned to investigate, in this case, medical disability benefits.
According to Army spokesman George Wright, these men thought the VA should not be helping soldiers with their Army medical paperwork. So they went to upstate New York and said as much. The VA didn't put up a fight. And because of that, the VA stopped helping hundreds of soldiers at Fort Drum, even though the Army's official policy says there's nothing wrong with what the VA was doing.
The Army said it could not put us in touch with the Tiger Team members, so we have no way of knowing their motivations. But we do know this: Higher disability ratings cost the Army money.
Mara Hurwitt is a private lawyer who's represented injured soldiers.
Ms. MARA HURWITT (Attorney): It's the Army budget. Now, whether - I'm not going to say that's why they're doing it, but you know, when it comes down to it, the more soldiers you have who get disability retirements, the more retirement pay that's coming out of your budget.
SHAPIRO: And we're left with another question. Why would the VA, an organization whose mission is to help veterans, go along with the Army's request to stop helping disabled soldiers with their military paperwork?
Tom Pamperin is deputy director of the VA's compensation and pension service. He says VA officers are not qualified for that kind of work.
Mr. TOM PAMPERIN (Deputy Director, Compensation and Pension Service, Department of Veterans Affairs): We do not train our employees in the intricacies of the DOD disability evaluation system, so we would feel that it would be inappropriate for our employees to apply VA standards to a DOD process.
SHAPIRO: But other people in the system say the VA is more equipped than anyone to help soldiers with their Defense Department paperwork. Here's Attorney Mara Hurwitt again.
Ms. HURWITT: The VA counselors understand the disabilities, what the different kinds of conditions are, how they should be properly described in the paperwork. So for a lot of soldiers, that may be the only assistance they have.
SHAPIRO: And Hurwitt says VA officials have to look at the soldier's medical history anyway to counsel them on VA benefits, which are separate from Army benefits.
Ms. HURWITT: Really what it comes down to is you're just helping the soldier get what he's entitled to under law, under statute and regulations. So I don't see why there should be a problem with that.
SHAPIRO: The group Disabled American Veterans is allowed to help soldiers with their military paperwork.
Danny Soto represents the group at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington. He said the VA doesn't like to disobey people from the Defense Department because base commanders have a lot of power to control contact with soldiers.
Mr. DANNY SOTO (National Service Officer, Disabled American Veterans): Access to these folks is granted by the graciousness of the Army. You know, coming on post, giving presentations. They can limit the scoop of your access. If you want to go talk to the masses, you got to do it on their terms.
SHAPIRO: This is just the latest in a string of controversies about disability payments for injured veterans.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala co-chaired the president's recent commission on veterans care. She says stories like this one show how the whole disability rating system is broken and needs to change.
Ms. DONNA SHALALA (Former Health and Human Services Secretary): It's fundamentally unfair. That's the point about the need for reform in the system. It has to be reformed for everyone. It has to be straightforward. And all of us have to believe that it's fair for every soldier, every veteran.
SHAPIRO: There have been congressional hearings, commissions and reports on how to fix the system. So far, none of that has helped injured soldiers at Fort Drum, who now have less help getting their disability benefits than they did before.
Ari Shapiro, NPR News.
LYNN NEARY, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Lynn Neary.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
In his final State of the Union address, President Bush revealed no bold initiatives. He used last night's speech to review accomplishments of his seven years in office. In a moment, we'll hear how the president's address played on Capitol Hill.
First, the president called on lawmakers to take steps to make sure the nation's economy rebounds from a period of sluggish growth.
NPR's Don Gonyea reports.
DON GONYEA: From the president's first moments looking out over the members of Congress below, he seemed in an unusually reflective mood last night.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: Seven years have passed since I first stood before you at this rostrum. In that time our country has been tested in ways none of us could have imagined. We faced hard decisions about peace and war, rising competition in the world economy, and the health and welfare of our citizens.
GONYEA: And in the speech's opening minutes, the president had this plea for conciliation on the part of both parties.
President BUSH: In this election year let us show our fellow Americans that we recognize our responsibilities and are determined to meet them. Let us show them that Republicans and Democrats can compete for votes and cooperate for results at the same time.
(Soundbite of applause)
GONYEA: Then the president turned to the state of the economy. He said that in the long run, Americans can be confident about economic growth. But he also noted that a slowdown in that growth has caused concern.
President BUSH: America has added jobs for a record 52 straight months, but jobs are now growing at a slower pace. Wages are up, but so are prices for food and gas. Exports are rising, but the housing market has declined.
GONYEA: He urged Congress to pass a $150 billion proposal that is a product of an agreement between the White House and bipartisan leadership in the House. And he repeated a pitch he's made over and over again over the past four years - to make permanent the tax cuts passed during his first term in office, which begin to expire in 2010.
President BUSH: Unless Congress acts, most of the tax relief we've delivered over the past seven years will be taken away. Some in Washington argue that letting tax relief expire is not a tax increase. Try explaining that to 116 million American taxpayers who would see their taxes rise by an average of $1,800.
GONYEA: The president's average includes those taxpayers who saved tens of thousands of dollars per year because of the Bush tax cuts. A more typical middle-class family has saved between $500 and $600 a year. The second half of the speech dealt with foreign policy. Again, the president looked back.
President BUSH: We've seen people in Lebanon take to the streets to demand their independence. We've seen Afghans emerge from the tyranny of the Taliban and choose a new president and a new parliament. We've seen jubilant Iraqis holding up ink-stained fingers and celebrating their freedom. These images of liberty have inspired us.
(Soundbite of applause)
GONYEA: But the foreign policy story he most wanted to tell was about what he calls real progress in Iraq.
President BUSH: When we met last year, many said that containing the violence was impossible. A year later, high profile terrorist attacks are down, civilian deaths are down, sectarian killings are down.
GONYEA: The president said, however, that the enemy has not yet been defeated. He said Iraqis are doing more to provide for their own defense, but that to prematurely pull out U.S. forces would cede Iraq to extremists.
The president also continued his hard line on Iran, despite a recent national intelligence report that Tehran ended its program to develop a nuclear weapon years ago. And he pledged to do all he can to help to bring about a Middle East peace and the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
The president ended his final State of the Union address with this thought.
President BUSH: Our nation will prosper, our liberty will be secure, and the state of our union will remain strong.
(Soundbite of applause)
GONYEA: He stood for a moment looking around the House chambers seeming to take in the scene one last time, then he stepped down and lingered to shake hands and sign autographs from members of Congress before heading to his motorcade and back to the White House, knowing that just one more year of battles with Congress lay ahead.
Don Gonyea, NPR News, Washington.
DAVID WELNA, host:
I'm David Welna at the capitol.
Once again, reaction from lawmakers to this president's final State of the Union was split right down that broad carpeted aisle that separates Democrats from Republicans. On the one side, there was fond feeling. Florida Republican Senator Mel Martinez left behind all the primary eve excitement in his home state just to come hear President Bush.
Senator MEL MARTINEZ (Republican, Florida): I was here for President Bush's first and I very much wanted to be here for his last. I thought it was a very forceful and strong speech and I thought he laid out a very vigorous agenda for his last year.
WELNA: Still, Martinez readily acknowledged that in this lame duck election year Congress is unlikely to give the president much of what's on that agenda.
Sen. MARTINEZ: It's sad to think that a lot of it has been pending for a long time already, you know, things like the associated health plans, any number of items that there's unanimous applause when he brings them up. But then we don't seem to get it done.
WELNA: Including immigration reform, which Martinez sees as having no chance this year after last year's collapse. For his part, Ohio House Republican Steve Chabot said he was struck by the president's warning that he'll veto any appropriations bill that does not cut in half the value and number of congressional earmarks.
Representative STEVE CHABOT (Republican, Ohio): I think the president is exactly right. Congress for many years has wasted far too much money on things like bridges to nowhere. And I hope the president is serious. I hope he sticks to his guns. If he's willing to do that I think a lot of members of Congress will go right with him on that.
WELNA: Not Virginia Democrat Jim Moran, who's on the House Appropriations Committee. President Bush and his fellow Republicans, Moran said, cannot be taken seriously when it comes to earmarks.
Representative JIM MORAN (Democrat, Virginia): For six years they control the Congress. And for six years earmarks exploded under the Republican chairman. And now when the Democrats take it over, all of the sudden he's noticed that there are earmarks in those bills? He never vetoed one of them.
WELNA: Florida House Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz was equally skeptical of President Bush's plea for Congress to strengthen his signature No Child Left Behind school improvement program.
Representative DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (Democrat, Florida): There are a lot of problems with No Child Left Behind that need to be ironed out. And the only solution that I heard from him tonight was another form of voucher, for private schools and faith-based schools. I mean vouchers have never been the solution. They won't ever be the solution. But making a real commitment in terms of funding and reform for public education is the only thing that's going to work.
WELNA: When the president veered from domestic to foreign matters, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, for one, thought Mr. Bush delivered the best speech of his presidency.
Senator LINDSEY GRAHAM (Republican, South Carolina): It was somber and thoughtful. I think he realizes what he's been through, what the country has been through. And there's been dramatic progress in Iraq, and I hope we'll stop this effort of having politicians trying to take over the war. Let General Petraeus decide when the troops should come home. He wants them home as much as anybody.
WELNA: But for Illinois House Democrat Melissa Bean, the president's upbeat message of progress in Iraq was the same old same old.
Representative MELISSA BEAN (Democrat, Illinois): He makes the same case every time and the reality on the ground just hasn't changed. Now, true, there's been some military progress. But the political progress that was promised just hasn't materialized. And he keeps saying the Iraqi people are ready to step up, but where's the follow-through that says and as they stand up, we'll stand down?
WELNA: As the president spoke, many eyes in the House Chamber were on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the two Democratic senators who've been clashing in state after state as they vie to be the next person who'll deliver the State of the Union. The other senator who's still a presidential contender, Republican John McCain, stayed in Florida for a last night of campaigning there before today's primary.
Missouri Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill said the white hot presidential race was the big elephant in the room during last night's State of the Union.
Senator CLAIRE McCASKILL (Democrat, Missouri): It felt like it overshadowed it a lot to me, because everything the president said I kept saying, oh, next year it'll be better.
(Soundbite of laughter)
WELNA: One thing that's absolutely certain is that it will be a different person facing Congress next January.
David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.
NEARY: You can download the president's speech and the Democratic response at npr.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
It's been another day of deadly violence in Kenya. Opposition leader Raila Odinga warned the country was heading towards anarchy after gunmen killed a member of parliament from his party. It's not yet clear whether the killing was politically motivated or whether it was a criminal act.
NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton is in the capital, Nairobi.
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON: The police are calling it a murder at the moment, but whether it was politically motivated or not, the effect of the killing of Melitus Were, known as Mugabe Were, it's that it has provoked more violence. Right here in the capital, Nairobi, in Kibera slum, which has already been a flashpoint, and Kibera is not far from where he lives, already there have been reported deaths there and more violence. And as ever here in Kenya in recent weeks, it seems to be ethnic violence, one tribe against another, one ethnic group fighting another.
MONTAGNE: So that killing, whether it's politically motivated or not, it's already led to more bloodshed, both in the slums of Nairobi and the Rift Valley, which is quite volatile right now. What exactly happened?
QUIST-ARCTON: In the Rift Valley it's hard to tell whether it's the killing of Melitus Were that has sparked the violence. But we're told that army helicopters have fired rubber bullets onto a crowd probably of Kikuyu youths who were apparently terrorizing a group of Luos who were trying to escape the violence.
Now, let me explain that. Kikuyu is President Mwai Kibaki's tribe, and Luo is the opposition leader Raila Odinga's tribe. And in the Rift Valley over the past four or five days there have been (unintelligible) absolutely horrific killings using bows and arrows, using clubs, using spears. And first of all it seemed to be the Luo versus the Kikuyu, and now it seems to be revenge killings by the Kikuyu on the Luo and the allied Kalenjin ethnic group. So the opposition leader says this country is lurching towards anarchy. It is certainly becoming lawless.
MONTAGNE: Remind us why it has come to this in Kenya.
QUIST-ARCTON: All this violence was fueled by a disputed presidential election result. The opposition said it has been cheated of the presidency. It has been robbed of victory. The president said he'd won and hastily had himself sworn in. Since that, and we're talking about a month now, that all hell has been let loose here.
We have the former U.N. secretary general, Kofi Annan, actually in the country trying to mediate peace and trying to get everybody to stop the violence. But it almost seems as if it is out of control because we're now talking about youths and gangs and mobs from the different ethnic groups fighting each other and, it seems, trying to settle scores and trying to deal with vendettas that date back generations over land, over privilege, over position, and over tribe.
MONTAGNE: And later today, leaders of the two rival parties will formally begin talks, and mediated by former U.N. head Kofi Annan. Is there any optimism about what this will achieve?
QUIST-ARCTON: Kenyans are very distressed, very frustrated, and very frightened. They had hoped that Kofi Annan's intervention would help and would restore some sort of order and get the two men who were at the center of this crisis, the president and the opposition leader, to the negotiation table. But many Kenyans now think that perhaps it's gone too far, that the violence has gone too far, that the ethnic enmity has gone too far. But Kofi Annan and his team are still trying to mediate and bring peace back to Kenya.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton speaking from Nairobi.
LYNN NEARY, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Lynn Neary.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
Presidential candidates, both Republican and Democratic, are hoping to win support from the entire electorate. But there are some groups of voters that can make or break a presidential bid. This week we're examining some of them. Yesterday we heard a conversation about Latino voters. Today we turn to women.
NEARY: With me in the studio is Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners, a prominent Democratic polling firm. She's also co-author of the book "What Women Really Want."
And with us on the phone from her home in Fort Worth, Texas is Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger. Representative Granger is the most senior Republican woman in the House of Representatives and the co-leader of an organization called Women Impacting the Nation, which is working to bring more women into the Republican Party.
Welcome to both of you. Thanks for being with us.
Ms. CELINDA LAKE (Co-Author, "What Women Really Want"): Thank you.
Representative KAY GRANGER (Republican, Texas): Thank you for having us. Glad to be with you.
NEARY: First of all, are some issues more important to women in the two different parties? Celinda Lake, is there an issue or issues that you would say Democratic women feel are more important than their Republican counterparts?
Ms. LAKE: The number one issue that's been a big difference between Democratic and Republican women is the war in Iraq. Democratic women were the first to turn against the war in Iraq. They've been solidly against it. And they want the most responsible withdrawal as quickly as possible. Having said that, though, what's very interesting is there's some things that unite women. Women across all parties were very worried about the economy. Women across all parties very interested in health care reform. And 80 percent of the health care voters are women.
NEARY: Congresswoman Granger?
Rep. GRANGER: That's absolutely true. What we focused on in the economy is security and the security that affects women the most. You know, will I outlive my money because I'm going to live so much longer than men? And we still do. You know, have I planned well enough for that? They look at security in the working world. Okay, I have a career, but I just took out three years to have my children. Now I want to go back in the workforce. So there are some issues that women in economic security really look at differently.
NEARY: One thing that we hear a lot about is that a generational shift is going on. So what are some of the differences in terms of women and different generations of women?
Ms. LAKE: We are seeing one major difference between older and younger women. Over-50 women tend to be more focused on women's leadership. They still tend to see a glass ceiling there. They tend to be noting the historic nature, for example, of having a woman run for president. Women, younger women in particular, find the historic nature of a first woman president less compelling. One of the things that's quite interesting is when you look at women's lives, the stage of life that they're in rather than their actual age is more important.
So if you think about it, in a workplace today you can have three 42-year-old women. One may be an unmarried woman who's been on the career track. Another may be a first-time - about to be a first-time grandmother; the average age of being a grandmother is 46. And another may be the mother of an eight-year-old. So these women will have very different concerns based on their stages of life rather than their age.
Rep. GRANGER: I completely agree. It really isn't age. It's where you are in your life. They're also more and more often, because of the cost of health care and because women may outlive the benefits they have, they're taking care of elderly parents. So they're actually doing two roles at the same age because of their caretaking.
NEARY: What about racial and ethnic differences among women and class differences, economic differences?
Ms. LAKE: Well, on the Democratic side, we're seeing major racial and class differences. We tend to see college-educated women voting more for Barack Obama, non-college-educated women voting more for Hillary Clinton. We've also seen enormous racial differences with Latino and Anglo women voting more for Hillary Clinton, African-American women voting for Obama. So I think the point is that women are not monolithic.
Rep. GRANGER: That's absolutely true. And that's why it's one reason that women will be making their decisions on this race later. They'll stay undecided longer. And oftentimes it's the way they react to the candidate. Because issues are similar to women, they're not going to base it on a party, they're going to oftentimes base their votes on likability. Is this someone who understands my issues and seems to want to find solutions to the issues that affect my daily life?
NEARY: And one thing I think you can say too is both parties will battle for women at the end, and it will be the women's vote that will determine who is president in 2008. And we have seen Republican presidents such as George Bush, particularly the first time around, very effectively target women voters with security, with compassionate conservatism. And we've seen Democratic candidates very effectively in the 2006 elections target women voters. But I think one thing we can both agree on is the 2008 president will be determined by the women's vote.
Rep. GRANGER: Absolutely.
NEARY: Representative Kay Granger is a Republican from Texas. She is national co-chair of Women for Mitt Romney; and Celinda Lake is president of the Democratic polling firm Lake Research Partners.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
These days it seems like cell phones can do just about everything - take photos, send e-mail, let you listen to music or watch a movie. Okay, how about a phone that can look at printed words and read them to you out loud?
NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce has this report on a new cell phone being marketed to people who are blind.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE: If you're a person with normal vision who can read, there are thousands of things you do every day without even thinking about it. Little problems you solve with just a glance.
Mr. JAMES GASHEL (K-NFB Reading Technology, Inc.): You know how those bags are in the hotel where you want to make the coffee? How many of you know the caffeinated from the decaf?
(Soundbite of crowd)
Mr. GASHEL: Yeah. I know it every single morning.
(Soundbite of laughter)
GREENFIELDBOYCE: James Gashel is blind. But he can get his caffeine fix with help from his cell phone.
Mr. GASHEL: All you have to do is snap a picture of the bag and it tells you.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Gashel is showing off his new phone in a hotel ballroom filled with people who have come to check it out. Many are holding white canes. There's a seeing eye dog resting by the walls. Everyone listens to the small silver phone as Gashel holds it a few inches above a green rectangle.
CELL PHONE VOICE: Taking picture.
(Soundbite of clicking)
CELL PHONE VOICE: Detecting orientation, processing U.S. currency image, please wait.
(Soundbite of crowd)
CELL PHONE VOICE: Twenty dollars.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The phone is loaded up with software developed by the company that Gashel works for. It's called K-NFB Reading Technology. That's K as in Kurzweil, the inventor Ray Kurzweil, and NFB as in the National Federation of the Blind.
Besides reading labels and telling a 20 from a 10, the phone can read pages of printed text. Gashel holds it over a sheet of paper.
Mr. GASHEL: Pictures is snapped. Now I've put the reader down.
CELL PHONE VOICE: Proceeding to a specific location is a journey. Progressing to an unidentified destination is adventure. In other words, if you know where you're going, it's travel; if you don't, it's exploration.
(Soundbite of applause)
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Reading machines have been around for decades. This company already makes a hand-held device. But this reader is the smallest yet, just four ounces and a few inches long, and it's in a high-end Nokia phone with features like an MP3 player, high-speed data connection, and a GPS navigation system.
That's appealing to people like Mike Hanson(ph) from Minnesota. He uses a desktop reading machine for all kinds of things.
Mr. MIKE HANSON (Lawyer): Books, mails, bills. I'm a lawyer, so I will use it to read materials related to cases I'm working on.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: But he never wanted a hand-held reader before. He saw it as just one more gadget to lug around. This multi-functional cell phone though is a different story.
Mr. HANSON: Yeah. It's next on my list of technology items to seriously consider.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: It's not an impulse buy, he says. The phone plus the software costs around $2,000.
Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
LYNN NEARY, host:
NPR's business news starts with the Fed charting its next move.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke meets with colleagues today for a regular two-day meeting. It comes a week after the Fed made a surprise rate cut aimed at stabilizing global markets and easing concerns over the U.S. economy.
Today the Fed decides whether to cut rates again. By lowering its key federal funds rate, the Fed encourages banks to lower their rates on loans to consumers and businesses, hopefully stimulating economic activity.
Yesterday a new report showed new home sales tumbling. That's adding to expectations that the Fed will cut rates another half a percentage point.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Falling home prices and rising defaults have battered the nation's number one mortgage lender. The depth of Countrywide's financial trouble is now more apparent. Today the company announced losses of $422 million for the most recent quarter. That compares to a $622 quarterly profit last year. The company now says one in three of its subprime loans is delinquent. And yesterday the company's outgoing CEO announced he'll forego his gold-plated severance package.
NPR's Chris Arnold reports.
CHRIS ARNOLD: As Countrywide's troubles surfaced in recent months, the company's stock crashed about 90 percent. Chairman and CEO Angelo Mozilo now says he'll give up $37 million worth of severance pay and other benefits. He says, quote, "That's the right thing to do."
But consumer advocates are not clapping too loudly.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. IRA RHEINGOLD (National Association of Consumer Advocates): Well, my reaction is obviously to laugh.
ARNOLD: Ira Rheingold is the head of the National Association of Consumer Advocates.
Mr. RHEINGOLD: Come on. This guy profited beyond all imagination from the terrible lending practices that Countrywide was engaged in.
ARNOLD: Before the bottom fell out of his company, according to securities filings, Mozilo sold upwards of $400 million worth of stock by cashing in stock options. Speaking on CNBC last month, Mozilo defended that.
Mr. ANGELO MOZILO (Countrywide CEO): I started this company with David Loeb 39 years ago. I took stock options. The stock is up 25,000 percent. During that period of time all of the shareholders had benefited with me.
ARNOLD: But critics like Rheingold think Mozilo knew or should have known that when he was dumping stock, his company was a teetering house of cards.
Mr. RHEINGOLD: It's amazing that he was able to time his sales better than a lot of the shareholders who stuck with it. And the notion that he can make that much profit, there's something really rotten in Denmark.
ARNOLD: Mozilo has been asked to testify in Congress next month at a hearing on executive compensation.
Chris Arnold, NPR News.
LYNN NEARY, host:
Housing troubles are also hitting the U.K. A new report shows that nearly half a million cash-strapped British homeowners have missed a mortgage payment in the past six months. It's adding to worries about Britain's economy.
Today, top European leaders meet in London for an unusual gathering aimed at responding to all the turmoil in the markets and fears over the U.S. economy.
The heads of Europe's four biggest economies - France, Germany, Italy and Britain - are expected to appeal for calm and discuss ways to improve how financial markets operate.
From London, Rob Gifford reports.
ROB GIFFORD: Today's summit was called by Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown before the events of last week. Now, following the slide on global stock markets and the news of a rogue trader at French bank Societe Generale, the meeting seems even more important. It's all part of the British government's proposal for change in international financial institutions while still keeping individual institutions accountable.
British Finance Secretary Alistair Darling.
Chancellor ALISTAIR DARLING (Finance Secretary, Great Britain): The primary responsibility for all these things, whether or not it's a decision to lend to somebody in a house in America or to keep the books properly in your bank, must lie with the board of directors. But you've got to make sure that across the world we have an adequate supervisory regime. And frankly, the problem we've got just now is that many of the structures we have like the IMF, for example, were designed in the aftermath of the Second World War for a completely different world.
GIFFORD: All four governments have reasons to act and to be seen to be doing so at home. Some economists are predicting a recession in Britain, and Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown are still picking up the pieces after the first run on a British bank in more than a century.
A major German bank also had to be rescued last year after problems resulting from exposure to the subprime meltdown in the U.S., and France is reeling from the losses at Societe Generale. Leaders are today expected to call for more transparency in financial markets, new arrangements for credit ratings agencies, and better coordination between national regulators.
The question is, though, can a meeting such as today's produce concrete achievements, and is more regulation actually what is needed?
David Llewellyn, professor of money and banking at Loughborough University, thinks not.
Professor DAVID LLEWELLYN (Loughborough University): It's very seductive to think let's regulate and that will solve the problem. It also seems to have the advantage to ministers that they are then seen to be doing something. In my experience, it is usually not the correct approach. First of all, the problems are usually not because of a regulatory failure, and secondly, regulation often simply doesn't work. Financial markets are just too complicated to regulate in fine detail.
GIFFORD: That is the more traditional British, if not European, viewpoint, that less regulation is good. Gordon Brown's suggestions that a little more might be in order will perhaps raise hopes that today will lead to some concrete results. But getting agreement on many things in Europe continues to be difficult because of such competing national agendas.
As recently as last December, Britain vetoed Italian proposals that the supervision of financial markets be based on one set of rule standards across Europe. Many observers are hoping that the risk of a continent-wide recession will help to focus minds today on more European cooperation.
Rob Gifford, NPR News, London.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Our last word in business is about housing, of sorts. The word is mini-motel.
It's a new product on the market aimed at travelers who don't want to be stranded at the airport due to delays, college students who want more privacy in the dorm, or workers who could be stuck in the office due to a storm. This one-person accommodation comes with an air mattress, reading light, alarm clock, pillow, and a canopy with a frame.
If the mini-motel sounds like a fancy tent, that's because it is. It sells for $39.95 - S'mores not included.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
LYNN NEARY, host:
And I'm Lynn Neary, in for Steve Inskeep.
The rituals were all familiar last night at the United States Capitol.
Mr. WILSON LIVINGOOD (Sergeant at Arms of the United States House of Representatives): Madame Speaker, the president of the United States.
(Soundbite of applause)
NEARY: Despite the constancy of tradition, the mood changes when a president gives his final State of the Union Address. President Reagan, almost 20 years ago, protested that, quote, "We're still on the job."
MONTAGNE: President Bush is still on the job. And last night, he was looking to grab a little attention from the candidates looking to succeed him in the White House. We've gathered together a handful of NPR reporters who paid very close attention to what the president had to say, and whether he strayed at all from the facts. And we'll start our review of last night's State of the Union Address where President Bush started - with the economy.
NPR's John Ydstie joins us. And John, the president started by talking about the bipartisan plan to jump-start the economy, and he warned that it could get derailed if Congress tried to change it.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: This is a good agreement that will keep our economy growing and our people working. And this Congress must pass it as soon as possible.
(Soundbite of applause)
MONTAGNE: And John, is this a good package for the economy?
JOHN YDSTIE: Well, we won't know. Historically, these stimulus packages usually come too late, after a recession is over, and that very well could happen with this one because the checks aren't going to get out until midsummer or so. Ironically, the Senate, which is trying to tinker with the package, might actually improve it because it is trying to include the extension of unemployment benefits for 13 weeks. And that money could get to people right away and actually help - this stimulate the economy.
MONTAGNE: And the president quickly pivoted from the stimulus package to something close to his heart: making permanent his tax cuts.
Pres. BUSH: Some in Washington argue that letting tax relief expire is not a tax increase. Try explaining that to 116 million American taxpayers who would see their taxes rise by an average of $1,800.
MONTAGNE: John, what about that average of $1,800?
YDSTIE: Well, that average is misleading. As we know, the Bush tax cuts were weighted heavily toward the wealthy; they benefited most from them. So if they're not extended, the wealthy are likely to be hurt most. Some figures from the Citizens for Tax Justice suggest that over the 10 years of the Bush tax cuts, people at the top one percent are going to get about $30,000 on average per year, while people in the middle-income brackets get just $550 or so. So that $1,800 average really is quite meaningless.
MONTAGNE: John, thanks much. That's NPR's John Ydstie.
Now, the economy has become the top issue in the presidential campaign, but another big domestic issue is health care. Candidates have their plans, and last night, the president had his own offering.
(Soundbite of applause)
Pres. BUSH: So I have proposed ending the bias in the tax code against those who do not get their health insurance through their employer. This one reform would put private coverage within reach for millions, and I call on the Congress to pass it this year.
(Soundbite of applause)
MONTAGNE: Julie Rovner covers health care for NPR. And Julie, is the president right? This one reform would do this much?
JULIE ROVNER: Yes and no. The president's right that it would put health care within reach for millions, but that would only make a very small dent in the problem of the uninsured. Right now, if you get your health care at work, you don't pay taxes on the value of that health insurance. If you buy your own health insurance, you don't get any tax benefit. So the president would like to change that and give everybody a tax deduction.
The problem is, most of the people who don't have insurance don't pay any taxes, so a tax deduction won't really make it any less expensive for them to buy their own insurance. So even the most ambitious estimate says that only about 9 million of the 47 million uninsured people would get health insurance under the president's plan - which is, indeed, millions of people, but doesn't really go towards solving the problem - a main reason why Congress didn't take up this proposal last year when the president first offered it.
MONTAGNE: That's NPR's Julie Rovner.
Now, if the president is remembered for any domestic initiative, it would be his education plan: No Child Left Behind.
Pres. BUSH: Last year, fourth and eighth graders achieved the highest math scores on record. Reading scores are on the rise. African-American and Hispanic students posted all-time highs.
MONTAGNE: The president claiming that No Child Left Behind is succeeding. And Larry Abramson, you cover education, is the president right?
LARRY ABRAMSON: Well, there have been some improvements in test scores, Renee, particularly in the math area. The president can point to those scores going up, but he can't say that No Child Left Behind did it because a lot of other efforts have been under way. The states have been pushing higher standards for over a decade.
A lot of people say that those state efforts really were - had much more to do with that. And a lot of these improvements are really miniscule, Renee. Many people think that these scores should have gone up much more quickly, and they point to the fact that the achievement gap between white and minority students is still enormous. It's still two grade levels in many areas.
MONTAGNE: Although that gap is narrowing.
ABRAMSON: It's narrowing a little bit. But particularly for Hispanic students, they are still just as far behind as they were 10 or 15 years ago.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Larry Abramson.
And last year in his State of the Union speech, President Bush acknowledged climate change as a major issue.
Christopher Joyce covers science for NPR.
And, Chris, there was big applause last evening when the president said he wanted to, quote, "complete an international agreement designed to slow the growth of greenhouse gases." What was he referring to?
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE: Both sides of the aisle stood up. Everybody was very happy. But that's a good question, though, because there is already an international agreement. It's the Kyoto Protocol. It's been in effect for a couple of years and goes through 2012. It's also the international agreement that the United States is not part of, and all the rest of the industrialized world is.
What the president is actually talking about is his own parallel process - he's initiated last year, something called the Major Economies Initiative. And it's an effort to get China and India - countries that emit lots of greenhouse gases but are not part of the Kyoto Protocol - into some of sort of system, a voluntary one. But the rest of the world considers it rather too little and too late.
MONTAGNE: That's NPR's Christopher Joyce.
We've spent a lot of time talking about domestic issues just now, but the president did spend a lot of time talking about an area that will define his presidency - the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman was listening to the speech. And here we're going to hear the president talking about the war in Afghanistan.
Pres. BUSH: A nation that was once a safe haven for al-Qaeda is now a young democracy where boys and girls are going to school. New roads and hospitals are being built, and people are looking to the future with new hope.
MONTAGNE: Now, there are certainly new roads and more schools, but those schools are also being burned down - hundreds just this last year. Is this picture too rosy, Tom?
TOM BOWMAN: Well, there are also more attacks, Renee. Back in 2006, they -average of more than 400 attacks per month. In 2007, more than 500 attacks per month. So, there's a real concern about a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. And at the same time, NATO has gone somewhat wobbly on Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Gates wanted them to send in more than 7,000 more troops, and they've refused.
MONTAGNE: The president also had very positive words for Iraq.
Pres. BUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, some may deny the surge is working, but among the terrorists, there is no doubt. Al-Qaeda is on the run in Iraq, and this enemy will be defeated.
(Soundbite of applause)
BOWMAN: Well, al-Qaeda is definitely a threat in Iraq. There is no question about it. But perhaps a bigger threat is the lack of reconciliation between the Sunni and the Shiites. There's been very little movement on reconciliation over the past several years. No oil law. No provincial elections. And they have a lot of work to do.
MONTAGNE: The president had a few numbers - 80,000 Iraqi citizens fighting the terrorists, as he put it. A hundred thousand new Iraqi soldiers and police have been added over the last year.
BOWMAN: Well, the key question is, when can the Iraqis take over security on their own? And the Iraqi defense minister has estimated that for internal security, it will be 2009 to 2012 before they are able to take over. But as far as external threats to the country, he's looking as long as 12 years before they can handle that security job on their own.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman.
We've been reviewing the speech President Bush gave last night. This was Mr. Bush's last State of the Union address and the first time his twin daughters came to watch him deliver it. Next time, the speech will be given by a new president.
And if you missed some of what our reporters had to say about fact-checking the State of the Union address, you can read their full analysis at npr.org.
You're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
LYNN NEARY, host:
With President Bush's final State of the Union behind him, the attention now shifts to Congress. It's in the House and the Senate that the initiatives the president proposed last night will succeed or fail.
To talk about how President Bush's agenda will play out, we're joined by a member of the House Republican leadership, Congressman Adam Putnam of Florida.
Good to have you with us, congressman.
Representative ADAM PUTNAM (Republican, Florida): Good to be with you. Thank you.
NEARY: Well, right at the top of his speech, the president called on Congress to act quickly on measures to stimulate the economy. He acknowledged the temptation to load up the bill with pet projects. What do you think the chances are the Congress will do what the president wants and pass a clean bill quickly?
Rep. PUTNAM: Well, you know, it's interesting. The president was really speaking in many ways to the Senate on that topic because the White House, through Secretary Paulson, the House Republican leadership and the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, negotiated a proposal that really is on the Senate's doorstep right now. And what the president was saying is don't let the pride of authorship delay an important growth package or a shot in the arm for this economy. And he knows that there's pressure from both the left and the right to load it up. And he was, I think, really pleading with the Senate to take up the bipartisan agreement that has been negotiated in the House.
NEARY: Well, what would happen if the Senate adds to that economic stimulus plan? Is there a point at which the package could lose the support of House Republicans?
Rep. PUTNAM: Well, I think there's pressure, really, from both sides. There's some proposals being floated around in the Senate, that Charlie Rangel was sending a warning shot over to the Senate about because it's a pressure from the right. Obviously, Republicans have concerns about adding too many things from the left, and it could collapse under its own weight. And it would be a real missed opportunity for what has been a real bipartisan agreement here between Republicans and Democrats in the House. A big step in the right direction, frankly, for getting Washington back on track to work again for the American people.
NEARY: Besides the economic stimulus package, is there anything else that Democrats and Republicans can come together on now?
Rep. PUTNAM: Well, the other piece of that is, really, immediate in its term, is the reauthorization of FISA or the Protect America Act, modernizing our intelligence surveillance laws. It passed by bipartisan vote back in the summer when it was extended for only six months. That expires now, February 1st. There is, I think, broad agreement among rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats for allowing it to go forward so that our intelligence services have the eyes and the ears that they need. It is, unfortunately, I think, being delayed by things that are playing out at the leadership level. But it passed the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday by a vote of 13-2. It's hard to get a Mother's Day resolution through Senate committees on a vote of 13-2.
NEARY: Yeah. You know, in the final year of President Bush's presidency and in a Democratic Congress, are House Republicans really strong enough to push through his agenda? Just briefly.
Rep. PUTNAM: Well, I think when you look at how the first session of this Congress ended last December, you will see that the president is still very much an integral player in this process and House Republicans and Senate Republicans were as well. The omnibus package passed last year at the Republican level. We were able to re-authorize and extend the SCHIP, children's health insurance bill, for 18 months.
NEARY: Congressman Putnam, I'm going to have to stop you right there.
Rep. PUTNAM: Sure.
NEARY: I'm going to have to end right there. Thanks so much for joining us this morning.
Rep. PUTNAM: You bet.
NEARY: Congressman Adam Putnam is a member of the House Republican leadership.
You are listening to NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
LYNN NEARY, host:
And I'm Lynn Neary.
In his final state of the union address last night, President Bush touted successes in Iraq, where we'll go in a moment. The president also talked about five other parts of the world where people's freedoms continue to be diminished by terrorism.
One of them was Pakistan where the military continues to battle pro-Taliban insurgents. The Taliban recently launched a brazen attack on one Pakistani town not far from the major commercial center of Peshawar.
NPR's Jackie Northam reports.
(Soundbite of moving vehicle)
JACKIE NORTHAM: The dirty and crowded city of Peshawar is the gateway to Pakistan's tribal areas and on the road to Afghanistan. It's also just 20 miles away from Dara Adamkhel, notorious smuggling haven for arms and drugs.
Late last week, pro-Taliban militants hijacked four Pakistani army trucks in Dara Adamkhel loaded with munitions and captured the tunnel-linking Peshawar to Pakistan's tribal belt. The military came in hard using gun ships to attack the Taliban positions.
Rammimullah Yusufzai(ph), the editor of the Pakistani paper, The News, says the Taliban has been active in the area for more than a year. Yusufzai says this is the first time Pakistan's military has reacted.
Mr. RAMMIMULLAH YUSUFZAI (Editor, The News): There was no choice, the army had to act because if the army convoys are not secure, if army trucks our seized and if the army cannot have a safe passage through a major highway, then that shows that the army is so weak and the government has no control.
NORTHAM: It took three days for the army to recapture the tunnel Sunday and drive the approximately 500 Taliban militants into the surrounding hills. But the army hasn't regained total control of the area.
Retired Brigadier General Mahmoud Shaz(ph) spent years working for military intelligence in the tribal regions. He says, this time, the government and the military took action but often turns a blind eye to Taliban activity.
Brigadier General MAHMOUD SHAZ (Pakistani Army, Retired): If the government delays action, tries to put the dirt under the carpet, well, that's not a good attitude, I would say. They should have a zero tolerance for all those people who try to take law into their own hand. Roughly from this area of Dara Adamkhel this is Peshawar (unintelligible).
NORTHAM: Brigadier Shaz holds a large map showing a western side of Pakistan. His spread fingers move from the southern part up to the northern area. The Taliban are now active in all seven tribal regions and are making incursions into towns and villages in the surrounding districts.
Brig. Gen. SHAZ: What people are feeling the worst scenario could happen, is the Talibanization(ph) spreads through the whole of frontiers(ph) province. If it does, it will consume the whole army.
NORTHAM: Shaz says the Taliban has a coordinated strategy and may be opening new fronts to divert the army from its major operations in South Waziristan. The increased violence throughout the frontier regions, assassinations, suicide bombings, missile attacks - have put communities on edge.
Unidentified Man #1: (Speaking in foreign language).
Unidentified Man #2: (Speaking in foreign language).
NORTHAM: Here on the lawn at the University of Peshawar, fresh face students, male and female, mingle between classes. For the most part, the females have their heads covered. Some use their veils to cover most of their face. The Taliban has threatened the university for allowing males and females to study together.
Professor Sarfraz Khan says the Taliban has also come on to the campus to collect money and harass the students.
Professor SARFRAZ KHAN (University of Peshwar): We have seen extremists turned goats(ph), threatening students then they are sitting in a canteen together, male and female, or they are just in their classrooms or in the corridors, things like that, and talking to each other.
NORTHAM: But Khan says nobody stands up to the Taliban, not the school's administrators, the police or the military. Another professor at the university, Dr. Ijaz Khan, says people don't speak up because they're afraid that some in the military and the government are sympathetic to the Taliban.
Dr. IJAZ KHAN (Department of International Relations, University of Peshawar): People are just apprehensive. And you see the problem is even if they don't agree with the Taliban. They don't trust the government.
NORTHAM: Few believe the Taliban could capture and hold Peshawar. Nonetheless, the militants are having an enormous impact on this frontier city.
Jackie Northam, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Now to Iraq. Last night, President Bush touted the success of the military surge. Although it's brought relative quiet to Baghdad in many rural areas, insurgents are trying to regroup. The U.S. Army recently launched an offensive against al-Qaeda fighters.
NPR's Corey Flintoff was embedded with the unit.
(Soundbite of flying helicopter)
COREY FLINTOFF: The helicopters circling overhead are a reminder that this is a big operation, nearly 300 Americans plus units from the Iraqi army. They're backed up by armored vehicles and air support to clear the village of Vishigan(ph), a farming community on the Tigris River.
(Soundbite of helicopter)
FLINTOFF: Nine men have already died on this day in another part of the battlefield - three of them Americans.
(Soundbite of footsteps)
FLINTOFF: But for the 132 Cav's Bravo troop, the picture is a lot smaller, hemmed in by thick brush among neglected orange groves and towering date palms. They're following a young Iraqi man who was arrested just this morning on suspicion of working for al-Qaeda. He says he knows where there's a weapons cache, but when he gets to the site, he tells the interpreter that he's not so sure.
Unidentified Man #1: He doesn't know where exactly they put it, but they come through in this farm.
Unidentified Man #2: Start out, and start searching that way.
FLINTOFF: The prisoner looks to be in his late teens, not much younger than some of the soldiers who guard him. He moves clumsily through the brush because his hands are bound in front of him with black plastic handcuffs. The dog handler follows him.
Unidentified Woman: Good boy. Come on.
FLINTOFF: Her explosive sniffing dog, a furry German shepherd mix, is the only one who looks happy to be here. After much walking, the search turns out to be fruitless.
Another team had better luck. Sergeant Manuel Bias Jr.(ph) from Bravo's 3rd platoon was part of a patrol that found an insurgent campsite and weapons cache near a farmer's house.
Sergeant MANUEL BIAS, JR. (Bravo 3rd Platoon, U.S. Army): So we went to this little wooded area back there, about 200 meters back there, and I just began searching. So that's where we came up with this cache. Found a tent - a campsite, some mortar rounds, about 22 of them, and just a lot, a lot of bad stuff.
FLINTOFF: Specialist Lucas Frasier(ph) shows the burning remains of the campsite.
Specialist LUCAS FRASIER (U.S. Army): What's left of it, I guess. It's all on fire and burnt up. We destroyed it with thermite. And that's the crater, as you can see the - not much left of the cache.
FLINTOFF: Frasier says his fellow soldiers pulled camping gear, weapons and bomb-making material from the tent.
Spc. FRASIER: They were finding machine guns, ammunition, hand grenades, det cord, all IED-making paraphernalia. We pushed out, we found some motors, a motorcycle that was cached in the woods, kind of like a, you know, escape vehicle, I suppose.
FLINTOFF: It goes against the grain for young American men to blow up a motorcycle, even if they can't ride it themselves. But their mission is to destroy anything that the insurgents could use against them.
Air Force explosives experts planted charges on the motorcycle and on a thick spool of copper wire the insurgents had evidently planned to use for setting off roadside bombs. The soldiers crouch behind a mud-brick wall, waiting for the cry.
Unidentified Man #4: Fire in the hole. Fire in the hole.
(Soundbite of explosion)
FLINTOFF: The only thing left of the motorcycle was a charred tire, but the spool of copper wire had erupted into a giant slinky that the soldiers had to drag back with them.
The Army's 132 Cav will go on to search more houses and more farms. The doubt remains about what they may not have found and what else the returning insurgents may hide there while the Americans are away. The soldiers have promised to visit the area frequently over the next year, but for now, every visit is a costly and dangerous operation.
Corey Flintoff, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
In last night's State of the Union address, President Bush said the U.S. is committed to confronting global climate change. One of the places that change is becoming most visible is Antarctica.
The Antarctic is part of the great weather machine that shapes climate around the world, and its layers of ice have recorded 400,000 years of climate history. Now that some of that ice is melting, tourists who once came for the wildlife and the natural beauty are also coming to see a planet in peril.
NPR correspondent Gwen Thompkins is on just such a trip for our Climate Connection series with National Geographic. She joined us from the Norwegian ship, the MS Fram.
And, Gwen, where are you right now? Out in the water, I know that.
GWEN THOMPKINS: Yes, we are in the water, Renee. We have been sailing since Saturday evening. For the first 36 hours, we saw nothing. We saw not even a smidgen of dry land. And since then, we've seen some amazing glaciers covered in a powdery white snow. But if you look at to the relief of some of the glaciers, you notice that the snow is actually a pale blue, just a gorgeous blue.
MONTAGNE: Talk to us about the people who are on the cruise with you.
THOMPKINS: The people who are here, they all appear to be very excited about the prospect of seeing this continent and stepping on it for the first time. Many of them are inveterate travelers who want to see all seven continents on the Earth, and this is their number seven. So the people here tend to be drawn to this form of nature, drawn to some degree because they appear worried that it won't be here forever for humankind to enjoy.
MONTAGNE: So they're very aware of the notion that it's, as we were saying a moment ago, a part of the planet that's in peril?
THOMPKINS: Absolutely. In fact, I think to a person, they've all seen the Al Gore film, "Inconvenient Truth," and I think that that had definitely spurred their interest.
MONTAGNE: You just spoke of the ice being blue, it sounds quite dreamlike. Tell us more about that. Give us a sense of how this experience takes you from the familiar to - what?
THOMPKINS: The ice is blue, and that was one of the most shocking realizations that we've made so far. You know, Antarctica is so different from the Arctic if you circle, because at the top of the world, there's only the ice cap. There is no land. But here, what we're looking at are mountains, dark brown or black mountains that are covered in glaciers.
MONTAGNE: It sounds pretty spectacular.
THOMPKINS: It is, Renee. Yesterday, we set our boots on the ground for the first time on a barrier island. It was so exciting, in large part because when you think about these sort of ice paradises, you think that they're going to be silent places, you know, where you can listen to your heartbeat or you can listen through to your breathing. But no. You get on to these islands in the vicinity of the Antarctic continent, and they're loud places. You know, you hear the ice nearly cracking. You actually hear or see ice falling from glaciers into the water.
MONTAGNE: When you say you can hear the ice cracking and seeing ice fallen into the water or the ocean, does it make it easier to believe that climate change is happening, that it's a real event, that the Earth is fragile?
THOMPKINS: Well, the people on board here are very concerned that that this exactly what they are seeing. But at this point, you know, it's very difficult to tell whether these glaciers are melting as a result of climate change or whether this is a natural course of how glaciers behave in this part of the world. Certainly, there's compelling evidence to suggest that global warming is affecting the periphery of the Antarctic continent. But for right now, people are still caught up in the majesty of what they are seeing.
MONTAGNE: Gwen, we'll leave you with that as you head for the Antarctic Peninsula there on the MS Fram, and thanks very much.
THOMPKINS: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: We'll be hearing reports from NPR's Gwen Thompkins this coming March when Climate Connections is all Antarctica.
LYNN NEARY, host:
Good morning. I'm Lynn Neary.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy's relationship with model-turned-singer Carla Bruni has been making headlines. Now Ryanair has decided to use the couple's image in a French newspaper advertisement. The ad has a comic book style bubble over Bruni's head that reads, With Ryanair all my family can come to the wedding. The president isn't amused. He hasn't even proposed. He's seeking legal action against the airline.
You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
Football fans may already be praying for their team to win the Super Bowl or at least for a room in Phoenix this late in the game. You can do the praying in the room at Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery. The Benedictine nuns there are now renting rooms to Super Bowl-goers. No rowdy behavior allowed and it's 250 bucks for a bed. But that could include a little divine intervention.
This is MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
President Bush used his State of the Union address to highlight what he characterized as the great success of his landmark No Child Left Behind initiative. That federal plan aimed at improving public schools has to be renewed now. And six years after it won strong bipartisan support, it's drawing overwhelmingly bipartisan opposition.
NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports.
CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: So how did No Child Left Behind, enacted with such lofty expectations and political fanfare, come to be viewed as an unworkable, heavy-handed, underfunded mandate? The answer depends on who you talk to, starting with the co-author of the law, Representative George Miller, Democrat of California.
Representative GEORGE MILLER (Democrat, California): No Child Left Behind is the most fundamental reform of federal education policy in 40 years, but when you have the president break his promise to fund those reforms, that poisoned the well.
SANCHEZ: Okay. So not enough money was one big reason for the law's shortcomings. But it's not the only reason, says Roy Romer, former governor of Colorado, former chair of the Democratic Party, and former superintendent of schools in Los Angeles.
Mr. ROY ROMER (Former Superintendent of Schools in Los Angeles): Look, that law is not adequate. There are too many tests, and it's clumsy. And it's not as effective as it ought to be. It needs to be reenacted. It needs to be improved. It should not be thrown away.
SANCHEZ: There's also the skepticism that educators expressed early on, like Dennis Malone, principal of Hamilton High School in Ohio, where President Bush signed No Child Left Behind into law.
Mr. DENNIS MALONE (Principal, Hamilton High School): Some teachers believe that it's good and we need to make the change. You're still going to find others who say, wow, you know, we really don't need this. We were fine where we were and, you know, leave us alone.
SANCHEZ: Then there's economist Richard Rothstein's absolutely scathing criticism of the law's most important goal - getting every single student in America to perform at or above grade level by 2014.
Mr. RICHARD ROTHSTEIN (Economist): The notion that with schools alone you can create equal achievement for children of different social backgrounds is one that's not based in any research. It's not based in any experience. It's not based in any true understanding of what the many, many factors that contribute to students' achievement are, that health doesn't matter, that housing doesn't matter, that dysfunctional communities don't matter. I don't think we can make social policy on the basis of a myth.
SANCHEZ: As for Congress, some Republicans now question whether No Child Left Behind was even necessary. Representative Scott Garrett of New Jersey was elected the year No Child Left Behind became law. He says he would have opposed it because it has put the U.S. on a slippery slope to federalizing public education.
Representative SCOTT GARRETT (Republican, New Jersey): Where every single child in the entire country is reading from the exact same book at the exact same hour, taking the exact same test at the exact same minute. That doesn't bring us to a 21st world-class education. That just brings us to mediocrity.
SANCHEZ: Garrett wants to give states the right to opt out of No Child Left Behind. It's an idea that several governors support, but Congress is unlikely to seriously consider. So with the renewal of the law in limbo, opponents now have more time to chip away at other things they don't like about it. Connecticut and a handful of school districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont have gone so far as to sue the federal government, arguing that the law is an unfunded mandate and therefore unconstitutional.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings doesn't sound like she's losing any sleep over this or anything else critics are threatening to do. In a recent speech at the National Press Club, Spellings said the law will not be watered down, not on her watch.
Ms. MARGARET SPELLINGS (Education Secretary): And today, from Massachusetts to Florida, from New York City to Atlanta to Houston, those that first championed this approach are reaping the greatest results.
SANCHEZ: Reading and math scores, says Spellings, are at historic highs. But that's not because of No Child Left Behind, says Congressman Garrett.
Rep. GARRETT: And it's not just me saying that, it's, you know, the Fordham Foundation did a study on it and they said that, yeah, there's some improvements in some areas but they're modest compared to what improvements we saw prior to No Child Left Behind.
SANCHEZ: That's true. The most dramatic gains in math began long before No Child Left Behind became law. Based on the Education Department's own data, reading scores have in fact remained flat since the law took effect six years ago. The achievement gap between blacks and whites meanwhile is still pretty big. One study shows that if the gains under No Child Left Behind remain as meager as they've been thus far, it'll take decades to eliminate the gaps in math and reading.
Still, Secretary Spellings insists that short of a major revamping of the law, six years from now all students will be performing at grade level. There will be no gap.
Ms. SPELLINGS: Remember, what we're asking for is grade level reading and math ability by 2014. Is that too much to ask from our schools? I don't think so.
SANCHEZ: Congress will change No Child Left Behind for the better, says Congressman George Miller - if not this year, next year under a new administration.
Rep. MILLER: We're not going to give up on these reforms. We're not going to go back to having teachers that don't know what they're teaching. We're not going to go back to masking the poor performance of poor minority children.
SANCHEZ: And, Miller says, those who think that Congress is going to give up on No Child Left Behind are kidding themselves.
Claudio Sanchez, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The Los Angeles Police Department has a new crime-fighting tool. It looks like something that Captain Kirk and his crew might have used in the original "Star Trek" series. This device was developed by the Pentagon for U.S. soldiers now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As NPR's Mandalit del Barco reports, it could come in handy in lots of L.A. neighborhoods where English is rarely spoken.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO: Outside LAPD headquarters, Captain Dennis Kato shows off the department's newest gadget.
Captain DENNIS KATO (Los Angeles Police Department): It's called the Phraselator. It's not a translation device. It's not something that I can actually speak into and have it convert my voice or my language.
DEL BARCO: Instead, Captain Kato says, the Phraselator is a handheld electronic device downloaded with prerecorded phrases and commands.
PHRASELATOR: Hands behind your back.
Cpt. KATO: Now it's going to play in Arabic.
PHRASELATOR: (Speaking foreign language)
Cpt. KATO: We'll go to Cantonese now.
PHRASELATOR: (Speaking foreign language)
Cpt. KATO: Spanish.
PHRASELATOR: (Speaking foreign language)
Cpt. KATO: And then the last one was in Vietnamese.
PHRASELATOR: (Speaking foreign language)
DEL BARCO: Kato says more than half of today's LAPD officers are Spanish speakers and some speak Korean or Chinese dialects, but they're not always available. And in a city where more than 260 languages are spoken, the captain says this device can help officers meet the challenge.
Cpt. KATO: I can either give orders or I could - if you can answer by pointing, that's what the device is used for. So if say - can you show me which way the suspect ran, then at least you can - she could point down the street.
DEL BARCO: Responses by witnesses or suspects can be recorded onto the Phraselator to be translated later. The main idea is for police to use the Phraselator for crowd control, to avoid the kind of chaos that happened last year during the huge May Day immigration rights march.
Police in riot gear use batons and rubber bullets to sweep through MacArthur Park, trying to disperse the crowd. Dozens were hurt, including Spanish-speaking immigrants and news people.
Cpt. KATO: One of the difficulties at MacArthur Park is that we used a helicopter to disperse the crowd, and it wasn't very intelligible to the crowd that was on the ground. And most of the demonstrators were Spanish-speaking. We only did in it in English. So when we started looking at what kind of tools we had that can help, we came across this Phraselator.
PHRASELATOR: Welcome to this event. We are here to facilitate your First Amendment rights.
DEL BARCO: Are you going to translate what First Amendment rights means?
Cpt. KATO: Or would we explain that out on this device? No, we didn't do that.
DEL BARCO: So how are they going to know?
Cpt. KATO: That's a good question. That's something that we're going to put in here. And that's a valid question.
DEL BARCO: The LAPD is still working out the kinks on four test devices, priced at $2,500 each. They can be hooked up to powerful speakers to project sound for up to half a mile away.
Cpt. KATO: Now, this speaker allows us to communicate with the crowd.
Unidentified Man: (Speaking foreign language)
DEL BARCO: Sergeant Eric Lee projects this order from speakers mounted on the LAPD's other new gizmo, a four-wheel drive buggy that can go over curves and sidewalks.
Sergeant ERIC LEE (Los Angeles Police Department): It's a souped-up golf cart, if you want to say that, for going over a whole wide array of terrain. I mean it's such a large city that, you know, we go from the mountains literally to the sea.
DEL BARCO: The LAPD now has four of these $35,000 vehicles. They're also equipped with video cameras and electronic billboards to visually project information or commands.
PHRASELATOR: (Speaking foreign language)
DEL BARCO: The LAPD is hoping its new technology will help officers cope with an old problem - making themselves understood.
Mandalit del Barco, NPR News.
INSKEEP: To hear the Phraselator say hands behind your back in five languages, go to NPR.org.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
A former Soviet general is threatening America in the pages of Marvel Comics. And who is going to fight this villain out of the Cold War era? It's a job for Captain America - except, he can't anymore, as I reported on this program almost a year ago.
(Soundbite of archived clip)
MONTAGNE: Sad news now about a superhero. Marvel Comics yesterday announced the death of Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America. He was shot by assassins on the steps of the federal courthouse in New York City.
But wait, Captain America is back. Steve Rogers is still dead. The form-fitting, star-spangled costume has been donned by his old sidekick, James Bucky Barnes.
Mr. ED BRUBAKER (Writer, "Captain America"): Bucky is kind of a very conflicted character who's trying to find some redemption. And, you know, his closest friend is basically taken away from him before he can really reconcile with him.
MONTAGNE: Ed Brubaker writes "Captain America" for Marvel Comics. He says the two characters had a lot to reconcile. Bucky and Captain America fought together in World War II. After the war, they took different paths. Captain America became an American hero; Bucky was brainwashed by the Soviets who turned him into an evil killer.
Thanks to a superhero intervention, Bucky is back with the good guys now. Still, he's no Boy Scout. Unlike the old Captain America, whose weapon of choice was a shield. The new Captain America, Bucky Barnes, carries a gun.
Ed Brubaker understands that some readers might have a problem with that. He says Captain America is one of those characters that Americans on all sides want to claim as their own.
Mr. BRUBAKER: All liberals want Captain America to be standing on a soapbox outside the White House bashing President Bush. All right-wingers want Captain America to be, you know, over in Afghanistan punching Osama in the face, just like in his first issue, on the cover, he's punching Hitler.
MONTAGNE: Ed Brubaker, for one, isn't taking sides. He says he writes about Captain America, the guy behind the mask, not just the icon. And the new issue of "Captain America" is out this morning. Read a page from that story and see the original Captain America at npr.org.
(Soundbite of song, "Captain America")
MOE (Singer): (Singing) Captain America said you gotta be like me or you're gonna wind up dead last. At the end of your rope, flat broke. Down and tired while you're sleeping, won't you go to bed. Let me run your life. Lies.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's a challenge to collect statistics on anything in Afghanistan, especially something like the number of kids living on the streets. But the United Nations and other groups estimate that conflict and poverty force tens of thousands of children out on the streets every day. They beg food or sell it. They sell other odds and ends, usually making less than $2 per day. And with those meager earnings they often support their families, which means they're out on the streets even now during Afghanistan's bitter winter.
NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports from the streets of Kabul.
JAMAL: (Speaking foreign language)
SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON: This waif of a salesman in faded pink boots is 10 years old. His name is Jamal and he is hawking gum in Kabul's trendy Shahre-Naw neighborhood.
JAMAL: (Speaking foreign language)
NELSON: That's about 20 cents. He's determined to score a sale, no matter what. He chases after pedestrians and darts in and out of snarled traffic.
JAMAL: (Through translator) I'm a little scared of the cars. One hit me coming the wrong way down the street, but I wasn't hurt too bad.
NELSON: Jamal says he has worked this corner for four years. He's one of an estimated 60,000 children in Afghanistan who work the streets, says Mohammad Yousef, who heads Aschiana, a nonprofit group that helps street kids.
Mr. MOHAMMAD YOUSEF (Aschiana Director): Majority of them, they are not going to the school because they are working full time. Early in the morning they are starting, they are working. Until evening they are working to have a piece of bread or something for their family.
NELSON: Yousef says Afghanistan's street kids are the legacy of a quarter-century of war that stripped their country of safety nets like schools and social services. Growing unemployment and living costs are swelling their numbers. He and others say the Afghan government has done little to help street children, given other burning issues like the ongoing war against the Taliban.
Many of the street kids take their plight in stride. They help each other too - for good luck, they say - like giving a few Afghanis to a boy or girl who fails to sell anything. But a few admit they hate being out here, like 11-year-old Ruzadin, a pale boy with weathered skin and a faded wool cap. He hounds passersby with a soft, monotonous plea for 10 cents, while waving a can of burning incense to ward off the evil eye.
RUZADIN: (Speaking foreign language)
NELSON: It's like being a beggar, he says.
Next year he hopes to do something more rewarding, such as working in a hotel or a store like his older brother.
Ashiana director Mohammad Yousef says that's not good enough. He fears kids like Ruzadin will become another generation of undereducated, underemployed adults who send their children to work on the streets.
(Soundbite of music)
NELSON: Aschiana offers classes to thousands of street kids like this one in Kabul, teaching them to play traditional Afghan musical instruments to try and break the cycle. They also teach the children to read and write. The idea, Yousef says, is to boost their skills and ambition.
The kids attend class for only a few hours each day so they can still earn money for their families. Fourteen-year-old Ahmad Zia learned to play the accordion-like Armonia and wants to become a famous musician. But he has no plans to give up his day job.
Mr. AHMAD ZIA: (Through translator) Why should I be upset about having to work the streets? I have no choice. My father is old, my mother is weak, and only I can make the household run. So I need to sell plastic bags.
NELSON: Afghan singer and activist Farhad Darya says that's unacceptable. He believes education - not work - should be the priority for these children, and that Afghans need to do more to address the needs of street kids.
Mr. FARHAD DARYA (Singer): We're sure that it is not the people from outside who guarantee our future. This is these children who are left behind out there, so we must do something for our future.
NELSON: Darya, who lives with his family in Virginia, started a program called Kooche, or street, to provide for Afghan street kids. He says he's opened bank accounts for 2,000 widows, who receive $50 a month provided they send at least one of their children to school.
Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR News, Kabul.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's Wednesday, the time we usually hear from commentator Frank Deford. This week, though, the ghost of William Shakespeare makes an appearance.
The bard was in the Arizona the other day as the Super Bowl contenders met the media, and he filed this exclusive play.
(Soundbite of a play)
INSKEEP: (As Narrator) Our drama begins as a slovenly mob of sports journalists enters the field at the University of Phoenix Stadium. A fetching reporter, the Sideline Wench of the Duchy of Fox, steps forward.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: (As Sideline Wench) Since none of my sex is allowed within the network booth on high, 'twill be my one sweet distaff voice midst these growling sports-page lowlifes, which will, upon my sideline nunnery, dare confront the pretty Brady.
INSKEEP: (As Narrator) Two heralds, Kornheisercranz and Wilbonstern, wearing hideous matching ESPN doublets, elbow the Sideline Wench aside.
FRANK DEFORD: (As Kornheisercranz) Upon this line-ed greensward set within a desert, the Almighty fixed but for cactus will be this our strange stage for Sabbath's pigskin war, waged by mesomorphs come from green Blue States afar.
NEAL CONAN: (As Wilbonstern): 'Tis stranger still the warrior names affixed for they would better be the one, the other. Think on it: those called Giants are but dwarfs here, mere ciphers in the point spread, a goodly dozen down.
DEFORD: (As Kornheisercranz) Yey, the true giants, these peerless monsters call themselves Patriots, even though they give shame to that sweet address, trafficking more as traitors, scoundrels in video deceit, cashing all manner of Beli-checks(ph).
(Soundbite of music)
POGGIOLI: (As Sideline Wench) But hush all you scribes who bloviate so, for comes now fair Brady, he who is as super in his mortal company as e're this game is to sport. But soft, let me look upon him as if I filled his embrace. Oh, a visage that Narcissus would have traded for and a manner that knows neither pressure nor fear. But, alas, 'tis women of fashion that he favors - for one already has his babe, another his flowers - and I, only a Sideline Wench who can but model dreams.
INSKEEP: (As Narrator) And now, Brady enters amid a crowd of admirers. Small children toss rose petals in his path.
(Soundbite of cheering)
DEFORD: (As Kornheisercranz) Methinks the crunch upon his presence is so great and the paparazzi do shine forth such a spangled glare that the great golden orb above must be dimmed and the sounds of Niagara itself seem noiseless before the din of questions that confront our great Brady.
Unidentified Man #1: (As the Media) Hey, Brady, Brady, what is afoot with thou?
Unidentified Man #2: (As the Media) Brady, Brady, what is afoot with thou?
ARI SHAPIRO: (As Tom Brady) Good men of the press box, I come whole to you for always the feats I have achieved were upon my two feet. And Sunday, I shall play the same no less, one game at a time, one good foot before the other. But now, I bid you, let me take my leave to join my mates, for by rolling alone, there is no way for Moss to gather passes.
(Soundbite of noise)
INSKEEP: (As Narrator) And so Brady exits, stage left, and the heralds return.
CONAN: (As Wilbonstern): But look now, who approaches from yon other way? 'Tis young Eli, who seems in his manner, yet a boy, no match for such a paragon as the dauntless Brady.
DEFORD: (As Kornheisercranz) 'Tis so, he is yet more Manning than man, but the football blood that fills that callow vessel is as royal as Brady ever brought to his captured throne. Eli is the magnolia seed of the sainted Archie and thus branch from the same tree as Peyton - he who made stallions of Colts but twelvemonth past. Mayhap the lad can, with a pigskin, find the same mark little David did when bookies of yore favored huge Goliath.
POGGIOLI: (As Sideline Wench) So, withal, is the grandeur of Brady match for the legacy of Eli? Forsooth, with that, I take to silence and send it back up to the big boys in the booth.
INSKEEP: (As Narrator) And so the curtain falls on our Super Bowl drama with apologies to Shakespeare and thanks to our weekly sports bard, commentator Frank Deford, who played the part of Kornheisercranz. Thanks also to Sylvia Poggioli, who played the Sideline Wench, Neal Conan as Wilbonstern, and Ari Shapiro as Brady.
(Soundbite of music)
INSKEEP: You are listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
It's worth pausing a moment to recall that a few months ago Senator John McCain's presidential campaign was sliding in the polls, almost broke, and widely written off. Now he is the winner of the Florida primary and the Republican front-runner. Democrats had little at stake in Florida last night. Nobody campaigned there because it was considered too early.
The Republican contest was very different, as NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY: For John McCain, the victory in Florida means a huge boost in delegates, momentum and much needed fundraising heading into the Super Tuesday contest in more than 20 states next week. McCain told supporters in Miami last night to celebrate for a moment, because today it's back to work.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): My friends, in one week, in one week we will have as close to a national primary as we've ever had in this country. I intend to win it and be the nominee of our party.
(Soundbite of cheering)
HORSLEY: All of the Republicans campaigned hard in Florida, seeing the state as a giant stepping stone to the nomination. McCain faced particularly tough competition from Mitt Romney. But exit polls show the 71-year-old senator winning handily among Florida seniors, who represented the biggest voting block. He also got some last-minute support from Florida's popular governor, Charlie Crist. Exit polls suggest McCain scored best with Republicans who consider themselves moderate, while Romney did better with self-described conservatives.
Last night, McCain vowed to become the standard bearer for all Republicans by chanting limited government, low taxes and careful spending.
Sen. McCAIN: I am confident we will succeed in this contest and in the bigger one in November against - against anyone the Democratic Party nominates.
(Soundbite of cheering)
HORSLEY: For Romney, Florida represents another disappointing second-place finish, and because of the winner-take-all system, he gets none of the state's 57 delegates. He'd hoped to win in Florida by stressing his business savvy and experience in economic issues. But even though half the voters called the economy the most pressing issue, McCain was seen as just as capable in that area.
Romney shows no signs of ending his campaign. His wife Ann told supporters in St. Petersburg last night they are looking forward to next week's contest.
Ms. ANN ROMNEY: The conservatives are starting to rally around Mitt. This is just a send-off point. This is not an end. It's another beginning. We have 22 more states to go after, and we will be able to do that.
HORSLEY: Mitt Romney pointedly thanked a couple of cousins campaigning for him from California and Colorado, two states with contests next week. And he joked that supporters make his already large family feel like it's getting even bigger.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): All you guys are family. Don't expect to be part of the inheritance.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. ROMNEY: I'm not sure there's going to be much left after this.
HORSLEY: The multimillionaire has already dug deeply into his own pocket for the race, buying almost 10 times as many TV ads in Florida as McCain did.
Rudy Giuliani also campaigned hard in Florida after conceding several of the earlier contests. That strategy seem to backfire on the former New York mayor. And by last night Giuliani was speaking of his campaign in the past tense.
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York: Presidential Candidate): I'm proud that we chose to stay positive and to run a campaign of ideas. In an era of personal attacks, negative ads and cynical spin, we ran a campaign that was uplifting.
(Soundbite of applause)
HORSLEY: Giuliani travels to California today, where he is expected to throw his support to McCain. For all the focus Republicans put on Florida, Democratic presidential candidates steered clear of the state. They had promised not to campaign here after Florida blocked the party's rules and moved its primary up into January. That didn't stop Hillary Clinton, though, from coming to Davie, Florida last night to celebrate with her supporters, even though her victory carries no delegates with it, at least for now.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): I promise you I will do everything I can to make sure not only are Florida's Democratic delegates seated, but Florida is in the winning column for the Democrats in 2008.
(Soundbite of cheering)
HORSLEY: Clinton got half the Democratic total, more votes than any of the Republicans. But it was on the GOP side that yesterday's primary narrowed the field; next week's contests from coast to coast are expected to continue that process.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, St. Petersburg, Florida.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
We've just heard how Hispanic voters and seniors helped John McCain win in Florida, and we've been reporting this week on some of the different voter groups candidates are after. Today we look at the black vote, and Ron Walters is here to help us. He is the author of "Freedom is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates, and American Presidential Politics."
Good morning.
Mr. RONALD WALTERS (Author, "Freedom is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates and American Presidential Politics"): Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Generally speaking, what issues are most important right now in the black community?
Mr. WALTERS: Well, when you look at the public opinion polling, the biggest issue is jobs and the economy. And that's important because blacks, they have a structural problem with the rest of American society. They experience double-digit poverty, double-digit on employment. In other words, there is something of a permanent recession in the black community. So the economy, of course, is the top. The second happens to be the health care, and then of course Iraq comes in there. Black Americans are the most opposed community in the country to the Iraq war.
MONTAGNE: A poll that was done by the Pew Research Center recently suggested a trend emerging of younger African-Americans who choose to identify themselves as independents. Are you seeing generational shifts among black voters?
Mr. WALTERS: No, we're not really seeing a generational shift in terms of political behavior. We're seeing a shift in terms of voter identification. The post-civil rights generation, they didn't experience, so that the depths of the things that made them adhere to one party, a lot of them objectively look at the Democratic Party and look at the good and the bad. So younger people identify more as independents. But when it comes to their vote, they vote very much like their elders.
MONTAGNE: Is there room for the Republican Party to make inroads into the black vote? Because there's certainly a fair number of areas in which African-Americans, you know, as a community would seem to be more likely to be Republican - church-going, family oriented.
Mr. WALTERS: Well, you're absolutely right. The black community is the most churched community in America, possesses a whole range of conservative values. The problem is that when you look at the voting issues, when you look at the sort of key quality of life public policies, and when blacks look at those and when they experience, for example, deep cuts in the programs that service their community, when they look at politicians sort of appearing to blame them sort of for their socio-economic status, there is a huge backlash to that kind of behavior. The party really has to change substantively in order for blacks to consider it to be a valid option.
MONTAGNE: There are those who would say that the emergence of Barack Obama signifies that the U.S. has finally begun to move beyond race in the sense that he can be embraced by people of all races, white people in particular. To what degree do you agree with that?
Mr. WALTERS: Well, it says very little about the wider pantheon of race in the United States. This year we have experienced one of the most racially charged years in American history, everything from the fact that Katrina still lingers, the Jena Six, a whole range of nooses evoking the damage and the horror of lynching.
So I wouldn't say that Barack Obama represents that we have got passed race in the United States, but I will say that it represents it. When somebody like him comes along, who is - appears to be, for all practical purposes, qualified, that a lot more Americans will be give him a very fair chance to be heard and even supported.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for joining us.
Mr. WALTERS: Thank you for having me.
MONTAGNE: Ron Walters is director of the African-American Leadership Institute and professor in government and politics at the University of Maryland.
One more note now on the race for the White House. We're following reports this morning that Democrat John Edwards is ending his campaign. Edwards is expected to make an announcement later today in New Orleans, where he launched his campaign just over a year ago.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Let's move now from the streets of Afghanistan to the streets of India.
Our New Delhi correspondent, Philip Reeves, has been having a different experience on the roads, from the relative comfort of a new Indian car. That's the topic of his latest letter from India.
PHILIP REEVES: I've just changed cars. The new one is five-year-old Ambassador. Perhaps you know this type of vehicle. It's one of those sturdy round-shouldered you sometimes see lumbering through vintage black-and-white movies. Speed is not its strong point, nor is style. In fact, if it were footwear, the Ambassador would be a walking boot. It was modeled on Britain's 1957 Morris Oxford and its basic design hasn't greatly changed over the last half century.
However, my car is in a class of its own. That's because my car used to belong to a member of India's parliament.
In the last few years, Delhi has been flooded with fancy, big new cars, many of them imported. But many politicians here still cruise around town in shiny white Indian manufactured Ambassadors, crowned with a flashing light. The man who owned my car is Maharashtra state on India's West Coast.
For some reason the car's mad flaps are decorated with a skull and crossbones, and also, confusingly for the traffic behind, the command stop. Open the door and you get a real sense of the relationship between a politician and the people. Two small fans cool you as you lounge in the backseat behind tinted windows perusing your papers, illuminated by a personal lamp on a flexible stick. Any the exhaust fumes that stray in from outside are obliterated by the sickly whiff given off by a bottle of perfume which stands next to (unintelligible).
But what struck me most was the curtains. The car has white lace curtains. God forbid a politician should actually see the sometimes squalid and chaotic streets he passes through, or indeed that the inhabitants of those streets should be allowed to gaze upon him.
I have a young Indian colleague who's also just bought a new car, a modern city runaround. Her first journey in it was to the local temple. That's the tradition among many of India's Hindu majority. When they're buying something really special, they conduct a puja, a blessing, before they use it. The Hindu priest who blessed my colleague's car sprinkled water in its wheels, tied a cloth to the rearview mirror, and broke a coconut in front of it.
The priests of this booming capital must have run through a lot of coconuts in recent months. The New Delhi authorities are building a metro system and slowly new highways, but the number of private cars is skyrocketing. I couldn't find anyone in government willing to give me the figure. But a respected environmental lobby group here says private cars are increasing by almost 1,000 a day. You heard correctly - 1,000 cars every day in an already polluted and congested city of some 14 million people. That's a statistic which should cause India's politicians considerable alarm if they bother to look beyond their lace curtains.
Philip Reeves, NPR News, New Delhi.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
A university in Cleveland is trying to help returning military personnel continue their education. It can be hard to combine a return to civilian life with the pressures of going to college, which is why this university is holding classes exclusively for vets.
Dan Bobkoff reports from member station WCPN in Cleveland.
DAN BOBKOFF: It's mid-December and about a dozen young veterans are eating pizza and listening to a college pep talk at Cleveland State University in downtown Cleveland, as chemistry professor John Schoop(ph) make his speech.
Professor JOHN SCHOOP (Cleveland State University): (Unintelligible) work. You're going to make a choice. You're out. You've only finished your military service. Do you get a job or go to school.
BOBKOFF: Some look anxious, most of them back from duty only a few weeks or months. Mario Turner(ph) is sitting with a small group of vets on the right side of the lecture hall. He left Iraq with a gunshot wound in his leg, and after months of rehabilitation wants to move on with his life. But he finds the idea of college classes a bit daunting.
Mr. MARIO TURNER (Veteran): You'd freak out. Two hundred people around you when you're used to just - if you're just fresh out of war or something, or even been out for just six, seven months, you're still going to have the paranoia of having so many people around you.
BOBKOFF: Turner's been diagnosed for PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. He said it makes it harder for him to deal with everyday responsibilities like getting an apartment and paying bills, let alone trying to pay attention in a big classroom.
Mr. TURNER: It's like, wow, you know, my heart starts going, I start looking around, and that's when I started walking around and just looking around and seeing if everything's okay. And it's just - people just, they look at you and it's like, wow, what's wrong with that guy?
Prof. SCHOOP: They have a hard time concentrating. When it's quiet during a test, they are at their worst.
BOBKOFF: Professor John Schoop started the new program at Cleveland State to help vets adjust to school. He found that many of the guys he'd meet didn't think they could hack it at college.
Prof. SCHOOP: They'd come to me and say I don't know if I can handle it. I haven't been in school since, you know, I was 18, and that wasn't very good. And I said, you went to basic training. You were out there on the front line. That took a lot more guts than sitting in the class and applying for student loans. So I think you have what it takes.
BOBKOFF: The vets' apprehension became the basis of the school's new SERVE program, which stands for Supportive Education for the Returning Veteran. Schoop wants to help veterans like Edmund Sweeney(ph), who's just back from serving in Kosovo. Sweeney is a lot older than most of the other freshmen, and he's nervous.
Mr. EDMUND SWEENEY (Veteran): My basic concern was going back to school, just going back to school. Or having the do homework, having to study. Because when I was in high school, I did a little, I did enough. But now I'm grown.
BOBKOFF: Professor Schoop's idea is to recruit the soldiers early, often while they're still overseas. He hopes to navigate the VA and college registration. And then the vets get special small freshman classes open only to them. He's betting it will make them much more at ease.
Prof. SCHOOP: This way they had this camaraderie, this feeling of their unit.
BOBKOFF: So far he's convinced 14 veterans to take these classes. Mario Turner, Edmund Sweeney, and about 10 other young vets are sitting attentively in his introduction to chemistry class, held in a small classroom instead of a lecture hall.
Prof. SCHOOP: Why? By the time you leave Wednesday you're going to know why this group blows up, why this group kills you…
BOBKOFF: John Schoop plans to track the vets' experiences to see if this program makes a difference, because he says what it's really about is helping them deal with the trauma of war.
For NPR News, I'm Dan Bobkoff in Cleveland.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
NPR's business news starts with layoffs at Yahoo.
The Internet company says it plans to axe about a thousand jobs as early as next month. That's about 7 percent of Yahoo's workforce. The aim is to cut costs and focus on the company's most important business, online advertising. Ad revenues have been flagging and the company yesterday reported a 23 percent drop in quarterly profits.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
In addition to their falling profits and layoffs, people in the lending industry have to deal with federal investigators. The FBI says it has launched a probe into more than a dozen companies.
NPR's FBI correspondent Dina Temple-Raston reports.
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON: The FBI's Criminal Investigative Division wouldn't identify the 14 companies it is investigating, but it did say that the bureau was looking into allegations of fraud in virtually every stage of a mortgage, from the bundling of loans to the banks that end up holding them.
The bureau is even opening up books for firms that have been forced into bankruptcy as a result of the mortgage crisis. They are looking, among other things, for insider trading or other wrongdoing.
Sharon Ormsby heads up the FBI's financial crimes section. She says that more than half of their cases involve schemes worth more than a million dollars.
Ms. SHARON ORMSBY (FBI): They are criminal enterprise schemes involving brokers, appraisers, realtors, straw buyers, underwriters, developers, lawyers, and lenders, among others. It could be any combination of those groups.
TEMPLE-RASTON: As a result of this flood of activity, the FBI has opened more than 1,200 mortgage-related fraud cases. To give you an idea of scope, the number of suspicious activity reports banks have filed with the FBI have nearly doubled since 2006.
Neil Power is the chief of the FBI's Economic Crimes Unit in Washington. He said in 2003 there were 7,000 suspicious activity reports.
Mr. NEIL POWER (FBI): 2008, we're going to predict that we're going to have 60,000. They're still coming in. That would tell you that these suspicious activity reports are still come in the door. So we're going to have to take a hard look at these things.
TEMPLE-RASTON: The latest investigations are a new wrinkle in the FBI's focus on mortgage fraud. By focusing on the secondary market for mortgages, the FBI is casting a wider net, and that could end up implicating well-known financial firms. A number of adjustable rate mortgages will be resetting this year, so the FBI expects a flood of new cases.
Dina Temple-Raston, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
On Wednesdays we focus on the workplace, and today we talk about annoying sounds in the office - like a noisy printer or loud colleagues, or in this case a drill.
NPR's Neva Grant reports on something very close to home.
NEVA GRANT: So close to home, it hurts.
(Soundbite of machine)
GRANT: Yeah. Nasty, huh? And to record this I didn't have to visit a construction site. I didn't have to go anywhere. I just sat in my office and held up a microphone.
(Soundbite of drill)
GRANT: Here at NPR's headquarters in downtown Washington, repairmen have been drilling the façade of the building for weeks. It can get so loud, so unbelievably intrusive, it's like living inside a giant tube.
So I began to call around to see what we could do about this and that's how I met Wade Bray. He's an expert on why awful sounds sound so awful.
Mr. WADE BRAY (Head Acoustics): Human hearing is very sensitive to patterns. If you have a fairly smooth, not very much change of level, you can tolerate and tune out a fairly high amount of sound level. But if all of a sudden you start noticing something sticking out and coming and going, particularly if it's episodic like that, then it becomes objectionable. That's why the drill is so annoying.
GRANT: Wade Bray is actually a vice president of a company called Head Acoustics, and he says even typical office machines like printers, they can get on your nerves if they start to act out of character like rattling or shaking. Your brain just latches on to that jagged pattern, and it can't let go.
So one obvious way to deal with a sound that's nasty, says Bray, is to fight back with a sound that's sweet.
(Soundbite of music)
GRANT: All right, maybe a little too sweet for some of you, but the point is if you can play music at your desk, try that first, but not just any music. For example, these pan pipes, they're too sparse, says Bray. You need something that's lush.
Mr. BRAY: Music that is very thick like a choir singing and very thick chords, many different tones present, that will have more content at all frequencies and will be easier to hide the drill noise.
GRANT: Okay. So to test out his theory here's the drill - with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
(Soundbite of choir)
GRANT: Huh. Not bad. But if you don't like big production numbers, Wade Bray says there is another sound at your disposal and you can download it at your desk. It's called pink noise, similar to hissy white noise, says Bray. But...
Mr. BRAY: It's a more natural sound, much more like the sound of wind and trees or rushing water.
GRANT: Wade Bray says some noisy offices actually pipe in an artificial version of the sound to calm people's nerves. So what happens when you take our old friend the drill and match it with pink? Here goes.
(Soundbite of drill and pink noise)
Mr. BRAY: You could still hear the drill, but it's a much less strong sound, so yes, you can probably do a pretty good job of hiding the drill or making it less objectionable by doing that sort of thing with your computer speakers.
GRANT: Before playing the pink noise at your desk, you should check it out with your colleagues first, says Bray. And speaking of colleagues, remember that pink noise can also drown out the sound of the human voice. So if you have an office mate whose yakking is almost as bad as a drill, well, just remember pink is in.
Neva Grant, NPR News, Washington.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Okay, today's last word in business today comes from Japan, a country years ahead of us in many technologies and now perhaps also in workplace benefits. The word is heartache leave.
A cosmetics marketing company in Tokyo gives its workers time off after breaking up with a partner. The idea is for staffers to cry themselves out and return to work refreshed.
The company seems to think that splitting up is harder to do as you get older. If you're under 25 years old, you get one day of heartache leave, but workers who are older than 29 get three days to pull themselves together after a bad break-up.
This is your place for the latest breaking news, MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
When John McCain claimed victory in Florida last night, he spoke like a man who expects to be his party's nominee. He was especially generous toward other candidates whose support any Republican nominee would eventually need.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): I offer my best wishes to Governor Romney and his supporters. You fought hard.
(Soundbite of applause)
Sen. McCAIN: You fought hard for your candidate. And the margin that separated us tonight surely isn't big enough for me to brag about or for you to despair.
MONTAGNE: John McCain won Florida with 36 percent of the vote to Romney's 31.
INSKEEP: McCain was even more generous in his praise of another candidate whose supporters do have cause for despair this morning. Rudolph Giuliani finished far behind. He attracted only 15 percent of the votes despite a campaign strategy that focused almost exclusively on Florida. Now, the former mayor of New York is expected to drop out of the race and endorse his friend, John McCain.
NPR's Robert Smith reports from Orlando.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Mr. RUDOLPH GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York; Presidential Candidate): Thank you.
ROBERT SMITH: As Giuliani walked onto the stage last night, a woman from the crowd shouted out, it's not over.
Mr. GIULIANI: I think that comes from the great American philosophy, Yogi Berra…
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GIULIANI: …right? It's not over until it's over.
SMITH: But in Giuliani's case, it never really began. The 15 percent of the vote he got in Florida was his best showing by far in the primaries - a string of embarrassing fifth and sixth place finishes for a man the media once anointed as the front-runner. It didn't take long before the crowd started to notice that Giuliani was speaking about his campaign in the past tense and with a sense of nostalgia.
Mr. GIULIANI: The responsibility of leadership doesn't end with a single campaign. If you believe in a cause, it goes on, and you continue to fight for it, and we will.
(Soundbite of applause)
SMITH: It's not like supporters of Rudy Giuliani weren't mentally prepared for this. Even his fans, like Ralph Lovalo(ph) of Longwood, Florida, have started to second guess his strategy of skipping the early contests.
Mr. RALPH LOVALO (Resident, Longwood, Florida): I question why he didn't run very hard in Iowa and run very hard in New Hampshire. And I think that that hurt him here in Florida because a lot of times, people like to back a winner.
SMITH: The strategy might have worked if everything else had gone Giuliani's way, but it didn't.
Doug Muzzio is a professor of public affairs at Baruch College in New York.
Professor DOUGLAS MUZZIO (Public Affairs Professor, Baruch College of the City University of New York): During the month of January, not only was he under the radar, he was six feet under. He was below Ron Paul, while McCain, who would share some of the base with Giuliani - national security, not that conservative - took off and gained momentum.
SMITH: It started to seem like those early polls, the ones that had Giuliani leading in just about every state, were based on Rudy the celebrity, not Rudy the candidate.
Prof. MUZZIO: Wait, it was Rudy Giuliani, America's mayor, you know, the mythical Rudy Giuliani that was running for a long time.
SMITH: The flesh-and-blood Giuliani never seemed in sync with voters. He hammered on September 11th and terrorism, even as polls showed that people are more concerned with economic issues. He talked about victory in Iraq, even when the news from Baghdad moved off the front page.
But last night, Giuliani seemed more relaxed and happy than he'd looked in days. He made jokes and smiled. He didn't spoil the mood by formally dropping out of the race, and the crowd played along. A woman yelled out, they'll be sorry. And Giuliani blew her a kiss.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GIULIANI: You sound like my mother.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GIULIANI: If she were here, if she were here.
SMITH: Robert Smith, NPR News, Orlando.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
One of the Democratic candidates, reportedly, is ending his campaign. John Edwards is expected to drop out of the race later today. He is due to make an announcement in New Orleans, where he launched his popular campaign 13 months ago. Today, many of the candidates who are moving on to Super Tuesday, are headed to California. This state is the biggest prize in next week's coast to coast contest. From now, until then, our reporters will be in many of those states, following the candidates, talking to voters and covering the issues particular to each state.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Right now, we're going to travel with three reporters to three Super Tuesday states: Alabama, Arizona and the California.
First, to Birmingham, Alabama, where, as Tanya Ott reports, voters feel they finally have a say in the presidential race.
TANYA OTT: After holding the primary in June, the past four cycles, the state moved up the primary this year to February.
And veteran Democratic state lawmaker Fred Horn says it's about time.
Mr. FRED HORN (Democrat, Chairman of the State Senate Finance and Taxation Committee, Birmingham, Alabama): Now, we are a part. People are listening to us.
OTT: Huckabee, Obama, McCain, Edwards - they are all campaigning here, and the airwaves are filling up with ads. The Republicans are fighting for the votes of the state's 1.3 million southern Baptists, and other evangelicals, like college student Chad Henney(ph).
Mr. CHAD HENNEY (College Student): There's hardly ever a presidential candidate here, especially a Republican, because it's usually written off as a Republican state, so, yeah.
Unidentified Woman: Hi. Obama buttons.
Unidentified Man: Three for five?
Unidentified Woman: Five each or three for ten.
Unidentified Man: Oh.
OTT: In a typical year, about 40 percent of the Democratic electorate is African-American, but that number is expected to grow on Tuesday. Even some white Republicans, like Tim Blair(ph), are thinking about pulling the Democratic lever. Blair has voted GOP his entire life, but says he could cross over for Obama.
Mr. TIM BLAIR (Republican, Alabama): He's a compromiser, and that appeals to me right now.
OTT: Or Blair says he could easily go with moderate Republican John McCain. In Alabama, there is no party registration, so there could be a fair amount of crossing over. And it could begin today. Residents in Mobile have the option of voting today so it doesn't interfere with next week's Madri Gras.
For NPR News, I'm Tanya Ott in Birmingham.
TED ROBBINS: I'm Ted Robbins in south Tucson at Taqueria Pico De Gallo, a popular Mexican lunch spot.
Mr. FRANCISCO PESCARA(ph) (Owner, Taqueria Pico De Gallo): You know, the business is very slow right now. We're down, down, down for about 50 percent.
ROBBINS: After the economy, the big issue here in Arizona is immigration. Francisco Pescara, a Democrat, sees the two issues linked. Many of his customers are immigrants or have immigrant family members. They are leaving the state, he says, because of the economy and state laws cracking down on illegal immigrants. He won't say who he's voting for, but he's a prime target.
The state Democratic Party says 25 percent of its eligible voters are Hispanic. They've been favoring Hillary Clinton in polls, but the Obama campaign is hoping momentum and recent endorsements from the Kennedy family will benefit him.
Next door, Adam Delgado(ph) owns another restaurant. Delgado is a Republican who is also seeing fewer customers. He says he hasn't made up his mind who to vote for. All the candidates, he says, are making the same sweet promises.
Mr. ADAM DELGADO (Restaurant Owner): It's like that commercial of Honey Nut Cheerios commercial I have seen where he goes into the supermarket. Everything is Honey Nut Cheerios.
ROBBINS: John McCain was packaged in Arizona, though, and he is widely expected to win his home state. But Mitt Romney has been making headway among Republican activists who see him as more in line with party positions. McCain appeals to independents, but they will have to wait until the general election to vote. The state's primary is open only to party members.
Ted Robbins, NPR News, Tucson.
INA JAFFE: I'm Ina Jaffe on the campus of UCLA.
Unidentified Man: Vote in a mock election today. It takes a few seconds.
JAFFE: Yesterday, student activists of both parties were hoping a mock election would rev up interest in the upcoming primary. Voters under 30 make up about 16 percent of the likely voters in California. And in this blue state, on this college campus, a lot of those potential voters were backing Barack Obama. Senior Curtis Whatley(ph) says the students here take his message of unity personally.
Mr. CURTIS WHATLEY (Senior Student, UCLA): We don't like it that when you go to dinner at your family's place that you can't talk to certain relatives because one of them is Republican and you happen to be a Democrat.
JAFFE: And you think that Senator Obama can change that?
Mr. WHATLY: I do.
JAFFE: Despite Obama's appeal to young voters, Hillary Clinton leads in the statewide polls here. Tiffany Niemen(ph) is a 35-year-old American lit major, and she admires Clinton's experience.
Ms. TIFFANY NIEMAN (American Lit Major, UCLA): She's actually the one that's going to make the change happen. So, you know, I'm hoping I can bring a little wisdom to the kids here.
(Soundbite of laughter)
JAFFE: Among Republicans, John McCain leads Mitt Romney in the most recent California polls, but none of those student Republicans we spoke with mentioned either of them. We met supporters of Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee. But most of the students passed by the mock election voting booth without casting a ballot. Maybe they're just waiting for the real thing next week.
Ina Jaffe, NPR News.
MONTAGNE: And if you go to npr.org/elections, there's a map of the primary state so you can track the candidates' activities going into Super Tuesday.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Russian President Vladimir Putin will step down as president later this year, and he has already anointed a successor. He's a 42-year-old protegee named Dmitry Medvedev. Plenty is known about Medvedev's stylist dress sense and even his taste in rock music. And nobody doubts that he will win the election in March. What is not clear is what kind of leader he'll be, or whether the future president will be running the country at all.
NPR's Gregory Feiffer traveled to Medvedev's hometown of St. Petersburg to try to find out.
GREGORY FEIFFER: Medvedev and Putin have known each other 17 years, and share more than just the same birthplace of St. Petersburg. Both attended law school at what was then called Leningrad State University. Medvevdev, born into a family of professors, studied there in the 1980s before going on to teach law.
Today, the law school's corridors bustle with students. And since Putin picked Medvedev as his chosen successor last December, it's been home to a growing Medvedev legend.
Dean Mikhail Kropachev(ph) taught Medvedev and talks about his former student as if he's already president.
Dean MIKHAIL KROPHACHEV (Law, Saint-Petersburg State University, Russia): (Through translator) Dmitry is an intellectual, a man of principles. He'll fight for those principles with the full force of his character. And that's considerable. He's strong, masculine, responsible and well-organized.
FEIFFER: Medvedev is now a first deputy prime minister and seen by some as a relative liberal and a Kremlin dominated by former KGB officers. The diminutive official has a penchant for natty, thick ties and listens to the rock group Deep Purple. But those who know Medvedev say his reputation as a nice guy is deceptive.
Law Professor Natalia Shatihinas(ph) studied under Medvedev in the 1990s, and remembers him as strict and reserved.
Professor NATALIA SHATIHINAS (Law): (Through translator) Dmitry was demanding and poked fun at anyone showing signs of laziness. He'd say things like I know law books are heavy, and not everyone can lug them to class, but maybe you can just try extra hard next time.
FEIFFER: In the late 1980s, Medvedev went to work for the city administration under Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, a crusading reformer. That's where Medvedev first met Putin, a former KGB officer who also found work under the mayor after the Soviet collapse. Putin became a father figure for Medvedev and later brought him to Moscow to head his presidential campaign.
As president, Putin appointed Medvedev to government and named him chairman of Gazprom, the giant state natural gas monopoly.
St. Petersburg opposition leader Olga Kurnosova was a local legislator in the 1990s. She says Medvedev's key political attribute is loyalty.
Ms. OLGA KURNOSOVA (Opposition Leader, Saint Petersburg, Russia): (Through translator) Medvedev had no influence in St. Petersburg. He's not an able politician. He's never been elected to office. He's a mid-ranking bureaucrat and that's the extent of his capabilities.
FEIFFER: During his eight years as president, Putin rolled back Russia's democratic reforms and instituted Soviet-style authoritarianism. In recent appearances, Medvedev has sounded increasingly stern, much like Putin himself. And during his nomination as presidential candidate, Medvedev said he'd continue with Putin's policies.
Mr. DMITRY MEDVEDEV (First Deputy Prime Minister, Russia): (Through translator) It's a direction picked by our people, a direction that saved the economy and social services from collapsing. It stopped civil war from breaking out. Other countries no longer lecture us like school children. We're once again respected in the world.
FEIFFER: Many believe Putin plans to hold on to power after he leaves the presidency, if only to balance the rival Kremlin clans battling each other behind the scenes. Few were surprised when Medvedev's first public act as presidential candidate was to announce he'd appoint Putin to be his prime minister.
Sitting in a bar in St. Petersburg, newspaper editor Dmitri Provins(ph) says Medvedev would be a weak president, unlikely to oppose his mentor.
Mr. DMITRI PROVINS (Newspaper Editor): (Through translator) Putin has a much greater chance of being able to continue effectively controlling the country under Medvedev's presidency than under any other potential successor.
FEIFFER: But despite all the signs Medvedev is dependent on Putin, most political observers say it will become clear only after the election what kind of president he'd make or whether a two-man rule could work in Russia.
Gregory Feiffer, NPR News.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Today, the Federal Reserve is expected to announce that it's cutting rates, again. Last week, the Fed lowered its key federal funds rate by three quarters of a percentage point.
To discuss what's on central banker's minds now, we turn to David Wessel, economics editor of the Wall Street Journal.
Welcome once again, David.
Mr. DAVID WESSEL (Economics Editor, Wall Street Journal): Good morning.
INSKEEP: Anybody worried about cutting interest rates twice in a space of a week?
Mr. WESSEL: Well, probably a few people are, but it doesn't seem to be a problem. The Fed is looking at an economy which is doing worse than it had anticipated. It sees the risk that this credit crunch, the inability or the changing terms of getting credit, intensifying, spreading across the economy. That's why they moved interest rates in a surprise last week. And that's probably why they're going to do it again today.
INSKEEP: Well, let's talk about how much the Fed focuses on up or down movements in the stock market because the Fed, traditionally, is supposed to be looking at long-term factors like inflation.
How much are they watching the tickers go up and down?
Mr. WESSEL: Well, that's a really pertinent question because last week, of course, on a holiday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke saw markets around the world sinking, was apparently concerned that the market in the U.S. would sink as well when it opened, convened an emergency meeting and they did this dramatic three quarter percentage point cut in rates. That has spurred a lot of criticism of Mr. Bernanke, that he's being led around by the markets, or too quick to respond by the markets. And it was even more embarrassing when it later developed that maybe one reason the markets were weak was not generalized angst about the world economy but because this big French bank was unwinding some trades that a 31-year-old trader had did.
The Fed says not so - that, of course, they watch the markets but they were already on the verge of easing and it was just the timing - the markets helped with the timing. But it does - it is a little unseemly and I think it's hurt Mr. Bernanke's public standing a little bit.
INSKEEP: Why does it matter what people say about him?
Mr. WESSEL: Well, that's a good question. I guess, ultimately, it doesn't matter what people say about the Fed chairman. What matters is that you move interest rates the right way at the right time. But a lot of central banking is looking like you're knowing what you're doing. They call it, in the trade, credibility. And the concern is that if you appear to be bailing out the market, then the market will begin to expect you to bail it out and there'll be all this pressure to do things that you might not want to do. One of the reasons the Fed is so important is it gives investors and consumers and business executives the confidence that some smart grown-up is sitting there at the controls. And anything the Fed does to weaken that impression hurts the economy and limits the effectiveness of their interest rate move.
INSKEEP: Okay. So in this game, it's all about perception and expectations. What are the Fed's options today?
Mr. WESSEL: It's not all about perceptions. Just partly about perceptions.
INSKEEP: Okay.
Mr. WESSEL: The Fed is most likely to cut interest rates by 0.50 percentage point, the market says. There are some people who think they'll only do a quarter, and we'll see this afternoon.
INSKEEP: And is the Fed thinking much about what Congress and the president might do to boost the economy?
Mr. WESSEL: Yes. When the Fed looks at the economy, they have to take into account the fact that the president and Congress are about to add about 150 billion or more worth of stimulus. From the body language, it appears that despite that, which they and Mr. Bernanke has enforced the stimulus, they still think that the Fed could use - I'm sorry - they still think that the economy could use another dose of that fiscal - of that interest rate adrenalin.
INSKEEP: Very briefly, David. How does it affect things that European Central Bankers are not slashing interest rates?
Mr. WESSEL: That's two things. One is it tends to push the dollar down because markets like to take the - take their money to places where interest rates are higher, and it means that Europe will be a little slower than it would be and we could use them buying some exports. My anticipation is, eventually, the European Central Bank will capitulate and do the same thing as the Fed, maybe does not as much.
INSKEEP: David, thanks very much.
Mr. WESSEL: A pleasure.
INSKEEP: David Wessel is economics editor at the Wall Street Journal. He speaks to us on this day, when we are awaiting to find out what the Federal Reserve will do. It is widely expected to cut interest rates for the second time in a week.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
I'm Renee Montagne.
And this is Senator John McCain, the winner of Florida's Republican primary.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): My friends, in one week, in one week we will have as close to a national primary as we've ever had in this country. I intend to win it and be the nominee of our party.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
MONTAGNE: As of this morning, John McCain has an excellent shot at doing just that, now that he has won Florida's primary. McCain took 36 percent of the vote, putting his chief rival, Mitt Romney, in second place with 31 percent. Rudy Giuliani came in a distant third and this a candidate who staked his campaign on winning Florida.
Joining us now is Republican political consultant Mike Murphy. He has run campaigns for both McCain and Romney. And he's a regular guest on this program.
Good morning.
Mr. MIKE MURPHY (Republican Political Consultant; Founding Principal and Member, Executive Committee of Navigators): Good morning.
MONTAGNE: So Senator McCain can finally claim the title of front-runner?
Mr. MURPHY: Yes, yeah. He can, indeed. And I think he will, but he'll be a little shy about it because he's still a guy who carries a lucky penny and rabbit's foot around, and doesn't want to count his chickens before they're hatched. But no doubt, winning in Florida, very hard-fought battle in a very big, important state was a big victory for John McCain. It gives him a lot of momentum into the Super Duper Tuesday race coming in a week in all those states across the country.
MONTAGNE: Governor Romney also fought hard for Florida and he came up short. What are his chances of a comeback in, well, as you call it, Super Duper Tuesday - Super Tuesday contest next Tuesday?
Mr. MURPHY: Well, Governor Romney, you know, fought hard. He started at about 6 percent, not nearly as well known, and came up a little short, about five points. So now the question is, how do they approach Super Tuesday? I think there are some states where he's still operative. He was a bit defiant last night to his supporters about continuing, and I think he's earned that right. But it's an uphill battle for him, no doubt about it. I think they'll target a couple of states. They may win them. But I think after February 5th, when we've had those - that big wave of states' vote, you know, the delegate math is the cold heart truth of this business and we will see what happens.
I think reports are probably quite accurate that Rudy Giuliani is leaving the race to endorse Senator McCain and a very big bloc of delegates in New York, Connecticut, Delaware and New Jersey are up for grabs on the 5th. I think McCain will start out with a strong position in those states, and then work his way west into the Illinois and Missouris, Tennessees and Georgias, and culminating at the end in California where Romney might make his final focus. So I think Romney is still in the battle. He has a lot of resources, but he's definitely an underdog now. And McCain, after last night, has the upper hand.
MONTAGNE: A tough night for Rudy Giuliani. Not so long ago, he stood at the top of the national polls.
Mr. MURPHY: He did. There was a time when people called him front-runner, and he had a very rough night. Even the big southern Florida counties like Brevard(ph), Broward - excuse me - the Fort Lauderdale area, Miami-Dade, where Rudy Giuliani had done well in the past and were, kind of, the base of his very Florida-centric campaign. He having said that Florida was his final place where he was going to make his last stand and win. Even those counties, he was beaten handedly by John McCain, so it was a meltdown.
And I think, in retrospect, the mayor is a very capable candidate who may not have had a particularly capable campaign and particularly not a very good strategy, that of waiting until the end and not really competing. So he was already, kind of, damage goods in the world of politics, having lost so many early contests. That's a strategy that a few campaigns have tried in the past that almost always fails, and I think those who planned that strategy for the Giuliani campaign would have been well advised to have studied their political history a little more before embarking on it.
MONTAGNE: Well, just briefly, any - beyond the strategy, was it - were his ideas problematic there in Florida?
Mr. MURPHY: Well, I think, you know, Rudy might have had a problem in the primary world with some of the conservatives of the Republican Party because he had more moderate positions on social issues. But I think, you know, he had that early burst of support. He was very impressive to a lot of Republicans and still is, which is why he's such a valuable endorsement. But it just never caught fire. I think the Kerry problems and some of the negative media he got, combined with the bad strategy and sometimes it looked like he wasn't all that committed to giving it the full Rudy-Giuliani-top-of-his-game effort all combined has put his campaign in a bad place that they never got out of.
MONTAGNE: Mike, thanks for joining us.
Mr. MURPHY: Thank you.
MONTAGNE: Mike Murphy is a Republican political consultant. He joined us on the line from Tampa, Florida.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
The most Democratic votes in Florida went to Senator Hillary Clinton. She got no convention delegates. The National Democratic Party took away Florida's delegates as punishment from moving up the primary and the candidates did not contest the state. All of which did not stop Senator Clinton from holding a rally in Florida last night.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): I think it's time we again had a president who put the American people first and that is what I will try to do.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
INSKEEP: The candidates move on now to next week's Super Tuesday races. Yesterday, Senator Barack Obama was in Kansas where he had a kind of homecoming.
NPR's Don Gonyea reports.
DON GONYEA: Barack Obama is often described as the first African-American to have a real chance at winning the presidency, and his race has at times been a focal point of his candidacy. Obama's father was from Kenya, his mother, who was white, was from Kansas. And yesterday in the Kansas town of El Dorado, outside Wichita, he painted a much more complex picture of his background.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): It's a story that began here in El Dorado, when a young man fell in love with a young woman who grew up down the road in Augusta.
GONYEA: That's his grandfather and grandmother he's talking about. Speaking in a packed gymnasium at a local community college, Senator Obama looked back to the 1930s when hard times forced his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, and his bride to scramble to make ends meet, then came World War II.
Sen. OBAMA: He enlisted in Patton's army after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. She gave birth to their daughter when he left for war. In a time of great uncertainty and great anxiety, my grandparents held on to a simple dream - that they could raise my mother in a land of boundless opportunity.
GONYEA: In remarks that were different from his usual campaign stump speech, Senator Obama traced his family tree. He told how his mother, living in Kansas, fell in love with a man from Kenya. And he spoke of how that man left when Obama was just two years old. He talked of how his mother struggled with poverty and of how he and his sister were still able to get a good education.
Sen. OBAMA: So our family's story, the story of - it's a story that spans miles and generations. It spans races and realities.
GONYEA: And it's one that spans the racial divide.
Sen. OBAMA: This country is more than a collection of Red States and Blue States because my story could only happen in the United States of America.
(Soundbite of applause)
GONYEA: On his plane heading to Kansas, Obama told reporters some of his cousins would be attending the rally, joking that we probably wouldn't think they were his cousins if we spotted them in a crowd. Sure enough, at the event, he made an introduction.
Sen. OBAMA: And I've got another relative here at the - McCurry, where'd she go? There she is.
GONYEA: A 72-year-old white woman stood up in the audience not far from the stage - Margaret McCurry Wolf.
Ms. MARGARET McCURRY WOLF (Senator Barack Obama's Grandmother): His grandmother is my first cousin and we lived in Wichita and his grandma grew up in Augusta so we spent a lot of time on holidays and picnics with his grandma.
GONYEA: Wolf says she first heard of Barack Obama about four years ago and got a huge surprise one day while watching him on TV. Obama was being interviewed about his new book and began talking about his maternal grandmother.
Ms. WOLF: I looked at my husband, I just started shivering. I said that's Stanley Ann's son. I said he is my cousin.
GONYEA: Now Kansas is a state with just a small minority population. It's also a state that's been solid Republican in presidential elections for a long time. When asked what she thinks Senator Obama's chances are, Wolf predicts victories in the caucuses in Kansas next week and nationally in November. Smiling wildly, she says, quote, "He's got lots of cousins working for him."
Don Gonyea, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Four days and counting until the New England Patriots play the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII. But the real game before the game happened yesterday at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. Thousands of journalists swarmed the two teams on media day, putting football players to the ultimate test.
TOM GOLDMAN: Media Day takes the players out of their comfort zones and threatens their almighty focus. The guys who come to play in Arizona are thinking about pass routes and blocking schemes, not who they're going to vote for, but someone asked New York wide receiver Amani Toomer, so he answered.
Mr. AMANI TOOMER (Wide Receiver, New York Giants): I think I'm going to support Obama. Well, I like some of the things that he says about the health care and I like his ideas on the stimulus package for the economy. Thank you.
GOLDMAN: Toomer wasn't knocked off balance. In fact, he sounded quite informed, although Hillary Clinton wouldn't be too happy. He dealt with politics okay but then again, Toomer didn't have to deal with Ines. She was the reporter - wearing a wedding dress, waiting impatiently for her turn with New England quarterback Tom Brady.
Mr. TOM BRADY (Quarterback, New England Patriots): To the woman on the wedding dress.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. INES GOMEZ-MONT (Reporter, TV Azteca): Brady, I'm in love with you.
Mr. BRADY: Are you really?
Ms. GOMEZ-MONT: Will you marry me, please.
Mr. BRADY: Wow, I've never had a proposal.
Ms. GOMEZ-MONT: Marry me, please, Brady.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. GOMEZ-MONT: I love you, Brady.
Mr. BRADY: What's your name first?
Ms. GOMEZ-MONT: Ines, Ines.
Mr. BRADY: Ines? It's a beautiful name, Ines.
Ms. GOMEZ-MONT: Marry me. I'm the real Ms. Brady.
(Soundbite of laughter)
GOLDMAN: Ines, get in line. Tom Brady has morphed this season from an incredibly good quarterback into a pop culture icon. Impossibly handsome, the best at his high profile job, and dating - sorry, Ines - a supermodel. Brady is the it guy at the it sports culture event of the year. He told a reporter recently he's also a Zen kind of guy. Considering all the attention, the constant paparazzi, the reporter asked Brady yesterday, how's your Zen-ness holding up?
Mr. BRADY: I'm pretty low key. I'm pretty consistent. Hopefully, that's Zen-like. I just try to never be too up, never be too down and just take things in stride.
GOLDMAN: Oh, yeah? Try this one from another reporter - you've got this unbelievable platform, you have a gift, what do you want to say?
Mr. BRADY: That's a deep question. My purpose in life? Is that what you're going to (unintelligible)?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BRADY: My God. I throw a football.
GOLDMAN: Score another one for Brady who left Media Day in stride.
Tom Goldman, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
A German travel agency begins this week offering flights for vacationers who want to travel naked. The special flight will take nudists to a Baltic Sea resort popular with eastern Germans on a naturalist holiday. Naked Germans won't be wandering through the airport. Clothing is required until the passengers actually are onboard, carry-ons stowed, tray tables up. Once the plane is ready to take off, they can take it off.
It's Morning Edition.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
On Super Bowl Sunday, televisions across America will briefly fall silent. Pepsi is doing an ad in American Sign Language, with captions. It features Pepsi employees.
Sign language interpreters in Thailand ran into political trouble. The new prime minister is nicknamed Mr. Rose Apple Nose because some say his nose resembles that fruit. His supporters were angry when interpreters on TV made a sign for the prime minister, holding their noses.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
NPR's business news starts with the economy barely growing.
The government's latest numbers on the economy are out, and they show a sharp slowdown at the end of 2007. Growth, as measured by the Gross Domestic Product, registered a mere 6/10 of a percent. That compares with brisk growth of almost 5 percent the previous quarter.
To help us figure out what these numbers mean, we go to NPR's Adam Davidson.
Good morning.
ADAM DAVIDSON: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: And what do the numbers tell us?
DAVIDSON: Well, I think there's no way to talk about this without saying this is really bad news. The GDP is the measure of the economic activity, pretty much all activity in the U.S. And this is telling us that it grew very anemically. Economists say that if the number is below 1 percent, it sort of feels like a recession to most people in the economy.
And so this means that in the last three months of 2007, the economy was really, really slow, and it was throughout the economy. We had - many had hoped that this slowdown would be restricted to the housing sector, which did fall way more dramatically than everything else. But now we learned that in a broad way many sectors of the economy fell, which is, obviously, worse news.
Now, I should note that this is a first estimate. The government often revises this number. It could go up. It could go down. So we don't fully know. But what we do know is that Federal Reserve is looking at this number very closely, and later today when they make their announcement this increases the likelihood that they will lower interest rates aggressively to get this economy growing again.
MONTAGNE: So did this mean, though, Adam, that a recession is in the cards?
DAVIDSON: It increases the likelihood that a recession is in the cards. This kind of slow growth, a big drop from the third quarter of 2007 to the final quarter, suggests that that drop could keep on dropping. But there's so much talk about recession in the media among economists; it's worth remembering we don't know yet. There's a decent chance that the economy will slow dramatically. It'll be painful for a little while and then it will start growing.
I think today there was some numbers that came out from the private payroll company ADP. That's kind of a hint of how employment is doing. And they showed that employment for January grew far faster than anyone expected, which was very good news. That suggests that maybe the economy isn't doing as badly as we thought.
We'll find out for sure when the government releases its data at the end of the week. But people will be paying very close attention to all of this economic data to figure out if we are in fact in a recession.
MONTAGNE: NPR's Adam Davidson. Thanks very much.
DAVIDSON: Thank you, Renee.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
On the first day of this month, at the start of the presidential primary season, there were eight Republicans and eight Democrats running for the White House. By the end of today, those numbers may be down to a handful.
Republican Rudy Giuliani is expected to end his campaign after a disappointing result in yesterday's Florida primary. And on the Democratic side, John Edwards may be ending his run for the White House.
As recently as Sunday, he told NPR he was in this campaign until the end.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina): You know, if you're doing this and you're doing it 16, 17 hours a day, and you believe deeply in the cause of giving voice to people who don't have a voice, this is what motivates me. This is what drives me every day. And the cause has in no way dissipated or gone away. And so I am in this for the long term.
MONTAGNE: John Edwards speaking on NPR last weekend.
NPR's Adam Hochberg is at the Edwards' campaign headquarters in North Carolina and joins us now.
And what's the mood there, Adam? What are you hearing?
ADAM HOCHBERG: Well, this all happened very suddenly, not just going back to Sunday, but even as recently as yesterday. John Edwards was telling people and his campaign advisers were telling people that he was in this race for the long haul. So this decision apparently was made late yesterday sometime.
We're not hearing any official announcement here from campaign headquarters. A campaign spokesman says that they'll have the senator speak for himself when he talks in New Orleans later today. But people here are obviously disappointed this. You're seeing a lot of emotion as you would expect after a long campaign like this comes to an end.
MONTAGNE: Now, John Edwards began his campaign just over a year ago in New Orleans. Let's listen to a little of his speech from that day.
Mr. EDWARDS: We want people in this campaign to actually take action now, not later. We don't want to hope that whoever is elected the next leader of the United States of America is going to solve all our problems for us because that will not happen. And all of us know it. And that's what's going to be the basis for my campaign. This campaign will be a grassroots campaign where we ask people to take action.
MONTAGNE: John Edwards announcing his candidacy last year.
We're talking to NPR's Adam Hochberg at Edwards campaign headquarters. And Adam, did John Edwards succeed in waging the kind of campaign that he intended?
HOCHBERG: Well, you know, his campaign message kind of morphed away from that message that we heard in New Orleans. That was that speech that we just heard was delivered around Christmas time 2006. And he did start his campaign with a lot of this rhetoric about making it a campaign about volunteerism and sort of a JFK-esque campaign, ask not what your country can do for you but ask what you can do for your country.
But we've seen more recently a different kind of campaign message from John Edwards, one where it became outsiders versus insiders where he talked a lot about the evils of Washington lobbyists and large corporations, and he was going to Washington as an angry fighter to wage war against these large moneyed interests who he said were destroying our government.
So his campaign changed a lot during the - better than a year that he was waging it.
MONTAGNE: You know, back to his leaving - his decision to end the campaign -what finally made him make that decision, as you understand it?
HOCHBERG: Well, we don't know at this point. And like I say, it came as a surprise. As recently as Monday, his campaign officials held a conference call with the news media, spinning out a number of scenarios that they thought could paint the way for John Edwards winning the Democratic nomination. They talked about the possibility of their being a brokered Democratic National Convention, where John Edwards could emerge as the consensus candidate. Or they talked about, at least, he could be a power broker, that he would have enough delegates that maybe he could swing the race, to either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.
So this news has come as a surprise to just about everybody. We haven't heard his reasoning yet, why he decided to change his mind. Of course, as he's showing in the early primaries and caucuses has not been very good. He has finished third in South Carolina, his native state, this past Saturday, didn't even get…
MONTAGNE: Right.
HOCHBERG: …12 percent of the vote. So that's obviously a factor.
MONTAGNE: Adam, thanks very much. NPR's Adam Hochberg at the Edwards campaign headquarters in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
We're following reports today that two presidential candidates are ending their campaigns. Republican Rudy Giuliani is expected to pull out of the race after a distant third place finish in yesterday's Florida primary. Perhaps most surprisingly, Democrat John Edwards is said to be quitting the race, despite insisting just a few days ago that he was in it for the long haul. His campaign has scheduled an announcement later today in New Orleans.
Joining us now to talk about the shrinking field of candidates on both sides is NPR's political editor Ken Rudin.
Good morning.
KEN RUDIN: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Let's start with the Republicans. Where would Rudy Giuliani's departure leave the two leading candidates - John McCain and Mitt Romney?
RUDIN: Well, it leaves them obviously focusing on Super Tuesday. Rudy Giuliani never really seemed to make the difference. Once upon a time he was the national frontrunner, but the thought of a pro-gay rights, pro-choice, pro-abortion Republican candidate getting the nomination was always suspect to begin with. But I think it probably helps John McCain, in the sense that Giuliani was more of a moderate Republican and John McCain, for all of his conservative credentials, is seen as more of a moderate candidate - certainly more moderate than Mitt Romney.
MONTAGNE: Yesterday, John McCain spoke of Rudy Giuliani as his, quote, "dear friend," called him an inspiration, which right off suggests maybe he's not such a threat. But any doubt that Giuliani would throw his support behind John McCain?
RUDIN: Well, they've been very buddy-buddy. If you notice in the debates, they've been very kind to each other. Even in the last Republican debate, John McCain was talking about Rudy Giuliani almost in the past tense. Whereas there's no secret that most of the Republican candidates, especially John McCain, but also Mike Huckabee, do not especially like Mitt Romney. Romney has spent much of the campaign campaigning against and criticizing his fellow Republicans. But there is a certain kinship of bond between McCain and Giuliani.
MONTAGNE: Now, turning to the Democratic side, it seems we're down to two.
RUDIN: Yes. I mean, people are saying it is a surprise because John Edwards said all along that he would fight on until the convention. But he spent so much time and so much money trying to make a good showing in Iowa and he finished second there. Of course he spent a lot of time and his birth state of South Carolina - the only state he won in 2004. And he finished third there. It's hard to run against the $100 million campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And I think a lot of voters were not sure about which John Edwards they were seeing. Four years ago he was the nice guy, centrist. Now he's the angry populist. His message just didn't seem to carry through in the primaries and caucuses we've seen so far.
MONTAGNE: Do you, Ken, think that either party will have a nominee coming out of Super Tuesday?
RUDIN: Well, predicting anything is such a dangerous game, especially what's going on now. We all thought that Hillary Clinton was gone before New Hampshire, and that's certainly not the case. We were all writing off John McCain all summer long. And now he is the frontrunner - whatever that word means. So it's kind of odd to see what's happening. But they are moving closer and closer. John McCain does seem to be a serious frontrunner. And of course whoever comes out of February 5th between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seems to have an easy ride to the nomination.
MONTAGNE: Ken, thanks very much.
RUDIN: Thanks, Renee.
MONTAGNE: That's NPR's political editor, Ken Rudin.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Hidden Kitchens, today, travel to the Mississippi Delta into the world of Lebanese immigrants, who began arriving in the 1800s, soon after the Civil War. The Kitchen Sisters - producers Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson - take us to Clarksdale, where barbecue and the blues meet traditional Lebanese meatloaf in a story they call "Kibbe at the Crossroads."
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. PAT DAVIS (Owner, Abe's BAR-B-Q): Lebanese foods, we make it every Sunday. I make kibbe, cabbage rolls. When I get depressed, I make grape leaves. I'm Pat Davis, Abe's BAR-B-Q in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the famous corner of 49 and 61. We've been in business since 1924. My father was from Zahale, Lebanon -came to America in the early 1900s. They moved to Clarksdale. They were doing good peddling. Back then, the Lebanese people mostly were peddlers. 1924 when my father opened up a barbecue restaurant.
(Soundbite of song, "Cross Road Blues")
Mr. ROBERT JOHNSON (Legendary Bluesman): (Singing) I went down to the crossroads.
Mr. DAVIS: This is a main highway where the crossroads are. And we think that that's where Robert Johnson made a deal with the devil to play good blues music. Robert Johnson used to sit around where those sycamore trees were, playing his blues guitar, drinking a Bud and eating one of our barbecues.
Mr. CHAFIK CHAMOUN (Owner, Chamoun's Rest Haven): They say the blues was born here at Clarksdale. We have a blue museum here. I don't want no more blues. I have a blue when I was young. We used to have that blues in the field, an old country. My mother singing all that sad songs I love. Forget it - cutting the wheat, picking the grapes.
My name is Chafik Chamoun. I live in Clarksdale since 1954. Me and my wife, Louise, we got Chamoun's Rest Haven, I would say the oldest restaurant in this Delta.
Mr. JOE SHERMAN: Great raw kibbe, great tabouleh. We go there every January on the way to a duck hunt.
I'm Joe Sherman. We were Chamouns. My grandfather, when he came across the border through Mexico, they Americanized it to Sherman. And the Rest Haven - it's got an old sign at front and Mr. Chamoun, he'll be sitting there at a table with a telephone taking orders. If he's not, he's sick.
(Soundbite of telephone ringing)
Mr. CHAMOUN: Rest Haven, may I help you? They ordered spaghetti, hamburger steak, kibbe sandwich - that's our best-seller - kibbe sandwich.
Mr. JIMMY THOMAS (Managing Editor, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture): Kibbe, it's pretty much the national food of Lebanon. It's a meatloaf of sorts.
My father's family came to Mississippi Delta from Greater Syria. I'm Jimmy Thomas, managing editor for The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. One of the earliest stories of Lebanese in the South was a man who had come to the Port Of New Orleans. And he knew there were other Syrian immigrants there. So what he did - he stood on the dock and screamed, kibbe, kibbe, kibbe, until someone came.
Mr. CHAMOUN: When I came here in 1954, I bought about two dozen of ladies slips and nylon stockings. I sold that stuff - go from house to house. Thirty years. I tell you, the poor people in those days, they knew I was trying to make a living. They buy something just to help me.
Dr. SAMMY RAY (Professor Emeritus, Department of Marine Biology-Texas A&M University): Early on, I decided I wasn't going to be a peddler. My name is Sammy Ray, professor emeritus at Texas A&M at Galveston. My father was peddling dry goods to the black sharecroppers. And he was very dependent on black community - that's where he made his money.
(Soundbite of music)
Dr. RAY: My father's Syrian friends who were peddlers would come, and a big deal was a Lebanese picnic. Taking a live goat or lamb to a riverbank. And my father would slaughter the kid, flesh(ph) it. My mother would make rice, snow peas, and she would cook it in the stomach.
In the early '30s, my father bought a barbecue stand and Rosedale, Mississippi on the edge of Black Town. And we lived in the back of the barbecue stand. In the early days, I had problems because of my color. I was too dark to play with the white folks, and I was too light to play with the black folks. I got beat up, called a dago and a wop.
(Soundbite of music by Robert Johnson)
Mr. DAVIS: We lived in Riverton. A lot of Italian American, Lebanese Americans lived in Riverton, along with African-Americans back then, you know? Tina Turner and Ike Turner worked for my uncle at the grocery store. We knew all these people. And to be honest with you, we were all in that category of not a real citizen, I guess.
(Soundbite of song, "come In My Kitchen")
Mr. JOHNSON: (Singing) …in my kitchen…
Mr. DAVIS: Three black men came into the cafe, and this is probably in the '50s. And daddy took there offer. four or five farmers - they started calling them names. And I told daddy he needs to run them out of here. And dad said look, they are coming here to eat something. Don't bother. When they left, they told my daddy, you know, this is a good way to lose your business, to serve black people.
And we were tested in 1965. They got a bunch of kids - black kids - went to all the restaurants on the highway, and every one refused them except Chafik's Rest Haven - to my place. And everybody else got lawsuits against them.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. THOMAS: We used to have this list of all these famous Lebanese people: Casey Kasem is Lebanese, and obviously, Khalil Gibran.
Mr. DAVIS: Ralph Nader, he is Lebanese. But the greatest person was Danny Thomas. I think I might have a CD of Danny Thomas singing "Athebee" in my car. I think.
(Soundbite of song, "Athebee")
Mr. DAVIS: We called ourselves Syrians when we first came here. And until Danny Thomas came and said he was Lebanese, then, we all began to realize that we really are Lebanese. Danny Thomas can say it. So we're Lebanese now.
(Soundbite of song, "Athebee")
Mr. SHERMAN: Sunday was - help me make the kibbe. And we'd only make a big pan of raw kibbe in a kind of it was on a mound, about maybe an inch and a half high.
Mr. DAVIS: You get the ram steak, real lean. Grind it. Put a cup of wheat to each pound of meat. Soak it in wheat for an hour.
Mr. THOMAS: Bulgur wheat, lots of onions, cinnamon, salt and pepper - and you can eat that raw, fried or you can bake the kibbe.
Mr. SHERMAN: And somebody would always take their palm of their hand, turn it up and make a cross in it. And then they'd put olive oil in it - blessed the kibbe, which kind of blessed the family.
(Soundbite of music)
MONTAGNE: Hidden Kitchen was produced by the Kitchen Sisters and mixed by Jim McKee. Recipes for kibbe and all the Hidden Kitchen stories are available as Podcast at npr.org.
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne. Good morning.
Traumatic brain injury has been labeled the signature injury of the Iraq war. Now a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine finds that even minor brain injuries - concussions - are associated with long-term health problems, specifically post-traumatic stress disorder.
NPR's Alix Spiegel has this story.
ALIX SPIEGEL: Army medic Tim Bredberg's first concussion happened during a routine patrol of the Iraq desert. It was late afternoon when the road he was on narrowed abruptly, creating a bottleneck more or less in the middle of nowhere.
Mr. TIM BREDBERG (Army Medic): We were going through this and two other vehicles went before us, and we're thinking, okay, we're safe. And we drove by and then the next thing I know, I wake up in the middle of a firefight.
SPIEGEL: Besides a concussion, Bredberg was unhurt. For two days he says his ears rang and his eyes were sensitive to light, but there were no other symptoms. And Bredberg says he didn't really feel rattled by the experience in any real way.
Mr. BREDBERG: Not that I noticed. If anything, I was more pissed off and wanted to get out there even faster.
SPIEGEL: Over the course of his time in Iraq, Bredberg was hit by IEDs three other times and suffered another concussion. But again, he didn't notice any lasting effects. But then Bredberg returned to the U.S. and he began having nightmares, dreams of violence so intense he didn't want to sleep. Bredberg says he would startle at the slightest noise. There are flashbacks and wild mood swings. His relationships began to deteriorate. He found it difficult even to be near his infant son.
Mr. BREDBERG: I couldn't be around my son because of flashbacks when he cried.
SPIEGEL: But perhaps the scariest moment came one weekend when Bredberg was out at a store. A man passed him and Bredberg remembers him saying something vaguely rude.
Mr. BREDBERG: The next thing I know I have people from this grocery store yelling at me and grabbing at me because I'm beating the hell out of this guy in the parking lot. And I didn't realize it. I didn't know I was doing it.
SPIEGEL: Bredberg finally went to mental health on his base at Fort Drum. He says he was told by the doctors there that he had PTSD. Now a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine suggests there may be a relationship between concussions and the development of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Army medical researcher Charles Hoge surveyed over 2,000 Army infantry soldiers who had returned from Iraq and found that three to four months after their return a high percentage of those who had experienced a concussion met the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Dr. CHARLES HOGE (Walter Reed Army Institute of Research): Nearly half of soldiers who had a concussion with loss of consciousness met the criteria for PTSD, and that's a very high rate.
SPIEGEL: Hoge says he was a little surprised by these results because in the civilian world concussions aren't generally associated with PTSD.
Dr. HOGE: For instance, on a football field, football players certainly don't develop post-traumatic stress disorder in the context of football injuries and concussions on the football field.
SPIEGEL: Hoge says one possible explanation is that traumatic battles produce both concussions and PTSD. But another researcher, David Hovda, a professor of neurosurgery at UCLA, suggests another possibility. He points out that there are real chemical changes in the brain in the wake of a concussion.
Professor DAVID HOVDA (UCLA): And this change in chemistry causes other things to change, which have long-term consequences with regards to how the brain response to emotions.
SPIEGEL: So, says Hovda, though concussions don't cause post-traumatic stress disorder, the chemical changes that are the product of concussion and the lethargy, anxiety and depression that often follow, may inhibit a person's ability to recover from a traumatic experience.
Three and a half years after his return from Iraq, Tim Bredberg continues his fight with the disease, but says he is somewhat better able to cope with his child's cry.
Mr. BREDBERG: It is getting a little bit better. I mean, I can be around him for a certain amount of time if he cries. Like if I feel myself hitting a flashback when I'm around him, I can control it to a point. Just repeat to myself that, you know, everything is okay. My wife is in the other room. I'm sitting in the bathroom. You know, just keep going through things like that.
SPIEGEL: Alix Spiegel, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Forty years ago today, North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong launched a series of coordinated attacks against U.S. and South Vietnamese targets. The communist forces were eventually crushed, but what's known as the Tet Offensive marks the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War.
From Hanoi, NPR's Michael Sullivan takes this look back.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Chuck Searcy was a 20-year-old enlisted man stationed in Saigon when the Tet Offensive began. He'd gone to bed fairly early the night before after a movie and a few beers with his buddies.
Mr. CHUCK SEARCY: After midnight, the siren went off — the alert siren — which was our signal to go to our post. So everybody gets out of their bunks grumbling and bumbling and putting on all our gear, and went out to the perimeter, assuming that 15 minutes later, we'd have the all-clear signal, we go back to sleep. But then a captain came around the perimeter in a jeep with a loudspeaker, announcing that this was not a practice alert. That Tan Son Nhut Air Base had been overrun and Saigon was getting hit very hard.
SULLIVAN: Searcy was with the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion at the time. He says the attack caught almost everyone by surprise.
Mr. SEARCY: It was the moment when the war became a reality for us, because up to then Saigon had been considered a very safe area, and quite secure, and basically an area that would never be attacked.
(Soundbite of gunfire)
SULLIVAN: More than a dozen Viet Cong battalions took part in the attack on Saigon, which included a number of high-profile targets: the government-run radio station, the Presidential Palace and the U.S. embassy — attacks brought into Americans' living rooms on their TV.
(Soundbite of Newscast)
Unidentified Man: Now CIA men and MPs have gone ahead to the embassy, trying to get the snipers out.
(Soundbite of gunfire)
Ms. VU MINH NGHIA: (Speaking in foreign language)
SULLIVAN: Vu Minh Nghia took part in the assault on the palace. She was 21 at the time and the only woman in her 15-member team. They had slipped into the city the night before, she says, with orders to attack an army command post in Saigon's District 5.
Ms. NGHIA: (Through translator) We met for the last time, and our leader told us our target had changed — that our new assignment would be the Presidential Palace. We were very surprised. There were only 15 of us and the palace was very well defended. But we were determined to carry out our mission.
SULLIVAN: Her team was discovered just short of the palace gate, Nghia says, but managed to fight their way into the palace grounds anyway, killing several South Vietnamese soldiers and a few Americans in the process. Shortly after that, though, things started to unravel.
Ms. NGHIA: (Speaking in foreign language)
SULLIVAN: We took heavy fire, she says, and the reinforcements we've been expecting never came. Eight members of our team were killed, the rest captured. And Nghia spent the next six years in the notorious Con Dao prison.
U.S. and South Vietnamese forces regained control of most of the city in a matter of days. But in the old imperial capital of Hue, several hundred miles to the north, it took nearly a month.
(Soundbite of people chatting)
SULLIVAN: Today, the fighting in Hue is limited to foreign tourists jockeying for camera position outside the Imperial Palace. But during Tet 1968, Hue experienced some of the most brutal street fighting of the war after several thousand North Vietnamese regulars swept into the city the morning of January 31st.
Nguyen Ti Wah(ph) was 20 then, a civilian and mother of two, with a third on the way.
Ms. NGUYEN TI WAH: (Through translator) About 4 a.m., my mother got up to pray, and I heard the sound of gunfire and the heavy thud of footsteps. I opened my door slowly and saw many, many NVA soldiers running by. They wore helmets covered with leaves. By dawn, the soldiers from the south had all run away.
SULLIVAN: The communist troops overran most of the city. By the time, Captain Chuck Meadows and Golf Company of the 2nd Marine Battalion made it to the walls of the Citadel that afternoon, the enemy was firmly in control.
Captain CHUCK MEADOWS: We were significantly outgunned and overmanned. We made it to this corner and we started receiving very, very heavy automatic fire, other rifle fire, mortar fire, rocket fire. And I was sustaining a lot of casualties at that time. I had gone in there with probably, I'd say, 120 folks, maybe at the most. And by the time we got to this corner, I had lost five killed and 44 wounded. I'd lost almost 50 Marines.
SULLIVAN: Meadows says his company lost more men in four hours than it had the previous four months in the jungle. Urban warfare against well-armed regular soldiers was something totally new.
Capt. MEADOWS: There was nobody in our - in the unit, the battalion who had ever experienced anything like that, even though a couple of them had served in Korea, but they had not seen any of this kind of fighting at all.
SULLIVAN: The northern regulars and Viet Cong controlled parts of the city for weeks. Nguyen Ti Wah and her family fled their home before their neighbors early on. Her husband was a South Vietnamese soldier and the family knew the Viet Cong had a list.
Ms. WAH: (Through translator) The VC came and questioned the landlord about my husband and another soldier. But the landlord protected us. He told them my husband and the other soldier had come in the morning to drink tea then left. It was lucky for us - the landlord said that - otherwise, my husband would have been killed.
SULLIVAN: An estimated 3,000 people with ties to the southern regime were executed in a way, many buried in shallow graves.
Retired General Nguyen Van Thu was one of the Northern commanders in Hue at the time.
General NGUYEN VAN THU (Retired): (Through translator) We had to eliminate those who followed our enemies. It was certain that we would arrest them and eliminate them. It is a normal thing during war. Just like the Americans and the Saigon regime, arrested and killed those they suspected of supporting us.
SULLIVAN: The Northern forces were driven from Hue three weeks later. Nearly half the city had been destroyed. Nearly 100,000 people left homeless. Nationwide, the Tet Offensive was a crushing military defeat for the communist forces. Politically — and psychologically — it was a major victory.
Mr. SEARCY: The truth is, until the day I left, I never really felt safe again. I was always looking over my shoulder.
SULLIVAN: Chuck Searcy.
Mr. SEARCY: And in fact, the day I went to the airport to depart, my buddy who was driving the truck wanted to pull over and pick up a couple of South Vietnamese soldiers who were hitchhiking on the road. And we wouldn't let him stop, because we were too paranoid that they might not be South Vietnamese soldiers, and they might cause a problem. We just wouldn't stop because we were too uptight.
SULLIVAN: President Lyndon Johnson and his advisers were rattled, too. After repeated assurances to the American people that the war was going well, the Tet Offensive convinced Johnson and many in his administration that the war was, in fact, untenable, and that the U.S. should begin to disengage. It would take seven more years — and many more American and Vietnamese dead — before the U.S. was finally out.
Michael Sullivan, NPR News, Hanoi.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
In Your Health today, tuna and concerns over mercury contamination.
NPR's Allison Aubrey reports on the results of some new independent tests on samples of fish bought at grocery stores and restaurants, and what they mean for sushi lovers.
ALLISON AUBREY: Market analysis shows health-conscious young professionals are big on sushi. And as palates evolve, raw fish seems to be making its way into the mainstream, with about one-third of consumers now describing sushi as appealing.
Dr.. KIMBERLY WARNER (Marine Scientist): Here's a lot of packaged fresh sushi in a grocery store.
AUBREY: Marine scientist Kimberly Warner stands at the Grab and Go counter at a busy Washington, D.C. market.
Dr. WARNER: I see a lot of salmon, eel. Here's a spicy tuna roll.
AUBREY: There's a lot of tuna, from the Tokyo roll to the rainbow roll. And Warner's marine conservation group, called Oceana, recently tested samples for mercury contamination. They purchased tuna and sushi from groceries and restaurants in 23 cities around the country. Then they shipped it off to an independent certified lab in Michigan.
Dr. WARNER: We found very high levels of mercury in nearly half the samples. So...
AUBREY: And what does that mean? How high is high?
Dr. WARNER: Well, most of those approached the FDA action level and were above the level that we find in fish that the FDA warns the sensitive groups to avoid.
AUBREY: Sensitive groups mean women who are pregnant, thinking of becoming pregnant, as well as nursing mothers and young children. They're advised by the FDA to avoid four types of fish known to have higher levels of mercury, including swordfish, shark, tilefish and king mackerel. The reason is that mercury at high enough levels can harm a developing fetus and cause problems with brain development.
Tuna is not included on this do-not-eat list. The FDA's toxicologist, Mike Bolger, says they've tested many types of tuna, including the popular sushi and steak-grade yellowfin tuna.
Dr. MIKE BOLGER (Food and Drug Administration): We've heard people say that these tend to have higher levels, and every time we've looked at it we have not been able to confirm that to be the case.
AUBREY: In 2006, the FDA tested only 87 samples of yellowfin. Oceana and other independent testers have sampled even fewer. Since there's a lot of variation from species to species, and even fish to fish, these tests may not be representative of the supply at large.
The FDA's Mike Bolger says he has not reviewed the Oceana study, but he says if there is a pattern of high mercury concentration, he'll look at it.
Dr. BOLGER: Probably as a minimal effort a step would be to go out and get more samples of yellowfin to see where we are in terms of that particular fish and what's in the marketplace right now.
AUBREY: Bolger says the FDA has not evaluated bluefin tuna. Bluefin is the prized, expensive species mostly served in high-end sushi restaurants. Independent tests suggest high mercury levels.
Dr. BOLGER: We have not looked at bluefin because it's such a minor species.
AUBREY: It's minor by percentage of seafood sales, totaling less than 1 percent. But the National Marine Fisheries Database shows about $19 million worth of bluefin was imported to the U.S. in the last two years. So it's clear that some Americans are eating bluefin.
Gavin Gibbons represents the National Fisheries Institute. He says the mercury in bluefin or any other fish should not be of concern to most consumers. He reminds it's women of child-bearing age and their young children who are the target of the advisories, and even for them only a handful of fish are to be avoided.
Mr. GAVIN GIBBONS (National Fisheries Institute): The general public should be encouraged to continue eating a variety of fish and knowing that it is a very safe part of a healthy American diet.
AUBREY: It's a message echoed by nutritionists and researchers who've shown that the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish are very beneficial. The strategy for women of child-bearing age, experts say, is to make informed choices. That's why groups such as Oceana say the FDA needs to increase the frequency of its testing for commonly consumed fish.
Allison Aubrey, NPR News, Washington.
MONTAGNE: You can get the government's full recommendations on what fish are safe to eat. Bluefish could be a problem, looking here at the list. Haddock is fine. So are anchovies. You can get it all at our Web site, npr.org/yourhealth.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And in Pakistan the two parties that triumphed in parliamentary elections are now faced with what to do about mounting terrorist violence there. The new government may not involve the man the Bush administration has tied its fortunes to, President Pervez Musharraf. So the challenge for the U.S. is how to work with Pakistan's new leadership to fight militants, including al-Qaida, on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.
Pakistan does not allow American troops to operate in that area, and the new leaders have said they favor negotiations, not force.
Mr. RICHARD BOUCHER (State Department Official): Our reaction is that it's been tried before and hasn't really worked.
MONTAGNE: That's Richard Boucher, the State Department official responsible for Pakistan and Afghanistan. He spoke to us yesterday from his office at the State Department.
Mr. BOUCHER: Whether you're negotiating or you're using force, the goal is to end the threat to Pakistan, Afghanistan and the rest of us that emanates from those areas. You have to judge it by its outcome, and negotiations haven't produced an end to the plotting, an end to the planning, an end to the bombs. So one can negotiate, but you have to judge every action by its outcome.
MONTAGNE: Well, here's the argument that the opposition has made. It's argued that a popularly-elected government could make more progress along the borders, that they'd have more sway among people there against the radicals in their midst. And in a sense they would say it's been strengthened by the fact that in this election the religious parties that did have some political power there actually did very badly. So the argument is it's a changed political landscape.
Mr. BOUCHER: You can try it, but I think we have always found that a negotiation that's not backed by a certain amount of force can't really force out the bad guys who are up there and need to be taken care of. Ultimately it's the outcome that matters. Is al-Qaida still up there and operating? Are they sending suicide bombers into Pakistan and Afghanistan? And ultimately you can negotiate, but you also have to back it by force.
MONTAGNE: And are you actively making that argument right now?
Mr. BOUCHER: We're actively talking to everybody about the need to pursue a broad effort against extremism, not just a military one, but modernizing the education system, giving people things that can be done to move the society as a whole away from extremism.
MONTAGNE: The U.S. has reportedly been allowed to us unmanned drones to launch strikes against identified terrorist targets inside Pakistan along the boarder. Is that still an option at this point?
Mr. BOUCHER: I think we're all determined to cooperate and do everything we can against terrorism, but I can't go into any more detail than that.
MONTAGNE: There of course has long been a ban on the part of Pakistan of actually moving troops across the boarder. Is that still in effect?
Mr. BOUCHER: We see Pakistan as a partner in the war on terror. We work with them in a variety of ways, but it doesn't do us a whole lot of good to go into any more detail in public discussion.
MONTAGNE: There's a proposal from Senator Joseph Biden, who was there as an observer in this recent election, to triple the non-military aid to Pakistan, aid for roads, schools, healthcare. Is that something the administration would embrace?
Mr. BOUCHER: The first thing is to make clear we already spend a lot of money on, you know, education, healthcare, economic reform.
MONTAGNE: Could you give an example of the sort of things that you would consider seriously in terms of development or education - roads, schools, that sort of thing?
Mr. BOUCHER: Well, I'll tell you what we just started. We just started this year $150 million a year program that adds to a 100 million the Pakistanis are putting in, to modernize the economy in the tribal areas, to put in infrastructure so that they can attract investment and factories, to do vocational training, schools, so that kids can get jobs instead of guns.
MONTAGNE: And the security is sufficiently good for these programs actually to get under way and...
Mr. BOUCHER: Not everywhere. I think that is one of the keys, frankly, because it goes along with the security plan for that region, and the fact is that if - if people who live there actually do take hold of their security and settle things down, they can get a benefit from that. and I think that's part of the calculus, is that people will want to create a security environment where roads and schools and hospitals can go forward, and we'll be trying to do both in tandem with each other.
MONTAGNE: Thank you for joining us.
Mr. BOUCHER: Thank you very much. Good to talk to you.
MONTAGNE: Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher spoke to us yesterday from his office at the State Department. And this morning news of another strike into Pakistanis tribal areas.
Pakistani intelligence officials say as many as a dozen people were killed today in a missile attack on a house in a Pakistan boarder area. It's an area that's known to be home to al-Qaida militants, but authorities in Pakistan haven't said who exactly was killed or where exactly the missile came from.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
We remember now the man known as one of the fathers of the conservative movement. William F. Buckley died yesterday at the age of 82. He was a CIA operative who founded the conservative magazine the National Review. He used the magazine, his prolific columns, and his television program to help push conservative ideology to the forefront of American politics.
Mr. WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY (Founder, National Review): The next president of the United States would ideally combine the best features of Julius Caesar, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
MONTAGNE: That was a tall order, and that was Buckley's prescription for the president before the wrenching 1968 election, which came amid widespread fury over the Vietnam War. In a broadcast on his TV show that year, Buckley had a long list of qualities that he thought would make an ideal American President.
BUCKLEY: The next president should not aspire to too much extra Americanism, to the myth of himself as leader of the world. For instance, he should not reject his role as an American, proud of America's past, hopeful for America's future and grateful to a providence that he was born in America and will have now the supreme opportunity to serve his country.
MONTAGNE: The man who did win that election was Richard Nixon. Buckley supported him to start with, but eventually called for his resignation after Watergate. William F. Buckley died yesterday at his home in Connecticut.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Many cities in Iraq are languishing, though not the Holy City of Najaf. The city is a major draw for Shiite pilgrims and it's becoming a political and commercial center as well. The city's rise is being sponsored and financed by Iraq's Shiite neighbor, Iran. And Iraqis are wary of too much Iranian involvement, as NPR's Anne Garrels discovered on a recent trip to Najaf.
ANNE GARRELS: Najaf is being transformed. And at the center of this transformation is the golden dome shrine to Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed and the figure most associate with the founding of the Shiite sect. He's said to be buried here.
(Soundbite of praying)
GARRELS: The shrine brings the city not only its mystique, but its money. People here say it's the third most visited site in the Muslim world, behind Mecca and Medina.
(Soundbite of chanting)
GARRELS: Shiite pilgrims, the economic engine come mainly from Iran. They support local business and leave behind valuable donations. Deputy Governor Abdul Hussein Abtan says more than a million pilgrims come here each year.
Mr. ABDUL HUSSEIN ABTAN (Deputy Governor, Najaf): (Through translator) Iranian religious tourists are the most important thing for us, and we've asked Baghdad to permit still more pilgrims.
GARRELS: The Iranian government is paying for a major expansion of the shrine, as well as contributing to the construction of an electric power plant. But Abtan is trying to balance Iran's influence with other investors.
Mr. ABTAN: (Through translator) Obviously Iran wants to be inside Najaf, but we want to keep them at arm's length for now to avoid a conflict between Americans and Iranian forces. We are trying to be smart, using both sides, the best from the Americans and the Iranians.
GARRELS: The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq is a political power in Najaf. Although the party's roots are in Iran, where leaders like Abtan sought refuge under Saddam Hussein, there appears to be ambivalence about Tehran's role now.
Mr. ABTAN: (Through translator) We told them we won't let you make Iraq, and especially Najaf, the battleground with the Americans.
GARRELS: Iran has armed competing Shiite factions, fueling intra-Shiite violence as well as attacks on Americans. There's been a backlash in the Shiite south against this Iranian meddling, not just from the supreme council but from its rival, anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr, whose populist movement, the Jaysh al-Mahdi, remains strong.
Sheik Salah Obeidi, a key Sadr aide, says Iran overplayed its hand, taking control of elements of Sadr's movement for its own ends. Obeidi says one reason Sadr declared a six-month freeze on military activity last August was to reduce Iranian influence.
Sheik SALAH OBEIDI (Moqtada Al-Sadr's Aide): They want to make use of any power to balance the influence against them from the Americans, to stop any kind of mad usage from the Iranians. We are not enemies to them, but we are not intimate friends to them. We are very cautious.
GARRELS: While Iranian pilgrims are good for Najaf, other Iranian economic involvement raises concerns. The markets are swamped by subsidized Iranian agricultural produce, which hurts Iraqi farmers. A bookseller near the shrine worries about growing Iranian cultural influence.
Unidentified Man (Bookseller): (Through translator) Our publishing industry has been destroyed. It is much cheaper to publish in Iran. We will not let Iran control us.
GARRELS: Deputy Governor Abtan says competing political parties are now getting along in Najaf. But Sadr spokesman Sheik Salah Obeidi has a different view. He accuses Abtan and the Supreme Council of using Sadr's freeze to harass Sadr supporters.
Mr. ABTAN: We find our people are followed. Our people are targeted, which may be developed into a very big problem, a very big clash.
GARRELS: Security in Najaf is much improved for now, in part because of Sadr's freeze. Obeidi knows Najaf needs this peace for continued progress. He warns that if the government doesn't back off its attacks on Sadr's people, Sadr will consider lifting the freeze when it expires in a month, and that might well mean turning again to Iran for support.
Anne Garrels, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Time now for your comments.
The morning after the president delivered his annual State of the Union, we delivered our annual fact check of the president's address.
Thank you, NPR, writes Mona Paradi(ph) of Clinton, New York. Finally I was able to listen to a news piece that actually analyzed a politician's words for accuracy. I hope this is an approach you will use throughout this election year.
Listener Jay Carlson(ph) was quite a bit less enthusiastic. The title you gave was fact-checking, Carlson writes. A better title would be We Really Don't Like President Bush. You refuted virtually every claim from the president with general statements. Where you found nothing wrong with what the president said, your quote "analysis" glossed this over and pointed to something else.
And now some fact-checking of ourselves. On Monday we said American University, where Senator Ted Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama, was the same place where President John F. Kennedy announced the Peace Corps. Matthew Grockoff(ph) of Ann Arbor, Michigan pointed out that's wrong. He writes: It's bad enough that our auto industry is downsizing. Please don't downsize our history as well.
Our apologies, Wolverines. The University of Michigan was where JFK launched the Peace Corp during a middle of the night speech in 1960.
President JOHN F. KENNEDY: How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world?
MONTAGNE: We also got comments this week about Frank Deford's preview of the Super Bowl, performed as a Shakespearean drama.
FRANK DEFORD: Yea, the true giants, these peerless monsters, call themselves Patriots, e'en though they give shame to that sweet address, trafficking more as traitors, scoundrels in video deceit...
MONTAGNE: Those immortal words inspired some of you to write in with verse of your own, including Pamela Jennings(ph) of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Ms. PAMELA JENNINGS (Caller): Frank Deford verily thou didst (unintelligible) me dead in the tracks of my most hurried morning ablutions with thine captivating tale of the great, nay, super tourney anon of the hallowed pigskin. Ye, mine admiration for thy wit doth wax brighter.
MONTAGNE: Robert Krulwich's tale about how people hear music in their heads even when they're deaf got Bea Canter(ph) of Midlothian, Virginia thinking. I have always love Beethoven, she writes. And I've always felt such pity. How could someone who loves music so much survive hearing loss? But maybe he did hear music inside his head. Maybe that famous scowl was not frustration but concentration. He was capturing the compositions to write down.
(Soundbite of music)
MONTAGNE: If you hear something you want to weight in on, we hope you'll write. Go to npr.org and click on the button that says Contact Us.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Fifty years ago today the U.S. launched its first satellite, and the space race with the Soviet Union was on.
To hear the story, NPR's Richard Harris paid a visit to the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
RICHARD HARRIS: In a display hall filled with wonders like Skylab, the Lunar Lander and the Apollo Soyuz Spacecraft, it's easy to overlook a small glass case with a modest rocket-shaped thing inside it. But the museum's chief space historian, Michael Neufeld, says this 30 pound object holds a special place in space history.
Mr. MICHAEL NEUFELD (National Air and Space Museum): This is a backup of Explorer 1, the first United States satellite that was launched on January 31, 1958.
HARRIS: And being an historian, Neufeld is excited to tell the back story of the space race. Four months earlier the Soviets had built a rocket that was able to carry Sputnik 1 into orbit. It was the first manmade satellite.
Mr. NEUFELD: The first Sputnik achievement was followed one month later, less than one month later, by Sputnik 2 with the dog Laika. And that was a real shock because the payload was so large.
HARRIS: The message was loud and clear. If the Soviets could lob a dog around the world, imagine was else long-range rockets could carry.
Mr. NEUFELD: We would never have invested all this money in rocket technology, nor would the Soviets, if we weren't fundamentally trying to find a way to loft a warhead thousands of miles.
HARRIS: Neufeld says the U.S. had been urgently working on its own space program, but it was running a bit behind the Soviets. And the first attempt to catch up came in December 1957. The Navy tried to launch a satellite with a rocket it was developing.
Mr. NEUFELD: And it's a humiliating failure. It goes up a few inches, engine cuts off, falls back, explodes, and dumps a satellite out on the scrubland. And in fact over here in another case we have the satellite.
HARRIS: The Navy got to work trying to figure out what was up with its rocket program, and that gave its rival, the Army Space Program, a chance to put America into orbit.
Wernher von Braun had adopted the German V-2 Rocket used in World War II. And at 10:48 p.m. on January 31st, the Army launched his rocket. On top was the Explorer 1 satellite. It left the Earth and went off into, well, von Braun and his colleagues didn't know exactly where it went.
Mr. NEUFELD: They were at the Pentagon waiting, waiting, waiting. And it went around the world and didn't show up on time. Well, it turns out it went into a higher orbit than planned, so it was eight minutes late. And for eight minutes they were all feeling doomed.
HARRIS: They called a press conference in the wee hours of the morning to announce their success.
Mr. NEUFELD: U.S. national honor had been saved. It was such an enormous relief for the American public that we'd finally done it after four months of, you know, feeling like a second-rate space power.
HARRIS: And Explorer 1 wasn't just a symbolic mission. It did some exciting science. It discovered the radiation belts around the Earth in magnetic fields that prevent us from being fried by charged particles from the sun. And as the Space Age blossomed, many other science experiments followed as a sideline to the ballistic missiles, the development of spy satellites, and the manned space program.
Mr. NEUFELD: We accelerated incredibly. From this little satellite to putting a human on the moon in 1969 in only 12 years was really astounding. One of the interesting things about it, however, is that we haven't gone nearly as far as the space true believers like Wernher von Braun thought we would. You know, by now we thought we thought we'd have Mars colonies and who knows what.
HARRIS: And at the current rate, Neufeld says, we'll be celebrating the 50th anniversary of our first man on the moon, 11 years from now, with a repeat of that mission.
Richard Harris, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
NPR's business news starts with an SUV maker peeling out of the U.S. market.
Isuzu Motors says it will stop selling sport utility vehicles and passenger trucks in the U.S., though it will continue producing commercial trucks. Isuzu helped popularized SUVs in the 1980s with models like the Trooper and the Rodeo.
As other carmakers sped into the SUV market, Isuzu lost its position at the forefront. Last year the company sold just 7,000 vehicles in the U.S. Isuzu says its move to exit the American passenger market starting next year is the result of General Motors' decision to stop producing the two models it makes for Isuzu.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And the Federal Reserve had shaved another one half point off the key interest rate. The federal funds rate is now 3 percent, the lowest it's been in roughly two and a half years.
NPR's Wendy Kaufman has some answers on what that means for the consumer.
WENDY KAUFMAN: With interest rates falling, this may be an excellent time to refinance your home. Rates, says Gail Cunningham of the nonprofit National Foundation for Credit Counseling, are now hovering at about 5.5 percent for a 30 year fixed rate loan.
Ms. GAIL CUNNINGHAM (National Foundation for Credit Counseling): That's an excellent rate. You know, balanced against what it was last year at this time, it was it was 6.32 percent.
KAUFMAN: Individuals with variable or adjustable rate mortgages that are about to reset will see their rates go up, but not quite as high as they might have been without the Fed's intervention. Nonetheless, experts say that many people with variable loans would be better off with fixed rate ones and should switch. With respect to credit cards, most have pre-set rates, so they won't change automatically. But Cunningham says with interest rates falling, your bank may be willing to cut the rate on your credit card, if you ask.
Ms. CUNNINGHAM: I'm going to suggest that people look at your interest rate and if it's 10 percent or above, pick up the phone and start calling.
KAUFMAN: Individuals with good credit may be rewarded, and if not Cunningham suggests looking for another credit card issuer, one with lower rates. Other items? Home equity loans, which are often linked to what the Fed does, are likely to be lower in the coming days, as will car loans for new buyers.
Finally, while much of this is good news for borrowers, it's bad news for savers. Rates on certificates of deposit are declining at a time when inflation is rising. Nationwide, the average rate for a one year CD is just over 4 percent and could drop even more.
Wendy Kaufman, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Now to China, where the worst winter storms in half a century have crippled the nation's transport system during the busiest travel season of the year. Widespread power outages have left millions of workers stranded as they try to head home for the Chinese New Year. That starts next week. Some roads, airports and railways are reopening, but the situation has exposed an infrastructure system that's not keeping up with China's rapid economic growth.
NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Beijing.
ANTHONY KUHN: The storms have now hit 17 of China's 31 provinces and affected more than 70 million people.
(Soundbite of railway station)
KUHN: Many southbound trains out of Beijing's main railway station were delayed or cancelled. Graduate student Yao Mau Yun(ph) just arrived at the station to find her train cancelled. She says she'll spend her first Chinese New Year's away from home in her dorm room.
Ms. YAO MAU YUN (Student): (Through translator) We are not that bad off, At least we're not stuck on some road with children or old folks. The government really ought to help those people out. At least we have a place to stay and aren't cold or hungry.
KUHN: Nearby, a grizzled band of construction workers are sitting glumly on their luggage. Among them is 59-year-old Wong Duo Hai(ph), a former peanut farmer from Central Hunan Province. For migrant laborers like him, the journey home is never easy. This year the snows have made it extra hard. Wong says he's fed up with Beijing and won't be coming back after the New Year.
Mr. WONG DUO HAI(ph) (Construction Worker): (Through translator) We're so old, and yet the bosses here curse at us and dock our pay. It's so hard just to make a little money; you're at the mercy of whoever you work for. After the Chinese New Year, we'll try looking for work at Shanghai.
KUHN: The storms have caused food prices to spike and aggravated inflation that's running at the highest level in 11 years. China's leaders are worried about public unrest, and Premier Wen Jiabao has visited stranded travelers in two cities this week. On Wednesday, Wen appeared that the railway station in the southern city of Kwangju, where about half a million travelers have been stuck for days.
Premier WEN JIABAO (China): (Speaking foreign language)
KUHN: I've come here to visit you all, he said. You've had a hard time and I know you're eager to get home. I completely understand how you're feeling.
While state media have praised the government's relief efforts, many Chinese are critical of the government's lack of preparedness for the storms and power shortages. Downed power lines and transportation bottlenecks are not the only problems. The government has kept coal prices low and so coal companies have been unwilling to sell at a loss. Many Southern cities are down to their last day or two of coal reserves.
Jung Da Jun(ph) is an independent Beijing-based economist. He says that too often China's economic growth emphasizes quantity over quality.
Mr. JUNG DA JUN (Economist): (Through translator) This whole storm thing (unintelligible) the credibility of the electricity and railway ministries. What do these railway ministry people do all day? They keep making the trains go faster and faster, but what use is it if they don't prepare for risks and disasters like these?
KUHN: Snow or not, Chinese New Year's still the most important holiday of the year here and the only vacation many Chinese take all year. Besides, when a nation of 1.3 billion people takes a vacation all at once, life is bound to get a bit chaotic.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Beijing.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Here in the U.S., lawmakers are still debating the economic stimulus package that would give most people tax rebates, and the Hucksters are already there. Our last word in business is stimulus scam.
The IRS says identity thieves are using the prospects of a tax rebate to get people to reveal sensitive financial data. In one scam the caller says you can only get a rebate if you provide bank account information for a direct deposit. The IRS says it does not ask for personal information over the phone. So if anyone calls on behalf of Uncle Sam, you could tell them to take a tax hike.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
We begin our program with a look at some policies being debated on Capitol Hill, starting with a new policy on the nation's borders. Starting today, Americans crossing the border from Canada or Mexico will no longer be allowed to simply declare themselves U.S. citizens.
The Homeland Security Department says it wants to see a passport or other proof of citizenship. But it also says it will be flexible until people get used to the new rules. Critics are predicting confusion and delays at the border.
NPR's Pam Fessler reports.
PAM FESSLER: People might be surprised to learn that until now, Americans have been able to cross the border if a Customs officer believe them when they simply declare that they're an American. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says he was certainly surprised.
Secretary MICHAEL CHERTOFF (U.S. Department of Homeland Security): This is at the same time that the public is demanding that we secure the border, that we build fencing between the ports of entry. It strikes me as a little anomalous to say we're going to build a fence between the ports of entry, but you can just walk right through the port of entry by saying, Hi, I'm an American citizen.
FESSLER: So beginning today, that, at least technically, is no longer the case. Those crossing by lands from Canada and Mexico are supposed to show either a passport or a government-issued photo I.D. with some proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate.
But the change faces intense opposition from border state lawmakers and businesses, and Homeland Security has been softening its stance. Officials say no one will be stopped just because they don't have the right documents. They'll be given a warning and could face delays as Customs officers try to verify their identity.
Here is Jayson Ahern, deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, earlier this week in San Diego.
Mr. JAYSON AHERN (Deputy Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection): This is not going to be come January 31 that we're going to end U.S. citizen's ability to return back to their homeland. We can't do that. We don't have the authority to do that, but we have to make sure as far as individuals satisfy the officers' determination that you are a citizen of this country and they are who they say they are.
FESSLER: Homeland security officials say they're trying to prepare people for the summer of 2009 when everyone will be required to show a passport.
But Roger Dow, head of the Travel Industry Association, thinks this interim step is just confusing, and that requiring a birth certificate will do more harm than good.
Mr. ROGER DOW (President and Chief Executive Officer, Travel Industry Association): My daughter on her Mac could create a document that's much more official-looking than the birth certificates we have in the United States from hundreds of thousands of hospitals over the years. So there's no way to even tell if a birth certificate is a good document. They are not secure documents.
FESSLER: His biggest fear is that the change will only discourage cross-border travel and trade.
Pam Fessler, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Now, from border security to economic stability. Lawmakers in Washington have been negotiating a way to give the economy a boost. On Tuesday, the House approved a $146-billion stimulus plan. Now, the Senate is debating a modified version. It would give rebate checks to all, but the wealthiest Americans, and could be approved as early as today.
NPR's Brian Naylor has more.
BRIAN NAYLOR: The Senate bill gives somewhat smaller rebates than the House plan, but more people would get them. It got bipartisan support yesterday in the Senate Finance Committee. Chairman Max Baucus of Montana said that many will benefit from his bill, including the elderly and disabled veterans.
Senator MAX BAUCUS (Democrat, Montana; Chairman, U.S. Senate Committee on Finance): Twenty one million senior citizens received a rebate check. They would not receive benefits under the House-passed bill. In addition, about a quarter of a million disabled veterans can receive a rebate check. Those disabled vets will not get rebate checks under the House-passed bill.
NAYLOR: The Senate measure would give $500 to individuals compared to $600 under the House plan. Families with children would get $300 bonuses under both bills. Baucus had originally proposed a rebate with no income caps, but relented after his fellow Democrats howled in protest. The Senate plan would now phase out rebates for individuals earning $150,000 a year, twice that for couples. That doubles the caps under the House plan, but it would keep members of the House and Senate from receiving any money. Unlike the House-passed bill, the Senate proposal also extends jobless benefits and provides slightly more in the way of business tax breaks. It would also extend tax breaks for alternative energy sources.
To be sure, there were descending voices on the Finance Committee from Republicans. Arizona Senator Jon Kyl said the bill would do little to help the economy. Utah's Orrin Hatch said the Senate should stick with the House measure, which was negotiated with the Bush administration.
Senator Orrin Hatch (Republican, Utah): My fear is that this bill will be transformed on the floor from a lean and mean stimulus package into a bogged down extra spending laden couch potato that we will not be able to get to the president in time to accomplish his purpose.
NAYLOR: And there will be efforts to amend the Senate measure. Lawmakers from northern states want to increase low income heating subsidies, others want money for bridges and highways. The challenge facing Senate leaders is keeping the list of amendments under control to get the bill passed so negotiations can begin with the House.
Brian Naylor, NPR News, the Capitol.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Attorney General Michael Mukasey was on Capitol Hill yesterday, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. That's never an easy task, but it's especially difficult when the subject everyone wants you to talk about is the subject you've decided not to discuss.
NPR's Ari Shapiro reports.
ARI SHAPIRO: The subject Mukasey wanted not to discuss was waterboarding, the practice of controlled drowning that the CIA has used on some high-level terrorism detainees since 9/11. It has become shorthand for the country's debate over torture, and Mukasey said the CIA doesn't do it anymore.
Attorney General MICHAEL MUKASEY (U.S. Department of Justice): Given that waterboarding is not part of the current program and may never be added to the current program, I don't think it would be appropriate for me to pass definitive judgment on the technique's legality.
SHAPIRO: But Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee said laws need to be clear and public, especially when it comes to torture. Here is Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.
Senator EDWARD KENNEDY (Democrat, Massachusetts): Even though you claim to be opposed to torture, you refuse to say anything whatever, on the crucial questions of what constitutes torture and who gets to decide the issue. It's like saying that you're opposed to stealing but not quite sure whether bank robbery would qualify.
SHAPIRO: Mukasey said that comparison is unfair because it assumes waterboarding is torture.
Atty. Gen. MUKASEY: This is an issue on which people of equal intelligence and equal good faith and equal vehemence have differed.
SHAPIRO: Mukasey refused to scrutinize the actions of his predecessors who authorized waterboarding because, he said, to do so sends a message to CIA interrogators that legal authorizations are only valid until the political winds start blowing in the other direction.
Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse said:
Senator SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (Democrat, Rhode Island): The message you send, otherwise, is that I was only following orders is a fine response.
Atty. Gen. MUKASEY: It's not a fine response. It was a response at Nuremberg that was found unlawful, as we both know.
Sen. WHITEHOUSE: And yet it's the one that you're crediting right now. I had authorization and therefore I'm immune from prosecution. Is that where that analysis leads?
Atty. Gen. MUKASEY: No. If I had authorization and let's take a look at the authorization if the circumstances under which it was given and what was done at a whole wide range of variables.
SHAPIRO: Mukasey said the Justice Department is not currently analyzing those authorizations.
Atty. Gen. MUKASEY: I don't start investigations out of curiosity. I start investigations out of some indication that somebody might have had an improper authorization. I have no such indication now.
SHAPIRO: Whitehouse later said to Mukasey, essentially open your eyes.
Sen. WHITEHOUSE: Read The New York Times, read The Washington Post, read what people have said on television. There's been a former CIA official who has been on the airwaves. If that's not enough to at least open the first red flag as to whether inquiries should go forward, I don't know what on earth could be.
SHAPIRO: Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said he's frustrated that lawmakers have been almost completely unsuccessful trying to hold the executive branch accountable for its actions on the issues of torture, the CIA's destruction of interrogation videos, Whitehouse claims of executive privilege and the so-called terrorist surveillance program.
Senator ARLEN SPECTER (Republican, Pennsylvania): Congressional oversight has been so ineffective, notwithstanding Herculean efforts for the last three years. But the courts provide a balance, a separation of powers. Well, the only effective way of dealing with what is argued to be executive excesses is through the courts.
SHAPIRO: Yesterday, Mukasey urged Congress to keep the domestic spying program out of the courts and grant telephone companies that cooperated with the administration retroactive immunity for their actions.
Ari Shapiro, NPR News, Washington.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Detroit got a sober apology last night from its energetic, engaging and now scandal-plagued mayor.
Mayor KWAME KILPATRICK (Democrat, Detroit): To all of you who prayed for me, I'm sorry - for the embarrassment and the disappointment the events of the past few days have caused you.
MONTAGNE: Kwame Kilpatrick has flirted with controversy since he was elected Detroit's mayor at age 31, seven years ago. But last night's apology refers to a scandal that could destroy his promising political career. He's being investigated for lying under oath when he denied having an extramarital affair with his former chief of staff.
We're joined now by Ron Dzwonkowski, who is editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press.
Good morning.
Mr. RON DZWONKOWSKI (Editor, Detroit Free Press): Good morning.
MONTAGNE: Now, your paper uncovered some 14,000 text messages the mayor and his former aide exchanged and what did they reveal?
Mr. DZWONKOWSKI: They revealed some very romantic exchanges, on their city-paid text messages, between the mayor and his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty, in which they talked about planning rendezvous, eluding their security guards - all in direct contradiction to some very pointed questions he was asked under oath. And she was asked under oath in a civil trial filed by two police officers who came upon the affair while they were investigating misconduct on the mayor's security detail. These were essentially internal affairs officers. And so the text messages clearly undercut the mayor's sworn testimony about these matters.
MONTAGNE: Now, this was all tied to a whistle-blower lawsuit, and altogether, it's cost the city something like $9 million to settle - going back to basically this affair, right?
Mr. DZWONKOWSKI: Yes. Actually, a jury awarded the two officers who the mayor was attempting to get rid of. A jury awarded them $6-point-some million. The mayor was - who had testified in the trial and the jury only went out about three hours before they decided to find against the city and against the mayor. The mayor initially said he was blown away by the verdict and was going to appeal. And then, subsequently, a few weeks later, reversed himself and said the city should settle.
MONTAGNE: Right.
Mr. DZWONKOWSKI: They came out with a figure of about $9 million which they paid the officers.
MONTAGNE: And is the city upset?
Mr. DZWONKOWSKI: The city is upset about the $9 million. I think the mayor and his family at least earned some sympathy with his pretty effective apology last night. But it was interesting that in his speech, which ran about 10 minutes or so, he never said the word affair, never mentioned the $9 million, never talked about the legal issues.
Only said there are some things I just can't discuss. It was an entirely personal speech in which he said I'm sorry seven times and it was, obviously, an attempt to regain some standing with the voters of Detroit. But there's still an awful lot of question that he just did not address last night.
MONTAGNE: Now, we just have a few seconds - I'm sorry to say - but altogether, does this scandal ruin his promise to revitalize the city?
Mr. DZWONKOWSKI: I think the business community, the jury is still out and they're the big players in this revitalization of Detroit. Downtown has, obviously, had some pretty good growth under Mayor Kilpatrick. A lot of that is due to private investment, which the mayor has nurtured and has been pretty effective in doing. I think the business community is still waiting to see how this is all going to shake out in terms of a possible criminal case. If the business community were to pull the rug out financially from under the mayor, then I think his career definitely would be in jeopardy.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for talking with us.
Mr. DZWONKOWSKI: Glad to do it. Thank you.
MONTAGNE: Detroit Free Press editor Ron Dzwonkowski.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was at the Ronald Reagan library yesterday, but not to join the Republican debate that was scheduled for their -later. He was there to official announce his exit from the race and simultaneously endorse Senator John McCain.
NPR's Ina Jaffe reports.
INA JAFFE: If Rudy Giuliani wanted a huge crush of reporters to witness his official withdrawal from the presidential race, he picked the right place.
The media were out in force for the final Republican debate before Super Tuesday. But Giuliani said that the real reason that the Reagan library was the right place for this event was…
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York): Because President Reagan's leadership remains an inspiration for both John McCain and for myself.
JAFFE: But before Giuliani announced what everyone already knew, he took a moment to reflect. When you run for president, he said, you spend a lot of time thinking about what qualities a president should have.
Mr. GIULIANI: Someone who can be trusted in times of crisis. Someone with a clear vision about the challenges facing our nation. Someone with the will and perseverance to get great goals accomplished. Obviously, I thought I was that person.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GIULIANI: The voters made a different choice.
JAFFE: Giuliani spent relatively little time talking about himself, however, instead using the few minutes he spoke to praise McCain.
Mr. GIULIANI: John McCain is the most qualified candidate to be the next commander in chief of the United States. He is an American hero and America could use heroes in the White House. He's a man of honor and integrity. And you can underline both, honor and integrity.
JAFFE: Giuliani began his campaign as the national front-runner but with an unorthodox strategy. He skipped the Iowa caucuses and other early contests to focus on Florida. A win there was supposed to give him momentum for the more than 20 races on February 5th. But, instead, it was McCain who won Florida and Giuliani finished the distant third.
In accepting Giuliani's endorsement, McCain portrayed him the way Giuliani has portrayed himself during his campaign, as the hero of 9/11.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): And I saw Rudy Giuliani unite this nation in a way that made us all proud. And all of us where were recommitted to defeating the terrible evil that attacked New York City on September 11th.
JAFFE: Giuliani said he'd campaign for McCain in New York and California, wherever he could be useful.
Mr. GIULIANI: I am fully aboard 100 percent. I don't do things halfway. I do them 100 percent. And when I believe in a man like I do John McCain, this will become, to me, as important as my own election was.
JAFFE: But in recent weeks, Giuliani has trailed McCain in the polls in California and even in his home state of New York. And after last night's debate in which McCain and Mitt Romney fought tooth and nail over who's more conservative, it's unclear how helpful this endorsement from the moderate Giuliani will be, says political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe.
Ms. SHERRY BEBITCH JEFFE (Political Analyst): That small percentage of Republicans who voted for Giuliani will move to McCain. They would have done it anyway.
JAFFE: Later today, McCain is expected to wrack up a more important endorsement, at least in the delegate-rich state of California, when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger gives him his backing.
Ina Jaffe, NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Now, former presidential candidate John Edwards has not endorsed either of his rivals for the Democratic nomination. Edwards ended his second run for the White House yesterday with the promise that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would press the issue that was central to his campaign.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina): They have pledged to me that as president of the United States they will both make ending poverty and economic inequality central to their presidency. This is the cause of my life and I now have their commitment to engage in this cause.
MONTAGNE: Democrat John Edwards speaking yesterday in New Orleans.
Joining us now is NPR news analyst Juan Williams. Good morning.
JUAN WILLIAMS: Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Has this fundamentally different campaign in the one John Edwards run four years ago?
WILLIAMS: I think it was without a doubt a more strident, angrier campaign. And I think the reason here was, you know, in 2004, if you will recall, Renee, he gave a very good speech called "Two Americas" speeches in which he talked about the differences emerging in the country class-wise, rich and poor.
But this time, he literally started and ended his campaign, as we just heard, in New Orleans, and spoke about, repeatedly, the cause of his life speaking out for the poor Described himself as, repeatedly, as the son of a South Carolina mill worker. And as a result, there was a real stridency, a need to distinguish himself. And I think that became kind of the hallmark of this campaign.
MONTAGNE: While he was in the race, John Edwards often said he was at a disadvantage against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. He called them celebrity candidates, and, of course, mentioned how many millions of dollars they had. But he was hardly an unknown.
WILLIAMS: He was not an unknown, having been a U.S. senator from south - from North Carolina. But, you know, one of the problems that he had in this campaign also stemmed from that, which was, of course, his vote to support going to the war in Iraq, his support for trade with China. Some of that he never could overcome, but that's what he was known for.
And then, of course, it also became an issue as he was going about - talking about poverty issues that people were able to point out he'd had that $400 hair cut; pointed out that he had given speeches for a great deal of money; worked for a hedge fund. All of that somehow came to confuse his message, Renee.
MONTAGNE: And Edwards, though, did have strong appeal to some voters - he did get votes. Where are they going to go now?
WILLIAMS: Well, there is a question about that. But if you think about where his votes came from, clearly, his support was with white males, especially working-class white males. He's - was winning votes - those votes. The question is, now, where all those votes go, as you say.
Now, he has been splitting the white vote with Hillary Clinton. And the question is whether or not you're going to see that vote naturally go towards Mrs. Clinton. But the thing is that Edwards really shared with Barack Obama, this issue about the need for change. Edwards, at one point, in one of the debates - that he and Obama had a deep belief in change, and that Edwards, according to Obama, was a voice for the working class and he wants to be that working-class voice.
So I think what you can see is that Obama, going forward, is going to try to pick up the populist theme. I think he's going to go do more in terms of the anti-war theme and make it very clear his - the distinction between Obama - distinction between himself and Mrs. Clinton on the war, although it's not great.
And then, for the Clinton side of the ticket, I think they're going to do more - much more emphasis on health care and expect that by picking up the health care theme, they can pick up some of Edwards' voters.
MONTAGNE: You know, it was a two-person race, so to speak, for some weeks now. But there seems to be no consensus over how Edwards' departure will actually affect the race for the nomination.
WILLIAMS: Well, when you get people head to head, I think that it drives a sense of exactly what is the contrast here, where are points of difference? And, of course, the irony, Renee, is that there is not a great deal of difference on policy issues if you look at Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton - on the war, on health care, on taxes - just not a great deal of difference.
But that now becomes a sharper point, and everybody looking for exactly some point of difference that would be to their advantage. And that's why I think you're going to see more strident language as they go one on one in a debate in California tonight.
MONTAGNE: Just one last question. Tonight, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama meet for the first time in a one-on-one debate here in California. What do you expect the mood to be?
WILLIAMS: Well, I think, initially, you know, that everybody wants to be nice and warm. But I think what they're, you know - if you think about the states they're appealing to, Clinton going after the big states - New York, California, New Jersey; Obama going after more middle of the country, Kansas -where he spoke this week about his relatives - and especially states where there are going to be caucuses. I think you're going to start to see again a little tougher approach to each other.
MONTAGNE: Juan, thanks. NPR news analyst Juan Williams.
And you're listening to MORNING EDITION from NPR News.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
The record for most Smurfs gathered together at one time remains unbeaten. Close to 400 folks in Croatia painted themselves blue and wore floppy white hats, trying for a spot in the Guinness World Record. Unfortunately for the big blue group, their search of the Internet had yielded the wrong record. It turns out a British university had out-Smurfed them with an even bigger, bluer group.
You're listening to MORNING EDITION.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
An unlikely suspect showed up at a Sacramento County Sheriff Department's arrest record. Mickey Mouse is listed as a 47-year-old bartender and resident of Anaheim. His aliases are Buzz Lightyear and Donnie Duck. It turns out Mickey's name is used by police trainees learning to use the computer system. It was one of the names they could use without getting in trouble. Try telling that to Minnie.
This is MORNING EDITION.